Rahm reveals that the principles of government ownership came up in the context of owning banks, not owning car companies.

TPMM notes that DOJ has been reluctant to turn over to the Oversight Committee the documents pertaining to its Delayed Prosecution Agreement with AIG. Here are some data points that might begin to explain why DOJ would be reluctant to reveal what they knew about AIG and when they knew it.

Hank Greenberg will testify before the Oversight Committee today. I suspect it’ll be a dog and pony show designed to exonerate Greenberg, not a useful hearing to learn what happened at AIG.

We need to close tax havens not just because they’re tax havens. They’re also one of the tools corporations are using to hide risk.

Fox Business News has an article describing what it got in response to a FOIA request for Treasury documents on the bailout. While most of the interesting details were redacted because of attorney-client privilege, the documents do reveal the extent to which Citi and AIG were as arrogant when Treasury was negotiating this stuff as they have been in recent weeks.

Remember the flap in the last few years about deferred prosecution agreements? The flap started when it was reported that John Ashcroft’s firm had gotten a $52 million deal from his former colleague, NJ US Attorney Chris Christie, to monitor an out-of-court settlement with medical device company Zimmer Holdings. Bush’s DOJ loved the deferred prosecution agreements because it provided a way to “crack down” on corporate crime without dismantling the company.

The words extortion and blackmail are

Congressman Baca asked Ben Bernanke a very simple question about AIG: “When was it broken?” That question has a very simple answer: “1999.” But Bernanke didn’t want to admit that the deregulation passed in 1999 brought about the mess at AIG and elsewhere.

A few days ago, this hearing might have focused on why we need to bribe the banksters to clean up their mess. Now, it will undoubtedly focus on why we’re socializing risk some more. We’ll also have William Dudley, the new head of the NY Fed. The Honorable Timothy F. Geithner, Secretary, U.S.

Just days after I accused AIG’s traders of threatening a terrorist attack, Obama’s making the same analogy.