Home, Lost Home

Posted: November 16, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Bailout Blues, Equity Markets, Global Financial Crisis, U.S. Economy | Tags: , , , , , | 41 Comments

The Senate Banking Committee is looking into allegations today about Bank of America’s Foreclosure process.   As you may know, there have been problems with foreclosure documents that have led many to question the legality of many foreclosure actions by banks.  At least seven banking officers will appear before the committee to argue the case that robo-notorization and other means of speeding up the process of making people homeless are not illegitimate.  Retiring Senator Bank-Lobbyist-in-Training Chris Dodd is in charge of that committee.

Bloomberg has this to report about the hearings.

Democrats said they are concerned not only about foreclosures, but also about whether mortgage servicers are properly handling mortgage modifications intended to keep some homeowners from losing their properties.

“If many banks and servicers are not handling even basic foreclosure procedures correctly, it is likely that many are also not correctly evaluating homeowners for mortgage modifications,” Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who is a member of the Banking Committee, said in a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner that is scheduled to be sent today.

In the House, lawmakers will also call in overseers and regulators from government agencies, including the OCC and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Consumer advocates have been expressing concern about this process for years and aggressive lobbying is apparently paying off for the financial institutions.  This report on a flurry of FIRE lobbying is from WAPO.

The spotlight on the foreclosure process has anxious financial executives mobilizing on Capitol Hill. A financial lobbyist said senior executives have been meeting with lawmakers and their staffers, and industry groups are planning letter campaigns aimed at preventing aggressive new legislation.

“Everyone’s very nervous about what’s going to happen this week,” said another industry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his firm has a stake in the outcome. “We have all hands on deck.”

It’s unclear what new measure could pass in a politically divided Congress, but some ideas under consideration could broadly reshape the mortgage industry.

Some lawmakers want to resurrect legislation that would give bankruptcy judges the power to order lenders to reduce the principal that homeowners owe. Others are pushing for some big banks to spin off their mortgage-servicing arms to avoid conflicts of interest. There’s also discussion of replacing the industry’s current system for tracking mortgages with one that would be subject to federal regulation.

“The risk is small that a bill gets through,” the financial lobbyist said, but “we are taking it very seriously.”

Meanwhile, Americans for Financial Reform have requested the FED withdraw a Rescission Rule. In real estate transactions, these rules generally offer up a ‘cooling off period’  that give a buyer a chance to nullify a sales contract within a certain period. Most state rescission rules run from five to 15 days.  The FED’s considering tightening the process to favor the lenders.  Here’s some information on the request from AFR to the FED.

In the face of an unparalleled foreclosure crisis, now is the time to reinforce the fundamental importance of TILA rescission. Instead, the Board’s proposal would eviscerate the single most effective tool that homeowners have to stop foreclosures and avoid predatory loans: the extended right of rescission. The FRB Docket R-1390 contains a series of proposed changes to the TILA rules governing mortgage lending.

A few of the proposed changes, including new “material A much greater concern is the proposed decimation of TILA’s right of rescission. At the  depths of the worst foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression, we are surprised that the Federal Reserve Board has proposed rules that would eviscerate the primary protection homeowners currently have to escape abusive loans and avoid foreclosure: the extended right of rescission in 12 CFR § 226.15 and 226.23. disclosures” for home secured credit, would advance consumer protections.

Some changes are neither particularly damaging nor particularly beneficial to consumers. Other parts of the proposal, however, would seriously undermine the reliability of TILA disclosures on home secured credit.  Instead of informing consumers about the terms of their loans as Congress intended, these proposals  would allow broad misstatements of loan terms through new tolerances that are without statutory authority.

The Truth in Lending Act passed by Congress specifically provides consumers the right to unwind an illegal loan through “rescission” for up to three years after the loan was consummated.  The statute – and current Board regulations –both provide that if the proper disclosures were not  provided to the homeowner at the closing, the homeowner can rescind the loan by sending a notice to the creditor. The statute then requires the creditor to cancel the security interest. Only after the  creditor has complied with its obligation to cancel the security interest is the homeowner required to pay back the lender the amount still due on the loan. This order of obligations is the essence of the protection provided by TILA’s extended right of rescission. The cancelling of the security interest means that the homeowner has a defense to a foreclosure. It also means that the homeowner has the means to obtain refinancing so as to be able to tender the amount due. The extended right of rescission does not mean that the homeowner does not have to repay the loan. While the amount due is reduced by the finance charges, fees and amounts the homeowner has already paid, the balance is still due the creditor.

