"Fomer Louisiana congressman William Jefferson was convicted Wednesday of bribery schemes aimed at enriching him and his family in a trial that featured a freezer full of foil-wrapped cash in alleged bribe money. ... The seven-week trial featured video and audio tapes of Mr. Jefferson meeting with a federal informant. ... Prosecutors argued Mr. Jefferson was driven by greed, using his status as a congressman to carry out business deals to pay off credit-card debt and his daughters' college tuition bills", my emphasis, Dionne Searcey at the WSJ, 6 August 2009, link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124950747812708973.html.
What's wrong with greed? Or using your status as a congressperson to line your pockets? Isn't greed endemic to Wall Street? I must hand it to the DOJ, Jefferson, a nobody, will likely go to prison over $96,000 while Henry Paulson (HP) enables his "former" firm Goldman Sachs to get $13 billion from AIG and neither HP nor Lloyd Blankfein has been charged with anything yet. Some justice. See my 24 August 2009 post: http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2009/08/henry-paulson-as-joe-mccarthy.html.
1 comment:
Mr. Blankfein and Paulson committed a heist so big it's hard to get your mind around it...
Henry Paulson took the keys to the vault of our nations treasure and lead Lloyd Blankfein right to pile and said "how much is needed for you and your Wall Street and Euro cronies?"
Here is the story
"The decision, only two weeks after the Treasury took over the federally chartered mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is the most radical intervention in private business in the central bank’s history.
With time running out after A.I.G. failed to get a bank loan to avoid bankruptcy, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, convened a meeting with House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to explain the rescue plan.
They emerged just after 7:30 p.m. with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke looking grim, but with top lawmakers initially expressing support for the plan. But the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with.
What frightened Fed and Treasury officials was not simply the prospect of another giant corporate bankruptcy, but A.I.G.’s role as an enormous provider of esoteric financial insurance contracts to investors who bought complex debt securities. They effectively required A.I.G. to cover losses suffered by the buyers in the event the securities defaulted.
It meant A.I.G. was potentially on the hook for billions of dollars’ worth of risky securities that were once considered safe.
If A.I.G. had collapsed — and been unable to pay all of its insurance claims — institutional investors around the world would have been instantly forced to reappraise the value of those securities, and that in turn would have reduced their own capital and the value of their own debt.
Small investors, including anyone who owned money market funds with A.I.G. securities, could have been hurt, too. And some insurance policy holders were worried, even though they have some protections."
Blankfein said ... pay off our CDS from AIG at 100 cents on the dollar... otherwise this ship is going down...
Paulson said... how?...
Blankfein said... just go up on the Hill and tell the economy will collapse and we'll go back to the 16th century...
Paulson said... "I'm on it"...
Blankfein says... "wow... dodged a bazooka on that one..."
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