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In 2006, a majority of voters - angry, disgusted and alarmed with our country's direction under Republican control - swept Democrats to majorities in Congress. They were then lulled into accepting the Party's self-serving rhetoric that if only voters delivered Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate and the presidency in 2008, they would be able to restore sanity and the rule of law to our nation.
Unfortunately, this turned out to be an intentional and cynical lie in the spirit of Lucy's duping the ever gullible Charlie Brown into hoping that just this once she might not laughingly yank the football away at the last second, leaving him flat on his back in the dust (again).
Our Senior Senator has no problem voting against PAYGO and loaning billions to banks "too big to fail," (Hodes and Shea-Porter had a big problem with it, btw) but flies off the handle at the idea of using some of that money to help small businesses. Be sure to watch all the way to the end to hear Bernie Sanders put out Gregg's vapors with a few words:
This isn't the first time in a week that Gregg has lost it. What's up with that?
Do Republicans have any credibility about claiming to limit government?
DICK ARMEY: ... I think Pawlenty is the person standing on the safest possible ground.
What a world we live in. Bankster bailout supporter T-Paw will come to New Hampshire today to cheer on Granite State Republican candidates against Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes, who voted against the bankster bailout.
But Tea Party Puppetmaster-in-Chief Dick Armey says Pawlenty is Mr. Limited Government, so it shall be thus.
This can't be emphasized enough: as Senator, Judd Gregg voted for irresponsible tax cuts for the rich, while approving and funding a war adventure based on lies. He didn't once demand a financial accounting of it, either, no-bid contracts and all.
Now that there is talk of using paid back TARP loans to create jobs for the unemployed, Deficit Concern Troll Gregg springs into action as defender of the US Treasury.
New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said Monday that the law explicitly blocks using the TARP for infrastructure or other nonfinancial industry projects.
"Everybody agreed that this money -- as it came back in -- was going to go back to reducing the deficit and the debt," said Gregg, who was one of the chief negotiators in writing the law.
Using taxpayer money to benefit the rich is okay. For the unemployed, let them eat cake. Just make sure it's not from a fancy bakery.
Last weekend, John "Rip Van" Sununu took his out of touch message on the road and addressed the NH Young Republican's sparsely-attended convention. "Rip Van" gave the small gathering his best revisionist account of George W. Bush's $700 billion TARP bailout-telling the group that the $700 billion TARP bailout was needed to sustain the nation during a "week-long crisis".
Yes, that's right folks, the recession isn't real. It was only a brief 7 day economic slump in October that we needed $700 billion to resolve. Forget out of touch, "Rip Van" Sununu is living in a bubble.
But the absurdity didn't end there: "Rip Van" Sununu went on to argue against President Obama's investments in our state workforce and infrastructure, calling George W. Bush's $700 billion bank bailout a better use of taxpayer money. "Rip Van" Sununu justified the $700 billion TARP bailout- which his son John E. Sununu oversees despite being a direct beneficiary of a bank receiving bail out funds-saying that the TARP funds were different from money allocated for President Obama's recovery package because they provided "loans" and "acquisitions" to banks.
Doesn't "Rip Van" Sununu mean to say that the $700 billion TARP bailout
provided private planes and bonuses to CEOs?
"Now "Rip Van" Sununu is going try and tell us that the economic downturn which has left thousands out of work and forced so many out of their homes isn't real? Clearly, "Rip Van" Sununu is completely out of touch with Granite Staters who continue feel the fallout from George W. Bush's gross mishandling of the economy, "said NHDP Communications Director Victoria Bonney.
"Of course "Rip Van" Sununu thinks we should invest $700 billion dollars into banks; his son received money from a bank that was bailed out. While "Rip Van" Sununu and his son are living the high life, New Hampshire residents are fighting to hold on to their jobs and homes. He is out of touch with the people of New Hampshire and it would seem anyone who has read a newspaper, watched the news, or checked their 401k in the last year."
"Rip Van" Sununu also told the group about his disdain for the Fourth Estate claiming that our country is headed in the wrong direction because the press cannot grasp the reality he's living in.
"Rip Van" said of the media:
"I for one am really disturbed that the press has absolutely no understanding that this President is marching the United States and marching the world down a path of chaos."
President Obama has been in office for 108 days and maintains overwhelming public support. In fact, the UNH Survey Center found that New Hampshire residents believe that the country is headed in the right direction for the first time in four years.
"Deriding the press for reporting the facts is like complaining that faucets dispense water-it's what they do. John Sununu cannot blame the press for his party's failure to gain support with the voters; he is living twenty years in the past and the voters have moved toward the party of progess," said Bonney.
