For months now, (since at least September of last year) I’ve been making the case that if there’s indeed a mastermind behind a scheme to get Barack Obama into the Oval Office in order to advance a corporate, Wall Street-friendly agenda, it’s none of the usual suspects whose names are always thrown into the mix whenever these things are discussed, like Henry Paulson, but this guy, JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon. A profile of the bankster in today’s New York Times, while inaccurate on a few points, imo, does nothing to disabuse anyone of conviction resultant from such speculation. In fact, the piece, in detailing the New York Federal Reserve Board of Directors‘ member, who was selected along with Pepsico’s Indra Nooyi, another Obama campaign economic advisor, and his cozy relationship with the White House, especially with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, could be seen as express validation of such a claim.
Thanks primarily to Matt Taibbi and his recent Rolling Stone article about Goldman Sachs, The Great American Bubble Machine, especially in light of the company’s latest profit report, Hank Paulson’s name has been prominent in the news. Everybody from Paul Krugman to Seeking Alpha to Congress has weighed in on the meaning, effect, genesis and reality of said profits in light of their new status as a bank holding company, the company’s bailout, and their relationship of the architect of the TARP program that provided it, Paulson.
However, the fact that JP Morgan has also benefited every step of the bailout/extortion way is inescapable, while the reality of Jamie Dimon’s relationship with Obama usually flies under the radar. As does the fact that where Obama, Dimon and Paulson are concerned, all roads lead to Chicago.
We all know that Paulson is from Barrington, Illinois and served as Goldman’s Midwestern Investment Division chief in Chicago before becoming the company’s CEO. A Republican, who once served as an intern to Richard Nixon, Paulson has nonetheless been accused by fellow Chicagoan, Robert Novak and Nina Easton of being a Republican in Name Only (RINO) whose appointments were to serve as groundwork for his wife’s college friend, Hillary Clinton’s cabinet, despite the fact that Paulson’s political donations were primarily in support of his party. However, if Paulson was trying to pave the way for anybody, it was Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton. Read the rest of this entry »
On May 5, the Obministration finally decided to make official what every Obot detesting realist has known since Barack Obama became a United States Senator: the”internetwork” and the so-called, “politician” are in love. This, though unspoken, has never been a secret. Who needs words when one has actions? MSNBC, whose journalistically-challenged on-air personalities pornographically ooze affection for their Golden Boy on a 24/7 basis, are shamelessly forthcoming about their tingly-leg motivated compulsion to see to it that the man whose relationship with their parent company’s CEO is only slightly less of a tangled web than the one between said parent company and its co-partner in the hybrid network’s joint venture, is perceived as spectacularly successful and beloved by all. After all, such public bended-knee fluffing and prostate stroking is part of their job description, even if not everybody got the memo on the same day.
And, with the kind of deliciously wicked, bitchy-type writing I love, Andrew Malcolm of the L.A. Times snarkily reported on the White House representative Kareem Dale’s confirmation, at 1:51 in the following You Tube clip, that the ooey-gooey love feeling is mutual: Read the rest of this entry »
No wonder the Greatest Pretendident Who Never Was can’t see the forest for the trees; too many glimmers. Seems when Mr. Starry Eyes does that voodoo that he do so well, reading rehashed canned speeches between photo-ops, he relishes the anticipated dizziness resulting from spewing so much spin while swiveling his head back and forth from TelePrompTer to TelePrompTer, in much the same way a little kid likes twirling in a circle really fast. Wheeeeee! What a rush! Forget glimmers, what about these cool, psychedelic lights, dude?
Only someone seeking an altered stated (or, already in one) could look at the data and see what he sees. Across the country, contractors are so desperate to win stimulus-sponsored government contracts that they’re lowballing (probably, just telling the truth for once, but still) bids waaay below anticipated levels (about 15%). Which, of course, leaves them vulnerable to cost cutting practices regarding staffing and materials that could ultimately affect quality, but, hey, it leaves even more money in the stimulus budget to fund even more potentially substandard projects. Yay!
The “dirty little secret” regarding the firing of General Motors’ CEO Richard Wagoner by the Obama administration is not that it represents an alarming degree of government intervention into private business, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson fired AIG’s CEO of three months, Robert Willumstad, and brought in his Midwestern Goldman Sachs board member buddy, Edward Liddy, (who resigned his seat on Goldman’s board a couple weeks later) when he loaned the company 85 billion pre-TARP dollars in return for 79.5% of it, after all. In fact, the “dirty little secret” is not even a “secret” at all. You see, what nobody wants to admit, is that none of this crap makes any difference at all.
People simply can’t afford new cars, and everybody knows it. The Big 3 could be making the bestest, most beautifullest, fuel efficient air-powered chariots in the world and, like the housing market, they would struggle. Nobody’s accusing the construction industry of building crappy houses and causing the real estate collapse. Nope, the government is diverting your attention from the fact that they’re still funneling the money consumers might use to buy shit that would stimulate the economy to the banksters who screwed up the economy in the first place. All while they take over everything else, of course. Read the rest of this entry »
On a day when Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) appear before Congress seeking unprecedented power to further lootmanipulate regulate the financial industry, including non-banking entities like AIG, the company whose bonuses they’ve been called on the carpet to address, perusal of the day’s news stories, blog posts, and opinion pieces reveals more questions than answers. Is this the bizarre Obministration Hokey Pokey Bamboozle One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Cha-Cha-Cha it appears to be, or are the Obanomic efforts of the government so far truly on behalf of the people?
Though I make no claims of being a financial wizard, or a political maven, even I can see that all is not right on Wall Street, D.C. where the heart and soul of our country is on life support, currently being administered to by second graders who want to be doctors when they grow up. And, I’m sophisticated enough to recognize that a lot of what I read about our dire national situation is presented in the media by people representing the political party so far out of favor they have to look to bloviating blowhards for advice, or worse, can be made to appear to need to do so. I get that. However, in spite of all that, the forces pretending to represent the white-hatted good guys in this classic Adventures in Administration movie, armed with their heralded sky-high approval ratings for their poor man’s Dark Gable leading man, simply can’t mount enough of a stampede to disguise the fact that the dustcloud that follows them like Charlie Brown’s pal Pigpen’s is not the result of riding hard and strong over the dusty trail, but merely the wispy smoke trails from their “throw ‘em off the path,” hastily built, diversionary cookfire. In other words, they got nothing.
