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.

Paulson’s likely partner in crime, Dimon, also posted recent big gains for his company, JP Morgan.  It is said that the two firms are the big winners in terms of the whole bailout.  And, like Paulson, Dimon has a Chicago connection during the time Barack Obama was there.  In 2000, while Obama was busily en route to having his head handed to him by Bobby Rush in his bid for Rush’s Congressional seat, Dimon landed in town after being sacked by his mentor, Citigroup’s Sandy Weill, two years earlier.  After a nearly two-year wound-licking pity party, Dimon who once interned at Goldman, himself, took over Chicago’s Bank One, turned it around, and parlayed it into his position as JP Morgan CEO, taking Bill Clinton’s former Commerce Secretary, Bill Daley, the brother of the city’s mayor, Richard, along with him.  Paulson also remained loyal to his Midwestern roots, installing former Goldman boardmate, Allstate’s Ed Liddy as CEO of AIG when he bailed them out.

According to today’s New York Times article, the fiery Dimon’s relationship with Rahm Emanuel is close, going back to Rahm’s days in the Clinton White House, and Dimon’s at Citigroup, while he supposedly didn’t know Obama well, only meeting him in 2004 in relation to the Pretendident’s Senate run.  Yet, Obama, while not putting their relationship in any chronological context, said last July that he knew Dimon “quite well.”  Answering a question about CEO’s he admired, like Warren Buffet, and whether he could get them on the phone at will, Obama had this to say:

I call him, yes. He’s one of the most refreshing people. He’s one of those rare people who is exactly how you hope he will be. He’s just completely down to earth and is as smart as they come. Really a wise, wise person. 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. (emphasis mine)

As president, Obama has also made off the cuff remarks alluding to his relationship with Dimon, telling Citigroup’s current CEO, Dick Parsons, at the Business Roundtable, that he would “talk to Jamie” about core banking principles.  This is the infamous meeting where the previously gloomy economic prognosticator suddenly became optimistic.  At any rate, I have been chronicling the Dimon/Obama/Paulson relationship and its possible origin and ramifications  forever, so, it’s nice to see the media starting to play catch up.  Maybe sometime in the near future they can start to ask some of the other questions that a quick trip through my archives will show that I’ve explored, especially in relation to the Wall Street Whisper Campaign that lead to the Lehman Brothers collapse, linked to at the top of this page, as well as the subsequent fallout, including the CEO salary cap smoke ‘n’ mirrors illusion/delusion, also linked above.

Seems more than a little funny to me that two of Obama’s biggest campaign contributors keep coming out smelling like roses in this curiously? possibly? engineered economic collapse, and, that people close to him are such major players in the game.  Once again citing Chicago Tribune’s John Kass and his characterization of Illinois politics as a bi-partisan “Combine,” the possibility that all roads indeed lead back to Chicago through Jamie Dimon doesn’t seem far-fetched at all, especially considering his considerable axe to grind against Citigroup.  Add Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, (TTTG,tc) who, like Paulson, was once a Republican, with his daddy/Obama mama connection, plus his New York Fed relationship to Dimon to the mix, and a vedddy in-ter-est-ink series of coinky-dinks emerges.

Proof?

No.

Something to think about?

Hell yeah.

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:

For some inexplicable reason having to do with who knows what, a widespread impression has grown among many politics fans that MSNBC and its crowd of talkers — including Chris “Thrill Up My Leg” Matthews, Norah “The GOP Is Doomed to Die” O’Donnell and Ed “It’s Time to Grind Them Into the Ground” Schultz — are somewhat in favor of President Obama.

Well, actually in complete love with the Great Change Agent.

Now, thanks to the ubiquitous cameras of C-SPAN, comes official videoed word from Kareem Dale, special assistant to the president for arts and culture and a key White House advisor on disability policy.

Now, when I say tangled web, I freakin’ mean tangled web.  Everybody already knows that MSNBC is the love child of MSN (Microsoft) and NBC.  The network’s call letters make figuring that one out a no-brainer.  But that venture is but one of many collaborations between the two companies.  Seems they teamed up in 2001 to combine their financial news web divisions, CNBC.com and MSN Money, but dissolved their CNBC Money Central in 2005, according to Wikipedia.  Supposedly, they even once considered teaming up to buy Dow Jones, but eventually decided not to. Microsoft has also been accused of caving to NBC against consumers, and NBC and Microsoft enjoy an ongoing Olympic partnership.  Funny, but I thought I heard somewhere that the Barackstar was hellbent on getting the games in Chicago, didn’t I?  Anyway, this story about Microsoft and GE filing a joint patent brief, indicates that the long standing tangled web is an embrace.

