More evidence of behind-the-scenes string-pulling in the banking crisis:
NEW YORK (Reuters) –
Bank of America Corp CEO Kenneth Lewis testified under oath that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pressured him to keep quiet about losses at Merrill Lynch & Co, which the bank was buying, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Testifying before New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in February, Lewis said “it wasn’t up to me” to reveal Merrill’s fourth-quarter losses as they were becoming apparent in December, the newspaper said, citing a deposition transcript.
Shareholders of Merrill and Bank of America voted to approve the merger on December 5, and the transaction closed on January 1. Bank of America subsequently reported that Merrill lost $15.84 billion in the fourth quarter.
At Bank of America’s April 29 annual meeting, shareholders will vote on whether to force Lewis to step down as chairman of the largest U.S. bank or leave its board, because of Merrill and a falling share price…”
Read more at Reuters
My Comment
Why do people think nationalization will improve matters?
We’ve nationalized already…. unofficially.
Making it official won’t improve anything. It will just get people to accept what’s going on and legitimize the swindle.
We’re like bystanders at a mugging fighting over who ought to get the money the mugger left behind when he fled.
No. See mugging, call cops.
That’s how it’s supposed to go.
I dont remember if it’s been posted before on here, but Salman Khan has produced a video explaining how the whole thing (TARP) is a setup to stick the taxpayers with the losses. I believe nationalizations have a different purpose,to finance the left’s vision of america in terms of green energy and all the rest. There is most likely a quid pro quo connecting the two that stretches back to last year.
Should sanity return to the world, the nationalizations are easily undone, the rest will be more difficult and expensive to liquidate if it actually is brought to fruition.
Khan’s presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-arbfLTCtI
Lila,
Check out Donald Luskin at NRO. Even HE seems to be getting it although a tad bit late as he was one of the cheerleaders for TARP.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDE5ZTExZDljOWYyNjZlZjM4MjY5ZTgzYjFmNzc0NTg=
I’ll repeat what I wrote to him.
TARP is looking criminal? It was criminal from the start. The single greatest heist in history. The $700 billion is the least of it. The real goal was the financial system as a whole under state control. Take a look at the little passage in Goldman’s 2008 Report:
“In October 2008, under the U.S. Treasury’s TARP Capital Purchase Program, we issued to the U.S. Treasury 10.0 million shares of Fixed Rate Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series H (Series H Preferred Stock), and a 10?year warrant to 18,600 purchase up to 12.2 million shares of common stock at an exercise price of $122.90 per share, for aggregate proceeds of $10.00 billion.”
Do you really think that it is just a coincidence that Paulson came from Goldman? And when exactly was Goldman so troubled? Now we have Geithner, Paulson’s lackie and NY Fed alumnus running the show.
There is absolutely nothing in the U.S. Constitution that even remotely justifies a U.S. Treasury investment in Goldman Sachs. The word for that would be Fascism. We are now a fascist state.
If as you suggested that TARP was needed to keep the financial system from implosion, has it been a success? Are we out of the woods so to speak? Or are we looking at an even greater collapse with the inclusion of a collapse of the dollar and hyper inflation? Last time I checked the “implosion” of the financial sector would just be capitalism and the market correcting itself. So Citibank, Bear, and AIG collapse. So what? It has to happen eventually along with several other financial institutions. They don’t call it a bubble for nothing.
I hope that this gains a little traction but I’m not confident.
end letter.
This has been an orchestrated takeover of the private sector. With a combination of the fear, pain, and guilt of an enormously ignorant public, it has happened quite easily. People have an unrelenting need of security-to FEEL safe. They are low hanging fruit for demagogues and despots such as the cabal currently sucking up the limelight. Rational, intelligent arguments mean nothing to such people as they function primarily on emotion. “I know what I know” is what they’ll say. History be damned. Science, facts are of no matter.
There is a natural tendency to look at government with trust, hope, and faith similar to that which one finds in religion. We see ourselves, our society as good and well intentioned. Therefore government, whatever action takes, as a product of our society must be as good and as well intentioned as those it governs. Gone is the inherent DISTRUST in government written into the founding documents of this nation. Nationalization? They see it as safe. Socialized Healthcare? They want security. Gun control? It goes on and on.
No Pain, No Fear, No Guilt,
Keith Snyder
New York
kpsartless@verizon.net
Jeff – thanks for the video – it’s great.
I don’t think nationalization is only in order to put through the globalist agenda (climate control etc. etc.). I think the push for it is also to provide the kind of cover that might be necessary to cover up certain crimes. That doesn’t mean that everyone pushing for nationalization has that agenda. Some of them are genuinely convinced it’s the only thing to do, others are holding their noses and going along, because they feel “something has to be done,” still others are being politic and going with the flow….but there are others who are setting the agenda covertly and their motives aren’t innocent.
Keith – that’s great that you’re writing letters. It’s great that right is beginning to get it.
Though I wonder if people can step outside their partisanship long enough to figure out that each side got a bit of the puzzle right but neither side got it all. Only the libertarians have done the fundamental analysis and we’re – what is it? – kooks, outsiders, antisemites (where did that come from?), racists, nativists, crazies, idealists, reactionary, patriarchal…it goes on.
The fount of wisdom and racial harmony is, of course, the political class and the chatterati…
all others are by default troublemakers.
That’s the thinking.
I’ve been hacking away for some years now and I’m not optimistic.
The NY Times is writing about Geithner not out of a libertarian distrust of the state but to hold on to the shreds of its credibility…
Events (and the public mood)have overtake it…
In other words, they HAD to…