Why Henry Paulson must be “contained”
Paulson with his ChiCom friends
Both parties in Washington are about to screw us over on an unprecedented scale. They are threatening us with fiscal apocalypse if we don’t fork over $700 billion to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and allow him to dole it out to whomever he chooses in whatever amount he chooses — without public input or recourse. They are rushing like mad to cram this Mother of All Bailouts down our throats in the next 72-96 hours. And right there in the text of the proposal is this naked power grab: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
Stop.
My question for fellow conservatives: Do you trust this man?
I don’t.
Do you trust Hank Paulson’s judgment?
I don’t.
Listen to what he said about the subprime crisis in April 2007:
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said…the housing market correction appears to be at or near its bottom and that troubles in the subprime mortgage market will not likely spread throughout the economy.
“We’ve clearly had a big correction in the housing market. Retail housing was growing for some time at a level that was not sustainable,” Paulson said in a speech to The Committee of 100, a business group in New York promoting better Chinese relations.
“I don’t see (subprime mortgage market troubles) imposing a serious problem. I think it’s going to be largely contained,” he added.
Listen to what he said about the subprime crisis in May 2007:
JIM LEHRER: One final question, and a third subject. How worried are you about the slump, so-called slump in the housing market in the United States right now? And what kind of damage, if any, is it doing to the economy?
HENRY PAULSON: Well, let me say this. As you’ve pointed out, we’ve had a major housing correction in the U.S. The U.S. economy had been growing at a rate that was unsustainable and, in housing, it had clearly been growing at a rate for a number of years.
That correction was inevitable; that correction has now been significant. We think it is near the bottom. It will take a while to work its way through the system. Fortunately for us, we have a very diverse, healthy economy. There are other things that are positive that are offsetting that.
…So my very strong view is that we are near the bottom and that this will be contained as — the housing will be contained, and we’re fortunate that we have a diverse, healthy economy.
Listen to what he said about the subprime crisis in August 2007 while on a trip to Beijing (more on Paulson’s ChiCom ties in a moment):
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Wednesday the repricing of credit risk was hitting financial markets, but U.S. subprime mortgage fallout remained largely contained due to the strongest global economy in decades.
Speaking to reporters in Beijing, where he ran into stiff resistance in persuading Chinese officials to let the yuan strengthen more quickly, Paulson said markets were unwinding excesses in U.S. mortgage and leveraged buyout financing.
European and Asian stocks tumbled on Wednesday following a sharp drop in U.S. shares on Tuesday, after American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. said it might have to liquidate assets, fuelling worries over problems in the subprime mortgage market spilling over into other sectors.
“The market has focused on this. There’s a wake-up call, and there’s an adjustment to this repricing of risk, but I see the underlying economy as being very healthy,” he told reporters before leaving Beijing.
Paulson added that he did not see anything that caused him to reconsider his view that the economic damage from the housing correction was “largely contained,” despite losses in a number of financial institutions and a long period for subprime issues to move through the economy.
Here’s Paulson in October 2007 assuring us that he had no interest in government bailouts while touting the economy’s health again:
Paulson: Subprime help needed – but no bailout
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is walking a fine line, pushing the need to help troubled mortgage borrowers without rewarding past risky behavior.
“I have no interest in bailing out lenders or property speculators. Still, we must recognize the very real harms to families affected by the housing downturn,” Paulson said in prepared remarks for a speech given Tuesday at Georgetown University.
…Although the speech seemed to mark a step up in activism on the part of the Treasury Department, Paulson was quick to point out the limitations of the government’s approach during the question and answer following the talk.
Referring to HopeNow, he said, “This is a 100 percent market-based solution. I believe in markets. The government is doing nothing here but facilitating people coming together.”
Paulson also downplayed the possibility that the housing crisis could plunge the nation into recession. “I’ve seen turbulence in the market a number of times and I can’t think of any situation where the backdrop of the global economy was as healthy as it is today,” he said.
And here’s Paulson in May 2008 declaring the credit crisis on the wane:
The credit crisis that has scorched international financial markets is on the wane but more shocks are ahead, U.S. Secretary Treasury Henry Paulson told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Wednesday.
‘The worst is likely to be behind us,’ Paulson told the paper, in one of the most optimistic comments by a top U.S. finance official since sub-prime mortgage losses set a domino effect in motion in mid 2007.
Paulson said it would take ‘some months longer’ for the situation to stabilize and cautioned there would likely be further ‘bumps along the road’.
Yeah. A freaking $700 billion bailout bump. That’s all. Guess that little detail just slipped his mind.
On Sept. 15, Paulson was patting himself on the back for refusing to “put taxpayer money on the line” to rescue Lehman Brothers. On Sept. 16, just a day after drawing a line in the bailout sand, Paulson teamed up with the Fed’s Ben Bernanke to engineer the $85 billion federal bailout of AIG. And on Sept. 19, he was telling Americans that “hundreds of billions of dollars” — their dollars — were needed to “be big enough to make a real difference and get at the heart of the problem” and “stabilize the system.” This is on top of the estimated $200 billion in capital and credit lines committed by Paulson to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — capital that he had promised he wouldn’t be injecting into those two government-sponsored entities in August ( “We have no plans to insert money into either of those two institutions.”)
***
Now: Who is Paulson looking out for? A quick review of the Treasury Secretary’s record, political activity, and business priorities makes clear: He ain’t looking out for you.
Paulson has positioned himself as a champion of transparency. Me, too. Let’s shed some light on the man who wants total control over $700 billion of your money.
Robert Novak called attention to Paulson’s Democrat DNA last October. It’s worth reminding you of Paulson’s instincts and the liberal allies he has installed at the Treasury Department:
…[T]he former Goldman Sachs CEO does not act or sound much like a conservative Republican to the GOP remnant at the Treasury. “It’s not in Hank Paulson’s DNA,” one official told me. Is he loyal to Bush? “Hank is for Hank,” he replied.
