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Instead of appealing to voters to vote for him based upon x,y and z, he panders for votes by trying to increase his opponents negatives (as in FL) above his own by massively outspending them on negative ads. This approach has led to his negatives skyrocketing and his positives declining among independents and moderates. Fivethirtyeight and others have been monitoring this, and it isn't pretty. With each battle won (temporarily in Iowa and now Florida), he is headed to surpassing Obama's negatives or having lower positives (some show he already has) and he will ultimately lose against Obama if he...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A government watchdog says U.S. taxpayers are still owed $132.9 billion that companies haven't repaid from the financial bailout, and some of that will never be recovered. The bailout launched at the height of the financial crisis in September 2008 will continue to exist for years, says a report issued Thursday by Christy Romero, the acting special inspector general for the $700 billion bailout. Some bailout programs, such as the effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure by reducing mortgage payments, will last as late as 2017, costing the government an additional $51 billion or so. The gyrating...

Mitt Romney has been quick to justify his record of laying-off workers and closing plants as CEO of Bain Capital by wrapping himself in the “creative destruction” of free market capitalism But Romney’s idea of capitalism is that you can fire workers and strip companies on the way up, and then if you are big and influential enough, demand taxpaying workers bail you out on the way down. While Romney’s supporters are putting up a heavy smoke screen, Tea partiers should understand that, as a supporter of the TARP Wall Street bailout, Romney’s “creative destruction” only applies to Main Street,...

The Treasury Department has been disclosing financial information about bailout programs in press releases only if the initiatives are expected to bring money in to the government, a new federal audit has found. The Government Accountability Office found that financial information for Troubled Asset Relief Program initiatives that are projected to cost the government money long-term – like the injection of capital into the American International Group – were not included in Treasury releases. “Although press releases for programs expected to result in a cost to Treasury provide useful transaction information, they exclude lifetime, program-specific cost estimates,” G.A.O., Congress’ investigative...

General Motors Co. (GM) has hired management consultant Hackett Group (HCKT) to help identify areas to cut an undetermined number of white-collar jobs, said two people familiar with the matter. Hackett Group, based in Miami, will help identify opportunities for cuts and efficiency improvements at headquarters and elsewhere in North America, said the people, who asked not to be identified revealing private plans. GM has been trimming engineers and other white-collar staff, said Jay Cooney, a spokesman, who declined to comment on whether the Detroit-based automaker had hired Hackett Group.

Gingrich’s recent explanations of his last minute support of TARP reek of crony capitalism.“Gingrich informed a crowd in Davenport, Iowa that, ‘I was very biased against [T.A.R.P.] and had opposed it all the previous week. I had a number of very, very successful businessmen who called me and said that you need to understand, this system is on the edge of total meltdown...' "

Gingrich also admitted that as a student of history, the fact that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of the Treasury both agreed that the global financial system was on the edge of total failure also caused him to go from opposing T.A.R.P. to favoring its passage.

60 Minutes, as usual, had a very nearly excellent program last week on the economic collapse, and they were all upset because no one has been arrested; no particular person appears to be under investigation.  They have a good reason to be upset, but they seemed, at least in this report (and in several previous programs), to be clueless as to why. What happened at the end of 2008 changed history and the direction of the United States.  Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson goes to President George Bush and tells him, “The banks in the United States are about to collapse. ...

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Another trading day and another low for Bank of America's stock. Shares of Bank of America dropped more than 3% Tuesday, hitting a new 52-week low of $5.03 -- its lowest level since March 12, 2009. After the close of trading Tuesday, Bank of America was one of 37 financial institutions downgraded by S&P. Beyond the S&P downgrade, trading could become even more complicated in Bank of America's stock, if it falls below $5. Under that threshold, many broker-dealers will not allow investors to buy or short a stock on margin, according to a spokesperson for...

In the wake of the $700 billion TARP bailout, Warren Buffett apparently shaped a plan to clean up toxic assets that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner later adopted–resulting in massive profits for Buffett.That’s the latest bombshell revelation from investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s sensational new book, Throw Them All Out. According to Schweizer, after the bailout bill’s passage, Warren Buffett sat down and wrote then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson a four-page private letter laying out a plan to clean up the toxic assets plaguing numerous financial institutions. Buffett proposed something he called a “public-private partnership fund.” For every $10 billion...

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, long dismissed by the GOP establishment as a fringe candidate, has broadened his electoral appeal and emerged as a major player in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, according to several recent polls and conversations with a handful of longtime Hawkeye political operatives... In a Bloomberg News survey — conducted by renowned Iowa-based pollster Ann Selzer — Paul was in a four-way statistical tie for first along with businessman Herman Cain, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich... And, in a new Iowa State/Gazette/KCRG survey, Paul took 20 percent — behind only Cain...