NEW YORK, Feb. 25 PRNewswire-FirstCall -- BNY ConvergEx Group, LLC, a leading provider of global agency brokerage and investment technology solutions, today announced that former United States Senator John Edward Sununu has been appointed to the Board of Managers of ConvergEx Holdings, LLC, the holding company of BNY ConvergEx Group.
...He currently is a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the expenditure of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds and to provide recommendations on regulatory reform.
John Sununu, who serves on the Congressional Oversight Panel monitoring the government's bailout progam, has joined the board of a subsidiary to Bank of New York Mellon -- a firm that, in addition to receiving bailout funds, has been hired by the Treasury Department to administer the program.
The Sprintin' Sununu Board Game, 2nd Edition, Ages Five and Below:
A BNY ConvergEx spokeswoman said Sununu has no connection to the bank.
...(Spokeswoman) Anderson would not reveal what Sununu's compensation would be, but said it is "no different from any other independent board member."
And what's this I see? The Sprintin' Sununu Board Game, 3rd Edition!
And the second* campaign ad against Sununu '10 writes itself, thanks to TPM:
John Sununu, who serves on the Congressional Oversight Panel monitoring the government's bailout progam, has joined the board of a subsidiary to Bank of New York Mellon -- a firm that, in addition to receiving bailout funds, has been hired by the Treasury Department to administer the program.
...According to its press release, the [BNY ConvergEx Group] is an affiliate of Bank of New York Mellon (BONY). Founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1784, BONY received $3 billion in TARP funds back in October -- less than some Wall Street firms, but not chump change.
Just as significantly, it was also picked to be the master custodian for the bailout funds. According to reports, that means it's charged with handling accounting and record-keeping for the program, and even with tracking limits on executive pay at banks that got TARP money.
When I posted Sununu's entry onto the board of BNY ConvergEx, elwood presciently noted, "Isn't this a pretty clear conflict of interest for someone on the TARP Oversight Board?," to which I joked that apparently BNY ConvergEx doesn't think so, since they bragged about his TARP oversight role in the very press release. So while I had it on my to-do list this weekend to check out, I figured it would lead to nothing because of that. What a fool am I.
Today saw the announcement of the steps that the Department of the Treasury has planned for addressing the crisis in the financial sector. While Secretary Geithner's outline remains a work in progress, it does seem obvious that the Obama Administration has learned some lessons from previous TARP efforts. That they, and the general public, has a clear view of the problems of TARP is a credit to the Democratic Congress that insisted that they have their own body in place to oversee the actions of the Office of Financial Stability.
Great job, John E. No longer in power and still finding ways to stop change. This time, he's decided to turn the TARP oversight report into a partisan exercise:
A new report by a congressionally created oversight panel argues that deregulation over the last 25 years set the stage for current economic meltdown and offers myriad recommendations for how to toughen the regulatory system.
But the panel's two Republican members - former New Hampshire Sen. John Sununu and Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling - refused to sign the majority report. Instead, they issued an alternative set of fixes.
Surprise, surprise. John E.'s alternative involves less regulation.
Elizabeth Warren, head of the TARP oversight board, is characteristically succinct:
"We tried letting the private sector run the game and that's how we got into this mess," she said earlier in conference call, making the case for heightened regulation.
Now, how could a Phil Gramm admiring, flat-taxophilic, deregulator type get a seat on a panel overseeing how billions of your taxpayer dollars are being given out to bank failures?
VP Biden stated this weekend that the Stimulus Bill projected creating "up to" 4M jobs. At a cost of nearly $1T, that would mean we'd be spending nearly $250K per $35K (1-year) job created, or 250K per $70K (2-year) job.
By contrast, if the funds were spent strictly on creating jobs, it would create 25M jobs!
This is another substantially "pork-laden, pet-project" bill, that will have little real effect on consumer confidence or turn around the looming Depression.
Swift, decisive government intervention in the financial and middle class sectors might have had a chance of averting disaster. But the TARP initiative was never capable of achieving its stated objective, now or ever, and neither is the pending Stimulus Bill.
We are about to walk over the ledge and into the abyss while the hyenas feed.
Good for them. The vote was symbolic only, because the Senate's vote not to block the $350 billion allows the Administration to take the money, but I'm glad to see that Carol and Paul stuck to their guns on giving more free money to banks, no strings attached. From Rep. Hodes (email) release on it:
"Without strict accountability, oversight and transparency attached to releasing the funds, I cannot support spending another $350 billion of taxpayers' money," Congressman Paul Hodes said. "After sending billions of New Hampshire taxpayer dollars to Wall Street without knowing how the money was spent, we should not send billions more without the proper accountability and oversight."
