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POPS Charles Krauthammer :: Fox Wars only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox. At first, there was little reaction from other media. Then on Thursday, the administration tried to make them complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House "pool" news organizations -- except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down. This was an important defeat because there's a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret.
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POPSJohn Fund Reports on a New Congressional Travel Scandal 
"The policy is completely inconsistent," one House member told me. Total per diem allowances (per person, including staff) can top $3,000 for a single trip. Unused funds are supposed to be given back to the government, but congressional records show that rarely happens. It's all part of the "arrogance of D.C.," Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) told me Monday. "These are lucrative payments since many members have zero expenses overseas." After his last government-sponsored trip to Iraq, Mr. Coburn wrote the U.S. Treasury a check for his unused per diem. Not wanting to be dependent on government handlers, he paid for his own trip to the Middle East a couple of years ago. "I learned a lot more on my own than on the government trips I've been on," he says. The House's official handbook requires that lawmakers use regular U.S. airlines "whenever possible, unless such service is not reasonably available." But congressional records show members routinely take military planes to London,
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POPS$100 Million Payday Poses Problems for Pay Czar
In our capitalist society, we cannot begrudge corporations making a profit, as long as they do it legally. Also, outsiders do not have any say in how these businesses spend their money, whether it goes to improving their products, expanding their business our throwing it at their staff. In these hard financial times, our government saw fit to bailout that corporate sector that they thought needed it the most. Two major problems I had with this is that they were bailed out at all, because since we are a capitalist society businesses will find a way to make it by their own ingenuity or they should not be in business in the first place. Secondly, the amount of money given to these corporations and the fact that there was no oversight was way out of line and borders on criminal negligence. Obviously, they were given too much money or they would not be able to give bonuses and still plan on staying in business. Our government screwed tax payers again.
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POPSThe Great American Bubble Machine a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup " which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibilliondollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden parachute payments as his bank was selfdestructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director . . .
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POPSDocuments Detail Historic Treasury/Bankers Meeting # "CEO Talking Points" used by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson confirming that the nine bank CEOs present at the October 13 meeting had no choice but to accede to the government's demands for equity stakes and the resulting government control. # "Major Financial Institution Participation Commitments" signed by the nine bankers on October 13. The CEOs not only hand wrote their institution's names but also hand wrote multi-billion dollar amounts of "preferred shares" to be issued to the government. # Email documenting that, on the very day of the meeting, the Chief of Staff to the Treasury Secretary and other top Treasury staff did not know the names of any of the banks that would be in attendance. # Email showing Treasury officials wanted to use the Secret Service to help keep the press away from the CEOs arriving at the meeting. # Email showing a public relations effort, run in part out of the Bush White House, to tamp down public concerns about "nationalizing the banks."
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POPSTop Senate Democrat: "Bankers Own Congress" Goldman Sachs in particular, with which there is a revolving door between itself and the Treasury. Yet, as Greenwald points out, the MSM is absolutely silent about this obvious but unreported story, and this is why: One might think it would be a big news story for the second most-powerful member of the U.S. Senate to baldly state that the Congress is "owned" by the bankers who spawned the financial crisis and continue to dictate the government's actions. But it won't be. The leading members of the media work for the very corporations that benefit most from this process.
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POPSNeil Barofsky ~ Bailout Cop Busy on the Beat Barofsky, in the interview, insisted his goal is to inform the public that someone is minding the store and that bailout programs are not a "black hole." "It's not trillions of dollars going out the door without anyone keeping tabs on it," said Barofsky, who will testify before Congress on Thursday about his findings. As an inspector general, Barofsky has legal firepower. He can use subpoenas to compel disclosure and is tasked by federal law to track the details of how banks are spending taxpayer dollars. Barofsky, appointed by then-President Bush last November, has so far hired 35 members of a staff he expects to grow to 150. Currently working out of the main Treasury compound next to the White House, Barofsky and his staff are securing their own offices in the same building in downtown Washington that houses the Treasury staffers that administer TARP.
