Fed Whistleblower Reveals Bernanke Aides Advised Against AIG Bailout (VIDEO)
Video: Sen. Jim Bunning on CNBC's Squawk Box -- January 26, 2010
Quotes from Issa, Bunning and details on the Fed mole are inside. This one is extremely rewarding. Evidence of conflict within the Fed over the decision to bail AIG, and House and Senate subpoenas in response.
This is an outstanding interview. Joe Kernen and Bunning get along well. There are several funny moments, and several great quotes which I've transcribed at the bottom.
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Beginning at the 7:20 mark, Bunning makes reference to internal Fed emails:
- "Bernanke's staff did not agree with him on bailing out AIG. I am talking about an email that he sent his staff, after his staff recommended that the Federal Reserve not touch AIG, just like Lehman Brothers."
A Republican senator said Tuesday that documents showing Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernake covered up the fact that his staff recommended he not bailout AIG are being kept from the public. And a House Republican charged that a whistleblower had alerted Congress to specific documents provide "troubling details" of Bernanke's role in the AIG bailout.
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), a Bernanke critic, said on CNBC that he has seen documents showing that Bernanke overruled such a recommendation. If that's the case, it raises questions about whether bailing out AIG was actually necessary, and what Bernanke's motives were.
A letter Bunning sent Monday to Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) also refers to an "[e]mail exchange regarding restructuring of assistance to AIG, initiated by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner" in March 2009.
Senators will be voting on Bernanke's confirmation for a second term in the coming days. But only senators on the Banking Committee have had access to documents that illuminate just what decisions he made and how he made them. And that access only came after Bunning publicly complained that Dodd and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) were the only members of the committee could see them.
Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who has been investigating the AIG bailout in his role as ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that a whistleblower has informed him of "troubling details" of Bernanke's role in the bailout.
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Bunning's money quotes:
- "He doesn't deserve to be Fed Chairman, and I have a lot of reasons why."
- "All the talking heads that have something to do with the market favor Ben Bernanke for Fed Chairman."
- "The only reason you can get cash to come out of your ATM is the banks don't have to pay a darn cent for the cash they're giving you."
- "Geithner will get fired by the end of the year. He'll be fired by the President for his inability to handle his job as Secretary of the Treasury."
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Jan 27, 2010 at 6:05 AM
Reader Comments (12)
Is Bernanke Hiding A Smoking Gun?
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article source
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/26/state-of-the-union-drinki_n_436932.html
Ask Obama Questions (And See His Answers) on YouTube
http://mashable.com/2010/01/26/obama-questions-youtube/?utm_source=feedburner
Ron Paul: CIA has carried out 'coup' against US
Ron Paul: Greenspan, Bernanke Should Be Criminally Charged
Refresh Old:Ron Paul on Alex Jones Tv"Economic Terrorism"1/2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfBURwloHsk
“The Democrats don’t have the guts. They don’t have the courage of their own convictions. They’re disgusting. I’m embarrassed,” Moore says. “I want really nothing to do with them. And if they don’t find their spine, well, they’re in for a huge surprise in November.”
GO MIKE GO!
http://www.democracynow.org /
on edit, he adds later:
"But we, all of us, have to remember that there’s more of us than there are of them. There always have been. There always will be. There’s nothing to be afraid of here. It’s time to step up and take this country back."
Under fire, Obama’s chief of staff calls liberal strategy ‘f*cking retarded’
According to a report Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal, Emanuel told a liberal strategy group in August that a plan to run advertisements against conservative Democrats who were "balking at Mr. Obama's health-care overhaul" was grossly unwise.
"F—ing retarded," Mr. Emanuel scolded the group, according to participants cited by the paper.
"He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items," the reporter said.
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/fire-obamas-chief-staff-calls-liberal-strategy-fucking-retarded/
Criminals make money out of thin AIr by shipping Jobs Overseas
Obama and Volcker Must Go After the Big Banks
Volcker has the right idea, but Obama must take it much further if he wants to protect our economy from Wall Street excess.
http://www.alternet.org/news/145437/obama_and_volcker_must_go_after_the_big_banks
Geithner Must Go: He's Costing Us and Obama Too Much
http://www.alternet.org/economy/145431/geithner_must_go%3A_he%27s_costing_us_and_obama_too_much
FINAL CRIME FACT EPISODE ...........CRIMINAL TRAITORS IN WASHINGTON DC, REVOLT LEADER MUST GROW BALLS AND COME FORWARD TO LEAD US TO FREE USA REPUBLIC FROM THE JAWS OF THESE CRIMINAL HOME GROWN FINANCIAL ALQAEDA AND BLOOD SUCKING PESTS CALLED SENATORS/CONGRESS NOW...................
