Showing posts with label Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Show all posts
Friday, July 6, 2012
A great way to spend 17 minutes
An education on the 2008 national and international near-total financial and economic collapse due to American bankers and banking and where we are now.
You owe it to yourself--and the nation, your country--to see this documentary: http://www.insidejobmovie.com.au/
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Dead-on posting from "A New Way Forward"
Another rare posting I didn't create, but want to enter because it's that good:
This is the age old fight for power between large corporations and regular people
June 3rd, 2009 by tyc
People are starting to wage a battle with the financial companies, but if people don’t really start to see the battle for what it is — a fight for power between the banks who currently control Congress and the public who untimately pays for it — we’ll again lose any chance for real reform that restores our political system and economy in the interest of working families doing better than they are now.
Arianna Huffington argues that we could have had some structural reform happen after Enron, but the way politics are usually played, the fight for reform usually is assuaged by the companies for politeness’ sake and then completely dwindles:
Remember how during the 2008 campaign there came a moment when candidates hoping to win the White House realized they had to declare that, like Obama, they were all in favor of “change”? Hillary did it. McCain did it. So did Romney. Giuliani too.
In the same way, today everyone agrees that we need reform of our financial system. Even Wall Street knows it is inevitable.
So the question becomes: are we going to get real reform or are we going to get the DC version of “reform”?
The citizens who are fighting with ANWF are trying their hardest to not let that happen. We simply can’t lose our chance to create real structural reform that can ACTUALLY put large corporations back in their place. Push for breaking up the banks, please!
As Rep. Brad Miller wrote on Talking Points Memo,
It will be a fierce battle, even with the full support of the Obama Administration. “All of the signature economic reforms the President has promoted…are under siege,” The Nation reports. “Without a grassroots uprising that challenges business as usual in Washington, we aren’t likely to get the change we were promised, much less the change we need.”
We’ve won some battles. A couple of weeks ago the President signed into law the credit card reform bill that Carolyn Maloney introduced. A few weeks ago the House passed a solid bill–not perfect, but solid–to reform mortgage lending that I introduced along with Mel Watt and Barney Frank.
But we can’t possibly anticipate and prohibit every new predatory financial product that the industry claims is “innovation.” Requiring the industry to show that innovative new financial products are a positive contribution to society–and get approval before selling the products to consumers–fundamentally changes an industry desperately in need of fundamental change.
That is the kind of change that we cannot achieve without a “grassroots uprising that challenges business as usual in Washington.”
Link to original post here:
http://anewwayforward.org/blog/?p=344
Back from Mo Rage:
And folks, the foxes who raided the chicken coop--the big bankers who screwed us all, individually and nationally and got us into this financial crisis, Goldman/Sachs, etc.--are the very same foxes who are supposed to be cleaning up this banking mess, now.
And they're getting paid handsomely, now, too--again--to do it.
This is the age old fight for power between large corporations and regular people
June 3rd, 2009 by tyc
People are starting to wage a battle with the financial companies, but if people don’t really start to see the battle for what it is — a fight for power between the banks who currently control Congress and the public who untimately pays for it — we’ll again lose any chance for real reform that restores our political system and economy in the interest of working families doing better than they are now.
Arianna Huffington argues that we could have had some structural reform happen after Enron, but the way politics are usually played, the fight for reform usually is assuaged by the companies for politeness’ sake and then completely dwindles:
Remember how during the 2008 campaign there came a moment when candidates hoping to win the White House realized they had to declare that, like Obama, they were all in favor of “change”? Hillary did it. McCain did it. So did Romney. Giuliani too.
In the same way, today everyone agrees that we need reform of our financial system. Even Wall Street knows it is inevitable.
So the question becomes: are we going to get real reform or are we going to get the DC version of “reform”?
The citizens who are fighting with ANWF are trying their hardest to not let that happen. We simply can’t lose our chance to create real structural reform that can ACTUALLY put large corporations back in their place. Push for breaking up the banks, please!
