Free Republic

Jack Lew, who has been nominated as the next treasury secretary, oversaw up as many as a hundred Cayman Island investments when he worked at Citi Bank as chief operating officer of the alternative investment services unit, SEC disclosures reveal. It has previously been reported that Lew himself had been invested in a fund that was based in the Cayman Islands. "To meet your complex hedge fund, fund of hedge funds and private equity fund needs, Citi is your single provider with market-leading experience, global reachand state-of-the-art technology. Our unmatched worldwide presence, economies of scale and comprehensive portfolio of solutions...

A government watchdog says U.S. taxpayers stand to lose $27 billion from the 2008 financial bailout, up from an estimate of $22 billion made in the fall. A report issued Wednesday by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program says the estimate is higher because of increased losses for the Treasury Department on sales of shares in bailed-out companies. Ally Financial, the former financial arm for General Motors, still owes $14.6 billion of the $17.2 billion in aid it received. The report says taxpayers can expect to lose $5.5 billion on that investment because of the company's...

WASHINGTON - President Obama's decision to name Jacob Lew, his chief of staff and former budget director, to be his Treasury secretary sent a depressing signal that the economy and jobs won't be his highest priority in a second term. With unemployment remaining stubbornly high in the fifth year of his presidency, the job of Treasury secretary cries out for a hard- driving, corporate chief executive with strong economic credentials. Instead, Obama intends to pick Lew who has reigned over his big spending budgets (and five consecutive trillion dollar deficits), and more recently has run the West Wing operation as...

A trend has taken shape in Washington, and it has put our country on a devastating path towards potential fiscal ruin. The trend is characterized by an unsustainable penchant for spending money we don’t have. It became crystal clear in last year’s debt ceiling negotiations and was further highlighted by the recent debate surrounding the fiscal cliff; our country is broke, yet our government continues to spend more, risk more and accumulate more debt. Entitlements are often blamed for the vast majority of our spending issues, but our tendency to overspend is not restricted to just these. Parallels exist...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who reportedly will leave office at the end of this month, is already responsible for spending and borrowing more money than any of his predecessors as secretary of the Treasury. The U.S. Senate confirmed Geithner on Jan. 26, 2009. Between February 2009, the first full month of Geithner’s tenure, and the end of November 2012, the last full month for which federal spending records are available, the U.S. Treasury dispensed approximately $13.582319 trillion. …

The U.S. Treasury Department has added three individuals with alleged ties to the crime group Brothers' Circle to a blacklist which bans American citizens and companies from conducting any business with them according to a press release: "today's action targets Zakhariy Kalashov for acting for or on behalf of, or providing material support to, the Brothers' Circle, as well as Almanbet Anapiyaev and Adilet Kasenov, for acting for or on behalf of, or providing material support to, Kamychbek Kolbayev." The Treasury Department previously placed Kolbayev on its black list. According to the press release the Brothers' Circle "is a criminal...

Is there any reason for today's Americans to care about what happens to tomorrow's Americans? After all, what have tomorrow's Americans done for today's Americans? Moreover, since tomorrow's Americans don't vote, we can dump on them with impunity. That's a vision that describes the actual behavior of today's Americans. It would be seen as selfish, callous and ruthless only if it were actually articulated. Let's look at it. Businesses, as well as most nonprofit enterprises, by law are required to produce financial statements that include all of their present and expected future liabilities. On top of that, they are required...

The U.S. is following Canada's footsteps regarding the production of pennies and nickels. According to U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Giethner, our U.S. Mint intends to remove the penny and nickel coins from circulation beginning early in January 2013.

Investigating the IRS: Why it gives billions to illegal immigrants INDIANAPOLIS - Why are many illegal immigrants getting a bigger tax refund than you? Blame it on the IRS and a massive tax loophole that's now being exposed by Eyewitness News. 13 Investigates has found the IRS is giving away your tax dollars to illegal workers and people who don't even live in the United States - and the problem is costing billions! We want you to see exactly where your money is going and why the IRS is allowing it to happen. From the homes of illegal workers in...

