The Hammer Gets Hit By A Tree

Paulson annihilated by Congressman Cliff Stearns.

In light of the Goldman theft detailed last month, we are reposting this story.  This is a brilliant attack.  Paulson gets abused, to the point of stuttering.

Everything is in here: the AIG-Goldman conduit, Lehman's failure, Paulson's tax-free $700 million stock sale, Geithner's role with AIG, various conflicts of interest, political capture, the TARP switcharoo and Goldman's FDIC debt guarantee.

From over 15,000 videos on the site this is still one of our favorites.  Until the day Paulson is indicted for crimes against humanity, this is the closest we'll see him to a courtroom.

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Bonus clip:

Meet Hank the Hammer.  This is pretty funny.

We haven't forgotten the crimes against humanity of former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson.  We put everything that's important about your former TARP-loving Treasury Secretary into a 90-second comedy short.

Further reading:

A $700 Million Tax Loophole for Poor Mr. Paulson - Forbes

Paulson's role in the SEC rule change that allowed leverage to explode on Wall Street.  This single act played a devastating, but rarely-mentioned role in the crisis.

Paulson's Little-Known 2004 SEC Rule Change - New York Times

• Slideshow - Anatomy of Foreclosure Fraud

• Slideshow - Inside Bernanke's Private Offices

• Slideshow - Airport Security Cartoons

Screenshot

Check out video of Paulson and Marcy Kaptur...

Comments

[spideydouble]

Embarrassing. Hank Paulson's gravestone should read: "He died a thief, cheat and a liar and emboldened others to brazenly do likewise." Maggot shite indeed.

[Morton]

Ok It is nice to see him squirm.
One piece of democracy that works, and separates America from an autocracy is that these people can be made to answer for what they have done. But, if all he gets is a a few questions asked of him, what is the point? He gave away how many billions $ to his friends?
If he does not go to jail then you really have to ask, what's the point?

[WestWright]

I want to see Hank Paulson in an orange perp suit....along with the rest of the Goldman Sachs crooks!

[Sell Short]

Paulson is a crook. Love to see him in jail as well!!

[James H]

"It's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation." ---Hank Paulson July 20, 2008

http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-greatest-hits.html

Liar or dumbass?

[spideydouble]

http://dailybail.com/home/neel-kashkari-with-charlie-rose-video-broadcast-may-7.html

In the first summary video, Kashkari acknowledges that Paulson and Bernanke both knew they would need to pursue a bailout and agonized over timing because they were uncertain the political will was there.

01:35 "It was not until probably January of 2008 were we began serious work contingency planning that if the correction was so bad that the private market s would become unwilling to provide capital to the financial system, there might come a time when the Federal Government would have to step in to stabilize the financial system."

02:55 "So the toughest challenge for Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke was when to go to congress. When can we go when we know we are going to get the authority. Because if we go and we don't get it, that could be very damaging."

[spideydouble]

They are all treasonous liars in my opinion. Kashkari is a very intelligent and articulate guy, buy I have never believed a word he says. He takes talking point coaching well and still makes it seem natural and sincere. He would make a great actor someday.

That or he is so caught up in the web of deceit that he can't tell the illusion from reality. Still inexcusable, since he surely has hundreds if not thousands pointing out the distinction to him.

[James H]

@spidey

Thanks for finding that Kashkari quote -- I've been away from "the internets" all day.

I was pretty shocked by Kashkari's statements when I watched this back then. See, that's the perfect example of how difficult it is to play Dumbass or Liar. I had assumed Bernanke was a definite Dumbass, but with Paulson I wasn't so sure (I'm still not completely sure). Now I know (if Kashkari is to be believed) that both Bernanke and Paulson are definite Liars if not also Dumbasses -- "subprime is contained", "the banking system is sound". What makes me angry -- what doesn't these days? -- is all the clear and obvious happy talk right up until September 15. Which makes me wonder whether Kashkari's revelation was calculated or just a slip. If the MSM knew what they were doing, or weren't simply craven, they could do a whole mini-series on What Did Paulson and Bernanke Know...And When Did They Know It? Probably won't happen. Dylan Ratigan might take it up... but probably nobody else.

[spideydouble]

@ James

I would expect no less from our official Hearst/Rockefeller/Rothschild/Murdoch/Luce propaganda machine. I pray someone like Dylan Ratigan will take up the Paulson/Bernanke what did they know and when cause.