Current momentum to push the laws to protect mortgage loan originators and processors appears aimed at protecting them from the consequences of some really shoddy underwriting practices.  This seems mostly motivated to save them the billions of dollars of costs they–and in turn the Federal Government–would incur should there be zero tolerance of these egregious practices.  Not only are billions of dollars of investors money at risk–including pensions and institutional investment funds–but there’s also that little matter of the bankrupt Fannie and Freddie that sit on tons of the nasty stuff and are currently being propped up by tax payer money.

Oddly enough, there are calls again for the FED or Treasury to do more ‘stress tests’ to see exactly what the potential fall out from this massive stupidity might be.  Will we once again have to fork over our Treasury to pay for the greed of the housing and mortage debacle?  All of this undoubtedly has the markets shaky, I went in search of why so  much Big RED numbers in the major stock indexes today.  The uncertainty inherent in this problem is undoubtedly fueling the equities set back.  We continue to see fall out from the District’s inability to deal with the current systemic risk in our Financial System due to massive  and hasty deregulation.   Here’s some more analysis from WAPO.

At the same time, he said, panel members sympathize with the conundrum facing policymakers as they deal with the issue: On one hand, grinding foreclosures to a halt unnecessarily could harm the economy and slow its recovery. On the other, he said, distressed borrowers are entitled to due process, especially when banks are trying to take their homes.

Administration officials say they are keeping a close watch on the issue.

“We strongly believe that the reported behavior within the mortgage servicer industry is simply unacceptable, and servicers who have failed to follow the law must be held accountable,” said Treasury spokesman Mark Paustenbach. He added that the administration has led an interagency effort to “investigate misconduct, protect homeowners and mitigate any long-term effects on the housing market. The independent regulatory agencies, the Justice Department and [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] are examining servicers’ behavior, and we will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

This loosely means they’re  probably anticipating the need for more bailouts.  Good luck with that given the influx of hostile partisans coming in from the right wing of the Republican Party in January.   What’s a bunch of lame ducks to do?

Of Marx and Smith and Mice and Maddoffs

Posted: April 3, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Equity Markets, Global Financial Crisis, Team Obama, U.S. Economy | Comments Off on Of Marx and Smith and Mice and Maddoffs

If we lived in a perfect world of either perfect market capitalism or perfect government planning, there’s a lot of things that wouldn’t exist. There would be no corruption, no hidden information, no excesses or shortages, and absolutely no need for banks, insurance companies, and stock, real estate, or insurance brokers. That’s right. The entire FIRE lobby wouldn’t exist. Not only would we not need lobbyists, but we wouldn’t need the industries they represent. The Financial Markets exist because we don’t have any perfectly beneficent centrally planned governments or any form of real capitalism with perfect markets. They can’t exist. They are theoretical models period.

We have blended economies. They’re mishmashes of government intervention and mess-ups and failing markets and limping-along-as-best-they-can-markets. Nearly every economic transaction in the real world is fraught with some kind of chance for a misfire. You hire a real estate broker who you hope you can trust to guide you through the treacherous process of buying and selling the biggest asset most folks will ever have. You don’t know what’s a fair price, you don’t know where the buyers or sellers are and if either are honest or hiding The Money Pit from you, and you certainly don’t know who is a good or bad mortgage loan lender and lawyer to help ensure that you get a loan and a title free of bad encumbrances. That process is the same when you have a baby and you need a doctor and a hospital and you trust your insurance company to get a good deal for you. It’s the same when you look to save up for your pension or your kid’s college. The entire FIRE industry is there to help you navigate a bunch of imperfect markets with a lot of imperfect information. They’re supposed to be the experts who will help you navigate moral hazard and hidden information for you.

Except when they don’t.

Then, their government regulators are there to protect you and them from the bad eggs in the business. No one should be protected from their own stupidity, but these markets are so fraught with hazards and problems, that anything can happen. Bernie Maddoffs happen despite everything. So, do Goldman Sachs’ untoward influence in the NY Fed and the Treasury and financial panics. The key to these markets is middle-path economics. Yes, I’m a Buddhist and a Financial economist so I have to use the don’t tune the string too tight or it breaks, or tune the string to loose or it won’t play metaphor. It’s a balancing act. The financial markets play a unique role in a mixed market economy. The way we treat them must be unique also.