Stalwart bastion of the Obamedia protection service, Salon Magazine, has an article by former Clinton labor secretary and Obacolyte, Robert Reich, in which he pitifully attempts to pooh-pooh rightwing claims that the Obamessiah himself is responsible for our economic woes by trying to lay them at the feet of the finger-pointers:
When it turns out that people like Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, who took home $68 million in 1997, was the only Wall Streeter in a meeting last September at the New York Federal Reserve to discuss the initial AIG bailout with Tim Geithner, then New York Fed chair, among others, at the very time Goldman was AIG’s largest trading partner, a distinct scent of self-dealing begins to emanate. When it turns out that Citigroup got a bailout deal last October far more generous than that given to any other distressed bank, when a top Citi executive was advising the Treasury and Fed, the scent increases. Goldman’s past CEO was treasury secretary at that time, by the way, and another former Goldman CEO was a top Citi official and also a former treasury secretary. I am not suggesting anything so crude as corruption. But could it be, given these tangled webs, that — innocently, unintentionally, perhaps even subconsciously — the entire bailout effort was premised on saving these companies rather than protecting the public? Or that the distinction between the two was lost, and still is?
Yet, Reich gleefully and disingenuously, ignores the fact that the people he’s defending his ObaMaster against are the people who funded his campaign. Not only that, the central figure in Reich’s little morality play, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, (TTTG,tc) has a family history of sorts with Barry Sutoro, and is currently employed as the Blameless One’s lapdog and whipping boy. To point out that he may have colluded with the banksters against the public in ripping off the country on the other team’s watch is…well…stupid.
Why would anyone purporting to defend the Obama administration draw attention to the man quickly becoming the public face of its incompetence? Especially when the author can’t even make it through to the end of his own piece without acknowledging at least some of the complicity of the Obama Drama Troupe?
The Wall Street and Republican media attack machine doesn’t know exactly what to make of this. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, along with CNBC, alternates between attacking Obama for bailing out Wall Street and excusing Wall Street’s excesses. But then again, Obama doesn’t seem to know exactly what to make of it either. He seems to vacillate as well — one moment scorning Wall Street, the next moment justifying further bailouts. I do hope he takes a firmer hand, drawing a clearer distinction and making a clearer connection between clearing up these financial balance sheets and helping average people. Otherwise, the next populist uprising will be born in this moneyed quagmire. It is here — within the muck that was created by AIG, Citigroup, Fannie and Freddie, other giant financial institutions, now in combination with the U.S. Treasury and Fed — that the public is most confused, bears its most serious scars, and is potentially most burdened in future years, by decisions still made in secret.
When Baracus Ceaser Obamacus incessantly cried, “Change!” from the rooftops via TelePrompTer in stump speech after stump speech written by the Cardboard Titty Groper at the behest of the Astroturfing PuppetMaster acting on behalf of the banksters bankrolling the hopium-fueled ObamaLove Train steamrolling into the White House, who knew he really meant restructuring the global financial landscape, huh?
The inventors of the soon-to-be patented (I’m sure) ObaSpeak have mastered the art of diversion through obfuscation that lesser politicians and wordsmiths have been practicing inartfully for millennia. Thus, bailouts are not bailouts, and “nationalization” is not quite, exactly “nationalization,” per se.
I guess when you’re determined to “redistribute the wealth” on the downlow, you have to figure out a way to freak people out without freaking them totally out. And, if you can come up with a way to trick them into thinking it’s their idea, so much the better. That’s probably why the number of women in high places in the administration will always continue to be limited by design, we invented the “oh,honey, how clever,” ploy and can see right though it. That’s why when it comes to the current global financial system restructuring going on right under the world’s nose, I sweetly call “bullshit, dear.”
I’m no economist, but I know screwing when I see it, even when I don’t know the people, or can’t identify the species of the animals involved. And, oh, baby, oh, there’s some serious money screwing going on.
Before the banksters got together and financed the junior senator from Illinois’ meteoric rise to the top of the political trash heap, the world’s financial landscape looked very different. Yet, in just a couple short years, the financial structure as we’ve known it has “collapsed,” almost in a curious tandem reverse/parallel tango with the seemingly unqualified and inexperienced young political phenom’s ascent. Funny, that.
Now that there are no more large investment banks, as far as I know, news reports last year trumpeted the conversion to commercial banks of Goldman Sachs’ and JP Morgan Chase’s status as that of the last two, and the government has played favorites with which struggling banks and financial institutions to prop up, we now enter the “not really nationalizing, except we own ‘em” phase of the Bwah Ha Ha Plan.
How do we know that this is a Democratic UniParty plot, and not just a cleanup of the Bush administration mess? Why, Harry Reid told us. Not exactly in those words, per se; that’s not the way of ObamaCanCratSpeak. From Politico:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he supports efforts of the federal government to dramatically expand its stake in Citigroup, but wants people to back off from the dramatic rhetoric.
“It’s not nationalization, it’s protecting the taxpayers’ interests,” Reid (D-Nev.) told MSNBC’s Morning Joe program on Monday.
“In the bailout, the TARP, that we made sure the American taxpayer had a way of getting paid back for their investments,” Reid said. “That’s what this is all about and it’s the right way to go.”
In other, normal American words, “yeah, we already own a lot of Wall Street, but, you’re getting a cut, eventually, so ixnay on the ationalization-nay, will ya?” He forgot to mention that the 8 – 13 dollar cut you’re currently slated to get, just might be in Ameros in the near future. Dollars will very soon be worthless, anyway, so kwitcherbitchin’. Remember, TARP is bipartisan.
The Politico piece goes on to claim that Republicans are upset about, shhhh, nationalization, shhhh, but, didn’t that cross-party blog pioneer/ObaFluffer, Huff ‘n’ Puff, among every other news outlet on the planet, report last week that Lindsay Graham made the Sunday news show rounds planting the “we politicians can do it better” seeds in the Astroturf bs? And, isn’t he just the cutest little Barney Frank alter ego across the aisle, hmmmmm?
Now even the Soros backedCenter for American Politics‘ hatchet blog, Think Progress, is trumpeting the “if not nationalization, what?” drumbeat. Even Republicans are beginning to see the futility of resistance. That the growing chorus of cacophony is reaching eardrum-splitting noise levels is probably just the inevitable response to the legitimate crisis of confidence currently devaluing the global economy, right? I mean, we gotta do something, don’t we?
Sure.
So while the Spokesmodel-in-Chief dons his most comfortable Professor Man costume and publicly breaks up his lackeys into study groups, the better to memorize their approved talking points asssigned them by the Astroturfing, bankster-employed, stage manager/prducer who had them written and distributed, those who chose to remain clueless can take comfort in the fact that worldwide screwing of this magnetude has never before been attempted, so is likely not happening now. It’s okay. The thrill of telling you, “I toldja so,” will be just as sweet as it will be for other, less tinfoil- friendly PUMAs when the shit fully hits the fan and splatters us all.