As Rep. Brad Miller wrote on Talking Points Memo,
It will be a fierce battle, even with the full support of the Obama Administration. “All of the signature economic reforms the President has promoted…are under siege,” The Nation reports. “Without a grassroots uprising that challenges business as usual in Washington, we aren’t likely to get the change we were promised, much less the change we need.”
We’ve won some battles. A couple of weeks ago the President signed into law the credit card reform bill that Carolyn Maloney introduced. A few weeks ago the House passed a solid bill–not perfect, but solid–to reform mortgage lending that I introduced along with Mel Watt and Barney Frank.
But we can’t possibly anticipate and prohibit every new predatory financial product that the industry claims is “innovation.” Requiring the industry to show that innovative new financial products are a positive contribution to society–and get approval before selling the products to consumers–fundamentally changes an industry desperately in need of fundamental change.
That is the kind of change that we cannot achieve without a “grassroots uprising that challenges business as usual in Washington.”
Link to original post here:
http://anewwayforward.org/blog/?p=344
Back from Mo Rage:
And folks, the foxes who raided the chicken coop--the big bankers who screwed us all, individually and nationally and got us into this financial crisis, Goldman/Sachs, etc.--are the very same foxes who are supposed to be cleaning up this banking mess, now.
And they're getting paid handsomely, now, too--again--to do it.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
From Mish Sedlock
I said I'd print only stuff I wrote but this is too good not to reprint:
Paulson Steals Show From the Grinch
Did I hear someone say “making a list, checking it twice?” Not Hank. He might as well have made the checks out to cash. Come to think of it he did.
The Associated Press tried to do what Paulson hasn’t, asking 21 banks how much they’ve spent and on what, how much is being held in reserve and what their plan is for the rest. The folks responsible for the mess, in possession of billions of our dollars, were too arrogant to say.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. said of its $25 billion haul: “We’ve lent some of it. We’ve not lent some of it,” AP reported. Now get lost.
Bank of New York Mellon Corp. spokesman Kevin Heine told AP, “We’re choosing not to disclose that.” Wendy Walker of Comerica Inc., after refusing to share any details, said, “We’re not sharing any other details. We’re just not at this time.”
What time would be better, Ms. Walker? Never. I bet never is good for you.
Financial superstars got used to talking this way when they were lionized as American royalty. Sprawling oceanfront estates the size of hotels, private 737s outfitted like palaces weren’t marks of wretched excess but totems of swashbuckling capitalist derring-do.
This happened even as almost no one knew what these geniuses were doing. They weren’t making anything like a railroad you could see. They were moving money from one place to another, keeping some for themselves as it changed hands.
Try to follow the trajectory of a mortgage on a house in Cleveland into a bundled credit default swap of collateralized debt. Few could, yet paydays of $30 million and bonuses of twice that were based on it. Therein lay its charm.
Thanks to an economic meltdown, we now know the decade’s financial superstars walked off with money they didn’t earn in a scheme more sophisticated but no less damnable than a punk in a ski mask holding up a convenience store.
You would think heads would roll, some into jail. I’m not just talking about Bernard Madoff. I’m talking about the titans of commerce.
They still walk the streets, when in truth schemes should be named after them. Ponzi just doesn’t do justice to what they pulled off.
But why isn’t anyone screaming about giving these miscreants more money? Who’s in charge here? Surely, there is someone left with a conscience, and a pulse, in the White House, someone in Congress who can call a hearing and rough up these bankers at least as much as they did the auto industry.
Fortunately, I’ve found something even a Grinch can be jolly about: Reverend Warren’s stricture against gays in his church was removed from his Web site this week. And for 2009, the number of applicants to Teach for America jumped to 25,000 from 18,000 for 3,700 chances to serve in the poorest schools.
The best and the brightest want to do good instead of doing well. I’ll raise a glass to that.
Paulson Steals Show From the Grinch
Did I hear someone say “making a list, checking it twice?” Not Hank. He might as well have made the checks out to cash. Come to think of it he did.
The Associated Press tried to do what Paulson hasn’t, asking 21 banks how much they’ve spent and on what, how much is being held in reserve and what their plan is for the rest. The folks responsible for the mess, in possession of billions of our dollars, were too arrogant to say.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. said of its $25 billion haul: “We’ve lent some of it. We’ve not lent some of it,” AP reported. Now get lost.
