Free Republic

THE TARGETING PAPER TRAIL BEGINS: Soon as they occupied the WH, Obama and the Chicago con artists (a) took control of the US Census; (b) Obama placed his COS Rahm Emanuel in control of the US Dept of the Treasury (the IRS). THE DOTS CONNECT Obama told voters "Tea Parties were a threat to democracy." His mouthpiece, Valerie Jarrett, said the O Team "would not forget" which Americans did not worship Obama. BACKSTORY WSJ REPORT--On Jan 20, 2009 Timothy Geithner was appointed Obama's Secy of the Treasury. But within three weeks, the obama White House tightened its grip on Treasury....

MSNBC host Chris Matthews criticized President Obama for his mishandling of recent scandals, including the IRS targeting conservative groups.CHRIS MATTHEWS: He does run the IRS. He runs the Treasury Department. He runs the United States government, and he is accountable for it, and this is nonsensical.

While American taxpayers bail out failing companies via the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), behind the scenes the Obama Treasury Department is awarding their top executives with millions of dollars in raises even though Congress passed a law forbidding it. It’s an inconceivable scheme that rewards bad behavior with big bucks from taxpayers who have no say in the matter. In fact, the U.S. Treasury was forced by Congress to create rules against it yet a new federal audit reveals the agency repeatedly violates them to enrich the very people responsible for the companies’ failures (and need for...

Emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that the U.S. Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, was the driving force behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 salaried retirees at the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company. The move, made in 2009 while the Obama administration implemented its auto bailout plan, appears to have been made solely because those retirees were not members of labor unions. .... One email dated Thursday, April 2, 2009 shows PBGC staffer Joseph House discussing a meeting he and his colleagues were anticipating with the entire auto bailout team the following day. House emailed PBGC colleagues Karen...

Complete title: Judicial Watch, Human Events Sue Obama Administration for Records Detailing Bailout Loan to California Solar Manufacturer Heavily in Debt$1.2 Billion in Loan Guarantees to SunPower from Department of Energy Followed Successful Lobbying Campaign by Firm Connected to California Congressman’s Son (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on February 1, 2012, against the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of the Treasury for records regarding a controversial $1.2 billion government loan guarantee from the Obama Department of...

NEW YORK (AP) -- 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 interviewed more than 200 people, including Obama, Geithner and other top officials for "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and The Education of A President,"...

General Electric Co. says it has committed to pump $20 million into ShoreBank, providing the last amount of capital needed to keep the ailing South Side community development lender from failing. Discussions that went into the wee hours last night finally produced an agreement among a who’s who of Wall Street banks and a group of local lenders that will provide about $140 million of private capital to rescue ShoreBank, a person familiar with the matter said. That will enable ShoreBank to tap up to $75 million in bailout funds from the Treasury Department. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. had...

Citigroup Inc. said it is selling a huge chunk of its stock at a steep discount to raise the cash it needs to repay bailout funds and free itself from government support. But the government backed out of selling any of its 34 percent Citi stake, apparently due to the tepid investor response and the weak price garnered by the $20.5 billion equity offering -- described by Citigroup as the largest in history. Citigroup said it is selling 5.4 million common shares at $3.15 apiece, an 8.7 percent discount to yesterday's close. The bank is also selling 35 million tangible...

THE US government has $52 billion stashed away that hasn't yet been spent! Quick, call President Obama's bookkeepers. How'd they miss this? A year ago, that amount would have caused at least a wow, or maybe even a holy cow. And my first sentence above would have deserved the exclamation point I jokingly put at the end of it. But these days, when it costs $787 billion to put a TARP over bad bank assets, an astounding $700 billion just to attempt an economic rescue and $3 billion simply to lure people into new car showrooms, that $52 billion is...

The Treasury Department has agreed to conduct a review of IRS oversight of the community organizing group ACORN and similar organizations, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Thursday. Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, announced that the Treasury Department's inspector general had agreed to an investigation called for by Issa and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. "In response to your request, [the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration] is initiating a review of the IRS's oversight of tax-exempt Section 501(c)(3) organizations and Section...

You would think that by now the very first thing President Obama would do before he nominated someone for office is to have someone check their tax returns. After all, so far his appointees have produced four tax embarrassments: * Tim Geithner, who was picked to be Treasury Secretary (and new boss of the IRS) "forgot" to pay $34,000 in taxes. * Former Senator and "non lobbyist-lobbyist" Tom Daschle was designated to run the Department of Health and Human Services got a private car and driver and didn't know he was supposed to pay $100,000 dollars in taxes on it...