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POPSAdministration Enabled Bonuses So They Could Stoke Populist Outrage? I mean, I spent a long time to having people try to be — change it. And obviously they came. And the alternative was losing the amendment. And I didn’t think we should do that at all. BLITZER: Who asked you at the Treasury Department to do it? DODD: Well, they were people, obviously, coming and negotiating with the staffs back and forth. And I don’t know their names specifically, it was at a staff level, people were talking about it. Gee, would this be the same Treasury Department from the same administration that were “shaking with outrage” over these very bonuses? Dodd’s a liar, but he’s not the only one in this debacle. A conspiratorially-minded person might conclude that the administration deliberately enabled the bonuses so they could stoke populist outrage and push through more of their anti-business agenda. H/T suitably flip
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POPSDon't Let Our Tax Money go to Undeserved Executive Bonuses! Like many Americans I’m outraged over AIG’s recent announcement that they will use our bailout money to pay over $400 million in bonuses for their staff and executives. We have invested over $170 billion in this corporation, and taxpayers now own over 80% of the company as a whole. I’m encouraged by President Obama’s recent calls for the Treasury to use ‘all legal options’ to block these extravagant bonuses. I also know that several members of both chambers of Congress – including Senator Dodd and Representative Frank who chair relevant committees - are considering measures that would stop the bonuses from being paid, and more importantly that might prevent these sort of debacles in the future. I want to know I can count on you to publicly support the best ideas for getting our money back, and preventing these problems in the future. Sincerely,
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POPSAIG Bonuses: Bring on the Lawyers Liddy needs to be removed. No more fat cat jobs; the same justice that has been served on working America. Rome is burning. Obama needs to make a stand. Apparently, Geithner and Libby could not
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POPSAIG STILL Want Bonuses Of $160 Million Dollars!! FTA: At the same time, the company said in documents provided to the Treasury, any steps that encourage specialists at AIG Financial Products to leave could open the U.S. government to further risk because of the hazards still posed by the $1.6 trillion portfolio of complex derivatives those employees are working to dispose. They need to look up the word: Humility. Why the hell should they get bonuses when they are falling apart. Life just isn't supposed to be about rewards for the greedy.
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POPSAIG to Pay Out Millions in Bonuses AIG almost had me with their argument that they were legally obligated to pay the bonuses. Then I got to this part. "We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of American taxpayers — if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury,” wrote Mr. Geithner on Saturday. Yeah, they've been freakin' brilliant so far. When it came to bailing out car companies, the talk was about all the concessions union workers were going to have to make; they absolutely had to renegotiate their contracts. When it comes to Wall St. execs, they get every dollar they were promised -- no renegotiation is possible. What exactly is the big freakin' difference between these two groups of employees?
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POPS Mr. President, Now You Own It That's an obliteration of wealth that no stimulus bill will recoup. Since Election Day, the market has lost nearly 30 percent of its value -- trillions of dollars, not from CEO bonuses, as you may have hoped, but from your 401(k) and the private sector. You know, Mr. President, not everything is like politics. The market is a forward-looking entity, indeed, but it is driven by the decentralized actions of millions of investors every second. It's the opposite of politics. And this setup surely offends the sensibilities of the statist planners occupying Washington. Unlike politicians, markets don't lie. Obama, who promised not to raise taxes during a recession, now plans to raise nearly $1 trillion in new taxes directly from the investor class. He plans to raise capital gains taxes a disincentive to investment, corporate taxes for you, the consumer, ultimately to pay and on the "rich" which the nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimates will affect 1.3 million small-business owners.
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POPSObama Fiddle's As Rome Burns These problems are simply the hazard of staffing a treasury department, which often involves people who have made enough money to have tax and nanny issues. And without those people, we cannot fix the banking system. The gigantic stimulus package that Obama passed will fall flat on its face, as contracting credit markets absorb the multiplier. That the Obama administration has been conserving political capital for its stimulus package and its budget, rather than its treasury nominees, is a radical misallocation of priorities. In these circumstances, I find it hard to come down too hard on Geithner for failing to come up with a newer, better plan; he could hardly be expected to do so without any deputies or staff to help.
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POPSObama’s New Deputy Treasury Secretary Tells Him "Thanks, But No Thanks" Geithner has been criticized for staffing his department too slowly as it grapples with a banking crisis that has crippled the economy. Uncertainty about Treasury staff also has unnerved financial markets. Five weeks into his tenure, he has yet to name a single top deputy or assistant secretary. This has left Treasury with too few people authorized to make decisions or represent the department in meetings with stakeholders. The department has been meeting with members of the financial services industry as it oversees the government’s $700 billion financial bailout and other parts of President Barack Obama’s financial stabilization plan. At a Senate hearing Thursday about failed insurance giant American International Group Inc. — which has received four separate bailouts totaling more than $170 billion — Sen. Chris Dodd said he had asked Treasury for someone to appear, but that no one was available.
