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 readingDoes Congress think Detroit is a good investment?
It appears that <a href="http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081117/D94GUIK80.html">the auto bailout</a> is stalled for now, as congressional leadership and the Bush administration have come to loggerheads over providing $25 to $50 billion in loans to General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Chrysler.
I found it interesting that, as of December 2007 (the most recent date for which disclosures are available), just 27 of the 535 members of Congress owned stock in at least one of the big three automakers, according to <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org">Open Secrets</a>. They disclosed holdings worth ...
Continue readingOpenSecrets.org updates Financial Disclosure database
Want to know what members of Congress disclosed owning stock in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, American International Group or Bear Stearns on their most recent financial disclosure reports?
Want to see who reported owing money to Countrywide Financial? (Try here and here.)
OpenSecrets.org has provided the latest digitized data on financial disclosure forms filed by members of Congress, searchable by member, by company name or by keyword. Find out what assets, liabilities and transactions were popular on Capitol Hill.
The most recent disclosures covered data as of the end of 2007; in June 2009 we'll get a look ...
Continue readingNorth Carolina Businessman Pays for Campaign Ads
In late July this year, two North Carolina state legislators and a pharmaceutical industry executive set up a political non-profit to run ads focusing on the present financial crisis ahead of the November election. The nonprofit has spent more than $600,000 to produce the ads, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Real Time has been following various ads using our new "Follow the 527s" widget, available on the right side of the site.
The nonprofit, RightChange.com, Inc., was set up by a pair Republican lawmakers, state Sen. Fletcher Hartsell ...
Continue readingFARAdb Reveals Who Lobbyists Meet to Influence Congress
Prosecutorial Misconduct in the Stevens Trial?
The Washington Post reports that defense attorneys for Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, have accused prosecutors of withholding potentially exculpatory information. It appears that the judge hearing the case agrees:
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said the powerful 40-year senator "would not be getting a fair trial if it were up to the government." He halted trial testimony so lawyers could prepare for a 4:30 p.m. hearing on motions to end the case or impose sanctions on the government.
The indictment against Stevens seemed weak -- arguing that Stevens had failed to disclose information about his residence on ...
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 ...
Continue reading
Who’s Paying for Election Ads? Follow the 527 Widget…
The 30-second ad is typical fare for a campaign: the taxing and spending of a candidate, in this case former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., is pilloried. Her Republican opponent, Sen. John Sununu, facing a tough race, did not pay for the ad out of his own campaign funds. Instead, FEC filings show, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ponied up the $750,000 to attack Shaheen.
Political nonprofits are playing a bigger role than ever in election 2008, and Real Time (with assistance from Sunlight Labs) is making it easy to find the latest information on ads run by ...
Continue readingFannie Mae handbook: Illegal actions in a gray area?
This is largely gratuitous, but while tooling around Fannie Mae's Web site, I came across their Employee Code of Conduct, revised in 2007. The opening includes this passage:
But in many situations the right course of action is not always obvious. So here are some questions that we can ask ourselves to help us navigate the shades of gray:
The first shade of gray?
Is the action legal?
In fairness, the preceding sentence tells employees, "Perhaps most importantly, our Code not only requires us to comply with the law, but it challenges us to promote ethical conduct in all ...
Continue reading
59063
