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(snip) Sen. Lindsey Graham believes his fellow South Carolina Republican's verdict is too harsh. He plans to vote to confirm Bernanke, who just turned 56. “I remember what it was like in September 2008 when the stock market went down a thousand points, and we had one failure after another of major financial institutions,” Graham told McClatchy. “Bernanke and some others came up with a game plan to save us from another Great Depression,” Graham said. “I think he's been a pretty steady hand at the tiller.” DeMint also blasts Bernanke on the $700 billion financial bailout bill pushed by...

* Banks with influence got access to bailouts, more money U.S. banks that spent more money on lobbying were more likely to get government bailout money, according to a study released on Monday. Banks whose executives served on Federal Reserve boards were more likely to receive government bailout funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to the study from Ran Duchin and Denis Sosyura, professors at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. Banks with headquarters in the district of a U.S. House of Representatives member who serves on a committee or subcommittee relating to TARP also received...

A growing number of community banks that got federal bailouts are failing to pay quarterly dividends they owe to the government, including two banks that got aid after congressional intervention on their behalf, according to data released Monday by the Treasury Department. Fifty-five banks failed to make dividend payments in November, a 67 percent jump over the number of delinquent banks three months earlier. Fifteen banks failed to make the required payments in May, federal data show. The number climbed to 33 banks in August, and 55 banks failed to make the dividend payments due Nov. 17. Many smaller banks...

Harder to buy US Treasuries Created: 2009-12-18 0:13:35 Author:Zhou Xin and Jason Subler IT is getting harder for governments to buy United States Treasuries because the US's shrinking current-account gap is reducing supply of dollars overseas, a Chinese central bank official said yesterday. The comments by Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, referred to the overall situation globally, not specifically to China, the biggest foreign holder of US government bonds. Chinese officials generally are very careful about commenting on the dollar and Treasuries, given that so much of its US$2.3 trillion reserves are tied to their...

Citigroup wants to escape government control. The Obama administration wants to cut it loose. But investors are still standing in the way. The New York bank said Wednesday that it was on the verge of raising $17 billion from investors toward repaying its federal aid, but only at a price of $3.15 per share, 20 percent lower than the price of its shares at the beginning of the week. That discount was much larger than expected, leading the Treasury Department to postpone its plans to start selling the government's 34 percent stake in Citigroup. Treasury had expected to reap a...

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Deal made to recover bailout Firms exempted from rule when U.S. sells its stake

Is That A Door Slamming?Posted by Karl Denninger in Banking System at 14:48 Tuesday, December 15. 2009 Gee, you think this might have something to do with the equity and tarp exit right now nonsense? Citibank card chargeoffs 10.29% .vs. 8.79% (all month-over-month) and $617 billion in "Citi Holdings" (worth god only knows what), a cutesy game of asset-shifting and sausage-hiding the bank set up after Pandit came to power. Capital One 9.6% .vs. 9.04% AXP falls to 7.6% (that's actual improvement; was 7.8% last month) JP Morgan/Chase, 8.81% .vs. 8.02%. Bank America, 13% .vs. 13.22% (is that percentage even...

President Obama didn’t exactly look thrilled as he stared at the Polycom speakerphone in front of him. “Well, I appreciate you guys calling in,” he began the meeting at the White House with Wall Street’s top brass on Monday. He was, of course, referring to the three conspicuously absent attendees who were being piped in by telephone: Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs; John J. Mack, chairman of Morgan Stanley; and Richard D. Parsons, chairman of Citigroup. Their excuse? “Inclement weather,” according to the White House... That awkward moment on speakerphone in the White House, for better...

U.S. taxpayers could ultimately see a profit of $13 billion to $14 billion from Citigroup's payback of bailout investments, including dividends paid, a U.S. Treasury official said on Monday. That amount includes the gain on the government's 34 percent stake in Citi common shares , which was close to $5.8 billion as of Friday's close, as well as trust preferred securities with a $5.2 billion face value, received in a loss-sharing agreement backing a pool of Citigroup assets. The official also said the total also includes estimates of nearly $3 billion in dividends paid on the government's investments in the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Plans from Wells Fargo & Co and Citigroup to repay taxpayer funds will put the U.S. government on track to reduce its bailout investments in banks by more than 75 percent, while earning a healthy profit for the U.S., U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Monday. "With the recent announcements on repayments, we are now on track to reduce TARP bank investments by more than 75 percent, while earning a healthy profit on that commitment," Geithner said in a statement after Wells Fargo announced it will repay the $25 billion it received from the government under...

President Obama is calling on the financial industry to help dig the economy out of the pit the White House says it helped create, as the president and bank executives headed into a potentially tense meeting Monday morning. President Obama is calling on the financial industry to help dig the economy out of the pit the White House says it helped create, as the president and bank executives headed into a potentially tense meeting Monday morning. The president set the tone for the meeting in an interview broadcast the night before in which he called Wall Street bankers "fat cats"...