As I watched last week’s PBS special about the financial crisis, “Inside the Meltdown,” one of the many things I was struck by was the lengths to which the producers went to establish the consensus of opinion regarding Wall Street’s inordinate sensitivity and susceptibility to rumor, gossip, and innuendo. That such a vast, powerful, integral industry run by people presumed to be America’s “best and brightest” could allow decisions affecting the rise and fall of entire global conglomerates comprising the world’s economic foundation to be based on nothing more than “he said, she said” tales told out of school, or worse, possibly deliberately planted, malicious seeds of doubt, seems hard to fathom. Yet, the possibility of such an eventuality was demonstrated in great detail in the documentary, and, with just a modicum of imagination, one might easily consider that a few well timed “revelations,” true or not, might well take down an entire financial empire, if not industry. A little research might lead one to believe that such a thing is not only possible, it just might have happened.
In March of 2008, at the time Bear Stearns tanked and was sold to JP Morgan Chase at 2 dollars a share, only to have the price bumped up to ten dollars a share after the government intervened, even that price was only considered to be approximately ten percent of its market value. According to many sources, such intervention was rather suspect, for a lot of reasons, especially considering that the firm was not insolvent, though nobody would loan them money because of rumors that they were. In other words, it was not a lack capital that undid the company, but a lack of confidence. Vanity Fair encapsulated the cause of Bear Stearns’ death this way in the opening paragraph of its August ‘08 “autopsy:”
On Monday, March 10, the rumor started: Bear Stearns was having liquidity problems. In fact, the maverick investment bank had around $18 billion in cash reserves. But soon the speculation created its own reality, and the race was on to keep Bear’s crisis from ravaging Wall Street. With the blow-by-blow from insiders, Bryan Burrough follows the players-Bear’s stunned executives, trigger-happy reporters at CNBC, a nervous Fed, a shadowy group of short-sellers-in what some believe was the greatest financial scandal in history.
So, why did the corporation’s protestations to the contrary fall on industry-wide deaf ears? The company hadexperienced difficulties the previous year with 2 of its subprime mortgage hedge funds, High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund, and High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund, and was facing lawsuits from Barclays and other angry investors, as a result. Additionally, two of its former managers, Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi, were eventually arrested in June of ‘08 for taking their own money out of the funds while propping them up with corporate bailout money and lying to investors about it. But, that was after the company died and was consumed.
According to CNN Money, Fortune, CFO Sam Molinaro asserted that by February, ‘08, Stearns’ troubles were behind them:
Bear had survived one liquidity challenge, in the summer of 2007, when two of its hedge funds cratered after the subprime mortgage collapse. The firm had labored to repair its balance sheet and improve its financing. “Our capital position is strong,” said Bear’s CFO, Sam Molinaro, at an investors’ conference in February. “Balance-sheet liquidity has continued to improve throughout the course of the year. We spent an awful lot of time trying to reduce our higher-risk asset categories.”
So, could Bear Stearns have weathered the storm? Then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s old company didn’t think so. On March 11, an email sent by Goldman Sach’s derivatives group to its hedge fund clients, saying they would no longer back them on Bear Stearns deals, was the nail in the company’s coffin.
While I am not prepared to suggest that there was a direct “cause and effect” relative to the currently discussed events, I do think it’s helpful to bear in mind that the financial “crisis” evolved against the backdrop of the presidential campaign. Would Bear have “collapsed” had the results of Super Tuesday been different? Who knows? It is something to think about, though.
On March 28, the Chicago Tribune and Reuters, among others reported that rumors that the company was claiming were “totally unfounded,” were swirling about Lehman Brothers, too. By August 25, on the day the Democratic National convention started, The Deal.com was reporting that the rumors had become a full-fledged storm amid suggestions of a hostile takeover by Korea Development Bank and intra-company planned coup against CEO Richard Fuld.
On September 15, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy after the government, presumably weary of going to bat for “failing” Wall Street companies, like Bear, having bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the week before, refused to intervene this time. Interestingly, one of Lehman’s holdings, Neuberger Berman, headed by then President, George W. Bush’s second cousin, George Herbert Walker IV, was exempted from the bankruptcy filing:
Neuberger Berman LLC and Lehman Brothers Asset Management will continue to conduct business as usual and will not be subject to the bankruptcy case of the parent company, and its portfolio management, research and operating functions remain intact. In addition, fully paid securities of customers of Neuberger Berman are segregated from the assets of Lehman Brothers and aren’t subject to the claims of Lehman Brothers Holdings’ creditors, Lehman said.
According to Wikipedia, and corroborated here, on September 13, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG, tc,) then President of the New York Federal Reserve, now Secretary of the Treasury, convened a meeting about Lehman’s future that Lehman wasn’t invited to, after Lehman suffered substantial losses starting September 9:
An official from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said participants include Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox. The New York Fed official asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the talks.
Participants in today’s discussions at the offices of the New York Fed also include executives from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch. Representatives for Lehman Brothers were not present during the discussions.
Lehman claimed to be in negotiations for sale with Barclays and Bank of America, both of whom backed out. Bank of America bought Merill Lynch on September 14, instead. Barclays bought Lehman’s North American investment-banking and trading divisions along with its New York headquarters building, the next day, after Lehman was, for all intents and purposes, dead.
After the fact, in October, former CEO Richard Fuld said in prepared testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, that rumor-mongering was a big part of the problem that brought Lehman down. However, Fuld’s first contention was that the Federal Reserve’s refusal to allow Lehman an exemption to become a bank holding company, or commercial bank, was a body blow to the company. On September 22, a week after Lehman filed bankruptcy, The Fed allowed Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, “the last two major investment banks” to switch. According to the New York Times, this was a major big deal. The Washington Post reported at the time that the Fed had approved the conversion with “unusual haste.”
On September 27, the New York Times* reported that one of the members at the meeting that decided Lehman’s fate was Lloyd C. Blankfeld of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson’s old firm. At that meeting, the state of A.I.G., Goldman Sach’s largest trading partner, was discussed. As we know now, the government bailed out A.I.G., yet let Lehman die. Naked Capitalism asserts that the Goldman Sachs/Paulson relationship might have been more than a factor. In October, Bloomberg claimed that Lehman’s collapse was the fault of JP Morgan Chase, purchasers of Bear Stearns.
It bears remembering that in the midst of this Lehman Brothers/A.I.G./Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac financial upheaval, Barack Obama and John McCain were involved in a pitched battle for the presidency. It is also worth noting that Obama was reported at the time to have been in daily contact with Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary and former head of Goldman Sachs, one of Obama’s largest campaign donors. FYI, Paulson was raised in Barrington, Illinois, outside of Chicago, was also head of Goldman’s Midwestern Division, headquartered there. Worthy of equal or better note, Obama’s campaign economic team included William Daley, Mayor Richard Daley’s brother, and Midwest Chairman of JP Morgan Chase, as well as its CEO and New York Fed Board of Directors member, Jamie Dimon, who parlayed his turnaround of Bank One, after being dumped by his mentor, Sandy Weill of Citigroup, into the JP Morgan gig. Oh, gosh, did I forget to mention Bank One is in Chicago? My bad. One other noteworthy Obama advisor at that time was Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG, tc). I have done a series of posts chronicling Jamie Dimon’s involvement in the Obamenon, I humbly advise readers to check them out, here, here, here, and here,to name just a few posts, not so much for my opinions, but for the links to information they provide.