Paulson marched to his own drummer… by naming Eric Mindich, chairman of Eton Park Capital Management, to head the Asset Managers’ Committee of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. A former Goldman Sachs colleague of Paulson’s, Mindich is a top-level Democratic fundraiser. He was in Sen. John Kerry’s inner circle for the 2004 presidential campaign and backs Sen. Barack Obama for 2008.
Republicans in the administration were amazed that the White House acquiesced in appointing a Democratic activist to lead a group “to develop best practices” for asset managers. These critics wonder why President Bush did not ask Paulson why he could not name a Republican financier for this position…[A] Treasury spokesman replied that “we were looking for somebody who is well respected in the industry” to fill what is “not really a political position.” By that measure, no Treasury job can be considered political.
That includes Bob Steel, under secretary for domestic finance…Brought to the Treasury by Paulson a year ago, Steel is a retired Goldman Sachs vice chairman who worked there with Rubin and Paulson. Federal Election Commission records show no political contributions by Steel since the 2002 cycle, when he gave exclusively to Democrats (including Sen. Charles Schumer of New York). Steel, who is Board of Trustees chairman of Duke University in Durham, N.C., contributed to the North Carolina Democratic Party and its Senate candidates, Dan Blue and Erskine Bowles.
Although Paulson was a generous Republican contributor and prodigious Bush fundraiser (over $100,000) in the 2004 cycle, his earlier political giving was more varied. He contributed to Bill Clinton in 1992, Democrat Bill Bradley’s 2000 presidential campaign, the feminist Emily’s List and Wall Street’s favorite Democrat, Chuck Schumer. Most of the Paulson family’s Democratic contributions come from the secretary’s wife, Wendy, who has supported Hillary Clinton.
All this was known to Bush in May 2006 when he tapped Paulson as a Treasury chief who would command respect on Wall Street. It should be no surprise then that he is regarded in his own administration as less a true Republican secretary than a transition to the next Democratic Treasury — a trademark of a lame-duck regime.
Paulson is also an activist eco-zealot who pushed Gore-esque, mandatory global warming reduction schemes as head of the Nature Conservancy and while at Goldman Sachs. From a 2006 WaPo profile touting Paulson’s green pedigree:
“It isn’t every day that the Sierra Club finds itself welcoming a nomination to George W. Bush’s Cabinet while ultraconservatives decry the move,” said Carl Pope, the Sierra Club’s executive director.
“But on issues like global warming, Hank Paulson appears to favor managing risk rather than cooking the books,” Pope said. “It is heartening that someone of Mr. Paulson’s stature in the financial world is willing to say that immediate action must be taken to combat global warming.”
Last year under Paulson’s direction, Goldman Sachs issued an eight-page position paper on environmental policy, saying it accepts a scientific consensus, led by United Nations climate experts, that global warming poses one of the greatest threats this century.
Like Bush, the Goldman Sachs statement endorsed a market for businesses to buy and sell rights to emit greenhouse gases, saying it will spur technology advances by companies “that lead to a less carbon-intensive economy.” But, it added, “Voluntary action alone cannot solve the climate change problem,” a position contrary to the Bush administration’s view.
The Nature Conservancy, under Paulson’s direction, likewise supports a mandatory approach. It supports legislation by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., to cap U.S. greenhouse gases at 2000 levels, within five years. The Senate defeated the measure last year.
Then there are Paulson’s longtime ties to the ChiComs. The Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney blew the whistle during Paulson’s confirmation hearings in 2006. Prescient as always, Gaffney foresaw the very national security and economic conflicts of interest that now cloud the Paulson bailout plan. Paulson’s China promotion and profiteering are all the more relevant given the clamoring of foreign banks for a piece of the monster bailout action — and Paulson’s confirmation yesterday on ABC’s “This Week” that foreign-based banks would not be excluded:
Under Mr. Paulson’s leadership at Goldman Sachs, the company has been instrumental to the growth of Chinese economic power and particularly to its penetration of Western capital and other markets. He has been directly involved in developing his firm’s relationships with the PRC, priding himself on having made 70 trips there since late 1991. Consider just a few of the deals Goldman has managed, underwritten or otherwise facilitated under Henry Paulson’s leadership:
In 2005, Goldman Sachs not only advised the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) in its attempted takeover of Unocal. It also strove to ensure that the Chinese state-owned company’s bid prevailed after ChevronTexaco offered $17 billion in an effort to keep Unocal in U.S. hands. CNOOC was able to up the ante to $18.5 billion for the American concern, thanks to a bridge-loan Goldman Sachs arranged (along with J.P. Morgan). Fortunately, despite the assiduous efforts made by Mr. Paulson and his firm to secure Unocal for Communist China, the American people and Congress strenuously opposed the transaction, leading ultimately to its derailing.
In late January 2006, Goldman Sachs purchased a stake in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China’s biggest bank, for $2.58 billion. According to press reports, Mr. Paulson’s personal stake in this transaction was $25 million.
This is but one of many such state-owned banks the Chinese are interested in bringing to Hong Kong and other Western capital markets. As I told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission last August:
These are foreign government-owned entities, not private firms. The Chinese government appears to be actively working with leading international banking houses [notably, Goldman Sachs] to shape the appearance, assets, liabilities, profit margins and public relations tactics of these state-owned enterprises.
Despite such efforts, the PRC seems simply to be dressing-up what were, until recently, insolvent banks in the hope that international capital markets will contribute to bailing them out. This process involves the off-loading of non-performing loans onto asset management companies in a fashion very reminiscent of the U.S. savings and loan crisis. Indeed, the PRC appears, in fact, to have modeled its strategy on the American experience.
No less worrisome is the fact that these banks’ assets include not only its non-performing loans, but also the loans made to various Chinese enterprises of grave concern to the United States, including elements of the PRC’s military-industrial complex; entities involved in the manufacture and perhaps the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems; human and labor rights abusers; environmental despoilers; etc.