Call it a stimulus, paying off a debt, but it's time to call it a work in progress. If the Federal Government is going to prop up the richest of the rich, isn't it time to add up the losses that Blacks have incurred during their time in America? Supporters of slave reparations argue that there is no equal opportunity for African Americans nor has there ever been. Systematic discrimination deprived African Americans of equal chances and deserved justice and parity. The clear lack of parity is seen in the recent instances of bailouts for the rich and distain for...

They neglected to remind us of the role they played in creating this disaster and of the fact that they both were bought and paid for long ago by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. played a bigger role than has been publicly disclosed in fueling the mortgage bets that nearly felled American Insurance Group Inc. Goldman was one of 16 banks paid off when the U.S. government last year spent billions closing out soured trades that AIG made with the financial firms. A Wall Street Journal analysis of AIG's trades, which were on pools of mortgage debt, shows that Goldman was a key player in many of them, even the ones involving other banks. Goldman originated or bought protection from AIG on about $33 billion of the $80 billion of...

The main reason Bank of America paid back the money was to get out from under the onerous pay caps that makes it harder to keep its people and attract a new CEO. To make the payment, Bank of America had to take huge dilution at what a year ago would have been considered an appalling price. Bank of America may be healthier than it was 9 months ago (maybe), but shareholders certainly didn't consider selling $19 billion of equity at $15 a share cause for celebration. But aren't taxpayers better off now that Bank of America has paid us...

This week, the administration has been trumpeting [1] the news that the $700 billion TARP [2] is likely to ultimately cost much less than early estimates. That’s true, but far from the whole story. The government’s best estimate, released Wednesday [3], is that the bailouts of AIG and the auto companies will ultimately cost taxpayers about $61 billion. It also forecast that other parts of the TARP will end up making taxpayers money. Put it all together, and the final estimated loss from the bailout’s first full year (thru September 2009) is about $41.6 billion. (See our table below.)simple-tab.table{border:thin...

Bush initiates TARP funding program - bad (Bush's Fault) Economy gets worse - bad (Bush's Fault) Bankers and Wall Street get bailed out - bad (Bush's Fault) Banks pay back some of the bailout dollars to apply to the deficit - good! Obama uses the repaid dollars as a jobs-maker (slush fund) - great! SO Bush's Fault = Obama's Great?

President Obama hopes to use money still unspent from the $787-billion economic stimulus plan to fight the nation’s 10% unemployment rate, and one of the ideas on the table is to channel money to states to keep them from laying off public employees. But a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 22% of Americans favor providing federal bailout funds to states with serious financial problems. Fifty-eight percent (58%) oppose giving bailout money to financially troubled states. On top of that, 56% of Americans oppose the passage of another economic stimulus package this year. While House Speaker Nancy...

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government's policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry........ The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September. Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.

The Wall Street Journal reported today about the Democrat's political abuse of TARP, which was created to "save the financial system" in a time of "crisis". (I don't buy into that, but I digress.). The original description of the program, according to Federal Reserve's own website was...

The projected long-term cost of the government's bailout of the nation's big banks is going to be at least $200 billion less than previously thought, a United States Treasury Department official said Sunday. The Obama administration had estimated the cost to taxpayers of the $700-billion Troubled Asset relief Program, or TARP, would be $341 billion but now says it can cut that by $200 billion. "That improvement is driven by the fact that Treasury's investments to stabilize the system are delivering higher returns than anticipated and that Treasury does not anticipate having to draw upon the full $700 billion in...

Obama Breaks Vow on Plans for Repaid TARP Money http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-breaks-vow-on-plans-for-repaid-tarp-money/

Two lawyers have joined forces to assemble a case challenging in U.S. bankruptcy court the federal government's use of Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to bail out Chrysler and in doing so may have created a scenario that finally will bring to a head the issue of Barack Obama's eligibility to be president. The attorneys are Leo Donofrio, who has launched cases directly challenging Obama's eligibility, and Stephen Pidgeon, who also has worked on the issue. Their new case questions the authority by which the federal government and administration officials intervened in the auto industry, specifically allocating some $8 billion-plus...

On the eve of Obama’s trip to Denmark, in which he may announce new spending plans for developing countries, Moody’s is poised to send a warning that America’s triple-A credit rating is at risk. For generations the country has relied on deficit spending and the strongest credit rating to manage the country’s finances. This new chink in our fiscal armor is a direct result of the fact that our government faces a trillion dollar deficit for the next 10 years, and sends a clear message that Congress, the President and the American people must rein in deficit spending. A reduction...