Tim Geithner, one of President Barack Obama’s closest economic advisers, has no intention on staying on as Treasury secretary if Obama wins a second term. Geithner, who was one of the chief architects of the government’s response to the financial crisis, told Bloomberg Television he’s “pretty confident” Obama won’t ask him to stay on. “I’m confident he’ll be president. But I’m also confident he’s going to have the privilege of having another secretary of the Treasury,” Geithner said. The comments, which were confirmed by the Treasury Department, mean a second four-year term in the White House would be led by...

A new book offering an insider's account of the White House's response to the financial crisis says that U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ignored an order from President Barack Obama calling for reconstruction of major banks. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind, the incident is just one of several in which Obama struggled with a divided group of advisers, some of whom he didn't initially consider for their high-profile roles. Suskind states that Obama accepts the blame for mismanagement in his administration while noting that restructuring the financial system was complicated and could have resulted in deeper financial harm....

As was pointed out yesterday, courtesy of a blistering $80 billion cash burn in the first half of July, Tim Geithner managed to reduce Treasury cash balances from $130 billion to $39 billion. Granted this number will increase next week after this week's $66 billion in Treasury auctions settle, only to drop once again when another batch of Bills mature and are not rolled. So in response to various inquiries we present the 29 public companies that hold more cash than the US Treasury does as of July 13 (Geithner is tied with Google at $39 billion). Not very surprising,...

A quick look at today's just released total debt to the penny from the Treasury may crimp the artificial smile of even such die hard administration sycophants as Moodys. Why: because the total debt, as we predicted when we observed last week's 30 Year auction, is now at $14,305,336,580,992.11. This is a problem because as anyone who rails against the broken US fiscal apparatus should be able to tell you, the debt ceiling is $14.294 trillion. In other words we have now officially breached the debt ceiling by $11 billion. So why has the US not filed a notice of...

And for the most unsurprising news of the day, Reuters reports that the White House has admitted it knew about the S&P rating action on Friday. Which means that all the key bond buyers (or sellers are the case may be, Pimco), knew at roughly the same time what the key market catalyst on Monday would be (we can't wait to get a declassified glimpse of Larry Meyer's phone log over the weekend one day in the future). Which also means that today's action was a strawman in which the big boys merely waited for an opportunity to buy bonds...

Grotesque, meet tragicomic. In today's POMO the biggest CUSIP monetized was QB9, of which the Fed purchased $5.99 billion (of a total $8.03 billion). And here's the kicker: when we commented on last week's 7 Year auction we once again were rather prophetic: "Altogether a weak auction but it's not like the PDs would let it fail especially not with QB9 becoming the next "flip back to the Fed" bond for the PD community." And tadaa: today, the Fed bought back 50% (!) of the Primary Dealer take down ($12.115 billion) of last Wednesday's (yes that would be the QB9)...

Even after wake-up calls emanating from last year’s riots and near collapse in Greece and the November 2010 U.S. election results, Obama and much of Washington and the media elite remain in denial about the urgency of entitlement reform and the need for radical reduction in government spending. A collapse in the dollar and the global U.S. Treasury debt market is now a very real risk, requiring proactive leadership.

The Fed is trying another round of QE, even though the first instalment of $1.7 trillion did not work to actually repair the economy. We spent another $2 trillion in TARP and other stimulus that was, also, supposed to fix the economy. It’s a grand total of $3.7 trillion just in the last two years. (Some say it’s more than $12 trillion spent or committed.) All this money printing did inflate stock prices. It also helped out the big banks. It worked so well they are paying a record $144 billion in bonuses this year. What did the man on...

Note: The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-delegation-bethlehem-attend-palestine-investment-conference Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 01, 2010 Presidential Delegation to Bethlehem to Attend the Palestine Investment Conference President Barack Obama today announced the designation of a Presidential Delegation to Bethlehem to attend the Palestine Investment Conference from June 2-4, 2010. The Honorable George Mitchell, Special Envoy for Middle East Peace will lead the delegation. Members of the Presidential Delegation: The Honorable Neal Wolin, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Mr. Daniel Rubinstein, American Consul General in Jerusalem Mr....

TUESDAY, MAY 04, 2010 "U.S. Treasury Site Compromise Linked to the NetworkSolutions Mass WordPress Blogs Compromise" SNIPPET: "UPDATED: Saturday, May 08, 2010: 5 new domains have been introduced by the same gang, once again parked at 217.23.14.14, AS49981, WorldStream."

