Flo White's Money Bomb

Another artist who has the pimp knowledge on the money printing scammers. This is deep, in addition to Bernanke and Greenspan, there's a cameo by the evil Neel Kashkari. Even the public apathy is done just right. Very cool.



(Via LRC)

Is Kashkari A Chump?

Congress beats up on Neel Kashkari. I would be impressed if they treated Ben Bernanke this way.

Issa Grills Kaskari

The link to this youtube video was posted in a comment below. I have never come across Karl Denninger before, but, as you will see, he gets it BIG TIME.

David Weidner Asks The Big Questions And Makes The Key Points

David Weidner writes:

If [Neel] Kashkari [formerly of Goldman Sachs] is on the job, does anyone think Treasury will be driving a hard bargain with Goldman on its mortgage assets? And while we're on the subject of Goldman, under what criteria did Goldman and Morgan Stanley qualify as two of the nation's nine strongest financial institutions? Just wondering...

It's no wonder that the world is scratching its head. Congress approved a bailout of bad assets and the Treasury Department has used it to buy stakes in preferred banks. Some of those banks, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of New York Mellon, look to be in decent shape. Others, such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman are highly leveraged firms that, regardless of what kind of charters they hold, are not too far from hedge funds...

...to many investors and citizens, Neel Kashkari is just another Wall Street insider who has close ties to the Treasury chief. Kashkari joins Paulson, Josh Bolton, Steve Shafran, Ken Wilson, Dan Jester as former Goldman bankers who now saturate the administration's team handling the crisis...

Kashkari came from humble beginnings, but he studied hard. You can guess the rest of the resume: Wharton Business School, homes on both coasts, he met Paulson and got his job by knowing the right people. He stayed up all night working on the bailout proposal even though the document, at a total of three pages, was politically inept and borderline unconstitutional.... In short, he's really part of the elite that brought you The Biggest Financial Crisis Since The Great Depression.

Tape Blows Cover On True Treasury Intentions

The new kid at the Treasury hasn't quite learned you really can't talk in public about what you are really up to at Treasury. New Interim Assitant Secretary of the Office of Stability, Neel Kashkari, has been caught on tape providing the true details of what Treasury is up to. This will get him muzzled pretty fast, but it provides us the opportunity to see the scheming going on at Treasury.

Kashkari's statements were posted on YouTube, and now appear to have been removed.

WSJ reviewed the tapes and reports first on the fact that Kashkari considers the executive pay caps demanded by Congress a joke:

As the biggest market intervention in U.S. history made its way through Congress, Neel Kashkari, the Treasury official named this week to run the program, offered assurances to 800 financial-industry players.

Attempts by Congress to make beneficiaries pay for their mistakes, such as placing caps on executive pay, were "quite reasonable" and "a pretty modest hindrance to you," he told them, according to a recording of the Sept. 28 conference call made public on video-sharing Web site YouTube.

Kashkari told participants in the call that lawmakers' interest in limiting executive compensation was "emotional" and "probably the most difficult part of the negotiation" with Congress.

When one industry participant said the caps might discourage participation, Kashkari noted their limited scope, which he called "a pretty modest hindrance to you coming into the program," WSJ reports.

WSJ also reports that the conference call took place the night before the House rejected the rescue plan, on September 28. The plan passed days later on October 3.

The dates are important because Kashkari, according to WSJ, also reported to the financial insiders that, "Our preference would be to try to help healthy banks become even healthier." (My emphasis.)

Remember, the entire focus, at the time, was on buying up bad mortgages and there was no news out publicly about Treasury helping "healthy banks"?

Indeed, I just did a search of the New York Times database and the first time the words "healthy bank" come up in a search is on October 9, where NYT reports that as Part of a NEW "Plan B" that Treasury may take positions in banks, even healthy ones.

This is how NYT reported the story (My emphasis):

Having tried without success to unlock frozen credit markets, the Treasury Department is considering taking ownership stakes in many United States banks to try to restore confidence in the financial system, according to government officials...

The American recapitalization plan, officials say, has emerged as one of the most favored new options being discussed in Washington and on Wall Street. The appeal is that it would directly address the worries that banks have about lending to one another and to other customers.

Treasury officials say the just-passed $700 billion bailout bill gives them the authority to inject cash directly into banks that request it...including healthy ones.

This new interest in direct investment in banks comes after yet another tumultuous day in which the Federal Reserve and five other central banks marshaled their combined firepower to cut interest rates but failed to stanch the global financial panic.

As Bob Murphy has pointed out, they haven't even bought one mortgage yet, so how could they have failed at attempting to unlock the supposed frozen market?

"New interest"? "New options" "After yet another tumultuous day"? Then why was Kashkari talking about these details to the securities industry, even BEFORE the first House vote?

A database search of WSJ pretty much shows the same thing, the first time "healthy bank" is used with regard to the takeover of banks is October 10. The only other relevant search that comes up is an Op-Ed piece on 9-26 by John Paulson , a respected Wall Street investment manager--not the Treasury Secretary--, who discusses the Treasury's plan to buy mortgages from all banks. And he would certainly be shocked to hear that two days after his Op-Ed that Kashkari said the Treasury's preference was to help healthy banks, given that John Paulson wrote in his Op-Ed:

By allowing all banks to sell their worst assets to Treasury at inflated prices, taxpayers would be subsidizing healthy banks which have access to private capital (Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, for example) as well as banks that don't have a private alternative. But under a Preferred plan, only banks that don't have a private alternative will be given federal assistance. This would reduce the outlay otherwise required to solve the crisis.

Folks, we have a smoking gun here, you would have to be blind not to see that the Bernanke-induced crisis is being used by Paulson to funnel money to Goldman Sachs and his other crony favorites. The plan all along was to help out "healthy banks". It's on tape from the interim Assistant Secretary of Stability. Yeah, crisis and fear alright. Every time they utter those words, they move more of the $700 billion closer towards Goldman Sachs' vault.

UPDATE: There is a poor quality audio tape of the conference call on YouTube. Here is Part 3 where at the 9:00 minute mark the mention is made that healthy banks will be preferred. Thanks, Anthony.

In Profile: Neel Kashkari

Deal Journal has a profile out on the new interim assistant Secretary of Financial Stability, Neel Kashkari---apparently a very stable guy.

Bottom line: Nice guy, smart guy, will take orders. Writes Deal Journal: " In the parlance of investment banking, he is a good 'execution guy': He leaves strategy to the bigwigs. But if you give him a project, he will prioritize, delegate and finish it."

Alert: Interim Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability To Speak

Treasury Interim Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability Neel Kashkari will deliver remarks Monday before the Institute of International Bankers in Washington. He will discuss financial markets and Treasury's progress implementing the Emergency Economic Stability Act.

When
Monday, October 13, 8:00 a.m. EDT

Where
The Four Seasons Hotel
Salon A
2800 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C.

Keep in mind that this is another Goldman Sachs man brought over to Treasury by Paulson.

Paulson Names Former Goldman Sachs Man To Head Bailout

What a surprise another Ex-Goldman man in control of government finances.

Treasury Secretary Paulson has appointed Neel Kashkari to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program and the newly created Office of Financial Stability.

Kashkari, a former executive at Goldman Sachs, is the assistant Treasury secretary for International Economics and Development. He joined Treasury in July 2006.

Kashkari, prounced Cash Carry, for a crooked $700 billion slush fund? Who comes up with these names, a realtive of the late James Bond author Ian Fleming?

And , oh yeah, as far as hiring asset managers to actually manage the assets. Asset managers and other private-sector agents involved in running it may be hired "through other than full and open competition," the Treasury said in a statement.