[Ken]

Ron Paul vs. the Neocon Cowards

Positions of Dr. Paul’s that would help achieve this objective include:

1. Getting rid of the Federal Reserve, which functions as the financial enabler of war, as well as its head-coach.
2. Forcing politicians in favor of war to make a formal declaration of war, as specified in the Constitution.

To which I would add:

3. Patriotism requires that the profit-motive be put-aside in time of war. Therefore, financially profiting from a soldier’s courage, and, possibly, from the sacrifice of a soldier’s life, should be forbidden by law.
4. By law, every elected representative espousing war must either personally ship-off to battle, or, send a close family member in his stead.

The Ron Paul Revolution is, among other things, a revolution to reclaim our original American spirit, a spirit mangled, at least since the time of Lincoln, by the passive acceptance, and tacit encouragement, of state-sponsored mass-murder for profit.

[Sonic Ninja Kitty]

Favorite line from Stearns: "You're saying to us that you support the Obama administration giving more power to the federal regulator--the Fed--but when you look, Geithner was on board with the New York Fed, dealing with all these institutions--HE didn't get it."

Paulson did not look good, physically. Every last bit of decency he may have had has dried up and he's running on pure evil. I predict a stroke by next July. ...or a heart attack.

[hoo hoo hoo]

What a rumbling bumbling mumbling idiot!

[st. louis, misery]

I can't wait until the entire country is talking like Cliff Stearns... Gunning down the bailouts and the criminals involved.

[InstitutionalizedFraud]

Blah, blah, blah. Wake me up when the rest of you morons are ready to hang these bastards upside down from steel girders like Mussolini, so I can come down and pump their stinking dead corpses full of LEAD.

[DailyBail]

@ Fraud

So what you're saying is after someone here commits murder, you'll be happy to come along and shoot the already-dead bodies...

You're quite the revolutionary. Whoa.

[Ken]

USA working class bamboozled and sleep , Bankers raided the pensions with this bubble to send into bust pit with coming crash, Already crashed homes?lol

Addicted to Internet screams and bashing each other and thinking a revolution will take care itself?lol

What a Bamboozled Generation?lol

Dollar to Hit 50 Yen, Cease as Reserve, Sumitomo Says (Update1)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a_A5nqmw9Dq8

[Sell Short]

Paulson you crook you have ruined this country.

[Ken]

The credit crunch is getting worse on Main Street, despite a Wall Street bailout now in the trillions of dollars. The Federal Reserve’s charts show that “base money” is rapidly expanding—meaning coins, paper money, and commercial banks’ reserves with the central bank. But the money isn’t getting where it needs to go to stimulate economic growth: into the bank accounts of American businesses and consumers. The Fed has been pumping out money to the banks, and their reserves have been growing at unprecedented rates, but the money supply in the real economy has been declining.

According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing last month in the UK Telegraph, U.S. bank credit and M3 (the broadest measure of the money supply) contracted over the summer at rates comparable to the onset of the Great Depression. In the summer quarter, U.S. bank loans fell at an annual pace of almost 14 percent. “There has been nothing like this in the USA since the 1930s,” said Professor Tim Congdon of International Monetary Research. “The rapid destruction of money balances is madness.”

Chartered banks are allowed to create credit on their books equal to many times their deposit base, but lately they haven’t been doing it. In more normal times, one dollar in base money has been fanned by the banks into $8.50 in loans. Today, one dollar in base money produces only one dollar in loans. Although the Fed has been frantically pushing cash into the banks, it can’t make them lend to consumers.

[GoKaptur!]

Has anyone here noticed the amazing similarities between Lex Luthor and this Paulson guy? The same bald head, the same evil beady eyes. The same twisted smirk. The same plans for world domination and subsequent destruction of the entire human race.

[James H]

GoKaptur,

You're on a comment rampage. Anger is good. Cultivate it. Nurture it. Sharpen thy pitchfork. The peasants are pissed off and we might just win this time.

[Ken]

James H

Kaptur is my Commander in Chief and I asked 15 families to stop all loan payments to Banker terrorists and the revolt is on.Now do you folks here have the balls to revolt now?

Kaptur is not reading here...........

Contact her office , join the revolution

[James H]

Ken,

What do you mean -- I mean, what did you convince them to do? Mortgages, credit cards...? And how did you get in contact with 15 indebted families?

[James H]

Whatever, nice work.

[Ken]

What do you mean -- I mean, what did you convince them to do? Mortgages, credit cards...? And how did you get in contact with 15 indebted families?

James this question makes me laugh?

