Before he became president of MF Global, the bankrupt brokerage firm that lost $1.2 billion in client money, Bradley Abelow spent time as New Jersey’s treasurer and former Gov. Jon Corzine’s chief of staff. In those roles, Abelow served alongside Lisa Jackson, who led the state environmental protection department and eventually succeeded Abelow as Corzine’s chief of staff. Jackson now directs the Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama administration, and Abelow, despite a full-time job at MF Global, is still serving alongside her. The former Goldman Sachs executive holds the title …
On December 12, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) attempted to shut down West Coast ports from Anchorage to San Diego. Protesters said that by shutting down the ports, they could shut down Wall Street’s profits. OWS organizers called their event “Day Without Goldman Sachs.” They also could have named their port protest: “Day Without Holiday Paychecks for Truckers”: “I just lost $400 today. These people say they represent the 99 percent. They don’t represent me,” said Mark Hebert, a long-haul trucker who was stranded in Oakland with 36,000 pounds of Kansas …
Everybody now knows that the hedge fund at the center of the Goldman Sachs SEC complaint, Paulson & Co., made a fortune by selecting credit default obligations made up of high risk mortgages. What is less well known is how Paulson picked mortgages. The Wall Street Journal reports: “According to the SEC complaint, [Paulson and Company head John] Paulson especially wanted to find risky subprime adjustable rate mortgages that had been given to borrowers in California, Arizona, Florida, and Nevada—states with big spikes in home prices that he reckoned would …
Somebody spilled the beans Tuesday, telling the truth about the financial reform bill being debated in Congress. But most media ignored it. Rather than being the targets of this bill, Wall Street financiers will be rewarded by it. The chairman of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, told a Senate subcommittee, “The biggest beneficiary of reform is Wall Street itself.” So why does President Obama instead want us to believe the legislation is our revenge against Wall Street, a chance to get our money back after so many bailouts?
The New York Times reports this morning, “Politicians like nothing more than a convenient foil, and Democrats locked in a stubborn impasse with Republicans over new rules to govern Wall Street believe they have found a gold-plated one in Goldman Sachs. Democrats say the convergence of their push for an overhaul of financial regulation and a prominent federal securities case against the prestigious investment firm is a matter of coincidence, not planning.” Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) added: “If the disclosures at these hearings are not the final nail that persuades …
There is no person more central to Washington’s bailouts of Wall Street than Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. As President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he oversaw the federal bailout of Bear Stearns and under former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Getihner designed the original bailout plan for the American International Group (AIG). As Treasury Secretary, Geithner has enthusiastically assumed full authority over the $700 billion TARP fund first secured by Paulson under President Bush and he has continued to wield it in the same haphazard manner as his …
It’s been used to buy one car company, give another to union allies, punish non-union workers, undermine the bankruptcy code, enrich Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, keep unionized Zombie firms from dying, and generally terrorize the world economy. Now the left in Congress wants to use it again, this time as a slush fund for a third round of stimulus funding. The AP reports: Democrats are looking to tap as much as $70 billion in unused funds from the Wall Street bailout to pay for new spending …
Is it any coincidence that on the same day that the Obama Administration announces restrictions on executive pay for companies taking government bailout money, Goldman Sachs announced that it is pulling out of the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program? The investment bank, says CFO David Viniar, is chafing under the restrictions that came attached to its $10 billion loan. The new pay rules, which could be applied to existing TARP participants in a later iteration, may have been the last straw. “We would like to get out from under that,” …