Bank of New York Mellon Corp. spokesman Kevin Heine told AP, “We’re choosing not to disclose that.” Wendy Walker of Comerica Inc., after refusing to share any details, said, “We’re not sharing any other details. We’re just not at this time.”
What time would be better, Ms. Walker? Never. I bet never is good for you.
Financial superstars got used to talking this way when they were lionized as American royalty. Sprawling oceanfront estates the size of hotels, private 737s outfitted like palaces weren’t marks of wretched excess but totems of swashbuckling capitalist derring-do.
This happened even as almost no one knew what these geniuses were doing. They weren’t making anything like a railroad you could see. They were moving money from one place to another, keeping some for themselves as it changed hands.
Try to follow the trajectory of a mortgage on a house in Cleveland into a bundled credit default swap of collateralized debt. Few could, yet paydays of $30 million and bonuses of twice that were based on it. Therein lay its charm.
Thanks to an economic meltdown, we now know the decade’s financial superstars walked off with money they didn’t earn in a scheme more sophisticated but no less damnable than a punk in a ski mask holding up a convenience store.
You would think heads would roll, some into jail. I’m not just talking about Bernard Madoff. I’m talking about the titans of commerce.
They still walk the streets, when in truth schemes should be named after them. Ponzi just doesn’t do justice to what they pulled off.
But why isn’t anyone screaming about giving these miscreants more money? Who’s in charge here? Surely, there is someone left with a conscience, and a pulse, in the White House, someone in Congress who can call a hearing and rough up these bankers at least as much as they did the auto industry.
Fortunately, I’ve found something even a Grinch can be jolly about: Reverend Warren’s stricture against gays in his church was removed from his Web site this week. And for 2009, the number of applicants to Teach for America jumped to 25,000 from 18,000 for 3,700 chances to serve in the poorest schools.
The best and the brightest want to do good instead of doing well. I’ll raise a glass to that.
Monday, December 15, 2008
You want faith in our economic and political leaders?
Well don't look for it here.
Or lately.
Check out this quote for why, exactly, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson asked for 700 billion dollars of our taxpayer money to bail out his cronies on Wall Street, according to a "Treasury Department spokeswoman explaining how the $700 billion number was chosen for the initial bailout, quoted on Forbes.com, September 23:
"It's not based on any particular data point, we just wanted to choose a really large number."
Makes ya' wanna vote for higher taxes, doesn't it?
Or lately.
Check out this quote for why, exactly, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson asked for 700 billion dollars of our taxpayer money to bail out his cronies on Wall Street, according to a "Treasury Department spokeswoman explaining how the $700 billion number was chosen for the initial bailout, quoted on Forbes.com, September 23:
"It's not based on any particular data point, we just wanted to choose a really large number."
Makes ya' wanna vote for higher taxes, doesn't it?
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Who's zoomin' who?
Okay, word today of a couple of things.
One, we keep hearing how the Republicans in the Senate are going to keep pushing for "concessions" on the bill to bail out the car companies.
The first thing that comes to mind is that this is what those pussy Democrats in both houses of Congress should have done when Hank Paulson and the White House came screaming out for 700 billion dollars, of all things, to help save the banks.
What hooey.
If ever we could have had concessions, it was then.
How about lose the company jets, Citigroup?
How about put in a maximum still-obscene multi-million dollar salary range for the executives?
How about losing the "credit swap" tool?
How about jettisoning "hedge funds", eventually but absolutely, since they just weaken our financial system and are, as I've said, a virtual "bet on a bet", since they're conjecturing on the position of where stocks are headed in the future?
There were all kinds of things that Congress could--and should--have demanded, since they supposedly wanted and badly needed tax money--and lots of it--to save their hides?
Pussies.
As I quoted my friend Bryce, "Republicans are evil; Democrats are retarded."
(No offense to the retarded).
Anyway, who's kidding whom here or, as Aretha Franklin so aptly put it: "Who's zoomin' who?"