NBC is a subsidiary of General Electric, whose CEO, Jeffrey Immelt is on the Obamessiah’s, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker-headed, Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and also sits on the board of the New York Federal Reserve, along with Obabuddy Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase.  JP Morgan is one of the few banks that passed its stress test, administered by Treasury Secretary Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, (TTTG,tc) former head of the New York Federal Reserve and co-architect of the Paulson Plan, or TARP, along with his Bush-era predecessor, Henry Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, another of the passing stress test banks.  Interestingly, both Dimon and Paulson have Chicago connections, Dimon via Bank One, the company he turned around after getting shitcanned by his mentor Sandy Weill of Citigroup, which failed its stress test, and Paulson as Goldman Sachs’ Midwestern Division chief, where he met Chicagoan Ed Liddy who used to work at Allstate before Paulson hired him to take over AIG, the backdoor TARP fund distributor.  And, oh, by the way, the NY Fed’s chairman, Stephen Friedman resigned yesterday, after getting busted for buying Goldman Sachs stock.  You with me so far?

Good.  “Cuz that’s nuttin’, baby.  Going back to MSNBC, GE, and Jeffrey Immelt.  According to Time Magazine, Immelt, like most hopium heads, loves him some Obama, even when he doesn’t like what the Land of the Lost leader’s doing.  Jeffy also likes him some Jamie Dimon a lot, just in case anybody wanted to know:

GE chief executive Jeff Immelt isn’t a big fan of the $500,000 pay cap for executives at financial institutions that get additional government help, which the Obama Administration announced yesterday, but he still thinks Barack Obama rocks.

“It’s in the best interest of the citizens of the country for Jamie Dimon to run JP Morgan,” Immelt said. “He’s worth more than $500,000.” This was a bit of a non sequitur, given that Dimon is presumably hoping to get through this financial crisis without any more government help. Also, companies can still pay executives lots more than $500,000 as long as it’s in restricted stock that they’re required to hold onto for a while. But whatever.

Good to know, Jeffer, we’ll file your man crush admissions away for later.  Just like we’ll put a gold star in your column for forgoing your own payment package this year.  But, that’s the last “attaboy” you get from me, buddy.  Immelt, a big proponent of “cap and trade,” who once said he “never voted for a Democrat,” recently beat up his CNBC talent at an “on the carpet,” 3 hour dinner for their “Obama bashing,” then found himself under attack a week or so later at GE’s stockholder’s meeting, both from his legitimate critics as well as an agent of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who works for his (Immelt’s) nemesis, News Corp’s Rupert Murdock.  All of the fight for energy (and ratings) supremacy, pro and con, lead to the Great Tea Party Wars between Fox and MSNBC, with Fox promoting the Dick Armey-led,  FreedomWorks anti’spending, AstroTurfing campaign with its vendetta subplot against GE’s cap and trade stance, and MSNBC resorting to frat house dick jokes in response.  However, the back and forth seems staged, since Immelt is all for cap and trade, and Murdock seems to be amenable to it, while the “lack-of-personalities” on his network, and the Republicans they cater to, and feature, work overtime against any support of it.  Methinks ’tis but a big manipulating traveling roadshow we are being forced to but live in.

Anyhoo, while the dueling on the same side media entities churn out  episodes of the continuing sitcom, Cap and Trade Charade, for our entertainment, another comedy drama is being enacted on a different stage, starring the Political Pimp Playas and the Media Mob, called The Rape of Health Care.

GE is promoting, and investing in, get this, medical records technology!  No kidding!  In fact, they’re hooking up with…drumroll, please!…Microsoft to do it, too!  And, and, and, you don’t have to take my word for it, no sirreee, Bobbo!  This reporter, Kathleen O’Connor, talked to Microsoft’s Worldwide Director of Health, Dr. Bill Crounse, and, and, and, you can read it for yourself here and here, so there!  He even has his own Microsoft blog.  Yepper, Gates and Immelt are biiiiig on medical records technology.  Good thing the guy heading up the Senate Finance Committee in charge of fixing healthcare is so committed to it, too.  Maybe that’s why GE, and a bunch of health sector donors like him so much.  AIG, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase also seem to really like him a lot.