By November, when Obama secured the presidency, Paulson’s TARP had distributed about half of the allotted funds to “troubled” banks, more than half of it to the country’s largest, including Goldman and JP Morgan. According to reports, most of which came to light after Obama was inaugurated, the banksters were forced to accept the funds the Treasury was giving away, whether they wanted to or not, yet were later called on the carpet to explain how they spent them. At the hearing in the House, they, like their counterparts in the beleaguered auto industry, were castigated for frivolous financial excess, even though, not all of them requested government funds. As president, Obama had by that point, already railed against the ” shameful” bankers, and issued a “salary cap,” generally considered to be window dressing, since it only applied to those financial institutions receiving future government assistance from the second half of TARP, not the ones funded in the first bailout. TTTG, tc was said to have prevailed against other Obama administration advisers, namely David Axelrod, in the president’s ultimate soft bailout stance.
The TARP program, or Paulson Plan, is not universally loved by bankers, some say it’s a sneaky attempt at nationalization, or in the words of Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel, “subsidization.” The Brookings Institute called for more Congressional oversight in December, calling the plan “frayed” and “rushed into law.” At any rate, the relatively ineffective, previous admonition is now a moot point, having been trumped by the new, stricter “salary cap” guidelines supposedly snuck into the president’s “stimulus plan” by Chris Dodd when nobody was looking.
The new rules require all banks recieving government assistence to be subject to the new, stricter salary cap rules. That means, even banks forced into the bailout program are now under government supervision. And, though Obama has made, “the discussion’s not over” noises, as Politico pointed out, it’s not credible that the administration was blindsided:
The tougher rules that passed in Congress were no last-minute surprise. Dodd talked them up in a February 5 press release, and in another released on Thursday, just hours before the bill was filed. The rules were debated in the Senate.
Okay, I know this is a long post, and to be honest, I’ve only scratched the surface of the mountains of information and questions that arise from it, here. But, for a series of rumors to be the catalyst for events that end up in the “nationalization” and/or “subsidization” of the nation’s banks, at the expense of the global economy, is a mindboggling thing to consider, even if it’s ultimately untrue, or unprovable, if it is.
As I’ve said before, it’s reminiscent of a John Grisham novel, The Appeal, to be exact, so maybe my skepticism is born of an overactive imagination. But all things considered, the more pertinent question is, what if it’s not?
*The New York Times printed a correction clarifying the dates and participants of 2 separate meetings re: Lehman/A.I.G.:
Because of an editing error, an article on Sunday about the financial problems of American International Group referred incorrectly to the timing and participants at meetings at the New York Federal Reserve between Saturday, Sept. 13, and Monday, Sept. 15. Although there were indeed meetings that weekend, there was also a separate meeting on Monday to discuss financial aid for A.I.G. Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, was the only Wall Street chief executive who attended the Monday meeting, not the only chief executive who attended weekend meetings. Also, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, did not lead or attend the Monday meeting. (Both Mr. Blankfein and Mr. Paulson did attend the weekend meetings.)
During one late night/early morning informal discussion on The Confluence, the name Robert Wolf, and his influence on Barack Obama, came up. To be honest, I didn’t know Robert Wolf from the man in the moon, and still don’t. However, I have looked into the question of whether or not he might be “the guy” who’s responsible for foisting the fraud that is our current president onto our nation via our easily bedazzled and bamboozled breth-and sist-ren, and, have concluded, probably not. Though, he is a rather strong candidate, worthy of PUMA scrutiny and investigation.
Robert Wolf is the President and Chief Operating Officer of UBS Investment Bank, as well as Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of UBS Group for the Americas. That comes straight from the UBS website. The company is a global financial institution based in Switzerland, whose name (USB) comes from it’s original, pre-merger with Swiss Bank Corporation name, Union Bank of Switzerland. The AG is initialized form of a Swiss word basically meaning shareholder corporation. UBS AG, along with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley are among the financial groups who gave Googles of money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, either through employee contributions, direct personal donations, contributions to PACs, and/or bundling. Wolf’s and UBS’ political contributions to date can be tracked here, here, and here.
On February 6, White House.gov posted a press release announcing President Black Obama’s newly established Economic Advisory Board, designed to brief the president as he makes up an economic strategy on the fly, then tries to sell it on the campaign trail and run it up the public opinion flagpole and Chris Matthews’ leg, as David Axelrod runs focus groups whose results he can doctor and leak to the press. The board will tell him what to do for two years, then he will revisit the question of extending their term of service and basically do whatever they tell him to do. (Okay, the press release doesn’t exactly say that, but, c’mon, we know what’s up.) Anyway, besides Paul Volcker, Penny (first Commerce Secretary name withdrawn) Pritzker, and Austan (NAFTAgate) Goolsbee, the most interesting name on the list was…(drumroll, please)…Robert Wolf (rim shot).
Obama met Wolf in December of 2005 at a George Soros-sponsored “meet the bundlers” matinee soiree, and, according to an April 16, 2007, New York Magazine article, it was man love at first sight. Conversation was had, numbers were exchanged and a relationship was born. To make a long story boring, seems both were a little miffed at the “old school” dominance of the stuck up, cocky Clinton Machine, so the ambitious Obama jumped aboard the put out, mega-rich, political playa wannabe’s train, and together, they formed a younger rainbow money posse and rode off into the sunset, creatively plotting to take over the world with their new, invigorating “hopey changeness.”
Except…
Since it was George Soros’ party, and Soros supported Obama, it seems likely to me that, if there was a big player to exploit, Soros put the “suck up to that guy” bug in Obie’s ear. Also, a Washingtom Post article dated 2 days later, had already identified Goldman Sachs as Obama’s biggest donor, a title I don’t think GS ever relinquished. At that time, WaPo listed Obie’s Big Givers as:
The figures reflect giving from the employees of Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, as well as Goldman and UBS. Goldman employees gave about 50 percent more to presidential hopefuls than the next-highest set of givers, at Citigroup.
Remember, this is April ‘07 we’re talking here, before a single primary/caucus vote was cast/stolen. It’s doubtful that Wolf was able to snooker so much financial support from his business rivals unless there’s been some major collusion going on for quite some time.
Which is possible…
According to Wikipedia, Wolf assumed his current position as Chief Operating Officer with UBS in January, 2007. After a company shakeup in October of 2007, due to a “writedown” caused by the “deteriorating conditions in the US sub prime residential mortgage market,” Wolf was named President, Investment Bank. May, 2008 saw more UBS writedowns and job losses.