Speaking of banks, in May 2006, Goldman Sachs helped with the underwriting of the Bank of China’s IPO, listing $9.7 billion worth of its shares on Hong Kong’s stock exchange. Among other problematic activities the Bank has engaged in has been the financing over the past fifteen years of extensive infrastructure projects like dam-building for the mullahocracy in Iran.
…It seems predictable that a man with Henry Paulson’s background, track record and relationships with Communist China will play a worrisome role in U.S. government deliberations. Unless he recuses himself from involvement in the following sorts of issues, Mr. Paulson assuredly will be participating in and exercising great influence over far-reaching decisions in which he has a vested policy, if not financial, interest. These will likely include, for example:
Contending with China’s ongoing manipulation of its currency which it uses to help sustain its advantageous trade relationship with the United States;
Addressing the strategic implications of the PRC being the largest holder of U.S. debt;
Considering the need to impose economic and perhaps other sanctions on Chinese proliferators, not at the subsidiary level (as has been done to date) but against their parent companies, when some of the latter may include Mr. Paulson’s former clients;
Allowing China to purchase strategic U.S. companies and assets;
…Since Communist China’s interests and those of the United States are likely to diverge ever more sharply in the years ahead, the very least that should be required of Paulson is that he recuse himself from involvement in matters of interest to the PRC. Unfortunately, as the foregoing list suggests, since China’s interests and activities figure so prominently in the Treasury portfolio, such a recusal would reduce the job to a part-time one.
In the absence of such a recusal, however, Paulson’s China-related work at Treasury will require an extraordinary level of transparency and accountability by members of Congress, the media, and the American public. We must be assured he is working for us in this job, not for Communist China as he did so successfully in the last one.
***
On top of Paulson’s $700 billion bailout for both American and foreign-based banks, there is another stealth effort for a multilateral bank bailout championed by the Treasury Department to the tune of at least $15 billion. The proposal would transform billions of dollars worth of U.S. loans to the World Bank, IMF, and African Development Bank into grants. And voila! Their massive debts to American taxpayers would disappear. Sen. Tom Coburn, a fiscal conservative watchdog who is looking out for us, red-flagged the Treasury Department’s attempt to sneak the plan through last week in a letter to Senate GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell. I’m reprinting the letter in full so you are fully aware of what Hank Paulson’s priorities are:
September 18, 2008
Honorable Mitch McConnell
Minority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510Dear Senator McConnell,
I am requesting that I be consulted before the Senate enters into any unanimous consent agreements regarding S. 2166, the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation of 2008. I objected to the previous unanimous consent agreement, and I reserve the right to object to any future unanimous consent agreements or rule waivers regarding this bill.
I have a number of concerns with this legislation.
The Jubilee Act requires the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to “commence immediate efforts. . .to accomplish. . .cancellation by the United States of all existing debts owed to it by eligible low-income countries.”[1] This will effectively transforms at least $1.13 billion of U.S. loans to other countries into foreign aid grants that will no longer be repaid to the U.S. taxpayer.[2] In other words, S. 2166 authorizes a $1.135 billion foreign aid package.
The national debt now exceeds $9.4 trillion. That means over $30,500 in debt for each and every man, woman and child in the United States. The U.S. debt is expanding by about $1.4 billion a day, or nearly $1 million a minute. S. 2166 would significantly contribute to the already overwhelming burden of debt that Congress has created.
This violates a principle I have laid out in a letter sent at the beginning of the 110th Congress to all my Senate colleagues, to withhold my consent for unanimous passage of any bill that authorizes new spending without an equivalent reduction in existing spending authority for a lower-priority or less effective program.
S. 2166 also requires the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to “commence immediate efforts” within international financial institutions, such as the World Bank,” to ensure “that the provision of debt cancellation to eligible low-income countries is not followed by a reduction in. . .development assistance to the [low-income] countries by international financial institutions.” This section of the bill could be interpreted to support the notion that contributors to international financial institutions, such as the U.S. taxpayer, should be required to refund the international financial institutions for the entire amount of the loans forgiven. In other words, U.S. taxpayers, who have already paid their share of the forgiven multilateral loans, would be required to pay this amount a second time as a bailout for the banks.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Treasury Department, during a G8[3] summit in 2005, already made a commitment to provide a bailout to multilateral banks that participated in the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). MDRI is an initiative that gives 100 percent relief on eligible debt from three multilateral banks[4] to a group of low-income countries, most of whom never intended to repay the loans.[5]
In the outcome document from the 2005 G8 Summit, the U.S. Treasury Department and its counterparts in the other G8 countries agreed to “compensate” the multilateral banks “on a ‘dollar-for-dollar’ basis” the full amount of the debts to eligible low-income countries that will be forgiven.[6] The outcome document goes on to say that the G8 will “provide MDRI financing additional to donors’ regular support” which represents “an increase of about 25 percent over” the baseline funding level the G8 normally sends to the banks.
Regular support of the development banks comes in the form of replenishments, which are wealth transfers from G8 countries given to the banks every three years with which the banks redistribute to low-income countries. The agreement made by the G8 was to include the multilateral banks’ bailout within the regular 3-year replenishments to the banks.
The total debt relief G8 countries, including the U.S., agreed to is more than $41.3 billion over 40 years. This means $41.3 billion in mostly bad loans to low income countries have been transformed into foreign aid grants that will never be paid back. By agreeing to bail the banks out for these bad lending decisions, the G8 is passing the cost of the scheme to G8 taxpayers. The total cost will be up to $82.6 billion to cover the original loan plus the cost of the bailout.
The U.S. taxpayers’ share of this bailout is almost $7.5 billion over 40 years. Even though the U.S. Treasury was not authorized by Congress to commit to this increase in foreign aid spending, Treasury plans on making the first installments of the U.S. portion of the bailout this year without informing Congress. In its budget request to Congress in 2009, the Treasury Department does not report to Congress any information about its agreement to bail out the multilateral banks or that its request for its next 3-year replenishment to the banks includes its first installment of the bailout.
