Matt Taibbi is out with his take on the Fed’s bailout lending revealed last month. He focuses on how two rich housewives with no apparent business experience got almost a quarter of a billion dollars in the TALF program. In August 2009, John Mack, at the time still the CEO of Morgan Stanley, made an [...]

As I noted, the Financial Stability Oversight Council is meeting today. As announced, they discussed foreclosure fraud and securitization. For less than 15 minutes. And then they moved on, without once raising the issue of whether or not the banks’ exposure due to securitization problems posed a systemic risk to our financial system. As the [...]

From the Department of reading the wrong message in an election is this news, of Timmeh Geithner meeting with the Chamber of Commerce’s odious Thomas Donohue to talk about international issues (read: “let’s talk about other countries we can ship American jobs to”). But this week, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, met with the [...]

Greg Sargent and Steve Benen have interesting taxonomies of the Democrats who should buck up and clap louder. I think both bring some needed nuance to the discussion. As part of that, both include some kind of category of lefties who oppose Obama to defend important principles. Sargent doesn’t limit that category to any one [...]

Just wanted to throw two tidbits into the debate on Ben Bernanke’s reconfirmation. First, this quote, which needs no explanation. In the event that Bernanke isn’t confirmed, several sources say, Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Donald Kohn likely would be elevated to acting chair of the U.S. central bank. Bernanke would be entitled to stay [...]

Nomination hearing for Ben Bernanke.

Ben Bernanke nomination hearing.

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.

Congressman Donald Manzullo (R-IL) read this line in Tim Geithner’s opening statement to the House Financial Services Committee today.

AIG directly guarantees over $30 billion of 401(k) and pension plan investments and is a leading provider of retirement services for teachers and educational institutions.

And this line in Ben Bernanke’s opening statement.

Workers whose 401(k) plans had purchased $40 billion of insurance from AIG against the risk that their stable value funds would

Gresham Barrett (R-SC) asked Tim Geithner “the $64 trillion question”–basically, what is Plan B.

Geithner’s response? Don’t worry. It’ll work. That wasn’t acceptable when President Bush had no Plan B in Iraq, and it’s not acceptable here.