Sunday, February 28, 2010

Pravda Gets It!

"But unlike the perpetrators of the Watergate scandal, who wound up looking at jail time, Geithner evidently has a golden parachute waiting at Goldman Sachs [GS], not coincidentally the largest recipient of the AIG bailout. ... Hank Paulson, Geithner's predecessor, was CEO of [GS] before coming to the Treasury. Geithner, who has come up through the ranks of government, could be walking through the revolving door in the other direction. ... Critics are calling the New York Fed's [FRBNY] decision a back-door bailout for the banks, which received 100 cents on the dollar for contract that would have been worth far less had AIG been put through bankruptcy proceedings in the normal way. ... The [FRBNY] is a quasi-governmental institution that isn't subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the [Fed]. This impenetrability comes in handy since the bank is the preferred vehicle for many of the Fed's bailout progrqams. It's as though the [FRBNY] was a black-ops outfit for nation's central bank. ... Eevn after the GM autoworkers, bondholders and vendors all received a government-enforced haircut on their contracts, [Geithner] still had the audacity to claim the 'sanctity of contracts' in the dealings with these companies like AIG. ... The contention that the Fed had no choice is also belied by a recent holding in the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, in which New York Bankruptcy Judge James Peck set aside the same type of onvestment contracts that Secretaries Paulson and Geithner repeatedly swore under oath had to be paid in full in the case of AIG", my emphasis, Ellen Brown (EB) at Pravda, 8 February 2010, link: http://english.pravda.ru/business/finance/112085-aig_gate-0.

EB is a Los Angeles attorney. Why is this in Pravda? Is the American press afraid of the Vampire Squid (VS)? I disagree with one thing EB wrote. Timmy Boy will not leave Treasury for a VS position, but more likely BlackRock or Pimco. Timmy's joining VS would be too obvious.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Blackrock and Pimco seem to be getting kind of crowded with ex Treasury and Fed guys...

The revolving door got pretty active as the Bushies ambled over to the private sector.

SecGeithner will more likely do a Greenspan...more lucrative...

Independent Accountant said...

Anonymous:
See my 24 January 2010 post on Pimco.

IA