The only other person I can think of off the top of my head that those same inordinately generous donors like nearly as much is an even bigger proponent of computerizing medial records.  Everybody doesn’t think it’s a good idea, though, for patients to basically be able to treat themselves online with a few phone calls and emails exchanged with an assigned doctor in a command center, which is pretty much what these guys envision.   This doctor doesn’t, but, she’s probably just an old bitter knitter.  GE, Microsoft and the candidates they bought think so, and if you hit the KoolAid cooled hopium bong enough times, you will, too.  ‘Cuz, the way things seem to be going, you’ll have to shoot your bones a tweet to get your hopium ’script refilled.  Check this Jetsons medicine future fantasy from Kathleen O’Connor’s profile of the Microsoft guy, if you dare, ‘cuz this is why you ain’t gettin’ no single payer:

With the proper tools, he envisions a home health care manager for the family.  Because of these tools, individuals have the ability to retrieve their own health care information at home and the ability to communicate more efficiently and electronically with physician-led and nurse directed virtual health networks.  They can now have community-based 24/7 educational and emotional support.  Basic diagnostics can be performed automatically or by the home health care manager and transmitted electronically to their health care provider team.  As more of health care can be managed electronically, physician practice office capacity can grow, because so much of the care that now requires a visit can be done electronically.  This new technology does not eliminate the physician’s role, but focuses it more on diagnosis and treatment and makes the routine aspects of care more automated, requiring less of the physician’s time, thereby freeing them to focus on the practice of medicine.

Guess that’s why GE’s MSNBC is touting its successful re-branding as MSNBO.  GE brings good things, like electronic doctors, to light, and with a little help from their MSN friend, they can be the network of change that has come to America that we’ve been waiting for.  And, if you put it on a TelePrompTer, anybody who works for them can read their part just fine, even the invisible empty suit-wearing Spokesmodel-in-Chief they bought.  That’s not just me talking, either, that’s what the New York Observer is quoting MSNBO’s sales executive John Kelly as crowing about:

“Here’s that subliminal messaging that we put forward,” said Mr. Kelly. “We say we are the pulse of the nation right now. The change that this country voted for back in November is gathering each and every day and every evening on MSNBC.”

The person the country voted for doesn’t seem to mind MSNBC’s advances a bit. On May 4, a CSPAN clip went viral that showed Kareem Dale, a special assistant to the president for arts and culture, telling the audience at a black-tie event, “At the White House, as we always like to say, we love MSNBC.”

This is not a mistake. And it’s not really a sentimental or political relationship. It’s all business.

All about the Benjamins, baby.

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!

Banks, protected from scrutiny by a government mandated blackout on stress test results, seem to be intentionally fudging the numbers to make themselves seem profitable.  Now, I’m not sure just how ethical or un- it is to disappear a whole month, like Goldman Sachs did, but it seems kinda fudgy, in a non-kosher sort of way, to me.  And, Wells Fargo, who supposedly had a real good first quarter, too, put a big “take all this with a gain of salt” disclaimer in their press release touting that fact.  Glimmer, glimmer.

According to most reports, the Change-Happy Realist tried to temper his glimmerness by admitting that things still look pretty bleak, and just might start looking even bleaker before we all get our rose colored glasses, but, the banks are going to start lending again, so all is heading in the right direction.  What he didn’t bother to address while he was laying out his version of the genesis of our situation, was, who the hell in their right mind wants credit right now?  Maybe loaning to all those small businesses that are no more might once have made sense, but, the people who can’t afford to patronize them, would rather put whatever little bit of cash they can get their hands on under the mattress for their retirement, since their 401(k) is worthless, and they don’t trust the banks anymore.  It’s doubtful that anybody upside down in their mortgage will be buying a new car any time soon, even if they make them run on water.  People who don’t have jobs, don’t need, or want, credit, they need, and want, money, which they could get if they had jobs.  Such simple logic seems to escape His Hopeyness, but, the Dow seems to get it.

During his Glimmers of Hope speech today at Georgetown University, while dissing the 24-hour news cycle that is his lifeblood, the Obamessiah, understanding that doubletalk without backup rings hollow, shored up his argument by invoking the Sermon on the Mount, the same Sermon on the Mount he once declared “so radical that it’s doubtful our own Defense Department would survive its application,” and has used to justify his support of civil unions over gay marriage.  He must really like the Sermon on the Mount a lot.  Guess those glimmers come from the halo shining into his eyes.  That’s probably why only he can see them.

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.

Sounds screwy, doesn’t it?  But, when the current Treasury Secretary, Obama’s mama’s boss’ kid, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) who was in the room with Paulson and Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein when they decided to let Lehman Brothers fail and bailout AIG, talks about making capitalism “fundamentally different” and says cryptic, communist sounding things like, “When we get through this, people are going to care less about what they make, more about what they do. What they achieve is what they make,” while he pleads for even more power to sieze and control entities not traditionally within his purview, one must give pause.  Especially when you remember that the extraordinary power he seeks was already invoked with the bailout of AIG, a non-banking entity.  From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 17:

It puts the government in control of a private insurer — a historic development, particularly considering that AIG isn’t directly regulated by the federal government. The Fed took the highly unusual step using legal authority granted in the Federal Reserve Act, which allows it to lend to nonbanks under “unusual and exigent” circumstances, something it invoked when Bear Stearns Cos. was rescued in March.