This leaves us in the interesting situation of all three of our Democratic Congressional delegation looking for more accountability (thank you, Jeanne Shaheen), while GOP Judd is happy to give away more of your money to banks who have a track record at this point of spending BILLIONS of it on executive bonuses (more here from Michael Marsh on that).
Well, the money's gotta go somewhere at the banks, because it sure ain't going anywhere to help homeowners keep their homes.
This whole situation is so infuriating it has me spitting nails. The country's falling apart economically, no one's job is safe, and we're shoveling money as fast as we can down the maws of the same people that got us into this situation to begin with, and who have shown no interest thus far in doing anything differently. And in the meantime hard working people who play by the rules are losing their means to a living and homes and their health care at record paces.
Infuriating. Absolutely infuriating.
And where o where in this recovery package is there anything about what economic academic Elizabeth Warren has been playing Cassandra about for so long? Where is the attention to the structural monthly payments on mortgages and car loans and student loans and credit card debt that is absolutely killing the middle class right now? There was nada on that in the summary that came out on the package.
Bridges and broadband are nice, and needed. But forcing the banks to allow re-fi at lower rates would help millions stay afloat, and ideally so, before they go under. It's time for government to flex some muscle.
We have GOT to get control of the $700 billion TARP financial "bailout". The financial industry is abusing the taxpayers, and the current regulatory system is not stopping them. We need to understand that the guys running our nation's big financial companies are by-and-large simply not to be trusted. They are not interested in helping our country. Hell, they are not particularly interested in helping their own shareholders. They are concerned with their own interests, pure and simple. We need to treat these folks as the miscreants they are. Don't trust them to do the right thing. They won't. Don't expect them to act honestly and with integrity. It is foreign to their nature. Financial regulators should accept these simple facts and redesign our regulatory system accordingly.
A case in point: Merrill Lynch's CEO John Thain. Merrill just got absorbed by the Bank of America, in large part through the efforts of you and I, who gave B of A $20 billion to make this happen. Merrill needed the money after they announced an "unanticipated" $15 billion losses in the 4th quarter, and this was going to kill the deal. Did I mention that "we" also agreed to share in any losses that Bank of America has on $118 billion in Merrill debt?
So what does this have to do with John Thain? He has been the CEO of Merrill for about one year, during which time the company lost $30 billion and was saved from well-deserved bankruptcy only because the Feds arranged the company's takeover at our expense. That didn't stop Mr. Thain from spending $1.2 million redecorating his office. Nor did it stop him from secretly accelerating an end-of-year bonus to a few senior executives, including himself. His share of the loot is $15 million. For losing $30 billion. Who knows how big a bonus he would have arranged for himself if he made a profit- is there enough money in the world? Oh, and he resigned from his company today, as soon as the bonus check cleared the bank.
Mr. Thain is only the most recent example of self-dealing and double-dealing in the executive suites of our financial sector. These people have literally made hundreds of millions while losing hundreds of billions. They have misled their shareholders and debtors. They have led this country into its worst economic crisis in our lifetime. And they walk off with millions while we get stuck with the bill.
President Obama and Congress need to change the rules before another dollar is given to these companies.
what TARP Oversight Panel member John E. Sununu thinks it means:
"The American people have a right to know how their taxpayer dollars are being used, and so far, they have not gotten the transparency and accountability they deserve," Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Oversight Panel, said in a recent press release.
Treasury failed to answer 23 questions and other responses were wishy-washy, according to a grid of all the questions published in the panel's second report on Jan. 9.
...However, congressional panel member Senator John Sununu, R-N.H., disagrees with the panel's request for more detailed information. Sununu believes that the banks are victims of the crisis.
"There are several questions posed in the Panel's Dec. 10 report that are enormously difficult, if not impossible, to answer with any certainty," Sununu wrote in an attachment to the report. "Moreover, there are a few that are best left unanswered."
Seriously? Read those two bottom grafs again, and thank your lucky stars this man is no longer representing us.
In breaking with the rest of the freshman class [on releasing the second half of the TARP money with no strings attached], Shaheen has signaled that she may be positioning herself as a centrist Democrat and be willing to break with her party on key political issues.
Memo to the Politico: Just because Senate and House Republicans gave Bush everything he ever wanted, no questions asked, didn't make them less centrist. It just made it crystal clear that their party fealty was more important to them than country or the separation of powers.
