Most of you know the story already. Mike Morgan started a little blog. Lloyd Blankfein was wearing a man-thong and felt especially irascible. He instructed Goldman's lawyers to sue. Mike Morgan's blog got a wee bit of attention.
It appears he's not wasting the traffic. Check it out if you haven't already.
See also:
Maxine Waters Asks The Goldman Question
Purely a guess on my part, but I doubt these two protesters are Republicans. I have never heard of FairTax.org so if I'm wrong, feel free to tar and feather me in comments.
More on the tea party protests from Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. Cody Willard gets appropriately skewered as does everyone else. It's all in good fun. Two videos after the jump.
And pay no attention to the guy screaming "Obama's a fascist" while wearing a UVa lacrosse t-shirt. We think it's Jerry Falwell's son just trying to run a bit of subterfuge.
This one could go either way. Either he's bluffing the market to make eventual sales into the PPIP easier, or the mark-to-market accounting adjustments changed the entire game, as I wrote last week. Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock listened to the JPMorgan conference call early this morning and reported the following nugget.
Until now I have avoided comment on the hundreds of tea parties held nationwide yesterday. I haven't missed the fact that certain pundits are having a field day with the tea-bagging comedy. I've enjoyed the laughs. Tea-bagging, though inherently juvenile, is still funny. But jokes aside it's time to examine the movement and yesterday's events.
Treasury Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky wants to know if banks committed fraud in order to qualify for TARP. “I hope we don’t find a single bank that’s cooked their books to try to get money but I don’t think that’s going to be the case,” said Mr Barofsky.
Summers is a nasal drone. How he became a debate champion at MIT is beyond comprehension. Wall Street Larry was on with Maria Bartiromo this afternoon. We have both CNBC clips after the jump.
I consider this a postitive development. Though tonight he is repudiating the story first reported in the Page Six column of the New York Post, Spitzer's denial is to be expected either way. It's too early to declare for the 2010 race, his true intent notwithstanding,
Page Six reports that former New York governor Eliot Spitzer would like to be Attorney General of NY, a position he held for two terms before moving on to the Governor's mansion. Let me be one of the few so far to support former Governor Spitzer in his campaign trial balloon. Here's why.
Prostitution should probably be legal and regulated. His crime was against his wife and family and not the people of New York. He has already paid the substantial price of losing his job as well as the residual social embarrassment.
No one can deny that he gets a special kick from indicting financial giants. Talk to Hank Greenberg, longtime CEO of AIG as well as Henry Blodget. I think Frank Quattrone and Mary Meeker also might have a few thoughts on Eliot. Cuomo is the only prosecutor in the country doing anything substantial in terms of indictments of financial charlatans. He is exactly what we need to follow Cuomo.
His arrest was the result of a Karl Rove persecution over a charge Spitzer made aginst the Bush White House related to unfair lending practices by large banks.
Let us know if you would like to see Spizer back as Attorny General handing out indictments like candy to folks such as Joseph Cassano, Hank Paulson (a man can dream), Richard Fuld and Bob Lewis of AIG.
Former chief economist for the IMF, Simon Johnson, appeared recently on C-Span's Washington Journal to discuss his opus on Wall Street's ownership of the political class, 'The Quiet Coup' as published in the Atlantic. C-Span video clips after the jump.
After the jump we have the speech, the transcript, video of the Q&A, and a CNBC clip of reaction from Liesman and Santelli.
We are big fans of Chris Whalen. He has been repeatedly correct on the banks since early 2008 and he supports taxpayers vs. bondholders in the bank loss debate. Whalen just finished a short appearance on CNBC with Larry Kudlow and fellow banking analyst Dick Bove. The discussion was decent though it was tough on Whalen as the only realist facing the formidable duo of Goldy and Polly.
Watch this outstanding clip to witness a Geithner emasculation at the hands of Whalen.
CNBC Video of Whalen, Kudlow and Bove after the jump.
See also:
Whalen Statement to the Senate on Proposed Financial Market Regulation
bank bailout news, bailout, banking recovery
Former Goldman Sachs managing director Neel Kashkari has remained as administrative head of the TARP during the Obama transition, while a replacement was being located. It appears this morning that his successor has been found. Former Chairman of TIAA-CREF and more recently, fill-in CEO of Fannie Mae (since October of 2008), Herb Allison is President Obama's choice as the new bank bailout administrator for TARP.
Officially, Allison will be nominated as the assistant secretary for the Office of Financial Stability where he will report to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Prior to joining TIAA-CREF, Allison was a longtime executive at Merrill Lynch where he is perhaps most famous for terminating the Merrill analyst who warned about the dangers at Enron. Ouch.
After the jump, we have a short youtube clip of an exchange between Kashkari and Congressman Brad Sherman of California. The issue was AIG bonus payments and it is a good indication of the hornet's nest into which Allison will soon be sticking his ginormous head.
Most of you have seen this clip already, but I want it as part of the bailout record so I am posting it belatedly. I took 4 days away from the site to refresh and you may now expect the content to return to normal.
Larry Summers is appropriately interrupted by CodePink demonstrators during a talk at the National Economic Club.
Give GW some credit; he got one right. Appointing a prosecutor to a regulatory oversight function is usually going to mean a lot of audits. Egggsssaaaactly. Neil Barofsky is the Treasury's Special Inspector General of TARP appointed by George W. Bush to serve several watchdog functions. Barofsky works in concert with Elizabeth Warren but operates independently of her congressionally appointed commission.
I'm still endeavoring to determine what kind of actual power Barofsky wields with his charter at Treasury. (He works in the same building as Geithner. The enemy within.) Odds say he is ultimately toothless not unlike Elizabeth Warren and the panel she chairs, but it does not preclude him from making some noise occasionally. And he did today.
“All successful efforts to address bank crises have involved the combination of moving aside failed management and getting control of the process of valuing bank balance sheets,” the panel, headed by Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren, said in its report.
Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP, had her moment in the sun today and took the opportunity to question the Treasury's approach (PPIP) to the banking crisis. Her report recommended receivership for the failed banks and liquidation of their assets. Let's not kid; she is talking about Citigroup and Bank of America.
In the report, Warren’s panel said “it is possible that Treasury’s approach fails to acknowledge the depth of the current downturn and the degree to which the low valuation of troubled assets accurately reflects their worth.”
The official report pdf and video are after the jump.
Apr 17, 2009 at 1:41 PM