So, basically Geithner wants the Treasury to have the same kind of expanded power that the quasi- federal Federal Reserve enjoys.  But, the former Federal Reserve guy is just seeking to formally codify the existing practices of the incestuous monetary overseers and insure they remain on somewhat equal footing, as they continue to jointly loot the system in the name of the people.

The Obministration is not trying to save GM or Chrysler, they want them to fail.  From now on, when they can afford them, the American People’s Car will likely be a government-sanctioned, fuel-efficient Ford.

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 loot manipulate 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?

Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall wonders if we are living in an “alternate universe” after reading today’s Wall Street Journal article claiming that the Obministration has had a recent change of heart towards Wall Street, itself.  I’m not sure what exactly it is about the Journal’s conclusions that has Marshall’s knickers in a twist, but one of the passages that jumped out at me lead me to believe that the article’s writer is completely full of hooey.  Rather than eschew a close working Wall Street relationship as Monica Langley claims, it seems to me that Barack Obama was bought, paid for and hand-delivered to the White House courtesy of the banksters he now serves.  Though Ms. Langley spends a lot of ink chronicling the many instances where Obacolytes paid lip service to being critical of the “dirty bankers” that financed his campaign and advised his every move during his presidential run, she ignores the obvious fact that he’s been “dirty banker” pocket lint all along.  Here’s the part that leapt off my page:

Early on, Obama aides had had little to do with Wall Street heavyweights such as J.P. Morgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon. On March 11, Mr. Dimon was ushered into the White House and Treasury Department, where advisers brain-stormed with him about how banks and markets would react to their emerging policies. The following day, at a White House meeting, business executives implored Mr. Obama to get credit flowing again. “All right,” the president said, according to a transcript of the meeting. He’d have his people “talk to Jamie.”

That’s it?  Is she kidding?  The “talk to Jamie” exchange wasn’t at just any “White House meeting,” it occurred during the March 12 Business Roundtable when Obama responded to Citibank CEO Richard Parsons that the previously “catastrophic” economy was suddenly “not as bad as we think.” And, he didn’t say he’d get “his people” to talk to Jamie, he said he would.  From the Journal’s own transcript:

MR. PARSONS: So take it down to our industry, the banking business. At its core, it’s a very simple business: It takes funds from depositors and other providers of funding, and then it makes those funds available in the credit markets. And that’s how businesses grow, when people buy homes, and send their kids to college, buy cars, and all that sort of stuff.

THE PRESIDENT: Can I just say, Dick, it hasn’t been that simple lately. (Laughter.) But I get your theory, though.

MR. PARSONS: I said at its core.

THE PRESIDENT: All right, I’ll talk to Jamie. Maybe that’s — (laughter.)

edit

So I am very confident about our long-term prospects. We live in such a rapid-fire information-rich environment that people’s attention spans go like this. And that makes for volatility in confidence. A smidgen of good news, and suddenly everything is doing great. A little bit of bad news — oh, we’re down in the dumps. And I am obviously an object of this constantly varying assessment. (Laughter.) I’m the Object-in-Chief of this varying assessment. (Laughter.)

Not only is it clear that Obama and Geithner and all the rest of the Keystone Kop Obministration say one thing to Americans understandably upset by their power-grabbing, Wall Street serving actions, as they continue to do their Bankster Masters’ bidding uninterrupted, right in front of our faces, any “journalist” who accepts anything said by anyone associated with them, at face value, collects a paycheck under false pretenses.

Jamie Dimon, New York Federal Reserve Board of Directors member and CEO of new plane-buying JP Morgan Chase, has been on Obama’s economic team for months, if not years.  Their relationship stretches back to Chicago when Dimon was parlaying his reluctantly accepted position at Bank One (after being unceremoniously dumped by Citigroup’s Sandy Weill, his former “mentor”) into his current job.  In a July, 2008 CNN Money/Fortune interview, Obama was asked to name CEO’s he admired.  After dropping Warren Buffet’s name, he was asked if he was on a cell phone basis with the investor (Buffet):

Obama: I call him, yes. He’s one of the most refreshing people. He’s one of those rare people who is exactly how you hope he will be. He’s just completely down to earth and is as smart as they come. Really a wise, wise person. 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.