12/31/2010 9,390,476,088,043.35 4,634,739,130,665.17 14,025,215,218,708.52

A plan by beleaguered Bank of America to foist trillions of dollars of funky Merrill Lynch derivatives onto its depositors is raising eyebrows on Wall Street. The rarely used move will likely save the bank millions of dollars in collateral but could put depositors’ cash behind the eight ball. The move also brought to light fissures between the nation’s top banking regulators, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve, in the wake of new regulations meant to curb the free-wheeling habits that fostered the worst crisis in a generation back in 2008. At issue is BofA’s decision to...

Some fascinating survey data from Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen: On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion. Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they...

It's no accident that Mitt Romney has done so well during this election cycle. He has excellent name recognition, he's extremely well organized, he's a great fundraiser, he's become a polished debater, and he's not gaffe prone. His business experience doesn't hurt either, although it is worth noting that the only reason he's able to brag that he's not a "career politician" is because he lost to Ted Kennedy for the Senate and probably would have lost in 2008 had he run for governor of Massachusetts again. All that being said, there's a reason why Mitt Romney has been unable...

The U.S. plans on being an active partner as efforts intensify to get Europe get back on its feet financially, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNBC Friday. Getty Images U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner With global leaders preparing for next month's Group of 20 nations (G20) summit in Cannes, France, the International Monetary Fund — of which the U.S. is the greatest contributor — is being relied on to help underwrite whatever efforts are needed to backstop toxic European sovereign debt . Geithner said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has "very substantial" resources to fund a device that could look...

Almost everyone who believes in the Constitution and free markets properly considers October 3, 2008, one of the darkest days in U.S. history. It was on that day that the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” creating the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) became law. A day later, I wrote that law’s passage, accompanied by tactics and threats which amounted to orchestrated blackmail, over the strident objections of over 150 economists from across the political spectrum, only days after its initial voter-driven failure, proved that Washington’s politicians and elites “don’t care what we think.” Abhorrent as it was, the sickening saga of...

San Francisco bank executives cooked their books and lied to auditors just before they accepted a $298 million taxpayer bailout, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. They now have the distinction of being the first senior executives of a bank that received federal bailout funds to be criminally charged in connection with a scheme to defraud the government and American taxpayers. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged former United Commercial Bank CEO Thomas Wu and vice presidents Ebrahim Shabudin and Thomas Yu with illegally obscuring their bank’s mounting losses. A separate indictment charged Shabudin and Yu with securities fraud, conspiracy, falsifying corporate...

(Wall Street Journal) - More than half of $4 billion in federal funds disbursed this year to spur small business lending by community banks was used to repay bailout funds that the banks received under the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The Small Business Lending Fund was meant to raise capital at smaller banks, which tend to lend more heavily to small businesses, in the hopes of jump-starting growth and employment. But instead of directly lending to small businesses, many of the banks used the money to rid themselves of higher-cost TARP debt...

Pelosi: Wall Street protests are a Main Street reaction to bank bailouts By Jamie Klatell - 10/08/11 12:08 PM ET House Minority Leader Nancy Pellosi (D-Calif.) said the Occupy Wall Street protests are a reaction government putting "Main Street at the mercy of Wall Street" by bailing out failing financial institutions. In an interview for Sunday's "This Week" on ABC, Pelosi said that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which was passed in 2008 when she was House Speaker and signed by President George W. Bush, was one of the causes for the demonstrations. "I think one of the most...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators bowed to pressure from big banks seeking a quick exit from the financial bailout program and did not uniformly apply the government's own conditions set for repaying the taxpayer funds, a new watchdog report says. The report was issued Friday by the office of Christy Romero, the acting special inspector general for the $400 billion taxpayer bailout of the financial industry and automakers. It found that regulators, to varying degrees, "bent" to pressure from the banks in late 2009 and relaxed the requirements put in only weeks earlier. The regulators also were motivated by a...

Bank of America Corp plans to charge customers who use their debit cards to make purchases a $5 monthly fee beginning early next year, joining other banks scrambling for new sources of revenue. U.S. banks have been looking for ways to increase revenue as regulations introduced since the financial crisis limited the use of overdraft and other fees.

A recent article on Newsmax.com by John Berlau exposes another scheme by the Obama Administration designed to redistribute more wealth in an effort to cover taxpayer losses in the General Motors and Chrysler bailout fiasco. The plan is to have financial institutions with assets of more than $50 billion to continue to pay a "financial crisis responsibility fee" until TARP losses by firms like GM and Chrysler are recouped. Of course, cronies at GM and Chrysler are not on the hook for the losses. It seems that the old playbook used by Obama to have others pay for the...