I got drug back from the bliss of the first few days of spring break where the last thing I should be thinking about is the financial markets (not teaching) but the only thing I should be thinking about is the financial markets (researching) by an email by the petulant clown. Did I want to handle or look at the discussion here? It’s a thread at FDL started out with a nod to the WAPO editorial here by Simon Johnson and James Kwak then a retort at the NYT by Paul Krugman here. The central question is financial reform. The specific question is should we break up big banks? Johnson and Kwak join ex-Fed Chair Volcker and say yes. Krugman says no, just toughen their regulation. My bottom line is all of the above. Break them up AND toughen the regulation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not that kind of Protection

Posted: March 11, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Equity Markets, Global Financial Crisis, Team Obama | Tags: , , | Comments Off on Not that kind of Protection

The European Union appears to be serious about stopping the hedge fund casino where you get to bet on the failure of countries to meet their sovereign debt obligations with other folks’ money. It also wants to increase regulation that provides more transparency which should–theoretically–lead to increased protection from moral hazard and insiders with inside information acting against the best interests of other investors. Would you consider this action to be protectionist? (i.e. against free trade agreements?) Once again, I’m turning to the UK’s Financial Times for more information.

Evidently, Timothy Geithner our Secretary of Treasury Goldman’s Sachs Financial Interests is arguing just that.

Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, has delivered a blunt warning to the European Commission that its plans to regulate the hedge fund and private equity industries could cause a transatlantic rift by discriminating against US groups.

A letter sent by Mr Geithner this month to Michel Barnier, Europe’s internal market commissioner, makes it clear that the European Union is heading for a clash with Washington if it pushes ahead with what the US – and Britain – fear could be a protectionist law.

As we see the continual watering-down of financial regulation met to rein in the worst of credit abuses in the country, we now see our government arguing against reining-in the casino-style side bets of the hedge funds. The UK is raging against the reform machine too.

The draft EU directive would impose tighter restrictions on hedge funds, private equity and other alternative investment funds. It has caused alarm in the City of London, where some in the industry say it is a thinly veiled attempt by France and Germany to undermine the UK’s dominance of financial services.

Okay, so this is my question. How is this going to undermine the dominance of the UK and US investment houses? How does this stop them from competing for business? The answer is in one clause that may or may not be the real issue here.

Mr Geithner warns that US hedge funds, private equity groups and banks could be discriminated against if proposals to restrict the access of EU investors to funds based outside the 27-country bloc are included in the final law.

So-called “third country” elements of the directive would force non-EU funds to comply with the new rules if they wish to market themselves at all within the EU. The directive could also force EU-based private equity and hedge funds to use only locally based banks as custodians and depositaries.

Contentious areas also include rules on remuneration, limits on borrowing, the disclosure of sensitive information and the regime for depositaries.

Paul Myners, UK financial services minister, told a meeting of private equity executives on Wednesday that he would fight “line by line and minute by minute” to defend the free movement of capital. But he also warned that “nobody in this room is going to get the directive they want”.

One senior private equity executive said the UK needed to take a stand before others would rally behind it.

I can see how portions could restrict the movement of capital from one country to another if investors are forced to use local banks. However, asking the UK and US hedge funds to comply with the EU rules doesn’t seem any different than asking FORD or GM to comply with the tougher MPG or emissions standards by the EU or for that matter asking US food companies to restrict certain ingredients either. Most other U.S. industries comply with EU rules daily. One major example is the use of the metric system. So, why can’t Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan just shut up and comply?

Here’s what is more likely at the heart of the argument.

One regulation they do not want is one that bans speculative trading on naked CDS.

The momentum for a ban on naked CDS is getting stronger. Germany and France on Wednesday called on the European Union to consider banning speculative trading in credit default swaps and set up a compulsory register of derivatives trading, the FT reports. Angela Merkel and Francois Fillon sent a letter to Jose Barroso yesterday, asking for an immediate investigation of the role and effect of speculative trading in CDSs in the sovereign bonds of European Union member states. Fillon assured after talks in Berlin, that both governments are “very much in agreement in tackling extreme speculation”.

Earlier this week, Mario Draghi indicated that tighter regulation of CDS could become a G20 issue when he confirmed that the subject will be on the agenda of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), Reuters reports.

Four EU member states have called for an investigation into the role of these things in Greece’s problems.

An inquiry must be opened into the role and impact of speculation linked to credit default swaps trading in EU government bonds as soon as possible to determine any market abuse, the heads of four countries said.