A simple search through my archives will reveal that Dimon has been on my “more to this than meets the eye” radar for months.  If Obama even hints that he’s been consulting with this guy throughout the bailout process (which he did) you’d think that any “journalist” worth his or her salt would break their neck chasing that particular red flag down, whether Obi’s “aides” were privy to the meetings, or not.

If AIG “highlights broad failures of our financial system,” as Geithner told Congress, and Obama really doesn’t want to “choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy,” as he wrote in his 30 paper op-ed, we need to know if the Obministration’s ties to companies like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, two of the biggest donors to his campaign, directly influence their policy making, and how.  Perhaps the reason the Pretendident has so much trouble tempering the public’s furor when he talks out of both sides of his mouth about whether people should be as angry as he pretends to be before he vows not to “govern out of anger,” is because he and especially, his Boy Wonder’s, loyalites remain suspect:

As it happens, Mr. Geithner used to be a Republican and changed his voter registration — to Independent — only in the late 1990s, when he became under secretary for international affairs in the Clinton administration.

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.

Of course AIG is, and has been, raping the nation with a bayonet-tipped, Black and Decker, turbo-powered dildo; so, too is Citigroup, Fannie, Freddie, Timmy, Barney, Benny, Obie, Larry, Curly and Moe.  And while gross negligence, inexperience, and incompetence are slightly less odious than thuggery, thievery, and trickery, when considered on as grand a scale as the one under discussion, “oops, did I do that?” becomes as insulting as it is improbable.

CBS News reports that TTTG,tc is, for some reason, single-handedly ripping off the country, given that he has not been bothered with putting together a staff.  Thus, the man in charge of fixing the potentially “catastrophic” economic problems we face is not only winging it, he’s “flying solo:”

For five weeks, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has battled the worst economic crisis in generations with no key deputies in place. That’s made for a rocky debut for the man President Barack Obama put in charge of addressing the financial crisis.

With an awkward first television appearance, a bank rescue plan that lacked promised specifics and two restructured bailouts that raised taxpayer risk, Geithner has failed to calm financial markets desperate for answers.

Critics say part of the problem is that Geithner is flying solo: Not one of his top 17 deputies has been named, let alone confirmed. And without senior leadership, lower-level Treasury employees can’t make decisions or represent the government in crucial conversations with banks and others.

His boss is on no firmer terra, either, what with pissing off visiting world leaders on his own turf while preparing to embark on an offensive into friendly enemy territory regardless of how diplomatically ill-equipped he has shown himself to be.  Yet, his uncanny ability to garner approval from the sheeple should see him through abroad as well as it does here, like when he shows his commitment to the people by gathering disparate forces resistant to hot-button issues like  healthcare reform, into one location, and breaks them up into study groups so they can explain to each other why they won’t be implementing any substantial changes to the current system any time soon.

Such is the charm, or strong arm, of the Spokesmodel-in-Chief, that even his staunchest critics couch even their legitimate gripes in hopeful appeals for a more palatibly flavored KoolAid, rather than risk the ire of his West Wing Astroturfing media storm troopers.  Even his stanchest defenders, rapidly becoming disillusioned, are more comfortable ascribing his shortcomings to everything but incompetence, let alone, deliberate deciet.  Such is the ferocity, skill and effectiveness of said blitzkriegers that their outrageous tactics hardly register a blip on the radar screen of public consciousness.

So, with stories of the Lightbringer’s administration’s dedication to truth being trumpeted far and wide, while questions of high level staff impropriety are whispered into the wind, and big, fat, hard to blow over, straw men are built as decoys to divert attention from the fact that pre-appointees are jumping ship like telepathic Titanic passengers, we are only afforded glimpses into the reality of our Dear Leader’s frustrations with the difficulties of presidentin’.  Only when overwhelmed to the point that he and the Missus have to break out and bust a move, or hop a jet or helicopter to someplace exotic like, the homeland of Roland Burris, remember him? do we get a sense of how difficult it is to read speeches from a TelePrompTer every day. The fact that his visits often coincide with other significant events, like the release of affidavits, is of no consequence.

Sure, presidentin’ is hard, George Bush told us that.  But, as his successor is proving beyond a doubt, presidentin’ is a lot easier when people are so busy watching the show, they’re not really paying attention to the 800 pound gorilla taking a dump in the middle of the room.

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 backed Center 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 had experienced 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.”

Hmmm…Bear Stearns, University of Chicago, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Wall Street…straw man?  2002?  Didn’t Rod Blagojevich say something about prescription drugs?

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?