Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. AIG Head Insists On Giving Millions In BonusesAIG, the company that has received more bailout billions than any other institution ($140 billion and the meter is still running), is forging ahead with its plan to dole out over $700 million in bonuses and "retention pay" to the "indispensable" people in charge of its financial products operation.Despite a reported angry phone call from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, AIG CEO Edward Liddy claims that his hands are tied lest his top talent leave the firm in search of better offers. "I do not like these arrangements and find it distasteful and difficult to recommend to you that we must proceed with them," Liddy wrote in a letter to Geithner, as reported in the Washington Post. "Our competitors understand how valuable our top executives are, and we are acutely aware that they would like to siphon off our most talented leaders," he continued. Apparently the prospect of AIG geniuses finding work at other financial institutions deemed "too big to fail" (read "will demand taxpayer bailout after looting ceases") convinced Geithner to forget the whole thing. Incidentally, the Post notes that if the Treasury had decided to properly nationalize the company instead of just taking on an 80% stake as a silent partner, the government could have canceled all such payments and unilaterally rewritten the the company's employment contracts. Labels: AIG, Corporate Swindles, corporate welfare, executive pay, Timothy Geither, Treasury Department Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). This Just In....For what it's worth...From Reuters:Geithner wins OK for Treasury, vows quick action Mon Jan 26, 2009 9:07pm EST By David Lawder and Glenn Somerville WASHINGTON (Reuters) Timothy Geithner won confirmation as U.S. Treasury secretary on Monday and vowed to act quickly to protect the U.S. economy from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. "We are at a moment of maximum challenge for our economy and our country," Geithner said as he was sworn into office shortly after the Senate approved him on a 60-34 vote. Faced with a full-blown crisis, senators largely set aside misgivings about Geithner's failure to pay some taxes earlier this decade in light of his experience in battling the financial storm as head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, a post he relinquished on Monday. Read the rest of the article Labels: bailout, financial crisis, Timothy Geither, Treasury Department Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Geithner & Kiss. Ass., ConclusionFrom Bob Feldman--the last part of his series on Treasury-Secretary-to-be Timothy Geithner.Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner's Kissinger Associates Background--Conclusion Between 1986 and 1989, U.S. Treasury Secretary-Designate Timothy Geithner was employed at Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger's Kissinger Associates influence-peddling firm, which also employed George W. Bush's former special envoy to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, during the early 1990s. Commerce Secretary-Designate Bill Richardson, also is a former employee of Kissinger Associates. In its April 30, 1989 article by Jeff Gerth and Sara Bartlett, titled "Kissinger And Friends And Revolving Doors," the New York Times observed that at the same time Henry Kissinger operated his Kissinger Associates influence-peddling operation, Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner's former business colleage also "had a continuous window into the government's most sensitive information as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board or Pfiab." According to the Times, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board was "a little-known but powerful group" of 16 scientists, business executives and former U.S. government officials which advises the U.S. President about intelligence issues and intelligence activities. At least one former Pfiab official, "who asked not to be identified because of the board's secrecy pledge," told the Times in 1989 that Henry Kissinger, "using his authority as a board member, frequently reviewed intelligence documents outside the regular board meetings." The former Pfiab official also told the Times that he believed that Kissinger's Pfiab membership gave Kissinger special business benefit because Kissinger "could not have separated the insights gained from his access to United States intelligence data from his continuing analysis and advice" to his Kissinger Associates clients--during the period when Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner was employed at Kissinger Associates. In the year prior to taking office in the Bush I Administration, former Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger earned $674,000 from his work for Kissinger Associates and an affiliated Kent Associates firm (which paid $214,000 of the total Eagleburger earned from his `consulting' work for special, private corporate clients). After posing the rhetorical question "What exactly do they do for that much money?" the Times concluded in its April 30, 1989 "Kissinger And Friends And Revolving Doors" article that "little is known about what Kissinger Associates does for its clients." The Times also reported in 1989 that "When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee tried to elicit more information" on Kissinger Associates activities at his confirmation hearing, Eagleburger "was adamant in his refusal to discuss any details" with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Former Deputy Secretary of State Eagleburger did promise, however, "to disqualify himself for one year from matters involving his clients at Kissinger Associates," according to the Times. Given Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner's past association with Kissinger Associates during the same period