The move stops short of repeating recent calls for an immediate ban on selling CDS contracts to ‘naked’ buyers who have no interest in the underlying asset — thereby making it easier to find broad backing from the bloc’s finance ministers who will discuss CDS markets next Tuesday.

In a joint letter to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, dated March 10, Germany, Luxembourg, France and Greece also called for more transparency on derivative markets.

The moves would be aimed at preventing undue speculation, enhancing transparency and improving the safety of derivative transactions, according to the letter, which was released by the office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday.

So is Geithner complaining about the provision to restrict business in certain countries to local banks or the restrictions on some of the more exotic and toxic financial innovations? That would include the ones that have troubled both Greece and Iceland.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Senator Future Lobbyist of America member Chris Dodd is about ready to unveil his version of Financial Reform. This reflects his compromise with Republican committee member Bob Corker. Have I mentioned recently that nothing particularly good ever comes from compromising with a right wing nut? Oh, yes, that would be yesterday’s post where we talked about Corker’s goal of exempting payday lenders from regulation meant to stop lending abuse. Still, let’s go to Bloomberg for the latest controversy in OUR financial industry reform.

The new Dodd bill will include some elements negotiated with Corker. For example, it won’t propose the stand-alone agency, which Corker opposed, and will probably put the consumer unit in the Federal Reserve with an independent budget, a director appointed by the president and some enforcement powers, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plan.

“It has always been my goal to produce a consensus package,” Dodd said in the statement. “And we have reached a point where bringing the bill to the full committee is the best course of action to achieve that end.”

Notice the difference in the content between the EU talks and the US version. The EU is talking about serious regulation and the US is creating another level of bureaucracy within the FED with “some enforcement powers”. This is like trying to protect some one from AIDS by handing them a virginity pledge to sign when they ain’t no virgin.

It has to be the power of the FIRE lobby. All you have to do is read any of the academic literature on the financial industry to know that standardization of process and translucency, along with making investors have skin in their game creates stronger and deeper financial markets. While we are shuffling decks on the Titanic, the Europeans are looking at the engines. I just wish I had more control over my pension plan (which unfortunately has to be a selection of professionally ‘managed’ screwed up funds rather than letting me have my own money to invest as I see fit.

Who is going to stop Wall Street before they kill again?

Batten down the Hatches

Posted: March 3, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Bailout Blues, Equity Markets, Global Financial Crisis, The Great Recession, U.S. Economy | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

Most economists are saying what most Americans have been saying for some time. This doesn’t feeling like a recovering economy. But is it just another calm before yet another storm? I earlier reported on a new thesis called “The Doomsday Cycle” and the attention that it had been receiving in academic circles. The idea is that the Fed and other central banks have just been increasingly feeding private sector debt to grow bubble economies and that despite several downturns that have been not so severe (the dot com or tech bubble) and severe (the housing or sub prime bubble), we continue offering easy credit that’s not supporting real growth in the world economy. There is now a report coming from some of my favorite Cassandras that suggests we’ve yet to work out on the problems of the last few years and it’s likely to get worse. This would include Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, Public Watchdog of Bailout Funds Elizabeth Warren, and Rob Johnson of the United Nations Commission of Experts on Finance. The report argues that a down turn is coming that will be much worse than the recent one. The central cause of these continuing blow outs are those banks that continually speculate rather than lend to businesses that actually produce and do something which are being continually enabled by Federal governments everywhere.

The report warns that the country is now immersed in a “doomsday cycle” wherein banks use borrowed money to take massive risks in an attempt to pay big dividends to shareholders and big bonuses to management – and when the risks go wrong, the banks receive taxpayer bailouts from the government.

“Risk-taking at banks,” the report cautions, “will soon be larger than ever.”

Again, financial innovations are at the center of the maelstrom.

“While manufacturers have developed iPods and flat-screen televisions, the financial industry has perfected the art of offering mortgages, credit cards and check overdrafts laden with hidden terms that obscure price and risk,” Warren writes. “Good products are mixed with dangerous products, and consumers are left on their own to try to sort out which is which. The consequences can be disastrous.”

Frank Partnoy, a panelist from the University of San Diego, claims that “the balance sheets of most Wall Street banks are fiction.” Another panelist, Raj Date of the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, argues that government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become “needlessly complex and irretrievably flawed” and should be eliminated. The report also calls for greater competition among credit rating agencies and increased regulation of the derivatives market, including requiring that credit-default swaps be traded on regulated exchanges.

