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After clearing the Senate on a 74 – 22 vote on March 14, SB 1813 is now headed for a vote in the House of Representatives, where it’s expected to encounter stiffer opposition among the GOP majority.

As we continue to watch the general uproar over the Operation Fast and Furious program, and specifically what Attorney General Holder knew and when he knew it, it needs to be noted that perjury is not the only apparent violation of law to have occurred. I refer to the apparent violation of at least one (probably two) major U.S. laws by the Holder Justice Department. A few years ago, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701, the follow-on to the Trading with the Enemy Act) was expanded in order to criminalize any transactions between U.S. entities — to...

The Daily, the tablet newspaper, named one of the women who filed a sexual harassment claim against Republican front-runner Herman Cain while he was CEO of the National Restaurant Association. The woman, identified by the paper as Karen Kraushaar, now works as communications director at the Treasury Department's Office of the Inspector General.Cain has sought to downplay the charge — calling it frivolous — saying she overreacted to a gesture comparing her height to his wife's.But the paper spoke to friends and family members of Kraushaar who vouch for her honesty — saying she is not the type to bring false allegations.“She wouldn’t...

Looks like no more official trips for G-Pap anywhere very soon: ECB'S WEIDMANN-IT IS WRONG TO ABANDON ALL PRINCIPLES OF MONETARY POLICY BY CITING A GENERAL EMERGENCY-SPIEGEL GERMAN CSU HEAD - IF GREECE CAN'T OR WON'T KEEP TRACK WITH RESCUE PLAN THAN AN EXIT FROM THE EURO ZONE IS CONCEIVABLE-SPIEGEL More from Reuters: European Central Bank Governing Council member Jens Weidmann told Germany's Spiegel magazine in an interview he considered it wrong to "throw out all established principles of monetary policy by citing a general emergency." In a preview of an interview to be published in the new edition of...

Link only.

Siren is up...

(CNSNews.com) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Small Business Committee on Wednesday that the Obama administration believes taxes on small business must increase so the administration does not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.” The administration’s plan to raise the tax rate on small businesses is part of its plan to raise taxes on all Americans who make more than $250,000 per year—including businesses that file taxes the same way individuals and families do. [........] “We're not doing it because we want to do it, we're doing it because we see no alternative to a balanced approach to reduce our...

Geithner Says New Financial Crisis Coming Lloyd Grove, The Daily Beast May 19, 2011, 2:12 PM At a New York screening of the new HBO adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that not only is our financial system not too large to go bust—but we’re headed for another crisis. The Wall Street meltdown of late 2008 was, in real life, a harrowing event, triggering a terrible recession from which we’re still recovering. In the HBO movie Too Big to Fail, it’s also a surprisingly gripping melodrama—a clash of greedheads and egomaniacs desperate...

By taking advantage of  “must-pass” pieces of legislation, Republicans have three chances this year to restrain the burden of government.  They didn’t do very well with the ‘CR fight” over appropriated spending for the rest of FY2011, which was their first opportunity. I was hoping for an extra-base hit off the fence, but the GOP was afraid of a government shutdown and negotiated from a position of weakness. As such, the best interpretation is that they eked out an infield single.The next chance to impose fiscal discipline will be the debt limit. Currently, the federal government “only” has the...

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Please use the link to reference this article. Do not copy & paste articles which is a breach of FT.com's Ts&Cs (www.ft.com/servicestools/help/terms) and is copyright infringement. Send a link for free or email ftsales.support@ft.com to purchase rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/03567a28-e8a3-11df-a383-00144feab49a.html#ixzz14WJKo1Eb China has curtly dismissed a US proposal to address global economic imbalances, setting the stage for a potential showdown at next week’s G20 meeting in Seoul. Cui Tiankai, a deputy foreign minister and one of China’s lead negotiators at the G20, said on Friday that the US plan for limiting current account surpluses and deficits to 4 per cent of gross domestic...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.treas.gov/press/releases/tg894.htm October 6, 2010 TG-894 Secretary of Treasury Timothy F. Geithner Remarks at the Brookings Institution As Prepared for Delivery This weekend, finance officials from around the world will gather in Washington, along with the senior management of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meet in Korea later this month, followed by the G-20 Heads of State in November. I want to outline our objectives for these meetings. A period of unprecedented international cooperation Two years ago, the world economy was in the grip...