Hackers planted code into three sites belonging to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.As a consumer and a taxpayer, it's assumed that government websites are the most secure in the nation. After all, if hackers can gain access and plant malware for viewers to download , then the nation really isn't that all secure on the cyber frontier, right? Unfortunately, that's apparently what has happened to three websites belonging to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. How safe and secure do you feel now? Roger Thompson of AVG discovered the infestation on Monday. The urls involved include bep.gov (Bureau of...

The verdict is in: China is still the top holder of U.S. government debt, the Treasury said in a report on Friday. The report showed that as of December, China held $894.8 billion in U.S. securities. The figure is consistent with a preliminary report released in late February. Friday's final version of that report puts to rest a question about whether Japan had surpassed China as the top holder of U.S. debt in December. A report released by the government in mid-February had suggested that China had lost its top spot—one it had gained in 2008. But then, later that...

More news is surfacing concerning the story reported yesterday on the under-the-table plans for the U.S. Treasury to seize retirement funds and other citizen assets in order to minimize the impact of the coming economic meltdown. The IRS has been purchasing shotguns for its tax collection activities. A photo of the type of shotgun they are buying indicates that it is the short-barreled variety. Only 60 of these shotguns will be purchased. But the story concerning the IRS and firearms highlights the fact that the agency has a massive arsenal at the tip of its hands, given that it deploys...

As the Obama administration assures Americans that 'there are signs of hope' in the economy, the facts say the opposite. The forecast is so dire, in fact, that the retirement funds and financial assets of all Americans are vulnerable to government seizure. Economists and market analysts who predicted the last meltdown are joining in a united chorus to warn that yet another is on the way for 2010, and this one will be much worse than the last. In an alarming piece at WRSA the assertion is made by several respected authorities on economics that the U.S. Treasury Department will...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Not sure what to give Uncle Sam this Christmas? How about a nice, fat check to help whittle away at the $7.6 trillion national debt? The U.S. Treasury Department accepts gifts, payable to the Bureau of the Public Debt. Just mail them to the attention of Department G, Post Office Box 2188, Parkersburg, West Virginia, 26106-2188. Make a note in the memo section that it is a gift to reduce the debt held by the public. Yes, really. It's all on the Treasury's website, at the end of the list of frequently asked questions. Which raises a...

Bloomberg: Link Only

Sunday, August 2, 2009 Executive Summary The Federal Reserve and the federal government are attempting to "plug the gap" caused by a slowdown of private credit/debt creation. Non-US demand for the dollar must remain high, or the dollar will fall. Demand for US assets is in negative territory for 2009 The TIC report and Federal Reserve Custody Account are reviewed and compared The Federal Reserve has effectively been monetizing US government debt by cleverly enabling foreign central banks to swap their Agency debt for Treasury debt. The shell game that the Fed is currently playing obscures the fact that money...

On the heels of the Obama administration's revised deficit numbers which show a projected 9-trillion-dollar deficit rather than 7 trillion as originally predicted, the Feds today rolled out some more 'revised' figures that should send the warning flags waving frantically.

From Karl Denninger at the Market Ticker: *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $27 BILLION IN 52-WEEK BILLS *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $42 BILLION IN TWO-YEAR NOTES *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $31 BILLION IN THREE-MONTH BILLS *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $28 BILLION IN SEVEN-YEAR NOTES *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $30 BILLION IN SIX-MONTH BILLS *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $39 BILLION IN FIVE-YEAR NOTES

It's been a busy week for economic activity and I, for one, believe that we are no less clear on the direction of the economy than we were before everything was revealed. The stress tests told us little. More than half the banks still need capital and it's a grand total of $75 billion more. Some are saying this is good because it's not a very large amount and most should be able to raise it in the private market. I don't see how openly announcing a bank is in desperate need of billions would make it easy for that...

Early tax filers scramble for refunds; most will pay down debt. BY JENNIFER WATERS CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Cynthia Jeanguenat, a professional tax preparer in Virginia Beach, Va., said she was inundated with clients' tax forms in the second week of February. What jumped out, however, was the large number of the usual clients who had filed earlier than in years past. "People are creatures of habit and tend to come in at the same time every year," said Jeanguenat, who is an enrolled agent at Horizons Unlimited. "But some of the folks who already are in I don't normally see...