In California in any given town , it is easy to find 15 families in just one neighbor hood.
My town, hit hard properties below construction cost and banks holding back inventory flood.

hang them high folks..now

CHICAGO MOB SHILL=OBAMA=PUPPERT OF BANKER TERRORSIST

revolution is not unleashed with screams on yahoo board:time to talk and unite neighborhoods now

This is not my America
Im fed up with this extreme immoral greed from the elites and plutocrats running our system. From GS and the banks stealing $700B of taxpayer money meanwhile running a ten % unemployment, outsourcing of jobs and more. No regulations in the financial sector is insane.

To a epidemic of diabetes in America due to slave food fastfood on every corner making Americans sick and overweight. What choice do they have? MCD, Taco Bell, pizza chains, fried chicken chains, chinese food chains, sub sandwhich chains--they are all unhealthy.

Then the so called "health insurance industry" turns down my fellow Americans for so called preexisting conditions so Americans cant even get health care. Lobbyists spend millions and billions to make sure average Americans cant get health care and are gouged on credit cards anf the like.

Lastly I saw Michael Moore's Capitalism and it pains me greatly to seee in the corporations own writing they look at my fellow Americans as peasants.

Enough is enough this is what revolutions are made of.

My Commander in Chief is KAPTUR

OBAMA=CRIMINAL=TREASON

[Ken]

Revolution unleashed , join in with revolt action Fellow Americans:

Cash Every Check, carry cash, pay with cash, strangle the Banker Crooks: Our own Bail out has begun.

Best Advice For All True Americans!!!

Stop paying ALL credit cards and stop using ALL ATM cards. Everytime you swip an ATM card the banks get a fee. Pay everything in cash, invest in real tangible private assets like gold snd silver, and UNPLUG from the f*cking matrix!!!!!

[allie]

Damn, this clip is great.

Re: the dumbass or liar debate... um, c. all of the above.

[ex-republicrat]

Wow! $200,000,000.00 in profit and no taxes? These guys have really set the system up for themselves. Look at their retirements, their health care, their tax breaks! Who the #%&@ are they kidding. Democrats, Republicans, bla bla bla bla bla, it's all a joke! They get all of us to think some of them are on our side and really they are all on our back screwing us. Unbelievable.

[Jake]

I hate Paulson and Bernake like the next person. But Cliff Stearns lost ALL credibility the moment he advocated the TARP money be used to pay down equity of OTHER people's mortgages.

Why should I, the tax payer be paying SOME OTHER person's mortgage when I don't even own a house? In fact, why should I... a renter be making life hard for myself for keeping real estate artificially inflated?

Whatever mistakes were made. The one right decision was not to throw tax payer money buy paying off other people's mortgages.

[ex-republicrat]

"But Cliff Stearns lost ALL credibility the moment he advocated the TARP money be used to pay down equity of OTHER people's mortgages."

Jake, While I agree with your statement regarding paying other peoples mortgages, I have to say I would rather have seen some of my neighbors not have to pull their kids out of school, loose their house and move across town to some apartment verses these a-holes taking hundreds and hundreds of billions of our tax dollars and giving it to these damn companies so that their ivy league buddies could get their big ass bonus this year. I don't know if Stearns actually would have voted for a program to buy down the principal on peoples mortgages, but I know he thinks that would have been a far better idea than what actually took place. For that I cannot fault him.

[Kyle Krol]

Wamu TRUTH...


READ THESE COURT DOCUMENTS!

JPMorgan admits that the FDIC took over a solvent bank in one of the latest court documents...

I'm enclosing a few more documents filed through the BK court in regards to a declaration of Thomas M. Blake (http://www.crai.com/ProfessionalStaff/listingdetails.aspx?id=1276 ).

The declaration can be found in 103-4.pdf at http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=3b830df9f3d0e6fce7c82ed4b8f0c380aff12395630f22f3ce018c8114394287
Quoting:

http://wamuequity.org
http://wamuqd.com
http://www.wamu-shareholders-resources.com/wamued.html
http://www.wamucoup.com
http://wamustory.com

[Truth is dead]

you americans are hilarious. your country could not even put away the real criminals behind JFK's assassination. (the damaged windshield, and bullethole above the rear view mirror frame is dead on proof there was a second shooter).

tell me, if your own government would lie its ass off in the assasination of its own president, what makes you think anything will happen to one of their corrupt friends in the financial world? nothing.

absolutely nothing.

keep on crying though! :) it makes good comedy. nothing will happy from your worthless crying.