REWARDED CRIMINALS WITH OUR BLOOD SWEAT AT ZERO% ARE GUILTY OF THE CRIME: FCTS
$1.4 trillion in subprime loans to become $140 trillion in potential losses, you need two steps in between. The most significant is a healthy dose of leverage, but leverage would not have had a platform without the help of a wondrous financial feat called securitization. Financial firms run economic models that select and package loans into new securities according to criteria such as geographic diversity, the size of the loans, and the length of the mortgages. A bunch of loans are then repackaged into an asset-backed security (ABS). This new security is backed, or collateralized, by a small number of original home loans related to the size of the security. Some securities, for example, might be 10 percent real loans and 90 percent bonds backed by those loans. Some might be 5 percent real loans. Whatever the proportion, the money the mortgage holders pay to lenders on their loans is used to make payments on new assets or securities. Those securities, in turn, pay out to their investors.
During the lead-up to the Second Great Bank Depression, the securities themselves were a much bigger problem than the loans. Between 2002 and 2007, banks in the United States created nearly 80 percent of the approximately $14 trillion worth of total global ABSs, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and other alphabetic concoctions or "structured" assets. Structured assets were created at triple what the rate had been from 1998 to 2002. Bankers from the rest of the world created, or "issued," the other 20 percent, around $3 trillion worth. Everyone was paid handsomely. In total, issuers raked in a combined $300 billion in fees. Fees can be made for all types of securitized assets, but the more convoluted they are, the riskier and more lucrative they become. Fees ranged from .1 percent to 0.5 percent on standard ABS deals and up to 0.3 percent for mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and whole business securitization (WBS) deals. Fees were better for CDOs—between 1.5 and 1.75 percent for each deal, and higher for the riskier slices. All told, the $2 trillion CDO market alone netted Wall Street around $30 billion before CDO values headed south. Because U.S. investment banks were making huge profits from packaging churning loans and leveraging them, mortgage-and asset-backed security volume skyrocketed.
NEXT......................
http://www.kickthemallout.com
http://www.pushhamburger.com
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Supreme Court's 'Radical and Destructive' Decision Hands Over Democracy to the Corporations
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The Bush-Packed Supreme Court Thinks Corporations Are People Too
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The Supreme Court Just Handed Anyone, Including bin Laden or the Chinese Govt., Control of Our Democracy
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The Obama Brand: Feel Good While Overlords Loot the Treasury and Launch Imperial Wars
HANG HIM AND THEN HAVE A TRIAL!!
On Monday, Bunning sent a letter to Dodd, asking him to subpoena the emails and other documents. Bunning and other committee members have thus far had to view the documents at the Federal Reserve and are bound by confidentiality from revealing their contents. "He thinks that all members of the Senate should have access to the documents he's seen," said Bunning spokesman Mike Reynard.
Issa, in a letter to his committee's chairman, Ed Towns (D-N.Y.), asked for a similar subpoena and even specified exactly which documents he wants: Those tagged electronically as "sb-aig-01000092 to sb-aig-010000125" and "Draft Memo on AIG.pdf."
http://www.pushhamburger.com
http://www.kickthenallout.com
I work as a government contractor (sorry don't want to get into too much details) and I was hired once to provide services for a certain District Attorney's office thru an outside agency. Long story short, when I showed up at the job location I immediately noticed that I had been sent in ERROR and that there was really no justifiable reason for my being there, based on the specific type of services that I provide.
I called the agency that had sent me and immediately informed them of the situation. THEY ASKED MY TO STAY AND BILL IT ANYWAY, knowing FULL WELL I would be doing NOTHING the entire time. I asked them to phone the DA's office and tell them the situation, but they insisted it wasn't necessary and that I should stay anyway and pretend I was working basically. I decided to leave anyway because I considered billing under those circumstances unethical at the least and more probably an outright act of fraud.
I then subsequently reported the scam to a government fraud prevention hotline (as per some BULLSHIT code of ethics oath these fuckers had me take when I started with them) and guess what?. THEY DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT IT.
Why? BECAUSE THE PEOPLE FROM THE PRIVATE AGENCY ENGAGING IN THE FRAUD WERE INTIMATELY RELATED TO THE SAME DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE THAT HIRED ME THRU THEM ...AND THE SAME DA'S OFFICE WAS NOW IN CHARGE OF INVESTIGATING A FRAUD THAT THEY THEMSELVES WERE OBVIOUSLY INVOLVED IN!!! Who KNOWS how many times they were (are?) doing this; billing the city for services that are NEVER RENDERED.
All this brings us to question the USEFULNESS of reporting misconduct when the very authorities in charge of investigating and preventing said misconduct are THEMSELVES INVOLVED. THIS my friends is what LIVING IN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY IS *ALL* ABOUT. Get used to it.
And now I leave you with your Daily Zen Koan Meditation: "If someone blows a whistle denouncing fraud but no one in the forest ever hears it, did the fraud really exist?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI3Iq1EyeQQ
enjoyed the vintage Bunning clip from his days as a pitcher...thanks jjames...