Exhibit 10.1 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY 1500 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, NW WASHINGTON, D.C. 20220 Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:      The company set forth on the signature page hereto (the “Company”) intends to issue in a private placement the number of shares of a series of its preferred stock set forth on Schedule A hereto (the “Preferred Shares”) and a warrant to purchase the number of shares of its common stock set forth on Schedule A hereto (the “Warrant” and, together with the Preferred Shares, the “Purchased Securities”) and the United States Department of the Treasury (the “Investor”) intends to purchase from the...

BY DAVID M. DICKSON The United States will "look like a banana republic" unless it gains control over its budget deficit and federal debt, economist Allen Sinai warned Congress on Thursday. "The deficit and debt prospects under almost any scenario are daunting," Mr. Sinai, chief global economist for Decision Economics Inc., told the Senate Budget Committee. "This territory is uncharted, with no real historical analogue to this kind of financial situation for a major global economic power." Asked by committee Chairman Kent Conrad, North Dakota Democrat, whether the U.S. government's creditworthiness is at risk, Mr. Sinai replied, "Unequivocally yes." ....

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Treasury Department has given itself free rein in deciding the rescues of companies in the finance and auto sectors, according to two Treasury statements published this week. The Treasury on Friday released guidelines for its Targeted Investment Program (TIP), part of emergency legislation enacted in early October to ease a credit crunch from the worst global financial meltdown since the Great Depression. In the statement, the Treasury outlined the principles of the program under which it rescued ailing banking giant Citigroup on November 23. Under TIP, the Treasury said it would determine the eligibility of...

Doing the kind of investigative reporting we should expect from the major media, a financial research and consulting firm has released a major analysis of the “credit crisis” that concludes that the claims made by Treasury Department Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to justify a socialist takeover of the financial industry were demonstrably false. The analysis, Flawed Assumptions about the Credit Crisis: A Critical Examination of US Policymakers,concludes that the result of the unjustified massive federal intervention in the economy could be similar to the economic crisis in the Weimar Republic of 1922, where disastrous hyperinflation...

A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks. “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report. The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique...

If “cash is king,” then Middle East coffers are irresistibly enticing. During a recent tour of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt applauded the “growing role” of Arab banks in the U.S. economy. Treasury is seeking buyers for its newly acquired bailout assets because more than $1 trillion in cash is urgently needed to rescue the largest U.S. banks. However, cash from the Arabian Gulf comes with a vital string attached: Islamic banking, erroneously viewed as an ancient practice. In fact, Islamic banking is a newly invented institution: “Neither classical nor medieval Islamic civilization featured...

In "Uncle Shariah" in the Washington Times, December 16, Frank Gaffney details why AIG's nationalization is so worrisome: The insurance giant AIG has lately become the poster child for corporate risk-taking, mismanagement and greed. Its unimaginably large losses, rooted in insurance it extended to financial companies engaged in subprime mortgage-backed transactions, have destroyed both AIG's corporate reputation and balance sheet. Indeed, but for the fact that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson - who during his days running Goldman Sachs had extensive ties to AIG - deemed the insurance firm "too large to fail," the company would surely have gone under by...

Over the next year, the U.S. government will need to borrow somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 trillion, the most ever by far. Estimates go as high as $2 trillion, depending on how quickly the economy cools and how fast tax revenues fall. The simple question most of America has not asked is this: Where is the money going to come from? The federal government already knows the answer to that question, and it has implications Americans are not ready for but will soon be faced with. America is going cap in hand to Middle East oil exporters. What government...

AugustReview.com [Editor's note: members of the Trilateral Commission and companies with Commission representation appear in bold type.] Since 1973, this writer has made inquiry as to the location and ownership of the vast stores of monetary gold (400 oz., .999 pure bars) in the world. There has not been a formal audit on Fort Knox, for instance, since the Eisenhower administration. Official statistics on gold holdings are often contradictory. Getting plain answers from any Central Bank in the world, including the Fed, is virtually impossible. This paper points out a pattern of manipulation that has been clearly observed by many...