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: WSJ - Governors Against State Bailouts Hard to believe, but not everyone in politics wants a free lunch by Rick Perry and Mark Sanford Tuesday, December 02, 2008 • Press Release The Wall Street Journal Governors Against State Bailouts Hard to believe, but not everyone in politics wants a free lunch Dec. 2, 2008 By Rick Perry and Mark Sanford As governors and citizens, we've grown increasingly concerned over the past weeks as Washington has thrown bailout after bailout at the national economy with little to show for it. In the process, the federal government...

Eric Cantor (EricCantor) on Twitter

In the run-up to the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve fueled the housing bubble with its easy money policy. Now, we know that after the crisis struck, the Fed secretly propped up elite bankers all the way from Wall Street to Brussels to the Central Bank of Libya. A Bloomberg news investigation found that while the Treasury Department was pumping $700 billion into banks under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Fed was covertly operating its own bailout program — the biggest in American history. The Fed's Shadow TARP issued $1.2 trillion in loans to domestic and foreign banks from...

Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs are among those expected to be named in the lawsuit. The agency that oversees U.S. mortgage markets is preparing to file suit against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgages they packaged and sold during the housing bubble, The New York Times reported on Thursday. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is expected to file suit against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, among other banks, the Times reported, citing three...

U.S. Set To Sue Big Banks Over Bad Mortgages Agency says B of A, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, others misrepresented securities By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ The federal agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is set to file suits against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities they assembled and sold at the height of the housing bubble, and seeking billions of dollars in compensation. The Federal Housing Finance Agency suits, which are expected to be filed in the coming days in federal court, are aimed at Bank...

"Well, I want to tell you something: Hurricane Obama -- this irene. Whatever this Irene is going to cost us, it pales in comparison that has been the Hurricane that is the Obama administration. "The Obama administration, the Hurricane has cost us far more. And Byron York, while I was gone, great story, fabulous story on the source of all this deficit spending under Obama. The $4 trillion that they're spending. Everybody's focused on entitlements and he correctly points out it's not entitlements that have busted the budget here. Entitlements are known, the spending in entitlements. "What's been added to...

this is the typical response all my John Huntsman lovin' , Obama votin' friends have whenever talking up the economy. what say you?

<p>FOR the last three years we have been told repeatedly by government officials that funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to large and teetering banks during the credit crisis was necessary to save the financial system, and beneficial to Main Street.</p>

FOR the last three years we have been told repeatedly by government officials that funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to large and teetering banks during the credit crisis was necessary to save the financial system, and beneficial to Main Street... --snip-- Bloomberg reported that the Fed had provided a stunning $1.2 trillion to large global financial institutions at the peak of its crisis lending in December 2008. --snip-- In 2008, the Royal Bank of Scotland received $84.5 billion, and Dexia, a Belgian lender, borrowed $58.5 billion from the Fed at... --snip-- Mr. Todd also questioned the Fed’s decision to...

<p>Cheney writes that in 2008 he was puzzled about GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign and request a meeting with congressional leaders to discuss the financial crisis at the White House.</p> <p>“Senator McCain added nothing of substance,” Cheney writes about the now-famous meeting. “It was entirely unclear why he’d returned to Washington and why he’d wanted the congressional leadership called together. I left the Cabinet Room when the meeting was over thinking the Republican presidential ticket was in trouble.”</p>

I'm reading a review of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. I have a couple of questions. First, they reference "mark-to-market" accounting standards. That means they wanted to do away with "fair value" (i.e., true value) accounting standards? They wanted to inflate the value of mortgages so as not to destroy their balance sheets? Second, I read the following: "FASB was criticized for politicization of accounting standards." What does that mean? The injection of politics into the process? Thanx

As it turns out, the $700 billion TARP bailout in late 2008 was just an appetizer for Wall Street. Behind the scenes, the Federal Reserve gave out $1.2 trillion in loans to banks around the world, desperately attempting to maintain liquidity in a system that looked headed for collapse, according to Bloomberg News: Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.By 2008, the housing marketÂ’s collapse forced those...

The Federal Reserve extended over $1 trillion to the globe's largest financial firms during 2008's financial crisis, according to new analysis from Bloomberg News. The $1.2 trillion that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pumped into companies to keep financial markets functioning is roughly equivalent to the amount American homeowners owe on delinquent or foreclosed mortgages, according to Bloomberg. The new analysis is based on data released by the Fed following Freedom of Information requests and a lawsuit filed by Bloomberg, The central bank had been reluctant to release the data, arguing that making its lending public would damage the reputation...

Should we be surprised, frightened, disgusted or simply say "we knew it", that in the informal mixer just after Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry spoke at a Politics and Eggs breakfast in Bedford, New Hampshire, an unknown gentlemen approaches a casual Perry like an Ian Flemming character, and proceeds to dead drop the following: "Bank of America... We will help you out"... and silently moves on. At least we know now who is funding what, and whose interests potential future president Perry will be paid to defend.