It wasn’t until I asked specifically about the bailout that the Treasury Department admitted that it has hidden the first installment of the U.S. share of the bailout in the U.S. replenishment payments for 2009. According to the Treasury Department, these bailout payments will not cost the taxpayer additional funds. It claims that by sending the normal 3-year replenishment to the banks earlier than planned, the money will gain enough interest while sitting in the multilateral banks’ accounts that will pay for the U.S. share of the bailout. What the Treasury Department fails to understand is that this interest belongs to the U.S. taxpayer, and by denying the taxpayer this interest, the cost of the bailout is indeed carried by the U.S. taxpayer.
Another disturbing element to the bailout agreement that U.S. Treasury made at the 2005 G8 summit is that the additional money the U.S. and other G8 taxpayers will be sending to the banks for the bailout will be used for “providing further resources for. . .development efforts”[7] within low-income countries whose loans were forgiven. In other words, the U.S. Treasury Department agreed to saturate the multilateral banks with even more U.S. taxpayer cash, so the banks can continue their misguided policies responsible for issuing bad loans and the subsequent bailout schemes.
Development policies that require massive transfers of wealth from developed nations to low-income nations, or socialism, have proven not only to fail at eradicating poverty but actually prolong and worsen economic conditions in many impoverished countries. I strongly believe that when we act as a government to help people, we make sure that our help first doesn’t make the problem worse, and second, really works and doesn’t just make us feel good about having tried to help.
Wealth transfers, whether it be in the form of foreign aid packages or debt relief, is based on the false premise that transfers of riches from wealthy nations to poor nations will buy economic growth in those recipient nations. There is no credible evidence that suggests this approach has ever actually produced economic growth, and sadly, there is a growing body of economic research that suggests just the opposite. [8] All evidence demonstrates that poverty decreases only with the increase in economic freedom, free trade, the protection of property rights, elimination of corruption, and predictably enforced rule of law. In other words, poverty is the result of corrupt governments and the absence of liberty—not the lack of wealth transfers.
The American people are already burdened with over $9.4 trillion of debt due to uncontrolled spending by Congress. The U.S. taxpayer is always called upon to bail out failed wealth-transfer programs, whether it is multilateral banks, government-run mortgage companies, or federal retirement plans. It is unlikely that there will be anyone willing to bail out the U.S. taxpayers once this unsustainable spending frenzy finally catches up with us. I cannot, in good conscious, contribute to this problem.
In order for me to vote “yes” on the passage of S. 2166, the bill should be improved in two key ways. First, the cost of transforming over $1 billion of U.S. bilateral loans into grants should be offset by an equivalent reduction in existing spending authority for a lower-priority or less effective program.
Second, S. 2166 should include a prohibition on providing multilateral banks bailouts from the U.S. taxpayer for current or future debt relief initiatives. If multilateral banks desire a $7 billion increase in U.S. funding, they should make a request to Congress, and Congress should conduct oversight investigations, debate whether wealth transfer programs achieve measurable results, and, if there is measurable evidence supporting it, decide whether or not to grant the increase while offsetting it from existing spending elsewhere.
Thank you for protecting my rights on this legislation.
Sincerely,
Tom A. Coburn, M.D.
U.S. Senator
***
One last item if all this wasn’t enough to stop your heart. This is Paulson on “Face the Nation” yesterday:
Mr. Paulson said he hoped that the government would recoup much of the cost of buying distressed mortgage-related assets. But he did not rule out that the initial cost of the bailout could rise beyond $700 billion, the limit set in the terse proposal sent by the Treasury to Congress on Saturday.
“That doesn’t mean we’ll go all the way there, or it doesn’t mean it will stop there and we won’t ask for more,” Mr. Paulson said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “What we need is something that is big enough to get the job done. We’ll ask for what we think is a right amount to give us plenty of flexibility.”
And now, Washington is on the verge of handing this man unchecked power to grab $700 billion-plus in taxpayer money to stabilize a market he said was “healthy” in order to fix a crisis he said had been “contained” more than a year ago?
Henry Paulson must be contained.
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Coming in a little late here, but this unsupervised distribution brings back nightmares of the hurricane relief unlimited credit cards passed out after katrina and the kabillions unaccounted funds passed out by the CPA in the re-building of Iraq.
Unsupervised/unregulated “relief” programs are money down the drain.
And both parties have been bringing us to this point since 1932.
Stock up on food storage, and load more ammo. It’s going to get ugly.
Riiiiiight. The first words out of “Keating 5″ McCain’s mouth were “bigger government.”
McCain has repeatedly admitted that he is not qualified to handle the economy. During a primary debate he mumbled cluelessly when asked a real question about the plunge protection team. I suspect he’s not even interested in much about being President except being commander-in-chief.
His solution will be to send all the strapping young men into battle and let the women work in the munitions plants. Problem solved, right?
Family Man – devaluing the currency is what is happening now – bailing stuff out with “federal money” that isnt’ really there.
That does not equal “collapse” of the economy.
As far as “difficult to borrow money” – I gotta call EVERYBODY on that. Last I checked, there are credit card offers by the boatload, and my business gets at least three “equipment loan offers” every week.
As long as somebody is credit worthy, there will always be somebody willing to loan money.
I’m not saying it won’t change – I’m just saying “collapse” seems like a pretty dire word.
Ahh a Lion! Voting is all we can do at this point. Considering the Obama alternative is unthinkable.
This whole thing smells bad.
Paulson’s history and ties to China and his willingness to involve foreign banks, including those controlled by the PRC, should be a huge red flag for the rest of us.
He wears his history with China like a Medal of Honor.
He’s got congress following him like Pavlov’s dog. He speaks, they drool taxpayer cash and signs our names to the dotted line on loans by banks, including those run by the Chinese Gov’t.