In the midst of our world-wide economic crisis the story of the troubles UBS is currently facing is not getting quite the attention it deserves. One of the skeletons in Obama’s closet is that the banking conglomerate which employs one of the President of the United States’ financial advisers is currently under investigation for income tax evasion, which could have major implications for the entire banking industry and global reprecussions.
In February of last year, Reuters quoted a Wall Street Journal report that UBS was facing “subprime mortgage investigations:”
U.S. government prosecutors are investigating whether Swiss banking giant UBS misled investors by reporting inflated prices of mortgage-backed securities it held despite knowing those valuations had eroded, the Wall Street Journal said on Saturday.
According to a May 7, 2008 Bloomberg piece, the company was facing a tax probe:
UBS AG, the world’s biggest money manager for rich individuals, said the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether the Swiss bank helped clients evade American taxes.
One senior bank employee was “briefly detained” by U.S. authorities as a “material witness,” the firm said in an e- mailed statement. The Financial Times reported that the employee was Martin Liechti, the Zurich-based head of UBS’s international wealth management business for the Americas. Rohini Pragasam, a UBS spokeswoman in New York, declined to comment on the FT report. Liechti could not immediately be reached for comment.
In June, ex-UBS employee, Bradley Birkenfeld plead guilty to charges against him that had been filed in May, that he was “incetivized” by the company to help clients hide assets. By July, ABC was reporting that Senator Carl Levin was going after the company for helping US tax cheats hide taxable assets, and wanted the company shut down. In November, another UBS big shot, Raoul Weil, was indicted in Miami for doing the same thing for a lot more clients. In December, WSJ reported that the Feds had added Credit Suisse and HSBC to the probe list.
Now, in a series of rather confusing developments, USB has agreed to pay 780 million dollars in fines and open up its hallowed books to the government’s prying eyes. Despite the agreement however, Raoul Weil is still being sought separately, and still considered a fugitive, as he has been since January. It also seems that the Internal Revenue Service/Department of Justice has initiated a separate civil suit seeking enforcement of a “John Doe” summons that would require the company to reveal the names of up to 52,000 American customers. The official UBS statement can be found here.
While there is no shortage of Soros conspiracy theories, some of them, regarding Obama and the Soros-backed, John Podesta-led Center for American Progress, of which Tom Daschle was a Distinguished Fellow, have even been explored here, I don’t think Soros is “the guy” anymore than I think Wolf is. Unless Wolf has some secret plan to take down his own company from the inside, I can’t see how his Obama investment money has been well spent. I do think that, as was pointed out in the PBS special “Inside the Meltdown,” the whole credit crisis was rumor generated, so that it, and all the other social media, internet, financial, political, and other manipulation that so fortuitously worked to Obama’s advantage could have been implemented by one savvy guy with his ear to the ground, his finger on the nation’s pulse, and a brick-sized chip on his shoulder. I also believe there is such a guy, but his name ain’t George or Robert.
Can you say “double standard?” Kristin Davis, escort service CEO (madam) who provided companionship by the hour to former governor Elliot Spitzer, and whose “little black book” is revealing the peccadilloes and services purchased to indulge them of some of the country’s biggest big ballers, surely can. And she is indignantly proclaiming it loudly to anybody who’ll listen, like ABC News:
Wall street lawyers, investment bankers, CEOs and media executives often used corporate credit cards to pay for $2,000 an hour prostitutes, according to the madam who ran one of New York’s biggest and most expensive escort services until it was busted last year.
But prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office chose not to pursue any of the corporate titans, says Kristin Davis, who pleaded guilty last year to charges of running a prostitution business that used more than a hundred women.
“Used?” Not “employed?” There is a difference, ya know. Whatever one thinks of the morality of the profession, there’s not a lot of difference between a madam and a CEO, or a call girl and a consultant. Which is pretty much Davis’ point. Either it’s a crime to indulge in prostitution, or it isn’t. Can’t sell what nobody will buy, after all.
However, the larger point is that these poor, misunderstood, stressed out titans of industry were getting their ashes hauled using corporate credit cards that were billed for services such as “computer consulting” and “roof repair.” Which is fraud:
Davis says one CEO ordered her to send him invoices for “roof repair on a warehouse” to disguise the payment for prostitutes from corporate funds.
“That is fraud,” said former New York prosecutor Sid Baumgarten, who told 20/20 the district attorney should have investigated the men.
“Not necessarily just for the patronizing but for the use of these business records and credit cards to see what kind of fraud or tax fraud was being used. And if so, that is a major offense,” Baumgarten said.
When ABC News contacted that CEO, he said he used his corporate card to pay for the escort service to entertain clients, but that there was no sex involved.
Davis, who can plausibly be called an entrepreneur in her own right, operated a multi-faceted organization providing a variety of services, (I’d bet the farm sex was indeed involved in all of them) until the Fed crackdown on Elliot Spitzer took her down with him:
Davis operated her escort service as a prostitution conglomerate, with five different “brands” over a four year period, each with its own “price point” and websites.
At the high end was an escort service called Carlyle Trust, mimicking the name, but not connected in any way, to a prestigious investment firm. Davis said she recruited top fashion models who charged up to $2,000 an hour for clients of Carlyle Trust.
Her lower cost services charged $400 an hour for a “body rub,” she said.
The “best little whorehouse on Wall Street” was located just a few blocks from the New York Stock Exchange, in apartment 3A at 136 William Street.
Davis operated three other “in-call” locations in the mid-town area of Manhattan.
The escort business took in as much as $200,000 a week, Davis estimated.
This is where the story gets strange. Davis’ reputation seems to have been trashed, then, somewhat rehabilitated since the Spitzer investigation first revealed that he used her services as well as those of Mark Brener, the proprietor of the Empire Club and employer of Ashley Dupree, the woman Spitzer allegedly violated the Mann Act with by transporting her to Washington for sheet sweating, possibly on the taxpayers’ dime. Brener was sentenced Friday to 30 months in prison for conspiracy to commit prostitution and money laundering. Curiously, Spitzer was never arrested or prosecuted though he was forced to resign as Governor, and the Federal investigation against him was dropped 2 days after the November national election. Probably just a coincidence.
A March 26 New York Times article reporting Kristin Davis (not the Sex in the City actress, btw) does not mention Spitzer, and charcterized her as a “woman accused of running a large prostitution ring.” Subsequent reports, mainstream and otherwise, began to detail Davis’ involvement with the kinky governor who developed crushes on “consultants” and whined and tried to bully them into allowing him to “ride bareback.” Davis herself was soon being described as everything from “trailer trash” to “tranny.” Web articles here, here, here, here, and here get increasingly bitchy.