One would think that with all of the criticism of TARP program, Treasury Secretary Geithner would make dammed sure that he would have regular contact with the oversight people, especially when those oversight people were appointed by the Senate. Many of those senators will soon be voting on his requests to take over...well, just about everything. Elizabeth Warren, charged by the senate to keep an eye on the TARP program testified today that the treasury department has not been cooperative in her oversight efforts: "We have sent letters. We have requested that there be someone named so that we can...

As Congress and the Obama Administration consider legislation to limit bonuses at American International Group (AIG: 1.23, -0.36, -22.64%), documents obtained by FOX Business show AIG bonuses and other compensation were reviewed and changed by officials at the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve in November, when the Treasury made its first investment of taxpayer funds -- $40 billion -- in the company. “Have your benefits team made any progress on the ‘soft’ issues, or heard anything from the fed [sic] on the bonus situation?” a Treasury official wrote in an e-mail on Nov. 1 about the transaction. Despite their deliberations...

The economic term for the controversy surrounding the AIG bonuses is "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire." Fox Business channel got its hands on some treasury department emails and discovered that there was a discussion about the AIG Bonuses back in November: Nov. 1, 2008: “Have your benefits team made any progress on the ‘soft’ issues, or heard anything from the fed [sic] on the bonus situation?” a Treasury official wrote in an e-mail about the transaction. Before you jump on the report and say this happened during the Bush administration, remember that the person who worked on the bailout was...

Iran's largest bank blacklisted From correspondents in Washington September 09, 2006 THE US Treasury Department announced overnight that it had blacklisted one of Iran's largest banks, Bank Saderat, from having any links with US-owned banks. The move effectively cuts Iran's state-owned Bank Saderat off from conducting any business linked to the US financial system. The Treasury Department said it blacklisted Saderat because of its "support for terrorism." "Bank Saderat facilitates Iran's transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah and other terrorist organisations each year," said Stuart Levey, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. "We will no longer allow...

President George W. Bush traveled April 5 to Parkersburg, West Virginia to visit the so-called Social Security Trust Fund: a filing cabinet filled with paper. "There is no trust fund — just IOUs," backed by no economic assets whatsoever, Bush noted. Senator Jon Corzine (D., N.J.) called the president's remarks misleading. In a conference call with journalists, Corzine said: "U.S. Treasury securities have the ability to be paid under any circumstances based on the ability of the government to print money." While Corzine's press secretary denies this comment was a concrete proposal, at this writing, the senator proudly highlights this...

Riggs Bank yesterday admitted it was criminally liable for failing to take adequate measures to prevent potential money laundering by former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and officials of Equatorial Guinea. Riggs pleaded guilty to one felony count of failing to file suspicious activity reports and agreed to a fine of $16 million. The fine, if approved by U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina on March 29, will bring to $41 million the total civil and criminal penalties paid by the 160-year-old bank to resolve anti-money-laundering deficiencies in its former embassy and international operations. (snip)

Two Who Made a Difference Paul Craig Roberts Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2003 America lost two tax-cutting heroes last week – former Wall Street Journal editor Robert L. Bartley and former Republican senator from Delaware, William Roth. I knew both men well, having worked with Roth and his staff in creating the Kemp-Roth bill and having served on Bartley's editorial page. Both men did much for America: Roth cut tax rates, gave us the Roth IRA and championed the taxpayer against IRS abuse; Bartley acquainted influential people with an alternative policy to Keynesian demand management, which had mired the economy in...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Investigators are trying to figure out how piles of U.S. currency ended up in Iraq despite economic sanctions against the country since 1990, and whether the greenbacks are in fact genuine. Hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of new $100 bills were recently found in Iraq. The $100 bill is the most counterfeited U.S. note outside the United States. "We are working with the military to authenticate the seized currency," said John Gill, a spokesman for the Secret Service, which handles counterfeiting investigations. If the bills are genuine, experts say there are plenty of ways they could...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 — The F.B.I. has initiated an unusual behind-the-scenes attack on another law enforcement agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, as part of an effort to protect its turf and responsibility for domestic security, law enforcement officials said today. An internal F.B.I. draft full of criticisms of the firearms agency has circulated in the last week among law enforcement officials. Some of those officials say the draft is part of an effort by the bureau to head off a plan to move the firearms operations from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department in a broad...