What was Timothy Geithner thinking back in 2008 when, as president of the New York Fed, he decided to give Goldman Sachs a $30 billion interest-free loan as part of an $80 billion secret float to favored banks? The sordid details of that program were finally made public this week in response to a court-ordered Freedom of Information Act release, thanks to a Bloomberg News lawsuit. Sorry, my bad: It wasn't an interest-free loan; make that .01 percent that Goldman paid to borrow taxpayer money when ordinary folks who missed a few credit card payments in order to finance their mortgages were being slapped with interest rates of more than 25 percent.
One wonders if Barack Obama was fully aware of Geithner's deceitful performance at the New York Fed when he appointed him treasury secretary in the incoming administration. The president was probably ignorant of this particular giveaway, as were key members of Congress. "I wasn't aware of this program until now," Barney Frank, D-Mass., who at the time chaired the House Financial Services Committee, admitted in referring to Geithner's "single-tranche open-market operations" program. And there was no language in the Dodd-Frank law supposedly reining in the banks that compelled the Fed to reveal the existence of this program.
It was merely one small part of that reckless policy of throwing mad money at the banks while ignoring the plight of homeowners whom the banks had swindled, a plan pursued by both the Bush and the Obama administrations that set the stage for the current slide into a double-dip recession. On Tuesday it was reported that home values have continued an eight-month decline back to their lowest point since the recession began. With housing in deep trouble there can be no rebound of consumer confidence or job creation, and the first-quarter growth rate was an anemic 1.8 percent even as Wall Street profits and bonuses flourished. Wages are stagnant, unemployment claims have recently risen and, as the Wall Street Journal headlined on Tuesday, "Economists Downgrade Prospects for Growth." That same edition of the Journal reported that 44.6 million Americans now survive on food stamps, an 11 percent increase in that misery index over the past year, while Geithner's friends at Goldman are doing quite well.
Actually, Goldman wasn't even a bank and was therefore ineligible for those massive government handouts until Geithner helped gain approval for the instant conversion of Goldman from an investment house to a commercial bank. Goldman was granted that status, and with it access to the Fed's lending, soon after the privilege had been denied to the fellow investment bank Lehman Brothers (the $30 billion mentioned above was in addition to the $43.5 billion Goldman borrowed from other Fed programs). Although Lehman was allowed to go belly up, Geithner engineered the massive bailout of AIG, a move that turned out to be a cover for passing money to AIG's clients, including the aforementioned Goldman Sachs. The man's intentions were clear, even if all the secret details were not, when Obama picked him to be his point man in salvaging an economy that Geithner had done much to wreck.
Geithner's priorities were all too obvious from his days in the Clinton administration's Treasury Department when he worked first under former Goldman honcho Robert Rubin and then Lawrence Summers, who took six-figure speaking fees from Goldman and other banks while he was an adviser to candidate Obama. It was the recommendation of Rubin and Summers that landed Geithner the job as president of the New York Fed, where he faithfully followed the policy lead of Goldman-CEO-turned-Treasury-Secretary Henry Paulson.
It was back then and is now accurate to speak, as a New York Times headline once put it, of U.S. politics dominated by "The Guys From 'Government Sachs'" -- but on an international scale. From the crisis in Greece, where Goldman manufactured toxic tax-based derivatives with abandon, to its betting against the success of the mortgage-based derivatives that Goldman designed and sold to others, the company was nothing short of a massive wrecking ball in the international economy.
Oh yes, what did Goldman do with that taxpayer money it borrowed back in 2008? It needed the money to cover the lousy bets of its Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities trading unit, which had lost $320 million. Typical of the Goldman dealings in that arena was the $1.3 billion solicited from Col. Muammar Gaddafi's Libya sovereign wealth fund, which according to a report in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal lost 98 percent of its value and almost cost some Goldman executives doing business in Tripoli their lives.
But they survived, as the guys from Goldman always do. With the general "no banker left behind" program pursued by Geithner under both George W. Bush and Obama, the theory was that saving the banks would save the country. The first part worked out brilliantly, but the second act never occurred.
No they have bought up 80% of timber property's!
THE BANKSTERS STILL RUN THE WORLD!
J. W. McCallister, an oil industry insider with House of Saud connections, wrote in The Grim Reaper that information he acquired from Saudi bankers cited 80% ownership of the New York Federal Reserve Bank- by far the most powerful Fed branch- by just eight families, four of which reside in the US. They are the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans and Kuhn Loebs of New York; the Rothschilds of Paris and London; the Warburgs of Hamburg; the Lazards of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome.