Geithner Just Quashed Hopes Of A Bush Tax Cut Extension Gus Lubin Jul. 22, 2010, 2:09 PM Following comments from Senate Democrats expressing willingness to extend Bush tax cuts, the White House dispatched Tim Geithner to kill the buzz. Tim just announced Obama's plans to let the tax cuts expire for wealthy Americans in January, according to WSJ. Which is what people expected all along. WSJ: Mr. Geithner said there is "still some uncertainty about how strong the recovery is going to be," which may be impacting spending decisions by businesses and individuals. But he discounted that as a reason...

The "Discrimen" Of Change Is Near, As The Bernanke-Geithner-Keynes-Japanese Experiment Comes To An End Keith McCullough, Hedgeye Jun. 7, 2010, 10:00 AM“I will either find a way, or make one.”-Hannibal One of our most successful European clients recently sent me a book that I can’t put down: Tom Holland’s “Rubicon – The Last Years of The Roman Republic.” As a behavioral study, the parallels of power and politics between then and now are interesting to consider. The Rubicon is the river in northern Italy that Julius Caesar infamously crossed in 49BC to officially declare what was considered the unthinkable –...

Economy: A major problem this administration has is it continually downplays the power of free markets to right themselves. That was apparent in remarks made by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on Thursday. Speaking on NBC's "Today" show, Geithner said the bailouts and buyouts and other aid to companies were "deeply unfair" — especially given the way it's played out. True enough, today many companies are reporting booming earnings. Even banks look healthier. Average joes don't look so good. More than 8 million have been laid off since the recession began in December 2007, and unemployment at 9.7% is "terribly high...

Billions of dollars were at stake when 21 executives of Goldman Sachs and the American International Group convened a conference call on Jan. 28, 2008, to try to resolve a rancorous dispute that had been escalating for months. A.I.G. had long insured complex mortgage securities owned by Goldman and other firms against possible defaults. With the housing crisis deepening, A.I.G., once the world’s biggest insurer, had already paid Goldman $2 billion to cover losses the bank said it might suffer. A.I.G. executives wanted some of its money back, insisting that Goldman — like a homeowner overestimating the damages in a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will propose making a popular stimulus bond program permanent and expanding its use in the budget plan he presents on Monday, a U.S. Treasury Department official said on Saturday. He will also seek to lower the level of the rebate the U.S. government pays to issuers on taxable Build America Bonds to 28 percent, the official said. The bonds, created by economic stimulus legislation last year, currently give issuers a subsidy equal to 35 percent of their interest costs. The bonds "were successful in helping to repair a severely damaged municipal finance market, making...

No one has been less forgiving than Glenn Beck when it comes to Democrats with tax problems.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer's payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show. AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when...

Washington, DCJudicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.”  The list, in alphabetical order, includes: 1. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT):  This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 “Ten Most Corrupt” list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him.  In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat.  In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against...

Obama's Big Wall Street Sellout The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel...

On Saturday, joined by hundreds of friends, family and colleagues on a snowy December day in Yonkers, NY, we celebrated the life of Mark Pittman. Readers of The IRA who wish to express their thanks to Mark and show support for his family may make contributions to the Pittman Children’s College Fund, c/o Dr. William Karesh, 30B Pondview Road, Rye, NY 10580. Bob Ivry from Bloomberg News gave a remembrance of Mark, including reading the letter that his daughter Maggie Pittman posted on zerohedge to dispel rumors that her dad might have been murdered. Some members of the zerohedge family...

