This reports highlights:
The far enough down the road we get, the clearer people’s motivations become. After all, if your next job depended on it, wouldn’t you help out your future employer?
AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information,” said Issa, a California Republican. Taxpayers “deserve full and complete disclosure under our nation’s securities laws, not the withholding of politically inconvenient information.”
Emphasis added
Offered again for your consideration:
Learn about how Goldman Sachs has participated in inflating five bubbles since the early 20th century, plus, the gas they’re about to pass our way in cap and trade.
Seriously, read this and pass it on.
Agency plans to restart Recovery loan approvals by Dec. 28
WASHINGTON – President Obama signed the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) appropriations bill on Saturday, which included $125 million to continue through Feb. 28, 2010, the enhancements made possible through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to SBA’s two largest loan programs. The SBA estimates the additional funding will support $4.5 billion in small business lending.
New approvals of loans with the higher guarantee and reduced fees made possible by ARRA are expected to begin by Dec. 28. Loan applications from borrowers who chose to be placed in the SBA’s Recovery Loan Queue will be funded first, followed by new loan approvals beginning on or before Dec. 28.
Continue reading “Additional Funding for SBA Recovery Lending Programs will Support $4.5 Billion in Small Business Lending | SBA”
Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process.
Meet the new boss…same as the old boss…
The home financing system in America works because lenders count on your moral belief system, not contracts, to hold you to the deal, while they do not take that same obligation. This one single fact gives lenders the enormous power of humiliation. Brent White has created one of the most cogent and well crafted descriptions of the present storm we’re riding, along with some unusual observations.
Continue reading “Underwater and Not Walking Away – Brent T. White – Arizona Legal Studies, The University of Arizona.”
The executives at Citibank want to avoid the wall street pay czar so badly, they’re fire selling company assets to raise enough money to pay back the TARP funds:
Citigroup also is ending an agreement with the government that guaranteed a roughly $250 billion portfolio of assets against excessive losses.
The bank sold $17 billion of common shares and another $3.5 billion of bonds that automatically convert into shares in three years.
The bank sold convertible notes that pay a coupon of 7.5 percent a year, and automatically convert to shares at a 25 percent premium to the pricing level in three years.
The bank said on Monday it also plans to issue $1.7 billion of shares to employees, and may sell another $3 billion of trust preferred securities in the first quarter.
Bank of America and Wells Fargo have done the same thing, but they found buyers and Citi didn’t. These banks will crash again, they aren’t doing better, they’ve found even lower ways to be greedy. When they crash again, let them go under.
For those of us treading water, this is a hopeful sign.
the “Small Business Job Creation and Access to Capital Act of 2009” would increase the small business loan limit to as high as $5.5 million and extend for a year the fee eliminations and increased guarantee set to expire under the Recovery Act.
Specifically, the “Small Business Job Creation and Access to Capital Act of 2009” would:
- Increase the loan limit on 7(a) loans from $2 million to $5 million;
- Increase the loan limit on 504 loans from $1.5 million to $5.5 million;
- Increase the loan limit on microloans from $35,000 to $50,000 and increase the maximum loan made to a microloan intermediary from $3.5 million to $5 million;
- Allow the 504 loan program to refinance short-term commercial real estate debt into, long-term, fixed rate loans;
- Extend the authorization to provide 90 percent guarantees on 7(a) loans and fee elimination for borrowers on 7(a) and 504 loans through December 31, 2010; and
- Direct the SBA to create a website where small businesses can identify lenders in their communities.
Senator Jim Bunning smokes Ben Bernanke:
Instead of taking that money and lending to consumers and cleaning up their balance sheets, the banks started to pocket record profits and pay out billions of dollars in bonuses. Because you bowed to pressure from the banks and refused to resolve them or force them to clean up their balance sheets and clean out the management, you have created zombie banks that are only enriching their traders and executives.
…you put the printing presses into overdrive to fund the government’s spending and hand out cheap money to your masters on Wall Street, which they use to rake in record profits while ordinary Americans and small businesses can’t even get loans for their everyday needs.
A more complete, yet less satisfying description of the hearing can be read here.
Dispatches From The Front 