It's old news now: yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama announced he was picking Timothy Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as his Treasury Secretary.
Geithner's New York Fed, according to Bloomberg.com, has been "accepting [securities from banks] on behalf of American taxpayers as collateral for $1.5 trillion of loans. (Bear in mind that link is several weeks old, and, due to rounding and additional bailouts, may be off by a trillion dollars or two).
Bloomberg filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for documents related to that $1.5 trillion ...
Continue readingFinancial bailout: Senate approves bill
Details here, vote tallies here.
But does the bailout bill even address the underlying conditions that caused the crisis? Via InstaPundit comes this measured analysis of what went wrong that caused the need for the bailout:
Note that Mr. Paulson's proposal was not intended to solve the teaser-rate mortgage problem, either now or in the future. In the transactions that created the teaser-rate mortgages in the first place, both parties made bad decisions " the lender and the borrower. Mr. Paulson's proposal was not intended to help either. One of its unavoidable side effects, however, was to relieve lenders ...Continue reading
Financial Bailout: Nothing specific
When I read accounts like this, I'm not surprised that Congress has such low approval ratings:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pressed for passage, with the alarming news that one of the country's premier insurance companies was about to go bankrupt if the crisis was not quickly resolved."We don't have a lot of leeway on time," Reid told reporters in the Capitol. "One of the individuals in the caucus today talked about a major insurance company -- a major insurance company -- one with a name that everyone knows that's on the verge of going bankrupt ...
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Financial Bailout: Correlation in contributions and votes in House
Financial Bailout: Fannie Mae announces subpoena
Fannie Mae announced <a href="http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/310522/000129993308004533/0001299933-08-004533.txt">today</a> that it's gotten more subpoenas from the SEC and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York:
<blockquote>On September 26, 2008, Fannie Mae received notice of ongoing federal government investigations and inquiries into Fannie Mae by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") regarding certain accounting, disclosure and corporate governance matters. In connection with those investigations and inquiries, Fannie Mae received a Grand Jury subpoena ...
Continue readingFinancial Bailout: A look at the House GOP negotiators
Continuing the theme of last night's post (and of several prior posts -- just scroll down), we're taking a look at some of the key players in the financial bailout negotiations, looking at their career contributions from and personal interest in the industry. Thanks to Open Secrets, the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics, all this information is easily accessible online.
Over the course of his political career, minority leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, has raised $2,933,009 from political action committees, employees and their immediate family members of organizations in the finance, insurance and real estate ...
Continue readingFinancial Bailout: 102 pages and counting
This Associated Press report is a little like the early going of an Eric Ambler thriller: a tantalizing hint of the complexity to come, but very little detail about what the twists and turns will be. The market meltdown measure, which began its life as a 3-page bill, has grown:
...after almost a week of marathon talks between Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and key lawmakers in both parties, the working version was up to 102 pages.
We're going to need to add a lot of text to Public Markup.
Continue readingFinancial Bailout: Are congressional leaders invested in the crisis?
Members of Congress continue to debate the bailout package that may well affect the bottom line of every taxpayer in the country, as well as those of big banks, brokerages, and other financial firms. While they hear from numerous experts, including distressed Wall Street titans, on the dangers facing their firms, what sort of exposure do members themselves have if those firms fail?
In their most recent financial disclosure forms, the chairmen and ranking members of the key House and Senate committees considering the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector disclosed investments in firms with interests in the outcome ...
Continue readingFinancial Bailout: Who do McCain and Obama see at their fundraisers?
Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are returning to Washington today to lend their legislative talents to the bailout bill working its way through Congress. So let's take a look at the biggest contributors to their presidential campaigns, courtesy of our friends at the Center for Responsive Politics.
Going in alphabetical order, we'll take McCain first. Among the top donors to the Republican nominee's presidential campaign are employees, their family members and PACs of the following players in the nation's financial meltdown: Merrill Lynch (which needed Bank of America to rescue it), Citigroup ("written off ...
Continue readingFinancial Bailout: Who does Frank see at his fundraisers?
Among Rep. Barney Frank's top career donors are employees, their family members and PACs of the following players in the nation's financial meltdown: American Bankers Association (wants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to continue paying dividends, despite going bust), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (which bought Bear Stearns), National Association of Realtors (working to "assure a robust secondary mortgage market"), UBS AG (which hopes the bailout will include foreign banks), Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association (hopes Congress will "hastily approve" the administration's plan), Credit Union National Association (members are included in any bailout plan), Bank of America ...
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