The recent bombshell that Rep. Kanjorski dropped gets bigger and bigger. Atlas reader Suzanne picked up on a mindblowing "detail" in my blog post: "RIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION OF PRESIDENT HUSSEIN: "A $550 Billion Electronic Run on the Banks". Paul Kanjorski describes the closed door session of Congress where it was revealed that there was a $550 billion electronic run on the banks and that was what caused the economic crisis. In the video, Kanjorski says this occurred on Thursday, September 15, 2008. September 15th was a MONDAY. THURSDAY was .......SEPTEMBER 11, 2008 This was a Financial Terrorist Attack on...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _______________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release July 27, 2009 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT THE U.S./CHINA STRATEGIC AND ECONOMIC DIALOGUE Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center Washington, D.C. 9:35 A.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Good morning. It is a great honor to welcome you to the first meeting of the Strategic Economic Dialogue between the United States and China. This is an essential step in advancing a positive, constructive, and comprehensive relationship between our countries. I'm pleased that President Hu shares my...

"They're writing laws on income tax, but not for me..." A musical salute to Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, who for five years avoided paying a significant part of his income taxes.

<p>May 13 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Treasury will tell banks to increase transparency in the over-the-counter derivatives market by making prices available on centralized computer platforms, according to people familiar with the plan.</p> <p>Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner may announce the decision as soon as today, said the people, who declined to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Geithner laid out a framework in March for increasing regulation of financial markets as the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression caused more than $1.4 trillion in writedowns by banks and financial companies worldwide.</p>

Grab yourself a bowl, kids! WTF! The Federal Reserve Board of Governors, as promised, has released a white paper enlightening the common peasants to the Fed methodology of stress tests - thank goodness because otherwise the idiots down here at Ground Zero might have no idea what the hell is going on and God forbid the Fed allow that to happen! Skeeze on over to the Board's website and take a look for yourself if you have no life, actually believe what these bastards have to say, or find yourself laid off with too much time on your hands and...

If we don't rise up and stop this Joker now, we will be in a depression, close to famine and at war with China, Russia, Syria & Iran by 2012. The Axis of Evil is going to wait for the Cap n Trade to cause our agriculture sector to grow for fuel or not at all and then China (through Venezuela), after it stops importing to the US, will force Brazil (Third Largest Exporter in the World) & Other Central/South American Countries to stop exporting to the US (20% of total distribution). The damage of removing Farm Subsidies coupled with...

***The following are excerpts. It is far better to read the entire commentary (long but good). The graph is scary - it will make sense if you read the whole commentary .*** Last week, the U.S. Treasury Secretary advanced two proposals; one was a call for regulatory reform that is absolutely essential to the resolution of the current financial crisis. The other was a recipe for the insolvency of the FDIC, which would squander public funds to subsidize private speculation in troubled mortgage securities. [snip] Indeed, the only way for the toxic asset sale to increase shareholder equity is if...

The U.S. dollar slid against the euro Wednesday after U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner expressed openness to expanded use of an IMF currency basket even as he said the greenback would remain the world's reserve currency for a long time. Investors initially interpreted his remarks as negative for the dollar, sending it to a session low against the euro. China's central bank governor said earlier this month said the world should consider the special drawing right (SDR), a basket of dollars, euros, sterling and yen, as a super-sovereign reserve currency. Geithner, responding to a question at a Council of Foreign...

It’s been a recurring question about the young Obama administration: Why have so many of its nominees come down with tax problems? Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle, Ron Kirk, Nancy Killefer, and a number of others who didn’t make it to the nomination stage — all have been felled, or tainted, by unpaid tax bills ranging from a few hundred dollars to more than $140,000. After the first few cases, Republican Rep. Eric Cantor quipped that “it’s easy for [Democrats] to sit here and advocate higher taxes because — you know what? — they don’t pay them.” For their part, some...

US officials are examining ways gradually to convert government stakes in banks into ordinary shares as banks accumulate losses, according to people close to the discussions. The point would be to provide a drip-feed of additional common equity as needed to cover losses – without the government owning a larger stake in the banks than is necessary. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will announce the financial sector rescue plan on Monday along with a set of policies designed to reduce foreclosures and boost the housing market. Treasury refused to comment on its deliberations. One idea that has been considered by policymakers...