On Friday of this week, the Supreme Court of the United States has scheduled a hearing conference for the petition made by the Indiana Police Pension Trust against the theft of their nearly $6.5 billion dollar investment in the Chrysler Corporation, which was perpetrated by the Obama regime earlier this summer. The action, whereby the U.S. Treasury, without authorization by Congress, used TARP funding to force Chrysler LLC into a debtor-client relationship, and then in using that to practically control the corporation in bankruptcy pleadings has raised several constitutional and legal issues on the action. The case’s official name is...

Treasury Department Releases Text of Letter from Secretary Geithner to Hill Leadership on Administration’s Exit Strategy for TARP WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury released the text of identical letters sent today from Secretary Tim Geithner to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid outlining the Administration's exit strategy for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) established by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA). The text of the letter to Speaker Pelosi follows. December 9, 2009 The Honorable Nancy Pelosi Speaker U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 Dear Madam Speaker: I am writing to update...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday moved to extend the government's $700 billion bailout fund into October 2010 and pledged to deploy no more than $550 billion of it. Geithner, in letters to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said the extension of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) until Oct 3, 2010, would allow the Obama administration to use bailout funds to fight home foreclosures and boost small business lending.

In the movie “A Few Good Men” the character of Colonel Nathan R. Jessup experiences his ultimate downfall by getting himself trapped in a paradox by the testimony that he has given. Initially he claims that he has done everything by the book and ordered that no soldiers under his command were to harm a fellow soldier whom he has labeled as a ‘substandard Marine.’ Later, though, he testifies that he had ordered that same soldier to be transferred to another base because he was in ‘grave danger’ in his current situation. Therein lies the paradox, as pointed out by...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama outlined major new government stimulus and jobs proposals on Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to “spend our way out of this recession.” Without giving a price tag, Obama proposed a package of new spending for highway, bridge and other infrastructure projects, deeper tax breaks for small businesses and tax incentives to encourage people to make their homes more energy efficient. “We avoided the depression many feared,” Obama said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. But, he added, “Our work is far from done.”

The other day, I wrote that President Obama has "run out of both charm and ideas." I was too kind. To judge from the string of whoppers in his dreary jobs speech yesterday, he's also run out of facts. And he's still whining about the problems he inherited and blaming Republicans. He might as well be barking at the moon. That's sort of what he is doing, because the American people are tuning him out at a stunning pace. The latest Gallup Poll gives him a record low 47 percent approval. Only 26 percent in another poll say he deserves...

The Minnesota Department of Human Services has distributed nearly $11 million of federal funds to 31 state organizations that help individuals, families and unaccompanied youth find and stay in affordable housing, the department said Tuesday. Minnesota received $23.5 million of the $1.5 billion Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program money authorized under the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. More than half of the funds will go directly to certain cities and counties in the state to prevent or address homelessness.

58 percent of voters oppose an Obama Administration plan to bail out states with “serious financial troubles” as the President gets set for an evening address to the nation on the state of the economy. According to Rasmussen reports’ most recent phone survey, “just 22% of Americans favor providing federal bailout funds to states with serious financial problems. Fifty-eight percent (58%) oppose giving bailout money to financially troubled states.” Obama is expected to outline his plans to send aid to California, New York, and other states near default with repaid TARP funds tonight when he addresses Americans who are increasingly...

President Obama said today that while the federal bailout program for financial institutions turned out to be “much cheaper than we expected,” it is still “not cheap and he suggested that some of the savings could be put toward programs to stimulate job creation. The Obama administration anticipates that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) will cost taxpayers $200 billion less than the $341 billion estimate that it projected in August.

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- President Obama is expected to announce Tuesday that he wants Congress to redirect a certain portion of leftover Wall Street bailout funds toward job creation measures, White House officials told CNN. That would come on the heels of news Monday that the White House was reducing the expected loss from the bailout by $200 billion. Potential job-creation ideas include building roads and bridges, "weatherizing" homes to reduce energy bills and lending to small businesses. The idea of tapping the Troubled Asset Relief Program has been floating around Congress for several weeks. But in a speech Tuesday at...

"The fact that banks are paying back funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program is a good thing on many levels. It means taxpayers will save about $200 billion because the program cost less than initially expected. And it means banks such as Bank of America will be able to recruit top executives without the government dictating their pay. But there’s a downside to this: By letting these firms out from under the TARP yolk, the government may lose an important lever in encouraging the banks to fulfill one of the financial regulators’ primary goals — to ramp up lending...

With a wary eye toward the 2010 elections, Democrats are starting to craft another stimulus package. This would seem incompatible with the administration’s reluctance to add to the deficit, but a rally in the stock market has enabled some banks to repay the money they took under TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). The plan, as articulated by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is to use these funds to pay for a new “jobs bill,” which would look suspiciously like the $787 billion stimulus bill enacted just last February. This morning at the Brookings Institution, President Obama is scheduled to lay out some...

