This is an Instapopulist to cover the press articles on the new SIGTARP, the inspector general's report on TARP, due out this morning. We will update the site when we can get our little grubby peanut gallery hands on the actual report.
In Government report questions rescue claims we discover, surprise, surprise, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and the FDIC all lied on the health of the 9 banks receiving funds.
But the report said that then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other officials were wrong to contend at an Oct. 14 press conference that all nine institutions receiving the first round of support — $125 billion — were sound.
The New York Times has a detailed account of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and phone calls to Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis.
During the week of the A.I.G. bailout alone, Mr. Paulson and Mr. Blankfein spoke two dozen times, the calendars show, far more frequently than Mr. Paulson did with other Wall Street executives.
On Sept. 17, the day Mr. Paulson secured his waivers, he and Mr. Blankfein spoke five times. Two of the calls occurred before Mr. Paulson’s waivers were granted.
Elizabeth Warren, Congressional Oversight Panel Chair for TARP funds did not say Paulson lied. But to fit it in the title of the Instapopulist, I am summing it up for you.
Below is a Bloomberg interview where when COP cranked the numbers, they discovered for every dollar given in TARP funds, on the day it was given, the United States received 66¢ in shares, warranties. In other words, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson told the panel one thing, that the funds with a direct 1:1 ratio exchange for stocks and warrenties and the reality was another, by the numbers. It was a $78 Billion dollar subsidy with no return, straight out of the box and this is the actual day of transaction. In other words a $78 billion giveaway to the banks.
This evening, Bill Moyers interviewed William K. Black, the former senior regulator during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, who blew the whistle on the Keating Five (the U.S. Senators implicated in taking “gifts” from S&L bankster Charles Keating was convicted of racketeering and fraud in both state and federal court after his Lincoln Savings & Loan). Black is now an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, and the author of the recently released book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.
[Paulson] has shelved the original plan to buy troubled mortgage assets while turning his attention to nonbank financial institutions and consumer finance.
Purchasing these so-called "toxic" assets was once the cornerstone of the rescue plan for financial markets and was almost the entire focus of Congress when the package was being debated before its enactment. But almost as soon as Treasury received the money, it decided that giving capital to banks in return for preferred stock was a better use of the funds.
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson thinks the whole problem of the financial crisis is because of the Pricing correction on houses. He just said this in his testimony statement before the House Finance Services Committee.
THAT'S JUST WRONG
People cannot afford these prices because they offshore outsourced the jobs, brought in cheap labor to undercut US workers and their wages and enabled the biggest global wage arbitrage since slavery!
It's also plain wrong on the cause, which is unregulated derivatives and the shadow banking system.
The median price of a home, nationwide is still over $210,000 and the fact is people simply cannot afford that. In cities where the jobs are...it's much higher.
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