My Other Blog & Comments

News and Information Feed

Thursday, January 14, 2010

SEC, Fed, AIG conspire to conceal funneling of billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street banksters to cover gambling losses

SEC Engages in Conspiracy with AIG to Hide Bailout Evidence
(Infowars.com) -- By Kurt Nimmo

January 13, 2010 -- Earlier today House representative Edolphus Towns subpoenaed documents related to the so-called “backdoor bailout” of AIG, including documents from Timothy Geithner, the former New York Fed chief and current Treasury secretary. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is looking for information on payments made to AIG counterparties, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and Societe Generale. The subpoena “specifically requests all documents surrounding the decision to pay AIG’s counterparties 100 cents on the dollar,” according to AFP.

It looks like Towns and his committee may only get part of the story. They will have to wait until 2018 to get the rest.

In May, well before Geithner was on the hot seat, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a request by AIG to keep secret an exhibit to a year-old regulatory filing that includes some of the details on the most criminal aspect of the AIG bailout — the funneling of billions of dollars to the above mentioned culprits, particularly Goldman Sachs.

The SEC said the exhibit “qualifies as confidential commercial or financial information” and is off limits to Congress and the American people. The 2018 expiration date will fall on the tenth anniversary of the Federal Reserve of New York’s decision to provide “emergency financing” to an entity set up to specifically acquire some $60 billion in collateralized debt obligations from 16 banks in the United States and Europe.

The SEC ruling is yet another indication the banksters have a lot to hide and will go to unusual lengths to prevent the American people from learning the sordid details of their criminal activities.

In March of 2009, the socialist senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, demanded Federal Reserve mob boss Ben Bernanke reveal who received $2.2 trillion dollars in taxpayer money (or rather taxpayer debt obligation). Bernanke refused to answer. Bernanke said revealing who received the money would risk “stigmatizing banks and discouraging them from borrowing from the central bank.” Sanders abruptly cut Bernanke off. “Isn’t that too bad,” Sanders said. “They took the money but they don’t want to be public about the fact that they received it.”

In July of 2009, Congressman Alan Grayson asked Bernanke about which foreign banks were the recipients of Federal Reserve credit swaps. Asked which European financial institutions received the money, which was handed over by the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee, Bernanke responded, “I don’t know.” Bernanke said the Fed had a “long standing legal authority” to hand money to foreign banks under section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act, a claim contradicted by Bernanke’s own report, as Grayson soon highlighted.

“As we have previously reported, the destination of trillions in bailout funds remains hidden after the Fed refused to disclose where it had gone despite a lawsuit filed by Bloomberg,” Paul Joseph Watson wrote for Prison Planet on July 22.

Bloomberg filed a lawsuit under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs. On December 8, 2009, the Fed said it is permitted to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information.

As noted by Reuters, the AIG to SEC request to hide details of the massive and unprecedented bailout received scant attention in the corporate media when it was announced in May. “But it could spark controversy now following the release last week of 14-month-old emails that reveal that some at the New York Fed had discussions with AIG officials about how much information should be disclosed to the public about the Maiden Lane III transaction.”

Maiden Lane III is a Federal Reserve scheme to facilitate the merger of the Bear Stearns Companies and JPMorgan Chase. The New York Fed also used Maiden Lane III to acquire assets of Bear Stearns.

In November, Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky said “New York Fed didn’t have the backbone to stand up to Wall Street, didn’t understand its capacity to protect taxpayers, and didn’t appreciate that its responsibility was to taxpayers,” according to former prosecutor Eliot Spitzer. “Geithner and the Fed have proffered a series of spurious reasons for their willingness to pay AIG’s counterparties — the leading Wall Street banks — in full while demanding concessions from every other entity with whom the Treasury or the Fed dealt.”

In fact, the Federal Reserve, as a cartel for the international bankers, knew precisely what it was doing — it was paying off its buddies on Wall Street for their casino derivatives losses...MORE...LINK

No comments: