Should have resigned...conflicts of interest?

[WhiskeyGirl]

Cashing In on ‘Government Sachs’

We are so inured to tales of business corruption that even a devastating exposé in The Wall Street Journal no longer shocks us...

 

(I would add "business and government corruption")

When N.Y. Fed Chairman Stephen Friedman bought stock in the company that he once headed, and where he still serves as a director, he was already in violation of Federal Reserve policy and was hoping for a waiver to permit him to hold his existing multi-million-dollar stock stash and to remain on the Goldman board. The waiver was requested last October by Timothy Geithner...without having received that waiver, Friedman went ahead in December and purchased 37,300 additional shares. With shares he added in January, after the waiver was granted, he ended up with 98,600 shares in Goldman Sachs, worth a total of $13,330,720 at the close of trading on Tuesday.

 

How many others in our Treasury and Federal Reserve worked at Goldman?

...Nor did he inform the Federal Reserve of his additional purchases last December, and the lawyers for the N.Y. Fed didn’t know about that purchase until the WSJ raised questions in April. Friedman has made a profit of about $3 million on the additional shares.

...conflict of interest was summarized by the lead of the WSJ story: “The Federal Reserve Bank of New York shaped Washington’s response to the financial crisis late last year, which buoyed Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other Wall Street firms. Goldman received speedy approval to become a bank holding company in September and a $10 billion capital injection soon after.”

...Goldman received an additional $8.1 billion that will not have to be returned to taxpayers. This is a result of the bailout engineered by then-N.Y. Fed president Geithner of AIG, which listed Goldman as its top insured credit-swap customer. As Jerry Jordan, former president of the Fed Bank in Cleveland, told the Journal in reference to Friedman’s obvious conflict of interest, “He should have resigned.”

I wonder how many AIG 'pass throughs' there were?  Is Goldman being used to 'pass through' some of this money as well?  Other firms?

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090506_cashing_in_on_government_sachs/?ln

Something isn't right in America when large deficits endanger our future, the rich get richer, and the poor have to pay for it.

my opinions.

[WhiskeyGirl]

All of which calls into question the unique power of Goldman Sachs over the U.S. government, as described in another important, but largely ignored, article from The New York Times last October headlined “The Guys From ‘Government Sachs.’ ” Their power is vast, no matter which party controls the White House. As the Times noted, two leaders of Goldman Sachs—Robert Rubin, who co-chaired Goldman with Friedman, and Henry Paulson—had become secretaries of the Treasury in the Clinton and Bush administrations, respectively.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090506_cashing_in_on_government_sachs/?ln

Why is it that firefighters, school teachers and others that should be first in line for Chrysler bankruptcy, have to go to the back of the line?

 

Goldman and others go to the front?

Something is wrong in America when no one is looking out for Main Street.

My opinions.

[WhiskeyGirl]

Goldman, Give It All Back

While the bank is returning the government's $10 billion, why not also return the $13 billion it got from the U.S. through AIG's bailout?

If Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein wants to put his money where his mouth is, he won't stop with just giving back the $10 billion in federal bailout money the investment firm got last autumn. He'll also offer to return some of the $13 billion Goldman (GS) got from the U.S. government by way of the bailout of American International Group (AIG).

But, as we have seen in this financial crisis, some contracts can be broken. Maybe it was a smart move for the government to indirectly bail out AIG's trading partners to prevent a systemic financial collapse. But the government didn't have to make firms such as Goldman completely whole by paying face value for the CDOs that AIG had insured.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/apr2009/db20090414_212338.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis

For some reason, the government doesn't want to make the non-TARP Chrysler people whole, like they did some of the TARP people. 

For some reason, the government doesn't want to give the non-TARP Chrysler people the same advantages as the TARP folks.

I wonder why?

Why isn't the government worried about the firefighters, teachers, and other folks on Main Street that will lose their retirements?  Or, maybe from some other spending program, taxpayers will make these folks whole?

Taxpayers seem to make everyone whole, go into debt, and others like the former investment banks make profits and bonuses.

[WhiskeyGirl]

Does anyone see something wrong here -

The moral (hazard) of the story: Don’t be satisfied with profitability and stability. Be “too big to fail,” the new American dream.

The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. told U.S. Senate committee Wednesday that new powers are needed to regulate companies that grow so large that their collapse would endanger the nation’s financial system.

Why let them grow that big?  What happened to competition?  Monopoly?   

Bair suggested that the Treasury Department, FDIC, Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission could all be members of a new “systemic risk council” that would track large financial institutions for their exposure to the kind of collapse that has crippled the global economy.

Aren't these the same folks that got us into this trouble?  The foxes guarding the hen house?

Maybe this new council will just be another job rotation for Goldman and other big banks?

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090507/OPINION/905069902?Title=PD-EDITORIAL-America-can-t-afford-any-more-companies-that-are-too-big-to-fail-