By December of last year when she was “freed” after being sentenced to 90 days, time served, and relieved of the almost $500,000 she ws arrested with, Davis, though still referred to as a “buxom blonde,” was back on her way to relative respectability. By January of this year, Gawker was posting her opinion of celebrities’ sex worker potential. February 6 brought us Davis’ tell all book, though the contents of her “little black book” were hinted at as early as March of last year. Among those contents, partially verified by ABC, were these, re-printed here from the Raw Story:
* a vice president of NBC Universal (owned by General Electric)
* the part owner of a Major League Baseball team who “loves Kelsey”
* the CEO of one of the country’s largest private equity firms who met “Cameron” at the Peninsula Hotel
* a major New York real estate developer who, according to the list, “will come to the door wearing women’s panties”
* a partner at the Wall Street law firm Cravath Swaine Moore “looking for a party girl to come fully equipped” and spent a total of $20,000
* an investment banker from Lehman Brothers who saw “Kelsey and Keely together” and later saw “Aria and Skyler at the same time”
* an investment banker at JP Morgan Securities who “loves Brooke” and spent $41,600
* an investment banker at Goldman Sachs who “only wanted all-American girls” and spent $27,000
* a managing director from Merrill Lynch who saw “Lana” using the name “Nataly”
* a managing director from Deutsche Bank “who called about seeing Nataly again”
Spitzer, whose identity as Mark Brener’s, not Kristin Davis’, Client Number 9, was leaked to the media and confirmed by a “person briefed on the case,” took a big hit to his reputation as the “Sheriff of Wall Street,” an appellation earned from his efforts as New York State Attorney General to reform the financial industry, though some say those efforts didn’t go far enough. In light of the allegations of impropriety, and his subsequent resignation 2 days later, Wall Street took delight and unabashedly celebrated his predicament, while trashing his previous accomplishments. Some sources even began to go so far as to dismiss Spitzers triumphs as hollow victories.
As AG, however, Spitzer’s efforts were initially welcomed by industry watchdogs. Salon even called him “Wall Street’s Worst Nightmare.” So, what happened? Some speculate that the leak of his implication in the Federal investigation and possibly even the investigation itself was tantamount to a political “hit” orchestrated by forces furious with the governor’s reform efforts against companies like Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and AIG, among others.
Lost in the allegations of hypocrisy leveled at Spitzer for his indulgences with prostitutes while self-righteously prosecuting prostitution rings to the fullest extent of the law, was the fact that he had set his reformer sights on industries other than pimps and money-changers. According to Business Week, in December 2002, Spitzer served notice to the Hyde Park crowd:
Who’s to blame for expensive prescription drugs, pollution, and the biased research coming out of Wall Street? Try pinning the rap on the University of Chicago.
At least that was New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s attempted in a Dec. 4 speech to financial-services executives at the annual Banker of The Year dinner. At the banquet, which was held in New York’s Helmsley Palace, Spitzer blasted the University of Chicago for encouraging recent market excesses with a philosophical curriculum that teaches less regulation is always good for capitalism. The audience listened respectfully, but many, especially the University of Chicago alums, privately voiced their disagreement with Spitzer’s thesis later in the evening.
As a voice of laissez-faire economics, the University of Chicago has shaped much of the dialogue over market regulation in recent years, starting with Ronald Reagan’s Administration in 1980. Free markets, the theory goes, will correct most excesses by making it impossible for those guilty of bad behavior to survive. “They’ve said that intervention by…government is wrong,” Spitzer said. “But they haven’t taken into account that markets can have structural flaws.” Contacted by BusinessWeek Online for a reaction, University of Chicago professor of business and economics Kevin Murphy said Spitzer’s interpretation of the schools position was simplistic. Says Murphy: “I think we have better things to do than beat up a straw man.”
I know what you’re thinking, but, nah, couldn’t be. This is a story about prostitutes and double standards, remember? Doesn’t have anything to do with bailouts and presidents. Who was on Kristin Davis’ list, again?
No wonder President Black Obama’s administration is in such a rush to establish an official office of We Suggest You Pray. Besides the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader’s ever-increasingly less pretty speeches, that’s all they got. While some may harbor concerns about that whole “separation of Church and State” thingy, I say, you might just want to hold off on passing judgment on that one. At some point in the very near future, we just might all welcome a National Soup Kitchen and government subsidized homeless shelters on Army bases. Because, the bankers will soon have all our money, and our president is in a George Bush-on-the-way-to-Iraq type hurry to give it to them.
Despite the fact that many of the poor people sleepwalking with the shade on the light (to paraphrase Steely Dan) by choice are dreaming happy thoughts and giving high-fives to His Awesomeness for his hand-on-hips, get tough, hand spank of those greedy Wall Street CEOs, none of the CEOs in question are losing any sleep at all. The Obamessiah has decreed from On High that absolutely, positively, no body, ya hear me? nobody, not one single, solitary, money-grubbing, nogoodnik of a scummy bank CEO on the friggin’ planet will, shall, or might get a penny, shekel, farthing or ducat over $500,000 per anum if they take the government’s “extraordinary assistance.” Got that? Good. And don’t you ever forget it, either. Yawn. From Bloomberg, the president:
“For top executives to award themselves these kinds of compensation packages in the midst of this economic crisis is not only in bad taste, it’s a bad strategy, and I will not tolerate it as president,” Obama said yesterday.
Yet none of the new rules will apply to any firm until it negotiates an extraordinary deal with the federal government to remain solvent.
Uh, see, (ahem) the, uh, “bailout” money they already got? Yeah, well, here’s the thing, that’snotaffectedbythenewrules. Seems like all the banks and financial institutions that have already been “bailed out” are exempt from the new rules; unless and until one of them tries to get some more government money they don’t really need. And even then, there’s wiggle room aplenty on that salary cap thing, as any sports fan could have told you from the start. Now, I know I gave you two things to chew on in this paragraph, one, some banks didn’t really need the bailout money they took and two, wiggle room. Let’s start with the wiggle:
In addition, some executives may be compensated for the potential reduced salaries with restricted stock grants, which may result in huge paydays after the bank repays the government assistance with interest.
“They’re just allowing companies to defer compensation,” said Graef Crystal, a former compensation consultant and author of “The Crystal Report on Executive Compensation.”
The restrictions are “a joke,” he said, because “if the government is paid pack, you can be sure that the stock will have risen hugely.”
Now the sizzle, fuh shizzle. Since the new rules only apply to those banks that come back for more of the gazillions being allocated for them, firms like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan Chase should be among those most properly chastened by the Jr. President’s bitch slap, right? Ha. They didn’t need the money in the first place, and won’t be coming back. Let’s take them in order, according to Bloommie. First, Morgan Stanley:
For some firms, the rules are insignificant. Morgan Stanley is among companies that don’t expect the restrictions to affect their business because they foresee no need for additional government help.
“We have one of the highest Tier 1 capital ratios among financial services firms, so we do not anticipate the need for additional government capital,” said Mark Lake, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley in New York, when asked about the new restrictions.