What the hell is going on in our country???
There are elements in our gov’t that seem gleeful to put us on the hook for loans by hostile nations…. they are also gleeful to keep us buying as much oil as possible from hostile nations….
Something is wrong here.
Please write your representatives and let them know what your think of this situation. Use strong language, but try not to cuss (I kept having to re-type words–even broke out the thesaurus). It is important that they hear from us or they will think us supportive by our silence.
Write now. Write today. Write often.
Great. Evan Bayh is on CNBC explaining why executives should be volunteering to nationalize their busineses so that the government can reduce their pay packages. I think we need to reduce Congress’s pay package to a nominal payment of $1.00 a year. They’re all millionaires, and they don’t need the money.
I agree. It is still premature to panic.
and your savior’s solution will be to wave his hands, and cure our financial system at the same time he is healing the planet and lower the sea level
I am sure you can now show where on McCains web site, it is McCains plan to send the men into battle and the women to the factories.
laura ingraham just had a soundbite from mccain saying he wants to replace cox as sec chairman with andrew cuomo….unbelievable.
With Andrew Cuomo?
God… please help us.
Seriously.. I’m praying.
At this point, I do believe God is the only thing that can save us. Let us all pray for level headed help to our precious nations needs.
China controls our destiny right now. They are the largest purchaser of our debt, and the largest holder of our dollars. Their capital makes this country’s extravagant policies doable. It’s no wonder Paulson prostrates himself in front of the altar of China. It’s because China owns us, and can destroy us any time they want to.
The next shoe to drop will be China not coming to our treasury auctions and cashing in their Sovereign Wealth Funds to start buying stuff, most likely our stuff.
The constitution still says that only gold and silver are legal tender, right now it’s the only way to protect your wealth.
I just saw McCain on Fox at an event in PA, I think. I’m paraphrasing from memory, but he said something to the effect that while he respects Hank Paulson, so much power should not be vested in one person.
Obama’s econoimc plan:
1. Donate fifty billion tax dollars to the U.N.’s world anti-poverty fund, regardless of the fact we can no longer afford such a donation and that the funds will likely be diverted to line the pockets of U.N. officials and dictators.
2. Provide 95% of Americans with a tax break – whether they actually pay taxes or not – by raising taxes on their employers; of course the tax break will eradicate jobs for many of the tax payers but hey, in Obama’s world, whatever it takes to get elected, right?
3. Create more social programs and nationalize healthcare to the point that there is no alternative but to perpetually raise taxes and cut military spending – a socialist Democrat’s dream.
4. If it moves, tax it – to the point that the U.S. tax payer works ten months for Uncle Sam before even considering his/her own family’s needs.
Obama has NO executive experience to be President. He is wrong for America. President McCain and Vice President Palin know what it takes to govern and have that experience to prove it.
In 1913 we lost control of our money. The Fed has stolen our money time and time again and is at this very moment trying to bring the USA down to facilitate globalization. There is but one nation that stands in the way of their agenda and that nation is our nation. We are the strongest, hardest working and wealthiest people in the world when backed up by our Constitution which is why globalists hate it so much. Sovereignty means nothing to these people in charge of the money. They will get their way or we will be nuked into submission….our officials have probably been told this directly. The conversation would go something like this: “Sell it out or be destroyed from within with the help of your own stupid policies and your OWN MONEY!”
Each bailout should be reviewed by Congress in PUBLIC hearings with public input…..No money for foreign banks and stupid speculators/homeowners!
Agreed..but McCain had better be looking out for US when he goes up against Obama in the deabtes…if he is able to pull out another “Palin” strategem on the financial crisis that makes Obama look like the globalist elitist he is, he will win on the economy-if he just sounds like Demolite, Obama will get credence (that he does not deserve).
And I thought all we needed to do to usher in a Socialist America was to pull the lever for Obama in November.
The way things are going now, Obama may be considered the mainstream candidate by them.
I guess I’d better get on that ark after all.
Its time to let the house of cards fall. I dont want any bailouts to salvage ANYONE.
Anyone who was in charge of all of these companies and the government need to be rounded up and put on trial.
This country is running a giant Pyramid scheme and Pyramid schemes are ILLEGAL. (I dont care what name or euphamism we give it. (stimulus, social security, bailouts) bite me) All of these executives and goverment officials obviously do not know what they are doing because we wouldnt be in this mess if they did.
I’m only giving them the benefit that they do not know what they are doing because otherwise they are defrauding ALL of us.
Man, Paulson is about as dirty in all this as both political parties. In 2007, he was kidding himself that everything was okay and that the abuse of the sub-prime mortgage market wouldn’t cause an implosion in the world markets. This guy doesn’t appear too bright, much like Greenspan who ignored the problem and dumped it on Ben Bernanke’s lap.
Does anybody feel reassured that Paulson is at the wheel of this disaster? This man is about as “humbled” (as he clamed he was about the financial crisis on Fox News Sunday) as somebody who’s worked for Goldman Sachs can get. The problem is, who, exactly, is he looking out for? You? Me? Or the bankers who started this mess?
I’m sorry, but Paulson is about as insightful an economist as lgm is a mathematician.
MAKE THE CALLS!
Call Capitol Hill Switchboard TOLL FREE:
1-877 851-6437
1-800 828-0498
1-800 614-2803
1-866 340-9281
1-866 338-1015
1-866 220-0044
My earlier comment (to a different post) about Paulson and his sphere of influence…
The enemy has been advancing within our government, and
YES this enemy must be “contained”!
Giving in on this now will NOT solve the problem, it will only make it exponentially WORSE.
I know – pointing fingers isn’t going to solve anything but that won’t stop the spin the Democrat’s will be coming out with in an ever increasing crescendo.