At the same time, we’re seeing the reform bill that was intended to stop a repeat of the 2008 global financial crisis being watered down to the point of uselessness by congress and the FIRE lobby. You can watch at Bloomberg which is livestreaming the conference here at the Roosevelt Institute. It’s called Make Markets Better. I know it’s finance and economics, but you’re better off knowing, believe me.

Label me ‘Not Surprised’

Posted: February 23, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Bailout Blues, Equity Markets, Global Financial Crisis, Team Obama, The Bonus Class, The Great Recession, U.S. Economy | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Label me ‘Not Surprised’

I should’ve stuck to my research agenda, but no, I just had to go look at business headlines. There’s a debate on at The Economist over “Who benefits from financial innovation?” Nobel Prize winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz is arguing that financial innovation hasn’t been boosting economic growth but his position (which is mine) is currently in the minority.

The right kind of innovation obviously would help the financial sector fulfil its core functions; and if the financial sector fulfilled those functions better, and at lower cost, almost surely it would contribute to growth and societal well-being. But, for the most part, that is not the kind of innovation we have had.

In terms of that big question up there, the answer is found today on Bloomberg.com. If you answered “what is the vampire squid”,you’re absolutely right. The more relevant question appears to be what did that cost us? For that, I can only answer a lot and there’s more to come. Here’s the headline: Secret AIG Document Shows Goldman Sachs Minted Most Toxic CDOs.

Well, there’s your financial innovation for you.

So, the fun thing about the story is that the unlikely hero is Darrold Issa (Republican) member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform who “placed into the hearing record a five-page document itemizing the mortgage securities on which banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA had bought $62.1 billion in credit-default swaps from AIG.” Oddly enough,it appears that Issa may have not really known exactly what he had just disclosed. It didn’t really attract any attention at the time. Luckily, some one who knew something eventually looked at it. This was essentially a list of the deals that made AIG insolvent. These were also the deals that the government basically bought when it rescued AIG.

The document Issa made public cuts to the heart of the controversy over the September 2008 AIG rescue by identifying specific securities, known as collateralized-debt obligations, that had been insured with the company. The banks holding the credit-default swaps, a type of derivative, collected collateral as the insurer was downgraded and the CDOs tumbled in value.

The public can now see for the first time how poorly the securities performed, with losses exceeding 75 percent of their notional value in some cases. Compounding this, the document and Bloomberg data demonstrate that the banks that bought the swaps from AIG are mostly the same firms that underwrote the CDOs in the first place.

Here’s an even more interesting analysis from a legal standpoint. I know the deal was shady, I just have never known exactly if shady=unethical=illegal. The devil is truly in the details placed into public record by Issa.

The identification of securities in the document, known as Schedule A, and data compiled by Bloomberg show that Goldman Sachs underwrote $17.2 billion of the $62.1 billion in CDOs that AIG insured — more than any other investment bank. Merrill Lynch & Co., now part of Bank of America Corp., created $13.2 billion of the CDOs, and Deutsche Bank AG underwrote $9.5 billion.

These tallies suggest a possible reason why the New York Fed kept so much under wraps, Professor James Cox of Duke University School of Law says: “They may have been trying to shield Goldman — for Goldman’s sake or out of macro concerns that another investment bank would be at risk.”

Okay, so we know who we’re speaking of when Cox says the New York Fed, right? That would be Treasury Secretary Timmy-really-in-the-well-this-time Geithner. Bloomberg is going as far as to label his actions a cover-up. I frankly think that looks like a mild charge. Interestingly enough, an earlier version of the information was released by AIG but the counterparty names were redacted at the time. Chris Dodd’s committee had requested the information. Without the names–or more truthfully the frequency of ONE name in particular–you can’t really see much of a conspiracy.

What this detailed list shows–because the names are now out there along with the deals–is that the very same folks that underwrote the original toxic securities were the same folks that went to AIG to bet against them. It doesn’t look like they were hedging or placing insurance on their risk which would be natural and understandable transactions. It appears they fully knew the securities were bad and were preparing to make money by placing offsetting bets. This activity could only be determined if you saw the names of the counterparties next to the deals themselves. So, the appropriate document to list the information on would be a Schedule A. AIG released a schedule A for several years during the crisis, but without some of the most relevant details. We know now that this was at the request of the NY Fed (aka Tim–I’ve got GS on speed dial–Geithner).

