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The Treasury Department plans to tap Neel Kashkari, an assistant secretary of international affairs and a former Goldman Sachs banker, to oversee the government's $700 billion financial rescue program, sources familiar with the situation said yesterday. Kashkari has been a close adviser to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. on the credit crisis and helped draft the legislation for the massive rescue plan. He is expected to run the program on an interim basis until the Treasury finds a permanent head, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment. Kashkari's replacement would...

Make sure you send this one page document to your CONgresscritter's HOME offices as well as the Washington offices. NAIL THEM often ! Document to sent to your CONgresscritter>

http://www.newsmeat.com/ceo_political_donations/Henry_Paulson.php Think they all voted for the bill? I was just doing some research on Mr. Paulson. From Wikipedia - He has intimate relations with China elite and has visited over 70 times. He is co-chair of The Nature Conservancy's Asia Pacific Council and founding chair of the School of Economics and Management at the University of Tsinghua. He loves snakes. He is quoted as saying he "likes to hold them and look at them". His wife is quoted as saying "He had that snake look in his eyes". He is a Christian Scientist. (I don't know much about this,...

Did Hank Paulson subconsciously or consciously want to throw the election to Barack Obama. We don't know if the bailout will work as policy, but we know it worked as political theatre to turn the election.

With all the tools and time at Secretary Paulson's disposal to solve the subprime crisis, why did he wait until 5 weeks before the election to stage a brilliant piece of political theatre with the Democrats?

The Paulson-Pelosi plan was a bizarre and somewhat inexplicable economic proposal given the vast array of tools the government had at its disposal to respond to the subprime mortgage debacle. However, it was a brilliant piece of political theatre designed to take down the McCain Palin campaign that had a victory at hand. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5p5XsZLxAo

The American International Group said on Friday that it had already drawn down $61 billion of the $85 billion emergency bridge loan it received from the Federal Reserve two weeks ago, an announcement that startled credit ratings agencies. The emergency loan was supposed to buy the company time to sell its troubled assets in an orderly manner. But the sell-off has not yet begun, and now the insurer faces the additional pressure of trying to sell the businesses at a time when potential buyers are having trouble borrowing money. Moody’s downgraded A.I.G.’s senior unsecured debt on Friday and said it...

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Friday said the $700 billion financial rescue package protects Americans' jobs and savings and that the government is ready to begin buying up soured assets from banks. "We've been doing a lot of work, a lot of thinking getting ready for this, and once the legislation is signed, we're going to be going out and lining up some advisors from the private sector," Paulson told reporters at the Treasury. "There are a wide variety of tools that we have that come with this legislation, and which combined with the other authorities we have ... are...

The American populace, now being offered arsenic (a lá Cary Grant, for you movie aficionados) rather than tea, is loudly telling you to vote NO. No Way. No How. Not Now; Not Ever – on the current “Wall Street Bailout” bill. You can ask that it be dubbed “rescue” if you must, but just who is being rescued? Certainly not capitalism; certainly not democracy; certainly not the tens of millions of Americans who daily play by the rules; certainly not the small banks and businesses across the nation who do so as well. Please oppose or continue your opposition to...

In all of American history, it is likely that no government official besides a wartime president has ever been given as much power over taxpayer money as Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. would receive under the $700 billion financial rescue plan. If the House passes the bill Friday, the Treasury secretary will acquire broad authority to buy and then dispose of hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgages and mortgage-backed securities at his sole discretion. "They're appointing a financial dictator," said Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at Americans for Tax Reform. "Congress is giving a member of the executive...

“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people’s money to settle the quarrel.” – Abraham Lincoln, speech to Illinois legislature, January 1837 In July, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said of his massive underwriting scheme for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, “If you have a bazooka in your pocket and people know it, you probably won’t have to use it.” On September 7, Paulson pulled out his bazooka and fired, effectively nationalizing the mortgage giants. Last week, Paulson...

Buffett, Mr. "Call Option on the Bailout" says Paulson has "done a great job. The next President should ask him to stay on"

(Fortune) -- Warren Buffett suggested Thursday that the U.S. Treasury team with private investors to buy the distressed mortgage assets at the center of the controversial $700 billion Wall Street bailout, and said the price tag of the rescue plan may have to rise. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5p5XsZLxAo

Why is the mainstream media ignoring what might be the most earth-shattering provisions in Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s Bailout Package Version 2.0? If you look at page 180 of the 451-page monster bailout bill that easily passed the Senate yesterday (PDF here), you will see that it includes at Section 116 language about the tax treatment of “industrial source carbon dioxide.” It also provides, at Section 117, for a “carbon audit of the tax code.” What could a provision about the tax treatment of “industrial source carbon dioxide” and another provision about doing a “carbon audit” of the tax...

Strategery is a unique hedge fund. It is the largest in the world, with expected initial capital of $700 billion. It has a free and unlimited credit line should it need more. It has no fixed mandate, though it is expected to initially focus on mortgage-backed securities. And it is the only fund backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government. Strategery is a way for you to be more patriotic. Supporting this fund is an American duty. Many people have already taken to wearing a green, red, and blue ribbon to symbolize and broadcast their support...

Were conservatives and the McCain campaign punked by Paulson? He knew that McCain couldn't come out firmly against without seeming off the reservation. But he also knew it would split the base, demoralize the ground game and. Obama, on the other hand, can claim that he is just "cleaning up the George Bush mess.

Are Republicans being Punked by Paulson?

This thread pulls together the threads designed to organize freeper analysis of the draft Senate bailout bill: Title I, Sections 101 - 106 Title I, Sections 107 - 113 Title I, Sections 114 - 121 Title I, Sections 122 - 126 Title I, Sections 127 - 136 Title II Title III Section 2: Purposes Definitions

Who is Hank Paulson? And is he another Billionaire in the tank for Obama?

I am starting a movement now to call on both candidates to submit well thought out packages by next week and let the people VOTE on November 4 for their candidate based on their proposal -- after research, after debate. Let's have a mature election. No plan passed between now and November 4 will be legitimate in the eyes of the American people.

Not everyone gets the Wall Street-Main Street connection. But they should, because both streets intersect on every block in America. “In the sense that if the credit market dries up on Wall Street, capital will be unavailable on Main Street,” said University of Arizona political science professor Robert Maranto. “So no car loans, house loans, business loans and the like.” In the short run, Maranto explains, there is no reason to panic, but over two years it would lead to higher unemployment. Maranto also reminds that most of Middle America's savings are plowed into the stock markets, “so if the...

Please look at this and pass it around. Good intentions gone awry.

This is funny. And it is harsh. Please pass around.

Sing for Obama

If pro is the opposite of con, then progress is definitely the opposite of congress. Yesterday the number 777 -- not exactly the sign of the devil more like the sign of the discontent of the American people -- became the headlines in most major newspapers across the country as the market plummeted. And the markets fell thanks to the vote against the Paulsen Bail Out Plan. Many lawmakers voted not their party -- much to the chagrin of Nancy Pelosi and Roy Blunt who both thought they had the deliverables to pass the bill –- instead they voted the...

Last night Newt stated on Greta that the CEO of Goldman Sachs was the only private company represented at a meeting concerning bailout of AIG with Tres. Sec Paulson (former CEO of Goldman Sachs) and that Goldman Sachs had exposure of 20 billion dollars with AIG.The Newt stated Bush should fire Paulson. That this was a huge conflict of interest.Anyone hear more about this?

Two weeks ago, the nation’s most powerful regulators and bankers huddled in the Lower Manhattan fortress that is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, desperately trying to stave off disaster. As the group, led by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., pondered the collapse of one of America’s oldest investment banks, Lehman Brothers, a more dangerous threat emerged: American International Group, the world’s largest insurer, was teetering. A.I.G. needed billions of dollars to right itself and had suddenly begged for help. The only Wall Street chief executive participating in the meeting was Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Mr....

1)Newt, please post tonights interview with the Greta V. on YouTube. America needs to hear it ASAP! 2) Suspend mark to market now! 3) Paulson must resign tomorrow. 4)Can any Freeper's fill me in on the meeting Paulson had reagrding saving AIG knowing Goldman Sachs had 20 billion dollar stake in it? Is this true?