I’d think the Democrats would want this bill passed as quickly as possible in order to cover their tracks of large contributions from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to those Senators who voted to not reign in those two quasi-agencies back in 2005. The bill John McCain supported.
They also don’t want the electorate to remember that it was Bill Clinton’s administration that pushed for additional social engineering by pushing for loans for minorities that could not purchase homes if they had to follow the normal path of obtaining credit.
Keep listening. You’ll hear Bill Clinton pointing the finger at the Republicans anytime now – like he did when he had a chance to kill Osama Bin Laden and didn’t.
On September 22nd, 2008 at 1:05 pm, emjem24 said:
The problem isn’t that he’s not too bright.
The problem is that he is a Communist.
Yes, really.
And President Bush, while not stupid, is gullible…he trusts some people who should not be trusted. He has allowed domestic enemies, trojan horses, to be put in charge of the US Treasury and the National Archives.
America needs to wake up and understand who is trying to “bring an Empire to its knees”.
Who is “Inspired” to “Bring an Empire to its Knees”?
On September 22nd, 2008 at 1:11 pm, iamsaved said:
Ah, yes, I remember well…that Clinton interview motivated me to write my first comment at Hot Air (after having been just a reader from the very beginning).
Michelle, I haven’t read all the comments, so I don’t know if someone else has already noticed this…
You posted this incredibly thorough analysis at:
You must have pulled an all-nighter on this.
I can’t begin to explain how much that means to me and how much I appreciate and honor your sacrifice.
Very few people understand how serious the issue of “Domestic Enemies” in our government really is.
Senator Joe McCarthy was not wrong. History has proven him RIGHT. And current events continue to confirm that yes, Communists have infiltrated all levels and all branches of our Government.
The very survival of our Constitutional Republic is on the line.
And I thank you for being utterly selfless in fighting to preserve our Republic. You deserve as much respect as every man and woman who wears the uniform of our Armed Services.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
Looks like Osama’s “time-released airplane pills” are finally starting to take effect.
The muddled middle of the American electorate is about to place the catastrophic trio of Obama/Pelosi/Reid into the top three positions of power.
The Liberals have won, abject stupidity reigns, and the required upheaval will now immutably ensue.
We must stop this bailout — the same way we (temporarily) stopped amnesty.
Call the Senate! Call the House!
Only 7% of Americans support this bailout; if McCain shows some cajones, he could make this one of the winning issues for his campaign.
Shut down their switchboards. It is the only message that they’ll hear.
Senate Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
Find your individual senators’ phone numbers: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
House Phone List: http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/mcapdir.html
How about a REIT, supervised by Lou Dobbs, so taxpayers can VOLUNTARILY buy distressed mortgages.
I’s rather own a fund of mortgages than ZIP, NADA.
Is this the Soros Provision? It can’t be Consitutional.
We should all be standing in front of Fannie shouting Pay it Back…
For my $2333, I want an actual piece of paper saying I own part of a Manhattan condo…
Gorebot, (Gore-robot?)
Wrong.
The majority of America is waking up to the fact that this isn’t just a “culture war”.
The majority of America is waking up to the fact that godless Communists have been waging the “culture war” as a means to their ends…a “cultural revolution” preceeding a political revolution.
The majority of America is waking up to why Obama makes so many references to the American Revolution and how our country needs to be made “more perfect“.
The majority of America is waking up to what Islamic Jihadists, Malcolm X, “Black Liberation Theology”, and Democratic Socialist Communists all have in common…a desire to quite literally destroy everything America stands for and bring this country to its knees.
The majority of America will vote McCain-Palin and vote out of office a high number of the Democratic Socialists currently in the Congress.
Call it the “Echo Reagan Revolution” if you like.
Or, maybe just call it the “Palin Revolution“
“He who pays the Piper calls the tune” – is that the old saying? When the Chinese own all of our Debt, they can tell Paulsen what to do. He’s not smiling in that picture, he’s feeling the bamboo shoot up his butt.
Silly me – I thought it was the Saudis who had our back, it’s the Chinese? WOW! I feel better now!
Link? I think what he has admitted is that he is better on some issues than he is on economics, not that he knows nothing about the economy.
That’s better than a guy who really isn’t qualified to handle the economy lying to voters by pretending that he is, the same guy who hates capitalism, and basically said the other day that it is a philosophy that doesn’t work.
Anybody catch Obama’s stump speech in WI today – to hear him tell it, he has taken on corrupt Washington AND each and every lobbyist and has fought the good fight AND WON!!!!
Liar, liar pants on fire.
I appreciate Ms. Malkin’s analysis.
This is the economic equivalent of the Patriot Act.
More government intrusion….and there’s not much to be done about it. This bill will pass.
Welcome to Orwell’s “Animal Farm”.
And Congress goes “Oink”……
Well, I certainly hope you’re right in saying I’m “wrong”.
But until more resolute evidence is in (starting with Obama not getting elected), the worst must be presumed possible.
And, based on present polls, the prospects are not looking good. There is time for the electorate to wake up, but outcomes are uncertain at best right now.
Yes, BTW, “Gorebot” is meant as a conjunction of “Gore” and “Robot”.
Gorebot,
You can’t trust MSM polls any more than you trust any of the other biased propaganda that they push.
But take a look at the results of these “grassroots” AOL Hot Seat Polls.
The results of those polls is very encouraging. I believe that the only way Obama could win would be with massive fraud. And, with ACORN, massive fraud is being committed.
I pray and have faith that the fraud will be exposed, prosecuted, and then prevented in the general election.
JUST FYI:
You might want to go fill up all of your vehicles RIGHT NOW. Im on my way out the door at this moment.
Oil prices jumped 10% today alone, so you can bet that all of the gas stations will infate their prices as soon as they get the news.
Does anyone in DC have any clue as to what they are doing? They are the dumbest bunch of folks on the planet.
P.S.
Thanks for the $130/barrel oil Hank. Just when oil started going down you decided to make the dollar worthless.