In late November 2008, the insurer was planning to include Schedule A in a regulatory filing — until a lawyer for the Fed said it wasn’t necessary, according to the e-mails. The document was an attachment to the agreement between AIG and Maiden Lane III, the fund that the Fed established in November 2008 to hold the CDOs after the swap contracts were settled.

AIG paid its counter­parties — the banks — the full value of the contracts, after accounting for any collateral that had been posted, and took the devalued CDOs in exchange. As requested by the New York Fed, AIG kept the bank names out of the Dec. 24 filing and edited out a sentence that said they got full payment.

The New York Fed’s January 2010 statement said the sentence was deleted because AIG technically paid slightly less than 100 cents on the dollar.

Before the New York Fed ordered AIG to pay the banks in full, the company was trying to negotiate to pay off the credit- default swaps at a discount or “haircut.”

Read that date. We’re talking November 2008. If you read further into the Bloomberg article you’ll see that the names were withheld also during 2009. Issa put the names out because he wanted to show U.S. taxpayers where their money went. It’s unclear to me if he understood then or maybe even now that by putting out the details of the deals, he’s basically provided information that let’s us know how deeply Goldman Sachs was in on the financial innovations that blew up the economy. Not only that, it appears they knowingly may have been loading some of those innovations with assets they knew would explode and that they were actively placing bets on that outcome at AIG. As of the end of January, 2010 meeting, Geithner and the NY Fed still didn’t want the details released. No fucking wonder!

Janet Tavakoli, founder of Tavakoli Structured Finance Inc., a Chicago-based consulting firm, says the New York Fed’s secrecy has helped hide who’s responsible for the worst of the disaster. “The suppression of the details in the list of counterparties was part of the coverup,” she says.

E-mails between Fed and AIG officials that Issa released in January show that the efforts to keep Schedule A under wraps came from the New York Fed. Revelation of the messages contributed to the heated atmosphere at the House hearing.

…

Tavakoli also says that the poor performance of the underlying securities (which are actually specific slices or tranches of CDOs) shows they were toxic in the first place and were probably replenished with bundles of mortgages that were particularly troubled. Managers who oversee CDOs after they are created have discretion in choosing the mortgage bonds used to replenish them.

“The original CDO deals were bad enough,” Tavakoli says. “For some that allow reinvesting or substitution, any reasonable professional would ask why these assets were being traded into the portfolio. The Schedule A shows that we should be investigating these deals.”

So, check this out.

Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, who delivered a report on the AIG bailout in November, says he’s not finished. He has begun a probe of why his office wasn’t provided all of the 250,000 pages of documents, including e-mails and phone logs, that Issa’s committee received from the New York Fed.

Okay, now, follow closely as I connect the dots to this one: U.S. Treasury loan plan may exclude TARP watchdog.

If you were Timothy Geithner, would you want Neil Barofsky poking around any more programs? Wouldn’t you be highly interested in controlling TARP oversight? No wonder Treasury officials and others have been after Barofsky for some time. (Here’s an outline of their actions and attempts to remove independency by Glenn Greenwald at Salon from last summer. )

Bottom line:

Geithner basically knew the vampire squid was a huge contributor to the fall of AIG. It looks like he may have actively encouraged covering-up that information. It also looks like GS actively securitized mortgages it knew would fail eventually and made huge counterbets based on that information using AIG as its personal bookie. Then, when AIG couldn’t cover the bets, GS refused to negotiate any deals (they must’ve known something like a bail out was forthcoming). Then knew exactly what was in those securities so they knew their real value. Geithner made AIG pay GS 100% of the value when it appears they were worth around 35%. When AIG tried to report the counterparties, the NY FED told them to withhold the information. (Yet, post Timmy, the NY FED appears to have released everything to Issa’s committee. During Timmy’s time, remember, everything was heavily edited and Barofsky appears not to have gotten the same information.) They also were told not to provide details on the mark downs. Timmy must’ve known that Goldman was betting against the toxic assets they had created. Not only that, it looks like Goldman was actually shorting themselves! AND these guys were Obama’s major contributors. Giethner must’ve been part of the packaged deal.

I got one thing to say now. A lot of folks should be doing a perp walk on this one. This looks like fraud. If this is the kind’ve financial innovation these folks voting on The Economist poll want, then they should just as well turn their life savings over to Bernie Madoff right now. I just wish they’d stop giving the likes of him mine too.

(I hope I’ve explained this adequately, cause this sure is one fucking twisted tale.)

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