"Has Bernanke Perjured Himself?"

Quote

Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Reserve officials were warned by a leading Wall Street rival that Lehman Brothers was incorrectly calculating a key measure of its financial health months before its collapse in 2008, people familiar with the matter say.

Former Merrill Lynch officials said they contacted regulators about the way Lehman measured its liquidity position for competitive reasons. The Merrill officials said they were coming under pressure from their trading partners and investors, who feared that Merrill was less liquid than Lehman.

Beyond the apparent perjury (which our Congress seems to ignore any time a "powerful" person commits it) there is the larger problem in that if the Chairman of The Fed has lied about this, what else has he lied about?

Most critically, what about all those other banks out there with HELOC exposure behind underwater first mortgages that are not being paid on time?

The Market Ticker has reported on the wildly inaccurate and ridiculous treatment of firsts in this environment - people being "allowed" to remain in a home even though they haven't made a payment in a year - and sometimes two, loans that are reported to credit bureaus as having payments made on them "by agreement" when the consumer is not only not paying but has never talked with the financial institution involved about it. A quick look at the 10Qs and 10Ks filed by the big financial institutions discloses that these institutions have literal hundreds of billions of HELOCs and Second Lines on their balance sheets that are behind underwater first mortgages. Each and every one of those loans is worth nothing if the first mortgage it is subordinate to fails to pay.

There is thus every reason to believe that not only did Lehman materially misstate its balance sheet position and financial strength but that this deception is ongoing right here and now.

more here - http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/articleid/3961997

If people had jobs, would they be behind? All that stimulus money wasted, and no jobs.