Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc Monday, May 18, 2009 Interesting Items 5/18 -
Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy - In this issue: 1. Paulson 2. EPA Memo 3. Pelosi 4. DHS 5. Deficit 1. Paulson. PowerLine reported Friday on the October 13, 2008 meeting between then Treasury Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Chief Bernake and the CEOs of the nation’s nine largest banks. Judicial watch has obtained supporting documents via Freedom of Information Act requests. What those documents show is absolutely chilling for free marketers nationwide. This meeting is the point where Treasury and the Fed crossed the line from regulation to direction of the banks and in turn, direction of the financial sector. It set the stage for the Obama administration to conduct its galloping nationalization of the banks, the auto manufacturers, and whatever they end up deciding to go after next. During the meeting, Paulson and Bernake told the banking CEOs that they would misrepresent the health of the banks to the rest of the nation; telling the nation that the banks were all healthy (Merrill Lynch was not at the time) if they agreed to participate in the TARP. The regulators at the time had already been compromised, as the stick in this discussion was that if a bank chose not to participate, the federal regulators would start requiring the non-participating bank to have the same level of capital available – whether they needed it or not - as a TARP bank, quickly leading to its collapse. Bank of America, shortly afterwards tried to back out of its agreed upon purchase of Merrill Lynch, finding that its financial situation was significantly worse than expected. Treasury threatened to replace its Board of Directors, essentially transferring property owned by Bank of America shareholders into the hands of Merrill shareholders, and Bank of America relented and proceeded with the purchase. The memos also documented Bush administration efforts to run interference with skeptical conservatives and get the TARP legislation passed. I expect that there will be more on this as the months go by. Clearly Treasury, Bernake and the Bush administration were scared, most likely by the half trillion dollars pulled out of the Atlanta money market fund in fifteen minutes that triggered the entire affair. But fear must not trigger the complete overthrow of the rule of law, property rights, corrupting the regulatory structure, or lying about the health of financial institutions that are not healthy. Had the TARP not been passed, there would have been a debacle on Wall Street. But how much worst than what we have all experienced since October would that debacle have been? My guess is not much worse at all. And had Treasury, the Fed, the Bush administration and Republican insiders not participated in all of this, they would not have set the stage or the precedent for a federal takeover of the entire financial system. 2. EPA Memo. One of things that the Teleprompter administration is going to have to deal with over time are those left in federal employment that are not True Believers in either The One or the leftist ideology his and his minions are pushing. Additionally, he has been very slow to start filling the second and lower tier political appointees in the various departments, leaving the incumbent Bush-era appointees in place for the time being. When the Teleprompter Administration makes an outrageous decision, for example its designation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant, we start getting leaked documents about internal discussions leading up to those decisions. Midweek last, a nine page memo marked confidential, attorney client privilege made its way into the hands of Senator Barasso, who used it to question EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on her decision to list carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The memo is highly skeptical of the decision; states that it is not based on scientific analysis or conclusions; and demonstrates that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant at all. The memo states that the EPA has made a determination of harm from a substance that has no demonstrated negative health effects. Barasso called the memo a smoking gun in the argument against the EPA, and it may very well provide an opening for Freedom of Information Act inquiries into the decision making process within the EPA. You can find the memo itself at the following location. Another way to find it would be to do a search on “smoking gun memo.” Hot Air, Weds. Memo: http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocumentDetail&o=0900006480965abd 3. Pelosi. House Squeaker Nancy Pelosi (D, SF) got dinged up last week after picking a fight with the CIA. Pelosi and congressional democrats have made a lot of hay over the last several years with charges that the Bush administration had tortured the poor, pitiful, misguided, homeless Islamist detainees; most specifically by the use of enhanced interrogation techniques to obtain actionable intelligence from them. They had planned on using this silly issue as a vehicle to keep the Bush administration as a straw man to continually bash for their insensitive treatment of the bad guys for the next 4-8 years. Unfortunately for them, the democrat congressional leadership was completely on board with the enhanced techniques, having all been briefed on the techniques. Some went so far as to ask if the CIA and military had been doing enough to get enough intelligence out of the bad Guys soon enough. Former VP Dick Cheney last week stepped up, called the democrats liars, and said that they had all been briefed. He went farther and called for all the memos documenting those briefings be declassified and released. Pelosi responded by saying that she had never been briefed, and anyone saying she had known about or approved of the interrogations was lying. She doubled down a day or two later and called the CIA liars. This is not the thing to do to those that have the actual documents on hand. Pelosi, like Obama before her, decided to war against the CIA, which can release at will, classified documents proving who was there, what they saw, and what they said during the briefings. Those documents started leaking last week, proving Pelosi as a liar. As she is a leftist, she may very well survive this. On the other hand, there are no small numbers of people who believe that this may be a decapitation strike aimed at Obama by the Clintons, as Hillary supporter Stenny Hoyer (D, MD) stands to replace Pelosi as Speaker, third in line for the presidency, and Leon Panetta, former Clinton WH Chief of Staff, is now CIA Director. That supposition is a bit too much in the realm of black helicopters and tinfoil hats for my liking, but with the Clintons, anything is possible. 4. DHS. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano withdrew the infamous DHS memo describing everyone on the political right as a potential dangerous terrorist last week. Napolitano said that the memo should have never been released and that the unnamed responsible party was going to be subject to personnel action (discipline). Apparently Napolitano’s road show in support of the memo and its contents did not do well in administration polling. Note that this memo was released the day before the tea parties, as an obvious attempt to impugn the motives and objectives of the protests and protesters. Also note that no small number of so-called moderate bloggers, for instance AJ Strata on the Strata Sphere, said that the concern on the right about this sort of thing out of DHS was overblown. It must have not been all that overblown, as the Secretary herself withdrew it. Ed Morrissey in Hot Air, Thurs. noted that DHS continues to have an honesty problem, and agrees that it does have a personnel problem “… at the top.” 5. Deficit. The CBO reported last week that the budget deficit this year was going to be 50% larger than expected, expanding from $1.2 trillion to $1.8 trillion in the space of a mere three months. This means that the government is borrowing (or printing) over fifty cents of every single dollar that it is spending this year. The new deficit is over four times as large as the budget deficit for 2008, the all time record budget deficit. Expect tax revenues to continue to lag as more and more businesses go Galt. Also do not expect the economy to perform at a 3.5% growth rate predicted by the Teleprompter administration by the end of the year. Hot Air, Tues. More later - - AG "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776. Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations: The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/ MatSuValley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com District 28 http://www.dist28.com/ subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/ and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/ _,_._.,___ COMING SOON Flag Day Tea Party June 14, 2009 http://www.teapartyday.com/ Independence Day Tea Party July 4, 2009 http://www.teapartyday.com/ * Shout Out * To any one organizing a Tea Party. Reply with your details (when where, etc) to this email with "TP" in the subject to be further posted to others on the Internet. You are welcome to join the [email protected] Rich Martin . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To join RichsRants, send email to: [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/richsrants?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