Does ANYONE really think the Repugs are going to let the auto industry go bankrupt?
They'd better not.
There would be between 2 to 3+ million additional people AUTOMATICALLY out of work and on the street.
You don't think there wouldn't be some "revolution goin' on"?
Besides, they don't want that on their tombstone.
They're already so far down on the US public's popularity list, it'd be curtains, for sure.
It kills me that they're pushing so far and so hard on this.
It also gets me that people like Richard Shelby, a Southerner who has some foreign auto manufacturers in his backyard, ladies and gentlemen, would be allowed to weigh in on this.
He should absolutely recuse himself from this.
As hard as it is to believe, even though he's an American, and a representative of at least some Americans here in the States, that he'd tempt the fate of ruining both this industry and, possibly, the country, by letting this whole industry fail.
I'm no big fan of the American auto industry but hey, jobs are jobs, and we need 'em all right now.
Just now, even the White House has come out, pushing the Repug Party to accept this 14 billion dollar "loan"--or whatever you want to call it--for the Big 3 car makers.
Hey, what's a few more billion dollars to this President, right? He hasn't met money he hasn't wanted to spend yet.
Anyway, let's get over this whole "you gotta' give more concessions", crap, Senators.
The country's in a heck of a mess and, regrettably, this is something that needs to happen.
One, we keep hearing how the Republicans in the Senate are going to keep pushing for "concessions" on the bill to bail out the car companies.
The first thing that comes to mind is that this is what those pussy Democrats in both houses of Congress should have done when Hank Paulson and the White House came screaming out for 700 billion dollars, of all things, to help save the banks.
What hooey.
If ever we could have had concessions, it was then.
How about lose the company jets, Citigroup?
How about put in a maximum still-obscene multi-million dollar salary range for the executives?
How about losing the "credit swap" tool?
How about jettisoning "hedge funds", eventually but absolutely, since they just weaken our financial system and are, as I've said, a virtual "bet on a bet", since they're conjecturing on the position of where stocks are headed in the future?
There were all kinds of things that Congress could--and should--have demanded, since they supposedly wanted and badly needed tax money--and lots of it--to save their hides?
Pussies.
As I quoted my friend Bryce, "Republicans are evil; Democrats are retarded."
(No offense to the retarded).
Anyway, who's kidding whom here or, as Aretha Franklin so aptly put it: "Who's zoomin' who?"
Does ANYONE really think the Repugs are going to let the auto industry go bankrupt?
They'd better not.
There would be between 2 to 3+ million additional people AUTOMATICALLY out of work and on the street.
You don't think there wouldn't be some "revolution goin' on"?
Besides, they don't want that on their tombstone.
They're already so far down on the US public's popularity list, it'd be curtains, for sure.
It kills me that they're pushing so far and so hard on this.
It also gets me that people like Richard Shelby, a Southerner who has some foreign auto manufacturers in his backyard, ladies and gentlemen, would be allowed to weigh in on this.
He should absolutely recuse himself from this.
As hard as it is to believe, even though he's an American, and a representative of at least some Americans here in the States, that he'd tempt the fate of ruining both this industry and, possibly, the country, by letting this whole industry fail.
I'm no big fan of the American auto industry but hey, jobs are jobs, and we need 'em all right now.
Just now, even the White House has come out, pushing the Repug Party to accept this 14 billion dollar "loan"--or whatever you want to call it--for the Big 3 car makers.
Hey, what's a few more billion dollars to this President, right? He hasn't met money he hasn't wanted to spend yet.
Anyway, let's get over this whole "you gotta' give more concessions", crap, Senators.
The country's in a heck of a mess and, regrettably, this is something that needs to happen.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, regarding the economy and bailout
In the meantime, we've committed, it's been quoted, $7.7 Trillion dollars to the banking financial bailout.
(Link here: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/11/bailout-pledges-hit-77-trillion.html)
Thanks, George. Thanks, Hank.
You can't say the last 8 years haven't been interesting.
Tragic, sure--and misguided and wrong--but interesting.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
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