It is time to string up a few of these guys Brighton. But what politician, will dare step outside their columns of Right & Left......
Someone with a Center based spinal column and a strong backbone who is not owned by the financial institutions of America. This person is certainly not the teflon exoskeleton slim eaters in Washington. It needs to be a complete outsider, a real leader, someone fresh and respectable.
We are quickly loosing our representative government by and for the people. This is a very, very sad chapter in American history. Two years late as usual, the American people will rise up in a bipartisan ground swell and demand justice.....
D'man
--- In MediaValue@yahoogro
>
> PAULSON'S '07 TRUE CONFESSIONS NEED CLOSER LOOK
> By JOHN CRUDELE
> <a
> href="http://ad.doublecli
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> --
> HANK Paulson must have been feeling a little guilty on Aug. 21, 2007,
> when he made a startling and unprompted confession on live television.
>
> Speaking with Larry Kudlow, CNBC's clueless anchor, then-Treasury
> Secretary Paulson blurted out: "I think it's my job to talk regularly to
> market participants, but also talk regularly to key regulators and make
> sure that we are seeing the same issues, the same problems and working
> toward the same solutions."
>
> On the surface Paulson was simply defending the way he was doing his
> job. The financial markets were just starting to unravel and the former
> chairman of Goldman Sachs, at that time leading President Bush's
> economic team, wanted to assure us that he had things under control.
>
> OK on that level.
>
> But Paulson's statement was a legal humdinger that should have caused
> investors to go nuts, Congress to rise up and demand answers and
> journalists to, at the very least, do their jobs.
>
> I've brought all of this up in the past.
>
> But since the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was on
> a fishing expedition last week with regard to Paulson's behavior during
> the Bank of America acquisition of Merrill Lynch, I figure it's
> appropriate to rehash this story. The next time Congress goes fishing
> for Paulson, the least it can do is put its hooks in the right pond.
>
> By the way, I sent a copy of this material to the committee yesterday in
> case it really wants to understand what Paulson was up to and not just
> showcase its own ability to ask nasty questions that go nowhere.
>
> As anyone with any sense of insider trading rules would know, it is not
> the role of the Treasury Secretary to speak with his friends on Wall
> Street -- whom he euphemistically liked to call "market participants.
>
> And this situation isn't any more ethical if Paulson pretends that it is
> a part of a coordinated effort with regulators. In fact, meeting
> regularly with "key regulators" makes Paulson's contacts with "market
> participants" on Wall Street even more questionable. Goldman Sachs, of
> course, has been out-earning everyone else on Wall Street in recent
> years. It first claimed to have guessed right on the mortgage meltdown.
> And last year, during the only rough spot the company experienced, the
> government permitted Goldman to quickly become a bank holding company so
> it could partake of Washington's fiscal giveaway.
>
> And when Washington was bailing out AIG, the insurance giant, Lloyd
> Blankfein -- Goldman's chairman and Paulson's former colleague -- was
> the only "market participant" who was reportedly invited to discussions.
> Blankfein's firm is said to have done a huge amount of business with
> AIG, although Goldman claimed it had no significant exposure to the
> insurance company's problems.
>
> Just this past week Goldman reported a huge rise in quarterly profits --
> raising all sorts of questions in the press about the firm's flawless
> trading in the financial markets with money supplied by Washington.
>
> I'm not going to get into all of that. Nor am I going to mention how so
> many Goldman executives have become influential public servants that the
> company is now referred to, not so lovingly, as Government Sachs.
>
> Instead, let's again go back nearly two years to Thursday, Aug. 16,
> 2007. That's the day before the Federal Reserve shocked Wall Street with
> the first of many cuts in interest rates. It was also a week before
> Paulson freely admitted on CNBC that he was in regular contact with
> people on Wall Street.
>
> On Aug. 16, Paulson had a lunch with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke,
> according to Benanke's schedule, which was obtained by a Wharton
> professor under the government's Freedom of Information Act. It would be
> reasonable to believe -- although it cannot be proven without questions
> under oath -- that Bernanke at that meeting somehow conveyed his growing
> amenability to lowering interest rates.
>
> After all, what else could Bernanke and Paulson have spoken about for an
> hour? Wall Street had been lobbying hard for a rate cut for weeks, the
> markets were dropping steadily and this would likely have been a subject
> on Paulson's mind.
>
> By 3 p.m. on the day of that lunch, there was a rumor on Wall Street
> that the Fed was "going to hold a press conference." That rumor alone
> was enough to cause a 344-point rally in the Dow Jones industrial index,
> which went from an enormous loss to a decline of just 16 points on the
> day.
>
> There was no press conference. But before the market opened on Friday,
> Aug. 17, the Fed had lowered interest rates.
>
> Forget Merrill and Bank of America. Even if Paulson and the Bush
> Administration engineered a shotgun marriage of the two firms, defenders
> will say it was done to protect the system. It was for the greater good.
> Paulson was no different than Dick Che ney, who says he did what he had
> to do.
>
> Instead, Congress needs to ask questions about Paulson's relationship
> with Wall Street. And it needs to determine if the Treasury, the Fed
> (especially through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York) and Wall
> Street were in some sort of unholy and illegal alliance.
>
> john.crudele@
>
>
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