that Eagleburger worked for the firm, perhaps Geithner should, like Eagleburger, also agree to disqualify himself for one year from matters involving Kissinger Associates clients, especially since banks (like the Midland Bank of Britain) have been among the clients of Kissinger Associates, historically? And, as a member of the House Banking Committee in the early 1990s, former Representative Henry Gonzalez of Texas, wrote me in a July 16, 1991 letter: "For your information, the House Banking Committee's on-going investigation into the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNI) scandal has revealed some new evidence of potential conflicts of interest involving National Security Director Brent Scowcroft, Henry Kissinger and Kissinger Associates. "Upon learning of this fact, I have asked President Bush, in a letter dated May 2, 1991, to review Mr. Scowcroft's stock portfolio to ensure any potential conflicts are eliminated. "I was deeply concerned about Mr. Scrowcroft's stock holdings, especially since he is in a position to strongly influence our national security and foreign policies. "Rest assured, I am following this matter with careful attention, and will continue to monitor Mr. Kissinger and Kissinger Associates to ensure they do not practice improper influence over U.S. foreign policy." (end of article) Labels: Bob Feldman, Kissinger Associates, Timothy Geither, Treasury Department Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Geithner & Kiss. Ass., Pt. 3The third part of Bob Feldman's article on Geithner's Kiss.-Ass. connections.Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner's Kissinger Associates Connection—Part 3 Between 1986 and 1989, U.S. Treasury Secretary-Designate Timothy Geithner was employed at Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger's Kissinger Associates influence-peddling firm, which also employed George W. Bush's former special envoy to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, during the early 1990s. Commerce Secretary-Designate Bill Richardson also is a former employee of Kissinger Associates. Geithner's former associate at Kissinger Associates, Henry Kissinger, was not too pleased when some New York Times reporters in the late 1980s decided to write an investigative article about Kissinger Associates' clients and their past links to former Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who was the Kissinger Associates president before he moved into his State Department office in 1989. On April 14, 1989, for example, the Wall Street Journal reported that Henry Kissinger was "annoyed" at the Times for its "investigation of Kissinger Associates' clients" and was "threatening a lawsuit against the paper for harassing clients." The results of this New York Times investigation of Kissinger Associates were published on April 30, 1989, in an article titled "Kissinger And Friends And Revolving Doors" by Jeff Gerth and Sarah Bartlett. The article noted that, initially, another former Kissinger Associates colleague of Geithner, former National Security Affairs Adviser Brent Scowcroft, "told the White House he was merely a consultant to Kissinger Inc." and only "later amended his financial disclosure statement to reflect his position as vice-chairman." According to the 1989 New York Times article, Scowcroft also "told the White House he had to disclose only the name of Kissinger Associates, not the specific clients he worked with, because he was merely a consultant to the firm." Scowcroft only amended the financial disclosure statement he had filed on February 21, 1989 (to indicate that he was actually the former Kissinger Associates vice-chairman) on March 17, 1989, "one day after a reporter asked him why he had not reported" his true Kissinger Associates post on his original financial disclosure form. On his public disclosure form, according to the 1989 New York Times article, Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner's former colleague, Scowcroft, indicated that he would "disqualify himself from specific matters involving companies he" held "stock in and former clients such as Kissinger Associates, but not from matters involving the firm's clients." The New York Times also reported in 1989 that "among those willing to pay $200,000 or more to be clients of Kissinger Associates are ITT, American Express, Anheuser-Busch, Coca Cola, H.J. Heinz, Fiat, Volvo, LM Ericsson, Daewoo and Midland Bank." The "Kissinger And Friends And Revolving Doors" article also reported in April 1989 that Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner's former colleague, Scowcroft, "belatedly disclosed that he held stock in Kissinger Associates and, according to Mr. Kissinger and public documents, he arranged last month to have Mr. Kissinger buy it back for nine times its estimated worth"; and that Scowcroft's Kissinger Associates salary had exceeded $293,000 per year during the time that Geithner was employed by Kissinger Associates. (end of part 3) --bf Labels: Bob Feldman, Kissinger Associates, Timothy Geither, Treasury Department Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Geithner & Kissinger Associates--pt. 2From Bob Feldman:Treasury Secretary Designate Geithner's Kissinger Associates Connection--Part 2 Between 1986 and 1989, U.S. Treasury Secretary-Designate Timothy Geithner was employed at Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger's Kissinger Associates influence-peddling firm, which also employed George W. Bush's former special envoy to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, during the early 1990s. Commerce Secretary-Designate Bill Richardson also is a former employee of Kissinger Associates. Among the political influence-peddling firms in the United States, "Mr. Kissinger and his associates are by all accounts the most successful of this new breed of former senior Government officials," according to the April 20, 1986 New York Times Magazine article, titled "Kissinger Means Business: Corporate America is eagerly seeking Henry Kissinger's insight and celebrity." The "Kissinger Means Business" article also implied that the motive of these former and current senior Government officials for moving back-and-forth between U.S. foreign policy-determination roles and private influence-peddling position was generally a mercenary one, asserting that "many of these former Government leaders asked themselves, why not capitalize on our stardom, international contacts and insider knowledge to make large incomes on our own." In 1986, U.S. Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner's former colleagues at Kissinger Associates—Kissinger, Scowcroft and Eagleburger—peddled their special influence to 25 to 30 corporate clients in exchange for payments from their clients that totaled $5 million in Kissinger Associates gross income. Each political influence-purchaser paid Geithner's former employer between $150,000 and $420,000 per years for its services because, as former New York Times national security correspondent Leslie Gelb observed in 1986: "The super-star international consultants were certainly people who would get their telephone calls returned from high American Government officials and who would also be able to get executives in to see foreign leaders." When I telephoned the Kissinger Associates office in Manhattan in early 1991 to ask who some of its clients were at that time, a spokesperson for Kissinger Associates replied: "That's all confidential." The April 20, 1986 New York Times Magazine article indicated, however, that besides the Kuwaiti government-owned Midland Bank of Britain, the Kissinger Associates client list--at the time Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner was employed by Kissinger Associates--included H.J. Heinz, American Express/Shearson Lehman, Fiat, Volvo, ASEA, L.M. Ericsson of Sweden, Montedison of Italy, the International Energy Corporation, Atlantic Richfield/ARCO and the Fluor Corporation. Although Henry Kissinger was the sole owner of Kissinger Associates when Geithner was employed by his firm, former National Security Affairs Adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger each received hefty salaries when they worked as Kissinger's partners in influence-peddling, prior to assuming their influential posts in the Bush I Administration in 1989. To further attract foreign government-owned corporations like Midland Bank of Britain as influence-purchasing clients, Kissinger Associates also established a board of directors that included the following international corporate establishment figures around the time that Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner was employed by Kissinger Associates: former U.S. Treasury Secretary William Simon; former Citibank Chairman of the Board Edward Palmer; former U.S. Under-Secretary of State William D. Rogers; then-S.F. Warburg Chairman Lord Roll; then-Atlantic Richfield/ARCO Chairman Robert O. Anderson; then-Volvo Chief Executive Office Pehr Gyllenhammar and former Japanese government foreign minister Saburo Okita. (end of part 2) --bf Labels: Bob Feldman, Kissinger Associates, Timothy Geither, Treasury Department Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Neoliberalism, the IMF, Summers, & GeithnerInteresting post by Ken Hanly on lbo-talk, about Obama's new economics appointees: Timothy Geithner (to be Treasury Secretary) and Larry Summers (to be head of the National Economics Council, which coordinates economic policy throughout the executive branch):Both Summers and Geithner worked at the IMF and favored the deregulation that caused the financial crisis and Geithner of course has worked with Paulson and Bernanke and also used taxpayer money to help JP Morgan purchase Bear Stearns. Labels: IMF, larry Summers, neoliberalism, Timothy Geither Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Geithner and Kissinger Associates--pt. 1From Bob Feldman:Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner's Kissinger Associates Background—Part 1 Between 1986 and 1989, U.S. Treasury Secretary Designate Timothy Geithner was employed at Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Lawrence Eagleburger's Kissinger Associates influence-peddling firm, which also employed George W. Bush's former special envoy to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, during the early 1990s. A leading candidate for Commerce Secretary, Bill Richardson, also is a former employee of Kissinger Associates. An expose, titled "The 'Kissinger Affair': A Look At Henry Kissinger's Kuwaiti Connection," which appeared in the March 27, 1991 issue of a Lower East alternative newsweekly Downtown, began with the following quotation from the April 20, 1986 issue of the New York Times Magazine about Kissinger Associates, during the years that Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner worked there: "It is very difficult to pin down what Mr. Kissinger and the others are really doing in the business end of their lives. None will say for attribution who their clients are or discuss the specifics of what they do, although they do talk about their work with the understanding that they not be identified…Kissinger Associates requires a clause in its contracts stating that neither the firm nor its clients will divulge a business connection..." In 1991, T. Jefferson Cunningham III, according to Moody's International Manual, was on the board of directors of Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner's former employer. That same year Kissinger Associates Director Cunningham was also a director of the Midland Bank of Britain and 10.5 percent of Midland Bank's stock was owned by the government of Kuwait. And coincidentally, Geithner's former boss at Kissinger Associates, Henry Kissinger, was not reluctant to use his special influence on behalf of his Midland Bank/Kuwaiti government business associates after August 1990 to