In case you've been on another planet for the last ten months, you know that President Obama's standard answer for the economic meltdown, and his anemic prescription to fix it, has been that the blame rests wholly on his predecessor. "I inherited this" has been Obama's mantra from day one of his Presidency with regard to any problem he encounters. In a revealing testament to President Obama's true character, last week when he and his administration touted the success of the TARP program and how banks were paying back their bailout money -- with interest -- he never once gave...

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...

President Barack Obama will extend his push to revive the U.S. economy next week with a speech outlining job creation ideas, from encouraging home insulation programs to diverting funds meant to rescue failing banks, officials said on Friday. With unemployment hovering around 10 percent, political pressure is building on Obama to do more to boost the economy after months of debate on overhauling the U.S. healthcare system and a months-long review of Afghan war strategy. The White House has not given specifics of Obama's strategy but U.S. officials said his proposals included incentives to homeowners to make their homes more...

Follow the bouncing ball: TARP, the trillion-dollar-plus banking bailout, has morphed from a toxic assets purchase plan to a capital injection plan, back to a toxic assets purchase plan, to a life insurance company bailout, to an auto supplier bailout. I’m sure I forgot more. Well, now the Democrats want to use it to bail out state governments and convert unused TARP bucks into…a government union slush fund.

(snip) Don Imus and the Arizona Republican were talking Friday morning about the February stimulus vote when McCain, who kept his famous temper at bay during the '08 campaign, went Howard Beale. Imus: Did you support that bill? McCain: Hell no. Imus: I don't think you have to swear at me Senator when I'm just asking a... McCain: I'm not swearing at you. I'm swearing I've had to have been smoking something pretty strong to vote for that outrageous use of taxpayers' dollars. Toggling to the economy at large, McCain added: "There's not a lot of happy people out there,...

Bank of America said late Wednesday that it would repay the entire $45 billion in bailout money that it received from the government before the end of the year. The move should help the bank recruit a new chief executive by freeing it from government restrictions on executive pay. “We appreciate the critical role that the U.S. government played last fall in helping to stabilize financial markets, and we are pleased to be able to fully repay the investment, with interest,” Kenneth D. Lewis, the bank’s current chief executive, said in a statement. Mr. Lewis is scheduled to retire at...

Are economies inherently unstable? Are people driven by "animal spirits," and therefore susceptible to wild overreactions of stupidity and greed? And is government intervention necessary to stabilize these unstable, emotional markets? Or, do you believe that capitalism is inherently stable and that economic problems typically have their roots in government mistakes? These are the most basic of all economic questions. The answers cut one way or the other--either you believe and act as if the government is necessary for economic stability, or you do not. Every bit of economic analysis and most political decisions about fiscal policy take one side...

The following information may be the most important we have ever published. One of our Intel sources, highly placed in banking circles, tells us that on 1/1/10 all banks that have received TARP funds have been informed by the Federal Reserve that they must further restrict any commercial lending. Loans have to be 75% collateralized, 50% of which has to be in cash, which is a compensating balance. The Fed has to do one of two things: They either have to pull $1.5 trillion out of the system by June, which would collapse the economy, or face hyperinflation. This is...

A little over a week ago, the Putnam County Courier joined the list of regional newspapers that have begun asking serious questions about Porkulus job accounting. The Courier goes as far as to call the “saved or created” claims of the Obama administration “Recovery.con,” in its headline. Michael Brendan Dougherty finds many of the same kinds of fraud that newspapers around the nation have in the claims by the White House of stimulus success:

(snip) I am concerned, however, that a number of the legislative proposals being circulated would significantly reduce the capacity of the Federal Reserve to perform its core functions. Notably, some leading proposals in the Senate would strip the Fed of all its bank regulatory powers. And a House committee recently voted to repeal a 1978 provision that was intended to protect monetary policy from short-term political influence. These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the...

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama signed a combined nearly $1.5 trillion in federal spending in the attempt to correct the nation's economic tailspin, but with unemployment soaring over 10 percent, Congress is gearing up to pass yet another economic "stimulus" package, perhaps as soon as January.

Where did the swine flu vaccinations go? They went the way of the “stimulus money” – that is to say, they were sent here, and shipped there. And, of course, they were “administered” and “disbursed” and “distributed” by high ranking officials who work in very important positions in vital departments of our U.S. Government. But nobody in our government – no one, specific individual – can say with certainty how many flu shots there are, or where they are, or where they might be headed. And the same is true for the billions of dollars that were entailed in President...

Mulder and Scully are on the hunt for Harry Reid's phantom jobs.