Teapot Dome 2.0?

April 15, 1922 Senate Investigates the "Teapot Dome" Scandal

Repost from Jesse’s Cafe…

“I have to think this train is probably going to leave the station soon and we need to focus our efforts on explaining the story as best we can. There were too many people involved in the deals — too many counterparties, too many lawyers and advisors, too many people from AIG — to keep a determined Congress from the information.” James P. Bergin, NY Fed, in an email to his Fed colleagues.

‘Though it is hard to divine much understanding from the unredacted filing, it has become clear that Goldman had more involvement than previously believed: In addition to the credit default swaps it bought from AIG, the filing shows that Goldman Sachs also originated many of the underlying assets that AIG and the New York Fed bought back from Société Générale.

The American people have the right to know how their tax dollars were spent and who benefited most from this back-door bailout,” said Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Issa. “Now that it’s public, let’s see if the sky really does fall as the New York Fed said it would to justify its coverup.”

Other lawmakers believed that the New York Fed was trying to hide its ties to Goldman Sachs.’ AIG Reveals the Story – CNN

“Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.

We’re talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system — apart from the matter of AIG’s bailout — deserves further congressional scrutiny…

By pursuing this line of inquiry, the hearing revealed some of the inner workings of the New York Fed and the outsized role it plays in banking. This insight is especially valuable given that the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn’t subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve

This impenetrability comes in handy since the bank is the preferred vehicle for many of the Fed’s bailout programs. It’s as though the New York Fed was a black-ops outfit for the nation’s central bank…

Why do we trust the financial priests?

*Source:   Why do we trust the financial priests? BBC, Robert Peston, Saturday, 9 January 2010

“The Icelanders have risen up and humiliated their political class over its handling of the financial crisis, as I mentioned on Thursday.

But there’s nothing terribly unusual about their sense of powerlessness and alienation from the writing of the rules of the banking and finance game.

When it comes to how banks are allowed to behave, sovereignty over decision-making rarely rests with citizens.

Did anyone actually ask us whether we wanted our banks rescued to the tune of £1.2 trillion during and after the crisis of 2008?

If they had, we might have said no.

So perhaps it’s a good thing that politicians and central bankers simply did what they thought was best for us, without consulting – because if the banks had gone down, the contraction in our economy would have been far far worse than it turned out to be. Better to leave it to the experts, eh?

But hang on a tick: who actually got us into this mess in the first place?

It wasn’t the fault of ordinary citizens like you and me.

It was those self-proclaimed experts who allowed our banks to become too huge, too complicated, too addicted to taking crazy risks, and too poorly endowed with life-preserving capital.

Argentine battle over central bank reserves deepens

BUENOS AIRES, Jan 8 (Reuters) – An Argentine judge blocked the president’s plan to use Central Bank reserves to pay public debt and ordered the bank chief’s reinstatement on Friday, deepening a dispute that has rattled financial markets.

Moments after a court ruled to reinstate former Central Bank President Martin Redrado, he returned to the bank, waving at television cameras. A day earlier, President Cristina Fernandez fired Redrado for opposing her debt plan.

Despite the court rulings, local media said an interim bank chief was taking steps to move $6.6 billion in foreign currency reserves to the treasury. “It’s like a science fiction movie,” a central bank employee told Reuters.

The conflict has highlighted persistent political instability in Latin America’s No. 3 economy just as Fernandez’s cash-strapped government seeks to charm investors and issue global bonds eight years after a massive default.

Argentine bonds, stocks and the peso closed down due to investor concerns over the strength of Argentina’s institutions ahead of a sovereign debt swap that is expected to launch later this month. [ID:nN08135180]

Fernandez urged opponents to let her govern and defended using part of the Central Bank’s $48 billion in reserves to service the nation’s debts.

“It’s much better to use the reserves than to take out loans with an interest rate of 15 or 14 percent. It’s common sense,” she said in a televised speech.

Opposition leaders have challenged her order for the central bank to transfer billions of dollars in foreign currency reserves to state coffers.