The head of a new congressional panel set up to monitor the gigantic U.S. government bailout says the government still does not seem to have a coherent strategy for easing the financial crisis, despite the billions it has already spent in that effort. Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the oversight panel, said in an interview Monday that the government instead seemed to be lurching from one tactic to the next without clarifying how each step fits into an overall plan.

A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts. Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily IZVESTIA published on Monday: "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only...

Thousands of Icelanders took to the street in violent protests in Rekjavik, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and central bank governor David Oddsson in the wake of the country's complete financial collapse. REYKJAVIK - Thousands of Icelanders demonstrated in Reykjavik on Saturday demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and Central Bank Governor David Oddsson for failing to stop a financial meltdown in the country. It was the latest in a series of protests in the capital since the financial meltdown that crippled the island's economy. Hordur Torfason, a well-known troubadour in Iceland and the main...

Our Readers Who Comment are up in arms this morning about the news that the government will protect Citigroup against potential losses on a $306 billion pool of troubled assets. Those readers have hated bailouts from the moment they were first proposed, and that anger has not diminished in the weeks since. They complain that huge banking companies who stiff them with astronomical interest charges for being a day or two late on their credit cards are getting help, but they're not. They wonder why government seems less willing to assist the auto industry and its threatened workers than it...

Washington, DC — The U.S. government is committed to supporting financial market stability, which is a prerequisite to restoring vigorous economic growth. In support of this commitment, the U.S. government on Sunday entered into an agreement with Citigroup to provide a package of guarantees, liquidity access and capital. As part of the agreement, Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will provide protection against the possibility of unusually large losses on an asset pool of approximately $306 billion of loans and securities backed by residential and commercial real estate and other such assets, which will remain on Citigroup's balance sheet....

The federal government agreed Sunday to take unprecedented steps to stabilize Citigroup Inc. by moving to guarantee close to $300 billion in troubled assets weighing on the bank's books, according to people familiar with details of the plan. Treasury has agreed to inject an additional $20 billion in capital into Citigroup under terms of the deal hashed out between the bank, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Treasury officials will charge a higher interest rate for the capital injection -- 8% for the first few years -- than it has charged to dozens of...

Shariah-compliant banking, sometimes called Islamic banking, is growing in popularity in the Western and Islamic worlds. But critics say American interest in the system at a time of economic crisis is opening the door to increased Islamic influence in the American banking system. Worse yet, some fear the banks may be helping to finance international terrorism. In Shariah-compliant banking, lenders may not charge interest and investors cannot make money from forbidden industries like gambling, alcohol, pork and pornography. Selling debt, devising derivatives and short selling are also prohibited, and investments must be closely tied to actual assets. In the U.S.,...

Hedge fund managers, who rank among some of the world's shrewdest dealmakers, told Congress the U.S. government's bank capital injection program did not have enough strings attached. "The current terms are overly generous to recipients," said John Paulson, president of hedge fund Paulson & Co. He was among five hedge fund managers questioned on Thursday by the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's management of a $700 billion bailout program to unfreeze credit markets through taxpayer investments in financial firms. John Paulson -- whose attack on the plan was dubbed "Paulson versus Paulson" by...

In a stunning turnabout, the Bush administration Wednesday abandoned the original centerpiece of its $700 billion effort to rescue the financial system and said it will not use the money to purchase troubled bank assets. “Our assessment at this time is that this (the purchase of toxic assets) is not the most effective way to use funds,” Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told a news conference. Paulson said the administration will continue to use $250 billion of the program to purchase stock in banks as a way to bolster their balance sheets and encourage them to resume more normal lending. [snip]...

When the U.S. government said it would spend $700 billion to rescue the American financial industry, it seemed to be an ocean of money. But after one of the biggest lobbying free-for-alls in memory, it suddenly looks like a dwindling pool. Many new supplicants are lining up for an infusion of capital as billions of dollars are channeled to other beneficiaries like the American International Group, and possibly soon American Express. Of the initial $350 billion that Congress freed up, out of the $700 billion in bailout money contained in the law that passed last month, the Treasury Department has...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former American International Group Inc (AIG.N) Chief Executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg said on Tuesday the U.S. government support for the giant insurer will have to continue until the hobbled company is back on its feet.