Next, Goldman Sachs:
Goldman Sachs said yesterday it wants to repay $10 billion it got from Treasury under the TARP to signal the firm is healthy and to escape limitations that came with that infusion of money. “Our financial condition is sound and, subject to approval from regulators, we hope to repay TARP money as soon as practicable,” said Lucas van Praag, a spokesman for New York- based Goldman Sachs.
Lastly, JP Morgan:
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said Feb. 3 that the firm didn’t need capital and didn’t ask for TARP funding. The lender accepted the $25 billion it received from the first capital injection at the request of the government and to help stabilize the banking system, he said.
Get that? They didn’t need the money, the government made them take it! Ho, ho! You fools! And now, Iceberg Lettuce, President Pimp, is frantically waving his arms and shouting, “Hurry, hurry, the ship is sinking, get in!” And all his bitches in the media are working overtime to inform you of the truth while making it seem like a lie, much like a sneaky mom hides the kids’ peas under the mashed potatoes knowing that by the time the kid figures it out, he/she will have consumed a healthy enough amount. And, who knows, the kid might even like ‘em, right? On the other hand, they might hate them, and even if they don’t, they might feel so betrayed upon learning of their own mother’s subterfuge that they never eat peas or trust their mother, or any other woman, again. But, let’s not think about that right now! We’ve got to do what’s best for the kids! Right? Right? Right?!?!
Obama traces his own religious awakening to his days working as a community worker in Chicago and said that both secular and faith groups working to improve people’s lives were vital in the deep economic recession.
Sleep well, clueless ones; the screaming you hear in your heads is just an audio illusion. And, if you should awaken, try not to rock the boat; we’re taking on water at an amazing clip as it is. Just…pray. Or, lay back and think of England.
Some say Barack Obama has a “socialist agenda.” I have no idea what that means, let alone if it’s true. In this video, he talks about the “redistribution of wealth.”
In this one, he talks about a “Civilian National Defense.” The longer video with the entire speech can be found here, for context, with the money quote coming about 16:42.
He also talks about AmeriCorp, damned near compulsory “volunteering,” putting old people to work, and making kids work off their college loans. And who can forget Michelle Obama’s words?
“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone . . . Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual – uninvolved, uninformed.”
Yet, how do you then account for his financial backing from people like Penny Pritzker, JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and William Daley, both of whom are on his finance team and who I have written about here, here,here,and here, among others. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, in a piece for the Huffington Post, lambasted Obama and McCain equally for their part in the finacial crisis, given the amount of money both have recieved from prime players, though Obama has gotten far more, which can be validated here, here, here,and here.
When Obama talks about “spreading the wealth around” is he really talking about “redistributing the wealth” to the “middle class,” or is he talking about restructuring the financial industry to the benefit of the big money donors who bankroll him?
If that’s not bad enough, if elected, this “politician” would preside over a country undergoing a complete restructuring of it’s banking industry, a country that is about to bailout Wall Street with 700 billion dollars plus of taxpayer money. This comes after re-naming the “bailout” a “rescue” in an attempt to placate disgruntled voters who expressed their displeasure to lawmakers, only to seem to change their minds after the overloaded House website was shut down. Makes you wonder how Congress got the message.
Yet, nobody mentions the other bailouts, like the one in March for JP Morgan Chase, or the 630 billion the Fed pumped into the global financial market Sept. 29, or the other 630 billion dollar government spending bill, including 25 billion bucks for automakers, that Bush signed Tuesday. And, heaven forbid anyone from talking about monies paid to Congress by companies involved in the big bailout, or question donations to the “politician” benefiting most with voters from the country’s economic troubles, even when those donations come from the same banking industry whose executives advise him, like Jamie Dimon and William Daley (Chicago mayor, Richard’s brother) of JP Morgan Chase. If you’re not going to ask about those guys, you certainly won’t pay attention to donors to the “politician” like Mr. Good Will or Mr. Doodad Pro. Naaah, everything’s fine.
So, while I may seem to be a tad irrational in my daily ranting about this “politician,” I assure you, I am not. In a society gone mad, when the deck seems stacked against you, and the other side is just as bad, insanity is relative, anyway.
There are some strange relationships involved in the Obama bailout resolution, you know, the tentative one he said he deserved all the credit for? Well, I’m no economist, so I don’t know what it all means, but some things just don’t feel right, you know? Obama said that he’s been on the phone 24/7 with Henry Paulson, you know, the guy from Goldman Sachs, the one who headed up the midwestern division out of Chicago? Anyway, he and Obama have been jawing pretty regularly, according to Obama, who says he just wants to protect the little guy in all this. Oh, really? How much of the 700 billion do we get?
American Spectator blog via Chicagoans Against Obama alleges that the cozy relationship between Obama and Goldman Sachs has been recently beneficial regarding bailout negotiations:
When Sen. Barack Obama was given the floor to speak during White House negotiations, according to White House aides, he did so raising concerns about a House Republican alternative to the Paulson/Bernanke $700 billion bailout. But those concerns weren’t necessarily his, as he was not aware of the GOP plan before reviewing notes provided him by Paulson loyalists in Treasury prior to entering the meeting.
According to an Obama campaign source, the notes were passed to Obama via senior aides traveling with him, who had been emailed the document via a current Goldman Sachs employee and Wall Street fundraiser for the Obama campaign. “It was made clear that the memo was from ‘friends’ and was reliable,” says the campaign source.
On Friday, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley changed status from investment banks to bank holding companies. From Time:
The Federal Reserve said Sunday it had granted a request by the country’s last two major investment banks — Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — to change their status to bank holding companies.
The Fed announced that it had approved the request of the two investment banks. The change in status will allow them to create commercial banks that will be able to take deposits, bolstering the resources of both institutions.
The change continued the biggest restructuring on Wall Street since the Great Depression.
According to CNN Money/Fortune, Obama has a pretty stellar economic team, including Jason Furman, his economic policy advisor:
That bench also includes poverty expert Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute; Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago economist who has been at Obama’s side since the start of the race; and Georgetown University law professor Daniel Tarullo. Investor Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker top off the list of regular advisers. A larger circle also includes CEOs Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo (PEP, Fortune 500), and Eric Schmidt of Google (GOOG, Fortune 500).
The Telegraph UK lists a few other Obama money folks:
Obama’s main public support comes from Penny Pritzker, whose Chicago-based clan is one of the wealthiest in America, and JP Morgan Chase’s head of corporate responsibility William Daley, whose brother, Richard, just happens to be Chicago’s mayor.