The President had yet another busy and no doubt worrying day first of all making a statement on the financial rescue legislation early morning on the South Lawn of the White House. He also met with at the White House President Valdas Adamkus of Lithuania and Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko. After his meeting with Yushchenko the President spoke about the failed bailout On a somewhat lighter and more pleasant note the President presented the 2007 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Medals. Pray for President Bush -- Day 2938 - McCain/Palin--Day 32 Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke to students of...

Former Congressman J D Hayworth (R, AZ) is now a local radio talk show host in Phoenix. He is suggesting that Bush replace Henry Paulson with Mitt Romney to take over the financial situation.

Ahead of today’s House vote on the $700 billion bailout package, U.S. Rep. John Shadegg is calling for the resignation of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. “Today, I am calling on Secretary Paulson to resign. I believe he has failed to do his job and failed to uphold his responsibility to the American people. He did not warn Congress or the nation in advance of the impending crisis,” Shadegg said in a statement. “Congressional leadership received less than four hours notice before the Secretary publicly warned of an imminent collapse of the market and announced his bailout plan. Clearly, it was...

Rather than panic, follow these tips to pass the time wisely while Congress gets its act together and approves a financial-bailout package. While Nancy Pelosi is blaming our financial meltdown on Republicans, and Republicans are getting even by voting down the $700-billion financial-bailout package -- and while panicked investors react to the congressional backstabbing by sending the Dow Jones industrial average down a frightening 778 points -- I get an e-mail from my friend Clayton. Clayton is about to retire. He lives in a small city in the South and figures he could live comfortably the rest of his life...

Paulson should be kicked out of his office forthwith and all his papers and e-files locked down so the Feds can see the full extent of his corruption. And anyone else who signed off on that original blatantly unconstitutional bill should be identified and fired as well. It was the well-earned bad faith created by these acts that were the final nails in the coffin of this attempted “shock doctrine” coup..

WASHINGTON – Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said his agency would use “all the tools available to protect our financial system and the economy” in response to Monday's stunning defeat of the government's proposed $700 billion bailout. Paulson, speaking with reporters after meeting with President Bush at the White House, said, “our toolkit is substantial but insufficient” without a bailout, and that the Bush administration will continue to seek congressional approval for a rescue package. He warned that the same stresses overwhelming the banking industry, including last week's collapse of Washington Mutual Inc. – the biggest bank failure in history –...

In the fall of 1907, it took J.P. Morgan just eight weeks to resolve a credit crisis similar to ours. Several years of buoyant growth and too much risk-taking in poorly understood investments led to needs for capital that could not be met. Morgan, then 70, locked the nation's top bankers into the ornate library at his home for late-night confession sessions. He asked them to lay bare their balance sheets, keeping himself alert with endless Havana cigars. snip We also seem to have forgotten a basic point well known to Morgan, who would have recalled the panics of 1837,...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said the Wall Street bailout plan pushed by President Bush signaled the “final collapse” of the current administration. “The Bush administration has now provided three case studies in arrogance, isolation and destructiveness: Michael Brown during Hurricane Katrina, Ambassador Jerry Bremer in Baghdad and Secretary [Henry] Paulson at Treasury,” Gingrich said. “It is a tragic and very expensive legacy. No conservative and no Republican should doubt how much it has hurt our cause and our party.” The former Speaker reiterated his call for the resignation of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. “As long as Secretary Paulson...

Dear Secretary Paulson, Re: your presser just completed: The "congressional leadership" does not speak for the people. You can negotiate with them and make all the deals you wish, but that does not ensure the congress goes your way. The rank and file congresscritters represent the people of the USA and they're telling their reps, in no uncertain terms, to tell you to keep your big government mitts off taxpayer funds. The calls are running nine to one against you. Suggest you find a way for capitalism and the free markets to work. You might try ASKING the House Republicans...

A number of Republican House members and staff, along with others who are plugged in, are telling me that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will come back with a new bill that includes all the left-wing stuff that was scrubbed from the bill that was defeated today in the House. As this scenario goes, the House Democrats need 218 votes, and they have to pick up a number of black and Hispanic House members who jumped ship because the Wall Street provisions, in their view, were too benign. So things like the bankruptcy judges setting mortgage terms and rates, the...