[DailyBail]

@truth is dead

Some of us are trying to make change...

[DP]

While I detest Hank Paulson and would like to see him in prison, I don't think much of this clip. The Congressman asks question after question and makes charge after charge. Then every time Paulson starts to respond the Congressman starts up again and says he isn't going to let Paulson take all his time. These types of hearing where every member of a Congressional committee gets 5 minutes to grandstand are worthless. Each side of the aisle should appoint one or two members to ask questions, put the questions together as a group, and have some ground rules such as 1 minute for a question, 2 or 3 minutes for an answer.

[Ethan Cast]

You guys rule. I worked in finance and I always thought I just ended up in a snake pit. I thought that if I kept rising up, I'd find honor somewhere. I never found anyone with any honor and the people were only more deranged than previously.

[JCH]

Sorry, but the congressman comes off as a total idiot. Paulson changed TARP. Goldman Sachs agreed - they did not want it or need it - to take 10 billion in TARP funds, which they have since paid back plus interest and a tidy profit for the taxpayer on the warrants. The congressmen confuses that source with the 12.9 billion GS got after the Fed loaned tens of billions to AIG: the source was not TARP, it was the Federal Reserve. So the congressman doesn't know his butt from a hole in the ground. The 12.9 billion included 4.8 billion for highly liquid agency money securities - money GS would have gotten no matter what - even if AIG had gone into a disorderly bankruptcy. The 12.9 billion included a 2.5 billion collateral posting per the CDS contract. GS already had 1.4 billion of that from their backstop, which they had to return: nets to 1.1 billion on their side. The 12.9 included 5.6 billion for the purchase of a Goldman Sachs asset at a 60% discount. So the net to GS on the transaction was 1.1 billion. In this matter, outraged congressmen have consistently shown themselves to be total morans. Tone down the outrage, do some math.

[James H]

JCH, congressmen are almost all "total morans," but let's do the math from the taxpayer's perspective. At least 12.9 B, not counting collateral that might have been invalidated in a BK, went to Goldman. The taxpayer has received 0 B on the 12.9 B. Just doing a rough calculation, that still comes up to about 12.9 B. It's immaterial whether Goldman would have gotten their money absent the AIG bailout.

[Richard Webb]

The Chinese quickly EXECUTED a crooked official. Imagine how that would clean up Washington!

[madord]

Just another Chicago politician!!! Paulo, Blogo & Obomo ---------

[WhiskeyJim]

Regardless of the intelligence of this exchange, the moral hazard in this clip is beyond belief.

That taxpayers bailed out the big banks, who do not need to write down their mortgages. They will now soon own half the residential and commercial real estate in the country after having caused the mess in the first place. This is out of control, and we may still have the Great Depression.

To those people who want to blame it on people who purchased mortgages they can not pay, I would suggest they listen to those group tested phone calls the average Joe got, keeping in mind that your average citizen still believes in professional fiduciary duty and honesty regarding bankers. I took a number of those phone calls, and it often took an hour to find out exactly what the terms were, and I have a masters in Finance.

Bailing out those banks was the worst thing we ever could have done. Without it, mortgages would have gotten repriced in a months, K Street would have gotten a bath, and many of these guys would be gone.

[M.H.]

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/01/treasury-select-committee-glass-steagall-northern-rock/

[Canuck]

"A waiver from the ethics agreement"

WTF is that? LOL! SPANKED by Mr. Stearn!!!

[FinalMythology]

If I was up there on the microphone I'd say
"Can you repeat the question?"
That outta piss him off, waste the poor fools time.

[john]

Christian Science Plaza redevelopment gets city OK

http://www.boston.com/Boston/businessupdates/2011/08/christian-science-plaza-redevelopment-gets-city/HcOWXQciHC7Oe9OTGnMSHL/index.html?p1=News_links

[snip]

The plans by The First Church of Christ, Scientist call for two new buildings on a triangular plot across from the Sheraton and Hilton hotels along Belvidere Street. One building would be 251 feet tall and the other 512 feet, or nearly the same size of the crown-shaped tower at nearby 111 Huntington Ave.

A third building, of 291 feet in height, would be built near the corner of Huntington and Massachusetts avenues. The exact use and design of the buildings will not be determined until the church hires developers for each parcel, according to a press release posted on the church’s web site today. Allowed uses include offices, residences, hotels and retail stores.

Note: I wonder If hank made a donation........

[Dan]

Let's not forget that King Paulson held $75 Million in preferred shares of AIG when TARP was voted in.