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POPSNot Rubinomics Part II Nice take from NYT's Jackie Calmes on the influence of Bob Rubin on Obama's economic team. But don't expect the Obama era to be a reprise of Rubinomics, which focused on balanced budgets and deregulation. There's going to be much deficit spending and a shift towards regulation in the next few years.
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POPSAnother $140B for the banks!!?? Our Sec. Treasury Paulson has quietly set aside a tax law affecting banks, with the estimated net of an additional $140B!! Guess who is footing the bill? We are!
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POPSA Quiet Windfall for US Banks "It was a shock to most of the tax law community. It was one of those things where it pops up on your screen and your jaw drops," said Candace A. Ridgway, a partner at Jones Day, a law firm that represents banks that could benefit from the notice. "I've been in tax law for 20 years, and I've never seen anything like this."
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POPSHow to Get a Job with the Feds Roll Call book review also notes this: "Jobs that compete with Wall Street for employees generally come with the highest paychecks. Employees at the Treasury and the Federal Communications Commission can earn bonuses in the tens of thousands."
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POPSConcensus Reached, Will Make Final Announcement Tomorrow According to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, the plan proposed by Mr. Paulson, which would see the federal government buy up to $700 billion in toxic mortgage-linked assets, will form the core of any solution. Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), one of the lawmakers taking part in the talks to thrash out an agreement, said Saturday morning that the negotiators would stay in the meeting until an agreement is reached. "The basic understanding is once we get into that room we are going to stay there until we have an agreement," he said.
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POPSPaulson and Obama "Paulson and his team have not acted in good faith for this President or the administration for which they serve," says a House Republican leader who was not present at the White House meeting, but who instead is part of the team hammering out the House GOP alternative. "We keep hearing about how Secretary Paulson is working with Democrats on this or that, yet he never seems to consider working with the party that essentially hired him. Perhaps he's auditioning for a Democratic administration job. Our proposal didn't just spring forth fully formed; we've been working on this for several days, and Treasury staff has known about it." Posted By: The Washington Prowler
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POPSHave Conservative principals permeated North? With this level of impropriety suggested at Conservative HQ, how can the electorate of this region be reassured that the local party is free of such graft? Do local treasurers have the power to rein in over enthusiastic local politicians? Everyone can see that London Labour is so corrupt that their leading treasury personnel have no control over Labour finances. Labour Ministers flaunt their disregard for ethics whilst their spouses deny every single misdeeds of their partners. There is one ancient English metaphor...shit stinks!!! It is perfuming over both the major parties with equal stench.
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POPSIs Labour buying silence? After politicising the Civil Service, this corrupt government is now financially rewarding betrayal. Betrayal of an ethos that meant the British CS was the least corrupt in the World. Who can say that this is earned when there are over 3million pensioners still not receiving their rightful benefits, when English men are being suborned into third class citizens in their own country with threats of insidious new laws that prohibit love of ones own country, where these same civil servants act as judge and jury into claims for disability from injured war heroes, these same people who have denied access to personal records that prevent thousands of former soldiers getting a real pensions. Also these same people acquiesce with corrupt political regimes in the hiding of expenses abuses.
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POPS Exposing The Hidden Jihad In America You can download a pdf file of a shorter version of the legal memorandum, which will be published in the Utah Law Review in Sept 2008. The Center also works to educate the public, press and policymakers on the significant risks of Shariah and Shariah-Compliant Finance through the blog http://shariahfinancewatch.wordpress.com and a free weekly email newsletter, the Shariah Risk Due Diligence Newsletter. In addition to the legal analysis cited above, the Shariah Risk Due Diligence financial research team has been hard at work and their analyses will be introduced in May and June. On April 17, the Center announced the launch of a national campaign to alert the public to the serious risks of Shariah-Compliant Finance and Shariah Law - the Stop Shariah Now campaign. Other organizations including ACT America have also started national campaigns to stop the spread of Shariah-Compliant Finance through the U.S. finance system.
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