Folks, we have a smoking gun here, you would have to be blind not to see that the Bernanke-induced crisis is being used by Paulson to funnel money to Goldman Sachs and his other crony favorites. The plan all along was to help out “healthy banks”. It’s on tape from the interim Assistant Secretary of Stability. Yeah, crisis and fear alright. Every time they utter those words, they move more of the $700 billion closer towards Goldman Sachs’ vault.
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2008/10/tape-blows-cover-on-true-treasury.html
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2008
Tape Blows Cover On True Treasury Intentions
The new kid at the Treasury hasn’t quite learned you really can’t talk in public about what you are really up to at Treasury. New Interim Assitant Secretary of the Office of Stability, Neel Kashkari, has been caught on tape providing the true details of what Treasury is up to. This will get him muzzled pretty fast, but it provides us the opportunity to see the scheming going on at Treasury.
Kashkari’s statements were posted on YouTube, and now appear to have been removed.
WSJ reviewed the tapes and reports first on the fact that Kashkari considers the executive pay caps demanded by Congress a joke:
As the biggest market intervention in U.S. history made its way through Congress, Neel Kashkari, the Treasury official named this week to run the program, offered assurances to 800 financial-industry players.
Attempts by Congress to make beneficiaries pay for their mistakes, such as placing caps on executive pay, were “quite reasonable” and “a pretty modest hindrance to you,” he told them, according to a recording of the Sept. 28 conference call made public on video-sharing Web site YouTube.
Kashkari told participants in the call that lawmakers’ interest in limiting executive compensation was “emotional” and “probably the most difficult part of the negotiation” with Congress.
When one industry participant said the caps might discourage participation, Kashkari noted their limited scope, which he called “a pretty modest hindrance to you coming into the program,” WSJ reports.
WSJ also reports that the conference call took place the night before the House rejected the rescue plan, on September 28. The plan passed days later on October 3.
The dates are important because Kashkari, according to WSJ, also reported to the financial insiders that, “Our preference would be to try to help healthy banks become even healthier.” (My emphasis.)
Remember, the entire focus, at the time, was on buying up bad mortgages and there was no news out publicly about Treasury helping “healthy banks”?
Indeed, I just did a search of the New York Times database and the first time the words “healthy bank” come up in a search is on October 9, where NYT reports that as Part of a NEW “Plan B” that Treasury may take positions in banks, even healthy ones.
This is how NYT reported the story (My emphasis):
Having tried without success to unlock frozen credit markets, the Treasury Department is considering taking ownership stakes in many United States banks to try to restore confidence in the financial system, according to government officials…
The American recapitalization plan, officials say, has emerged as one of the most favored new options being discussed in Washington and on Wall Street. The appeal is that it would directly address the worries that banks have about lending to one another and to other customers.
Treasury officials say the just-passed $700 billion bailout bill gives them the authority to inject cash directly into banks that request it…including healthy ones.
This new interest in direct investment in banks comes after yet another tumultuous day in which the Federal Reserve and five other central banks marshaled their combined firepower to cut interest rates but failed to stanch the global financial panic.
As Bob Murphy has pointed out, they haven’t even bought one mortgage yet, so how could they have failed at attempting to unlock the supposed frozen market?
“New interest”? “New options” “After yet another tumultuous day”? Then why was Kashkari talking about these details to the securities industry, even BEFORE the first House vote?
A database search of WSJ pretty much shows the same thing, the first time “healthy bank” is used with regard to the takeover of banks is October 10. The only other relevant search that comes up is an Op-Ed piece on 9-26 by John Paulson , a respected Wall Street investment manager–not the Treasury Secretary–, who discusses the Treasury’s plan to buy mortgages from all banks. And he would certainly be shocked to hear that two days after his Op-Ed that Kashkari said the Treasury’s preference was to help healthy banks, given that John Paulson wrote in his Op-Ed:
By allowing all banks to sell their worst assets to Treasury at inflated prices, taxpayers would be subsidizing healthy banks which have access to private capital (Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, for example) as well as banks that don’t have a private alternative. But under a Preferred plan, only banks that don’t have a private alternative will be given federal assistance. This would reduce the outlay otherwise required to solve the crisis.
Folks, we have a smoking gun here, you would have to be blind not to see that the Bernanke-induced crisis is being used by Paulson to funnel money to Goldman Sachs and his other crony favorites. The plan all along was to help out “healthy banks”. It’s on tape from the interim Assistant Secretary of Stability. Yeah, crisis and fear alright. Every time they utter those words, they move more of the $700 billion closer towards Goldman Sachs’ vault.
UPDATE: There is a poor quality audio tape of the conference call on YouTube. Here is Part 3 where at the 9:00 minute mark the mention is made that healthy banks will be preferred. Thanks, Anthony.
Labels: BenBernanke, GoldmanSachs, HenryPaulson, NeelKashkari, TheTreasury