I understand how serious the issue is. I’ve commented several different times on various proxy issues about this very subject. We have traitor enemies in our midst. Worse yet….they control the money and the military through our elected officials. There are many “conductors” at the healm of this train wreck.
I read a summary of Hegel’s Dialectic that the author succinctly stated:
Sure sounds familiar doesn’t it?
The liberals wouldn’t do that would they?
Maybe we should wait on the bailout until cooler heads prevail?
Oil jumped $25 a barrel today. Guess they fixed things last week, huh? Tell ya what, I’ll make some torches, you guys bring some pitchforks and we’ll solve this the old fashioned way. I hear the Bastille is well defended, but I believe we will prevail.
Please replace “healm” with helm.
typing too fast
Congress, Bush team agree on bailout terms
How much longer before we have to strike off a couple of zero’s from our currency? How do you do that to a dollar bill?
It’s a matter of record that the MSM was pushing the mantra of
“The Economy is Issue #1″ BEFORE this “crisis” was manufactured.
They absolutely were preconditioning people.
This is another form of fraud.
Obama can’t win in November without fraud.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said
Communist. Domestic enemy.
They must be stopped.
Complete power grab by the Communists, with a plan to blame it on Republicans by passing during Bush’s administration.
This is Treason at the highest levels of office! The Treasury Dept has lied to Congress about giving OUR money to foreign agents, many of whom are openly antagonistic or even at war with us. Mr. Paulson has hidden his financial interests in this matter in a shameful and dishonest manner. And Mr.Bush(I cannot even bring myself to call him my President anymore even though I voted for him both times!) wants to give him extra-legal authority without review or recourse to redistribute $800,000,000,000 to people who were too greedy and incompetent to fairly manage our citizens retirements!
LET US ALL STAND UP FINALLY AND SHOUT “THE REDCOATS ARE COMING! THE REDCOATS ARE COMING!” AND TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY FROM THESE SHAMEFUL TAMMANY HALL BUREAUCRATS! LET US MARCH 200,000,000 STRONG UPON WASHINGTON AND CAST THEM BACK INTO THE CESSPOOLS FROM WHICH THEY CRAWLED! LET THEM KNOW THAT NEITHER OBAMA NOR McCAIN ARE ACCEPTABLE AS THEY ARE AND THAT PAULSON WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO SELL OUR CHILDREN INTO SLAVERY TO THE REST OF THE WORLD, FOR THAT IS JUST WHAT THIS IS!!!!!
Michelle: Who or what arrangements would you trust?
Michelle,
You are far from alone in being enraged by this insanity. While I am unsure of the etiquette involved in cross promoting in the comments, I invite you and all of the readers of Michelle Malkin.com to join us at http://nobailouts.ning.com.
Please join us, post a video, leave a comment, provide us with more information. Write your Representatives, your Senators and the President. Tell them no.
If you need to remove this post as an “advertisement”, I understand, and hope you will at least come to the site and join us.
I will not stay silent and let them saddle my children with this debt.
Take care.
Tony Katz
No Bailouts!
http://nobailouts.ning.com
Let them eat cake!
I had a funny thought (funny is relative) the other day.
BO wins the election, and he and congress are about to embark on measures that would prolong the recession and send it deeper, a la congress/Hoover/FDR in the 1920’s/30’s…
At some point, someone who is actually a serious adult steps up to BO and says,
”Barack, about that crazy tax plan of yours….it was all well and good when we could afford to throw money away, but now that we’re in a crisis…..well, let’s just say now’s not a good time….sorry.”
A “must read” post by Michelle. Masterful.
I smell history repeating itself. (Federal Reserve Act).
I just cant get over the good feeling i have as a US tax payer being forced fed a bill for the Criminal Bailout of Fannie Mae and their offshore investors (China is of the largest foreign holders of long-term debt in Fannie Mae).
I pray this Act does not pass.
#157 – i second that.
Tell you what: Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Franklin Raines, and all the other mucky-mucks who either allowed this debacle to happen, or profited from it, will be spending the rest of their lives paying huge amounts of $$ for personal security.
Even if the government pays for a Praetorian guard to protect them their personal freedom will become vanishingly small.
In China the managers of those infant formula factories will soon meet their fate standing in front of a wall.
Some people (not me!!) in this country who have been financially destroyed by similar predators, seeing the latter smiling and enjoying themselves, will be driven to take revenge.
I wouldn’t want to be one of Frank’s boy-toys. I might wind up in the line of fire….
Not advocacy. Just sayin’.
Obviously none of them do.
@nlebou:
Mccain’s never said that. he said he was less qualified to speak about the economy than he was about military and foreign affairs.
Take yer sillyass Obamaisms down the hall, will ya?
If anyone believes this will not pass is simply being naive.
So much for judicial review I guess. I see Congress isn’t too worried about that little oath they made to “support and defend the Constitution”.
I’m sorry… I can’t take this anymore…. no more money from my pocket… I’ve done my best…… I hate the politicians, I hate the bloodsuckers… I’m hunkering down and you try to take my money I’ll fire at you… am I naive?
@Send_me: actually Congress has the power under Article III, Sec. 2 of the Constitution to limit jurisdiction of the federal courts. In fact ALL federal courts other than the Supreme court are creations of the Congress.
Still, putting all that power in one guy’s hands is very, very scary. I hope it doesn’t make it into the final bill.
How do you people think stuff like this happens?
I know. It happens because you guys have let it happen time and again over the course of the Bush administration. From torture to Valerie Plame to warrantless wiretapping to the Iraq war, you guys have not only stood idly by while Republicans in power shroud themselves in secrecy and declare themselves to be above the law, but actively cheered it on. How else would you expect them to react?
Digshot,
Is that all you have to offer. Politicizing this thing is just lame. There’s too much evidence out there for any reasoning person to know that both sides of the aisle are to blame. Take a stand on the solution or go away.