CPA Thomas D. Schauf corroborates McCallister’s claims, adding that ten banks control all twelve Federal Reserve Bank branches. He names N.M. Rothschild of London, Rothschild Bank of Berlin, Warburg Bank of Hamburg, Warburg Bank of Amsterdam, Lehman Brothers of New York, Lazard Brothers of Paris, Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York, Israel Moses Seif Bank of Italy, Goldman Sachs of New York and JP Morgan Chase Bank of New York. Schauf lists William Rockefeller, Paul Warburg, Jacob Schiff and James Stillman as individuals who own large shares of the Fed. [3] The Schiffs are insiders at Kuhn Loeb. The Stillmans are Citigroup insiders, who married into the Rockefeller clan at the turn of the century.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va
The control that these banking families exert over the global economy cannot be overstated and is quite intentionally shrouded in secrecy. Their corporate media arm is quick to discredit any information exposing this private central banking cartel as “conspiracy theory”. Yet the facts remain.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va
Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, of the United States Constitution provides that Congress shall have the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof and of any foreign coins. But that is not the case. The United States government has no power to issue money, control the flow of money, or to even distribute it - that belongs to a private corporation registered in the State of Delaware - the Federal Reserve Bank.
Most of the shareholdings in the Federal Reserve Bank are either foreign owned or controlled by large New York City banks, the top controllers of the Federal Reserve Bank are:
1. Rothschild banks of London and Berlin.
2. Lazard Brothers Banks of Paris.
3. Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy.
4. Warburg Bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam.
5. Lehman Brothers Bank of New York.
6. Kuhn, Loeb bank of New York.
7. Chase Manhattan Bank of New York, (which controls all of the other 11 Federal Reserve Banks).
8. Goldman, Sachs Bank of New York.
1977: Jimmy Carter (D) signs the Community Reinvestment Act, guaranteeing home loans to low-income families
1999: Bill Clinton (D) puts the CRA on steroids, pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase the number of sub-prime loans.
2003: The White House calls Fannie and Freddie "a systemic risk." The Bush administration pushes Congress to enact new regulations. Bush warned them 17 TIMES.
2003: Barney Frank (D-CN) says F
2004: Bush talks up his proposals to increase home ownership opportunities for minorities and Section 8 renters - touts the "ownership society".
2004: B of A, Chase, Wells Fargo, Countrywide (et al), initiate sub prime loans and credit derivative swaps to drive the housing bubble to new heights. Fannie and Freddie follow suit.
2008: Adjustable rate mortgages and credit only mortgages begin to adjust, individual house payments triple and quadruple overnight, home owners are thrown into default and foreclosure. Housing bubble bursts.
2008: Bush bails out mortgage lender insurance giant AIG to the tune of more than $180 billion to cover bank losses from loan defaults and credit swaps.
2008: Bush initiates TARP (Toxic Asset Relief Program) giving $700 billion to B of A, Chase, Countrywide, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs (et al) to stop bank failures from loan defaults.
2008: The great Bush recession begins.
George Carlin ~ The American Dream
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
The only answer is that he did, and we've been suckered.
I smell third party. If organized labor doesn't move to create a labor party they're gonna be very, very sorry.
The transperancy is much easier today, thankfully. I hope people are listening, reading and taking notes.
They are all thieves....who haven't been arrested and prosecuted (and jailed) yet.......
If the Great Recession doesn't end soon....and I doubt it will....the desperate politicians will start throwing scapegoats (banksters and Wall Street creeps) to the wolves....er angry lower class American voters.
*****No matter WHAT they (politicians and media) say, the Great Recession is still going strong.
The people we put into office just turned a blind eye while the heavy players in Wall Street, Big Business and the Mega Banks financially ravaged the middle class and poor and let millions in taxpayer bailout money flow into the personal coffers of these players.
Even worse, our elected officials are now refusing to put into place the necessary regulations and over site that would keep any of this from occurring all over again.
Now these same elected officials want the victims of this outrage to make most, if not all, of the sacrifice that will be required to mend the economy.
For what ??
Just so the middle class and poor can be victimized all over again ??
I mean, the facts speak for themselves. There's being faithful, and there's being gullible.
*****I am talking about the politicians as a group.