It would be "centrist" to go along to get along with a new president. Kudos to Senator Shaheen for wanting more accountability than "trust me".
This is probably the most interesting tea-leaf moment I've seen since the election. On two counts.
Jeanne Shaheen, criticized as candidate in the fall for being against the bailout for political purposes, today as senator voted against releasing the second half of the TARP money.
Judd Gregg, lavished with praise in the fall for his role in the crafting bailout, but seeing the execution, transparency, and accountability of it crumble all around him, voted in favor of releasing the second half of the TARP money.
Both voted this way despite President-Elect Obama's support for releasing the funds.
Remember when Judd Gregg went to the Wall St. Journal Op-Ed pages and falsely claimed that the Bush years brought us the bestest tax revenues evah? When in reality the growth in revenues was zero percent?
Turns out that not the only place in the WSJ pages our Senior Senator had trouble with teh math. First, Gregg in the WSJ:
The TARP, for all its warts, has involved using tax dollars to invest in assets that will have a return to the taxpayer. In fact, the estimate to-date is that the TARP has actually had a gain of about $8 billion, while recapitalizing the financial system. With this type of stimulus, there will be little, if any, long-term increase in the debt.
Did that seem a little magical to you too? Well, you're not alone. The AP tracked down the truth:
"It's laughable - I can't imagine anyone takes that seriously," said Ritholtz, who is chief executive officer and director of equity research for the investment firm Fusion IQ. "You can't take one slice of what the government did out of the trillions invested and say, 'Look, we're up billions of dollars!'"
To say the Treasury has made money, he said, "you have to say all the other spending came back," including guarantees on assets from the now-defunct investment bank Bear Stearns and insurance giant American International Group Inc.
Even the Treasury - even the Treasury - won't stand by Judd's Funny Numbers:
"It's not our estimate," said Treasury spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin in an e-mail response to questions. "I'm not sure what they're basing it on."
It appears from the fact-checking piece that Gregg relied on an accountant who has subsequently walked away from his own research, saying "It was a horrible project," ... "I'm sorry I did it. It was very difficult to do."
But read the whole piece, especially the final graf.
"Fourthly, we address the issue of oversight. We create massive transparency so that everybody's going to know what's happening here." - Judd Gregg
23 December:
In a letter sent Tuesday to Paulson, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she joined those Americans who were "astonished and outraged" that banks were not explaining how the money was being spent.
"This lack of transparency and accountability is deeply troubling," Collins wrote. "The current lack of reporting requirements is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue." (h/t BarbinMD]
I wrote earlier that if Senator Gregg is running for re-election (I personally doubt it), he's going to have to be More Susan Collins and Less John E. in order to have any shot at it.
But it looks like the Juddy Collins Show might be hitting a major snag, or rather, a TARP.
From Carol Shea-Porter's letter of Congressional pushback to the banks on this insult to our tax dollars:
As Members of Congress acutely concerned with taxpayer protection, we were shocked to learn that companies currently participating in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) are able to skirt executive compensation limits included in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) using a loophole inserted into the legislation by the Bush administration late in bill negotiations, as detailed in the 12/15/2008 Washington Post.
Is there any part of the American fabric that hasn't been ripped over these last eight years by Teh Decider and his Enablers?
Judd Gregg, selling TARP on 1 October (transcription, and any errors, mine):
In addition we wanted to make sure no one was going to game the system, nobody's going to make a lot of money on this at the expense of the taxpayer, so we have language in here that limits, and eliminates in some instances, any sort of golden parachute, limits corporate salaries of the major - of the heads of the CEOs of these major companies that may take advantage of this...
AP, 21 December:
Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.
...Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.
Back to Senator Gregg:
Fourthly, we address the issue of oversight. We create massive transparency so that everybody's going to know what's happening here.
AP, 22 December:
after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.
..."If the appropriate restrictions were put on the money to begin with, if the appropriate transparency was in place, then we wouldn't be in a position where you're trying to call every recipient and get the basic information that should already be in public documents," [Elizabeth Warren] said.
"These funds were not authorized by Congress for non-financial companies in distress, but were to be used to restore liquidity and stability in the overall financial system of the country and to help prevent fundamental systemic risks in the global marketplace," says Sen. Gregg.
...But now that the Administration has acted on its own, it is critical that Congress re-double its oversight efforts to help protect the taxpayer who is being called to bail out companies, their investors, and labor unions from their own mistakes," Gregg says.
There's really no reason to listen to him. He fed the banks a whole lot of our money, no strings attached, and then bailed himself out.
Him getting the vapors because a fraction of that coin is going to companies with union workers is so transparent it's laughable.