Bank of America Corp. is cutting 3,500 employees this quarter and working on restructuring plans that will ax several thousand more jobs, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported citing people familiar with the situation. The reports Friday said that the job cuts at the biggest U.S. bank by assets might exceed 10,000 or about 3.5 percent of its current work force. The retrenchments are part of CEO Brian Moynihan's efforts to engineer a recovery at BoA, which was hit hard by the bursting of the housing bubble. Its share price has fallen nearly 50 percent so...

More shades of 2008, as banks put out statements about how everything is going fine. Yesterday The Fed said it had provided $200 million of liquidity to the Swiss National Bank in the form of forex swaps, starting speculation about funding tensions among Swiss banks.

Taxpayers may not realize it, but they just bailed out Bank of America again, this time to the tune of more than a half billion dollars.... The feds have just used Fannie Mae, which is controlled by the U.S. government, to infuse BofA with $500 million and ease one of the bank's biggest headaches.... Another thing needs to become clear: where did Fannie Mae get the money to do BofA the favor of buying these rights? Fannie Mae just asked for another bailout of its own, seeking a new $5.1 billion infusion last week.

The first of many gold price upgrades is here, as Goldman's David Greely finally catches on to what has been all too obvious to anyone with a frontal lobe: "Gold prices hit a new record high last week, closing at $1,663/toz on August 3. Despite this rally, the rise in gold prices has continued to lag the plunge in US real interest rates, with 10-year TIPS yields trading below 30 bp. With our US economics team lowering their outlook for US economic growth, implying US real rates will remain lower for longer, and with sovereign debt issues in both the...

I just got off the phone with a source on Capitol Hill who has spent the past few days trying to convince Republicans to vote for a debt ceiling hike. He told me that the biggest obstacle he faces has been "market complacency." "Frankly, a bit of panic would be very helpful right now," he said. As he explained it, lots of people in Washington, D.C. expected that this would be a week marked by panic in the markets. Stocks would tank. Bonds would get clobbered. The dollar would do something dramatic. And all of this would help convince reluctant...

But sometimes there's less than meets the eye. Generally, banks that repaid CPP funds did so with cash raised from earnings, or by raising new outside capital. In finance and banking you always have to read the fine print. And if you go back to the report, you'll notice that the fine print accompanying the entries for each of the above exits makes reference either to Footnote 49 or Footnote 50. Footnote 49 reads: "Repayment pursuant to Title VII, Section 7001(g) of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 using proceeds received in connection with the institution's participation in...

<p>U.S. taxpayers likely lost $1.3 billion in the government bailout of Chrysler, the Treasury Department announced Thursday.</p>

A year after President Barack Obama signed into law the most extensive financial regulations since the Great Depression, Wall Street so far is putting its political money elsewhere. Employees of Goldman Sachs Group gave Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney $238,250 in the last three months, more than workers at any other company, according to a computer-assisted analysis of Federal Election Commission data. Obama took in $10,113. Four years ago, employees of New York-based Goldman gave $994,795 to Obama and $234,275 to Romney, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group. For both candidates, it was more than...

On Wednesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent a warning on the debt-ceiling hike. “Let’s get on with writing the bill,” she said. “I don’t need to see markets drop 400 points. But Republicans may need to see markets drop 400 points.” Pelosi remembers September 2008, when the House, then controlled by the Democrats, initially voted against the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Stocks plunged 778 points. Only after her caucus felt the visceral terror of an impending depression was Pelosi able to cobble together votes to counter Republican opposition. If the House goes to the wire this time, there will...

Goldman Sachs plans major job cuts in the United States while planning a major hiring spree in Singapore. With profits coming under major pressure in the U.S., Goldman appears to be launching possibly the most aggressive effort among big banks to expand overseas where the business climate is more favorable. A major source of trouble for banks and investment firms is the new regulatory environment. Those regulations, found primarily in the Dodd/Frank financial reform bill sponsored by Senator Chris Dodd and his counterpart in the House, Congressman Barney Frank, have forced banks to hold higher capital reserves and also forced...

Welcome to extreme makeover, the Sen. Orrin Hatch edition. The Utah Republican — fearful that 3,500 locally elected grass-roots, state GOP delegates could boot him from office 10 months from now ­— has spent the past several months recasting his image in a bid for a seventh term. He’s shining a spotlight on his 34-year Senate voting record as a conservative stalwart while minimizing his penchant for bipartisan deal-making. (snip) Cognizant of his precarious position with grass-roots Republicans and tea party activists in a way that Bennett was not, Hatch is determined not to let the same thing happen to...