Bailout

Rep. Alan Grayson has written a letter calling for the release of all documents and materials contained on AIG's internal servers. His idea deserves support. US taxpayers rescued AIG and own a majority (79.9%) of its shares. Serious questions remain about the payment of money AIG allegedly owed "counterparties" like Goldman Sachs: Why did the US government indirectly pay 100 cents on the dollar to these counterparties for debts from a broken company? Were the amounts claimed by these counterparties legitimate or inflated? Was there an attempt to negotiate the amounts down - and if not, why not?

There are other legitimate and important areas of inquiry, too: Why were large bonuses paid out, presumably to the same people that ruined the company and cost the taxpayers billions? Was there a secret deal to ensure that these bonuses were paid? Did regulators and auditors perform their functions adequately? Rep. Grayson quotes fraud investigators Bill Black, Eliot Spitzer, and Frank Portnoy as saying that "a thousand journalistic flowers can bloom" once these materials are released. They're right.

The public has a right to know. These materials should be released.

The full text of Rep. Grayson's letter is below. more »

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While Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was on the talk shows reassuring America that the economy is healing, developments in Europe threatened to cut the legs out from under a U.S. recovery. more »

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Banks still aren't lending where its needed, and it's getting worse, not better, for small businesses - the nation's jobs engine. Why did we bail out the big banks, again? Perhaps our government should just loan directly to the job creators instead of the job killers. more »

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How ironic that President Obama’s jobs summit should be scheduled on the same date (Thursday, December 3) that the Senate Banking Committee has scheduled the reconfirmation hearing of Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke. more »

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The new consensus on international imbalance monitoring/surveillance attempts to reduce the problems associated with the country-specific development and growth model in the face of economic hegemony on the one hand and export-orientation of developing nations on the other to a problem of imbalances that can be solved by minor transparency gains, less regulatory arbitrage among lax structures and more »

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Remember that $500,000 pay cap for bailed-out banking execs the White House announced in February? Under Treasury Secretary Geithner’s new rules for bailout pay, that max has become a minimum.

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