In July, Obama rallied the guys ’round the table for the bi-partisan “group I will be convening periodically over the next few months,” CBS News reported:
The list of attendees was long and impressive: Warren Buffett participated by phone; former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; Gov. Jon Corzine, D-N.J.; JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, former SEC Chairman under President Bush, William Donaldson; Chairman of Pepsi, Indra Nooyi; Former Treasury Secretary under Bush, Paul O’Neill; Former Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, Robert Reich; Google CEO, Eric Schmidt; AFL-CIO President John Sweeney; former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, among others.
The JP Morgan Chase/Obama relationship is interesting because of recent moves the company has made. Said to be largely unaffected by the subprime mortgage mess, JPM has been involved in the Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual deals/rescues. CNN says of the second acquisition of the year by company CEO Jamie Dimon:
The acquisition is JPMorgan Chase’s second major purchase this year following the mid-March acquisition of investment bank Bear Stearns, a deal that was also engineered by the government.
Bear Stearns, one of the nation’s biggest and most prominent investment banks, stunned Wall Street Friday by announcing it had turned to rival JP Morgan Chase and the federal government for an emergency bailout.
The surprise, last-ditch rescue effort, announced just before the stock market opened, was the latest troubling sign of how a cascading credit crisis is threatening the liquidity of even Wall Street’s most established firms.
Though it’s hard to see how Obama might have directly influenced anything so far, there’s no doubt he and JPM CEO Jamie Dimon have a relationship. In July, he told CNN/Fortune:
I got to know Jamie Dimon quite well when he was in Chicago. I think he’s a very smart person, and I think he’s doing his best to manage his bank under difficult circumstances.
The Wall Street Journal claims Dimon is on the short-list for Secretary of the Treasury in an Obama administration, though Timothy Geithner is said to be the front-runner:
Geithner is a solid choice in many ways: he has plenty of Treasury experience and he played a leading role in this year’s Bear Stearns drama that was a critical point in the credit crunch. Should he win the post, it would be at the expense of several prominent current and former Wall Street bankers–including prominent Democratic contributors–who names have been floated as candidates for the job.
Two others mentioned in that Real Time Economics post are J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.
I guess it’s good to know that while Senator Obama is diligently looking out for the little guy, he has so many big guys on his side. I mean, the guy involved with some of the more interesting aspects of the country’s corporate restructuring is flying under the radar as one of Obama’s most trusted advisers. You’d have to be, to be on the short-list for Treasury Secretary, right? If this was a Grisham novel, I’d say this would be the guy to watch. And we’ve barely even mentioned Penny Pritzker. We’ll save that and some of the other Obama financial team intricacies for later, shall we?
*UPDATE: From AP-Yahoo News, re: the tentative bailout agreement:
While the plan broadly aims to prevent banks from profiting on the sale of troubled assets to the government, there is an exception made for assets acquired in a merger or buyout, or from companies that have filed for bankruptcy.
This detail could allow JPMorgan Chase & Co. to sell toxic mortgages and other assets it gained control of last week when it purchased Washington Mutual Inc. for a higher price than the failed thrift paid for them.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, America’s last two investment banks, and two of Barack Obama’s largest donors, have been granted a request by the Federal Reserve to change status to “bank holding companies,” according to AP News.
The Fed announced that it had approved the request of the two investment banks. The change in status will allow them to create commercial banks that will be able to take deposits, bolstering the resources of both institutions.
What does it mean?
The change of status means both companies will come under the direct regulation of the Federal Reserve, which regulates the nation’s bank holding companies. The banking subsidiaries of the two institutions will face the stricter regulations that commercial banks are required to meet. Previously, the primary regulator for Goldman and Morgan Stanley was the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In related news, Politico announced that Obama says he will likely keep Henry Paulson “involved” in his administration, if elected:
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said Sunday that if he’s elected, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would be “involved” in the new administration’s transition – a very unusual move when the White House changes parties.
Paulson, 62, is the wealthy former chairman and chief executive of the investment bankGoldman Sachs, and is widely respected on Wall Street.
Kevin Hall, of McClatchy News, wonders if that is a good idea:
Making the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson repeatedly said today’s financial problems were long in the making. He should know. He was part of the Gold Rush that has brought the global financial system to the brink of collapse.
Paulson presided over one of the most profitable runs on Wall Street as chairman and chief executive officer of investment banking titan Goldman Sachs & Co. from 1999 until President Bush nominated him on May 30, 2006 to take over the Treasury Department .
Goldman Sachs ($208,395) and Morgan Stanley ( $233,272) have both donated to John McCain, too, but not quite as much. Obama got $691,930 from GS and $318,070 from MS.
For months now, (since at least September of last year) I’ve been making the case that if there’s indeed a mastermind behind a scheme to get Barack Obama into the Oval Office in order to advance a corporate, Wall Street-friendly agenda, it’s none of the usual suspects whose names are always thrown into the mix whenever these things are discussed, like Henry Paulson, but this guy, JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon. A profile of the bankster in today’s New York Times, while inaccurate on a few points, imo, does nothing to disabuse anyone of conviction resultant from such speculation. In fact, the piece, in detailing the New York Federal Reserve Board of Directors‘ member, who was selected along with Pepsico’s Indra Nooyi, another Obama campaign economic advisor, and his cozy relationship with the White House, especially with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, could be seen as express validation of such a claim.
On May 5, the Obministration finally decided to make official what every Obot detesting realist has known since Barack Obama became a United States Senator: the”internetwork” and the so-called, “politician” are in love. This, though unspoken, has never been a secret. Who needs words when one has actions? MSNBC, whose journalistically-challenged on-air personalities pornographically ooze affection for their Golden Boy on a 24/7 basis, are shamelessly forthcoming about their 
No wonder the Greatest Pretendident Who Never Was can’t see the forest for the trees; 
The “dirty little secret” regarding the firing of 
On a day when Chairman of the Federal Reserve, 
Though I make no claims of being a financial wizard, or a political maven, even I can see that all is not right on Wall Street, D.C. where the heart and soul of our country is on life support, currently being administered to by second graders who want to be doctors when they grow up. And, I’m sophisticated enough to recognize that a lot of what I read about our dire 
When Baracus Ceaser Obamacus incessantly cried, “Change!” from the rooftops via TelePrompTer in stump speech after stump speech written by the Cardboard Titty Groper at the behest of the Astroturfing PuppetMaster acting on behalf of the banksters bankrolling the hopium-fueled ObamaLove Train steamrolling into the White House, who knew he really meant restructuring the global financial landscape, huh?
As I watched last week’s PBS special about the financial crisis, “
During one late night/early morning informal discussion on 
Can you say “double standard?” Kristin Davis, escort service CEO (madam) who provided companionship by the hour to former governor Elliot Spitzer, and whose “little black book” is revealing the peccadilloes and services purchased to indulge them of some of the country’s biggest big ballers, surely can. And she is indignantly proclaiming it loudly to anybody who’ll listen, like 
No wonder President Black Obama’s administration is in such a rush to establish an official office of 