push for the January 1991 Pentagon high-technology military attack on Iraq that led to thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties. In the April 20, 1986 New York Times Magazine article, titled "Kissinger Means Business: Corporate America is eagerly seeking Henry Kissinger's insight and celebrity," the Times then-national security correspondent, Leslie Gelb, reported that the Midland Bank of Britain was also one of the special influence-purchasing clients of Kissinger Associates that paid Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner and his colleagues "slightly more than $150,000 yearly for varying services." Gelb also noted that "The other top members of the firm" were "Lieut. General Brent Scowcroft, President Ford's National Security adviser, and Lawrence S. Eagleburger, who was an Under-Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration." In the early 1990s, Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner's Kissinger Associates colleagues, Scowcroft and Eagleburger, were both high officials in the Bush I Administration. Scowcroft, a former Santa Fe International director who received personal payments from the Kuwaiti government-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) subsidiary in 1984, 1985 and 1986, was Bush I's national security affairs adviser. And Eagleburger was Bush's Deputy Secretary of State. According to a profile of Scowcroft that appeared in the Times on Feb. 21, 1991, it was the presentation of Geithner's former Kissinger Associates colleague at a National Security Council meeting on Aug. 3, 1990 "that made clear what the stakes were, crystallized people's thinking and galvanized support for a strong response" to the Iraqi military occupation of Kuwait--which has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians from either Pentagon military operations or U.S. economic sanctions since January 1991. Kissinger Associates was established in 1982, four years before Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner joined the firm, after Henry Kissinger secured a loan from EM Warburg, Pincus & Company, an investment banking firm. And when Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner worked for Kissinger in the late 1980s the Kissinger Associates Manhattan office was located at 350 Park Avenue on the corner of 52nd Street—in the same building as Chase Manhattan Bank's Commercial Bank of Kuwait subsidiary local office. The building's lobby at that time contained a computerized building directory of all the building's tenants. But, according to New York Times then-national security correspondent Gelb's April 20, 1986 "Kissinger Means Business" article, "Punch 'K' and you will not find Kissinger Associates, for Henry A. Kissinger still receives threats, so, for security reasons, you have to be invited to learn what floor his firm is on." Kissinger Associates also had an office in Washington, D.C. of three researchers and four clerks which was headed by Scowcroft when Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner worked for the firm. According to Times correspondent Gelb, only about 25 people worked in both the Manhattan and Washington, D.C. offices of Kissinger Associates in the 1980s, "including Mr. Kissinger's bodyguards" and Geithner. In 1991 a Kissinger Associates spokesperson told me in a telephone interview that Geithner's 1980s employer was "an international consulting firm." But, according to the April 20,1986 New York Times Magazine article, "Kissinger Means Business," although "these consultants are not lobbyists in the strict sense of the word," some of them "are involved in selling their influence at home and almost all do so abroad." (end of part 1) --b.f. Labels: Kissinger Associates, Timothy Geither, Treasury Department Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Co-centric Vicious CyclesThis posting is from D&S collective member and frequent blogger Larry Peterson. To see more of his posts, click here.The European Central Bank and Bank of England, as expected, cut interest rates (with the BoE coming down an unprecedented 1.5% to 3.0%), but exceedingly poor corporate and consumer outlooks are pulling stocks down anyway. In Asia, both the Japanese Nikkei and Hang Seng in Hong Kong endured terrible losses. Obama is putting on a full-court press to contain the damage (expect him to name Clinton ex-Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers or New York Fed chair Timothy Geither today to head the Treasury Department), but if stocks continue their slide, he'll have to announce some sort of stimulus proposal, probably involving infrastructure spending, very soon. It remains extremely worrying that extraordinary measures, like the BoE cut, and circumstances, like the hurry-up Obama transition, have exerted only temporary effects on a downward spiral in global markets that has seen trillions wiped away from pension funds and other forms of wealth people really rely on (not just the ill-gotten gains of the filthy-rich), in just a few weeks: there will be a real shock when people get their fourth-quarter 401 K statements, even if they don’t spend much on Christmas shopping, which will itself deliver another body-blow to the economy. And, meanwhile, hedge fund redemptions continue, and that cycle of deleveraging shows no sign of abating: in fact, be prepared for an uptick in hedge fund bankruptcies. What you have here is a series of co-centric vicious cycles, all collapsing into each other. What anyone can do to stop it is still anyone's guess. Tomorrow the employment report for October comes out, and I believe it will be horrible (expect 150,000 jobs to be gone). At this rate, the Obama administration could be worn out before it even officially takes office. Labels: Bank of England, Barack Obama, european central bank, financial crisis, Larry Peterson, larry Summers, stock market, Timothy Geither Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