This thing needs to be defeated. It’ll just add more water to the slippery slope of socialism that we find ourselves on now.
It’s not politicizing to fault a corrupt and flawed ideological movement for the problems that their horrible governance has created.
Democrats are to blame for this, too, but only insofar as they didn’t do anything to stand up to the Republicans when they started destroying our government.
You wanted to take credit when things were going better, so you get to take the blame now that the bottom’s fallen out.
Digshot,
Do you read anything at all that’s not issued from the Dems? You can not be serious. I will give you this, you are single-minded in your purpose.
I agree!! liberalism has given us this mess. Thanks to Clinton and the commmunity redevelopment act, and then his OMB director Raines at freddy mac, and the the DEMOCRATS refusing to fix the problem, as MCCAIN wanted to in 2005.
its very important to remember the ideology that has given us this mess, just as it has given us the failed war on poverty, the ponzi scheme that is social security and medicare.
thanks for the reminder.
This is not a liberal or a conservative problem, this is a Dem/GOP problem.
This is not a failure of the free market. It is the failure of a collection of attempts to manipulate the free market.
If you think Congress will give the administration of blank check, well, you’re right. They will. With pork-laden strings attached.
This is an opportunity for politicians to fall over themselves to continue to borrow against posterity in order to coat us in feel good lard and regulations.
This will blow by $1 trillion.
Thought the Iraq War was costly?
Just wait until this bipartisan take down of the economy gets going this week. It’s the old giving of whiskey and car keys to teenage boys simile of PJ O’Rourke. The results won’t be pretty.
right4life,
How could liberalism be the problem? Republicans have been in office these past 8 years, and McCain, when he ‘wanted to fix the problem’ back in 2005, had the Presidency and both houses of Congress to help him do it. Even if all of this is the fault of Bill Clinton somehow, magically, why didn’t your guys fix it?
Digshot, you are either a troll or a fool. Likely both.
You can read how the Community Development Act was passed in 1977, and strengthened by Clinton in the 90′s.
You can read further to learn how mortgage banking industry was perverted by the REQUIREMENTS of that Ace, passed by the Dems, by making them lend to uncreditworthy people in the name of “fairness” and diversity, or suffer civil and criminal penalties.
You can read all over the net about how Wall Street, Republicans AND some Dems warned years ago that Freddie and Fannie were disasters ready to happen.
You can read how McCain himself proposed reforms, but was beaten back by Schumer and Barney Frank, among other Dems.
You can read how Dodd, Obama and Hillary got gobs of money from Freddie Mac to keep them compliant. You can read how Fannie and Freddie’s execs enriched themselves to the tune of 100 million by cooking the books. You might even ask yourself why the evil Boosh would let a pack of Democrat liberals like Raines, Gorelick and Mudd enrich themselves with public money. You can read how the Bush administration warned about Freddie and Fannie, espec the past two years when the Dems have held the majority.
You can also read the Constitution where you will be reminded which branch passes the laws. Hint: it’s not the Executive. You might also fire up a couple of neurons and remember that the GOP majority was a slim one, so slim that Booosh couldn’t get a lot of federal judges confirmed. Do the words filibuster and cloture mean anything to you? I doubt it.
Or, instead of educating yourself, you can steep in your own willful ignorance, post nonsense here, and get the crap beat out of you.
Take yer pick, chief.
More for the idiot Digshot, from PowerLine:
“As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. …
The problem was that the trillions of dollars in play were only low-risk investments if
real estate prices continued to rise. Once they began to fall, the entire house of cards came down with them. Take away Fannie and Freddie, or regulate them more wisely, and it’s hard to imagine how these highly liquid markets would ever have emerged. This whole mess would never have happened.
It is easy to identify the historical turning point that marked the beginning of the end.
Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were, after years of dominating Washington, on the ropes. They were enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. At one telling moment in late 2004, captured in an article by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Peter Wallison, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s chief accountant told disgraced Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines that Fannie’s position on the relevant accounting issue was not even “on the page” of allowable interpretations.
Then legislative momentum emerged for an attempt to create a “world-class regulator” that would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks. Politicians who previously had associated themselves proudly with the two accounting miscreants were less eager to be associated with them. The time was ripe.
The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn’t be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie “continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,” he said. “We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.”
What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.
If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.
But the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter. We now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.
Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000. …
There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.
Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that’s worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.
Put that in your bong, Digshot.
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McShamnesty and NoBama are both horrid choices. Nevermind the BS economic plans, when they grant amnesty to 18 million illegals, we will run into even larger deficits due to entitlement programs.
Not to mention, loss of our culture.
We need Nancy Reagan…”JUST SAY NO!”
Just Say “NO!” to Income Redistribution
Just Say “NO!” to Corruption
Just Say “NO!” to Unconstitutional power-grabs (trying to eliminate any possibility of judicial review)
Just Say “NO!” to Marxism: The Opiate of the Asses
A ray of hope for those who believe:
The Demoncrats who have gotten wealthy off of their corruption will not get to hold on to that wealth. Somehow it is going to transfer to the righteous.
I can’t believe this is happening to my America. It’s unreal that Congress would even consider collapsing the three branches of government called for in the Constitution an that they would run around like dummies and even consider giving ONE MAN $700 Billion of the taxpayer’s money just because he says so.
Anyone left on the hill with a brain?
Wow. Take a minute and think back over the past 8 years and remember how many administration officials were thrown under the bus because of some contrived “scandal”.
Think about the judicial nominees, those who made it to the bench, and those who never got a hearing, yet were smeared anyway.
Then, think of this guy who is looking to give away over $700 BILLION with no accountability…after his previous sorry performance.
Why is he still in the administration?
Paulson doesn’t need contained….he needs to be on the unmemployment line!!!
Mao Tse-Tung stated that the United States will fall without ever firing a shot…since they have us by the nutsac economically I would say ole Mao was right.
Word is that Paulson included Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch in his bailout plan…