Why Paulson is Wrong Saving capitalism from the capitalists Luigi Zingales | September 29, 2008 When a profitable company is hit by a very large liability, as was the case in 1985 when Texaco lost a $12 billion court case against Pennzoil, the solution is not to have the government buy its assets at inflated prices—the solution is Chapter 11. In Chapter 11, companies with a solid underlying business generally swap debt for equity. The old equity holders are wiped out and the old debt claims are transformed into equity claims in the new entity which continues operating with a...

Bailing Out The Oil Market William Pentland, 09.23.08, 11:35 AM ET While everyone knows the U.S. government is looking to bail Wall Street banks, few people realize that it's also bailing out speculative oil and commodities traders in the process, fueling a sharp rise in energy prices. Lehman Brothers and AIG held enormous trading positions in commodities markets. If those positions had been liquidated suddenly, the price of everything from wheat to oil would have collapsed. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the main regulator of U.S. commodity markets, allowed Wall Street's investment banks and trading companies to take control of...

The Federal Reserve and other countries' central banks have announced fresh steps to battle a worsening credit crisis that threatens to unhinge the U.S. economy. The Fed said Monday the action is intended to "expand significantly" the availability of cash available to squeezed banks and other financial institutions in an effort to provide relief to the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed cited "continued strains" in the demand for short-term funding. European central banks joined Asian counterparts in pumping more cash into paralized money markets on Monday, but commercial banks preferred to hoard cash rather than lend...

The single-biggest mistake in the Paulson bank-rescue-plan marketing effort has been the failure to explain clearly how taxpayers are going to recoup $700 billion used to buy toxic assets at auction in order to unfreeze the banking system. In other words, folks don’t understand how taxpayers will be paid back, and may actually make profits, which will enable the new government debt to be erased after the Treasury bank-rescue is completed. Here’s the key point: Any loan package bought by the Treasury will be 100 percent taxpayer owned. Period.

On Friday, September 19, rank and file Republican members of Congress were notified of a conference call that would include Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. I would never disclose confidences, but it is quite public now that we were told an economic disaster was about to take this country that could be worse than the crash of 1929. Now, that’s a real attention-getter. It sure got mine. My years as a judge force me to demand factual evidence to support expert opinions. The factual evidence was then and is now less than satisfactory. Yes, credit was...

Scott Pelley gets rare access to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as he deals with the nation's unfolding economic crisis.

"The government has to do something to keep markets from falling and the economy from getting worse." How many times have you heard that mantra this past week from President Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Democrat leaders, the news media, and even some ostensibly conservative periodicals? But what if the bailout, as originally proposed and in its latest incarnation, would spend $700 billion of taxpayers' money and actually make the economy worse? Believe it or not, there is good evidence this may happen. The inflationary prospects of the bailout price tag may lead to spikes in oil and crop prices...

The especially odious provision in the Wall Street "rescue" package that would have provided millions of dollars in government money for kooky left-wing activists has been deleted. The Politico reports that the controversial provision in Henry Paulson's Wall Street bailout package that would have funneled mountains of dough to radical left-wing community organizing groups like ACORN has been removed: After several days of rage from conservative activists regarding a provision in the bailout bill that would send some of the profits from the sale of distressed assets the goverment buys into an affordable housing trust fund, congressional negotiators have removed...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., on Sunday described Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's request for billions of dollars to buy debt from struggling Wall Street financial firms as "un-American" and said the secretary should have stepped down. Gingrich even expressed concern with Paulson's connections to Wall Street. The treasury secretary served as the chairman of a major global investment banking and securities firm before joining the Bush administration. "You have the former Chairman of Goldman Sachs asking for 700 billion dollars, and in his initial request, asking for it in such an un-American way that I think he should have...

Anyone who caught even a sliver of Tuesday's hearings in the U.S. Senate on the proposed Treasury bailout of the mortgage-backed securities market knows the current financial crisis is far from over. Suddenly all sorts of previously unthinkable catastrophes seem possible.

"To help struggling homeowners, the plan would require the government to try renegotiating the bad mortgages it acquires with the aim of lowering borrowers' monthly payments so they can keep their homes." - I am either voting libertarian or sitting out the election. However my goal now is to take everyone who passes the bill and get them out of office. If somehow this bill is stopped in time by the Republicans then I will be energized to vote.

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