We learned, yesterday via a breaking story by Bob Ivry over at Bloomberg, that in 2008 Tim Geithner’s Federal Reserve Bank of New York (“NYFRB”), under the auspices of the Federal Reserve, was managing the distribution of $80 billion in highly secretive, “subsidized” loans--the specifics of which, up until now, were unreported to Congress and in the press--to some of the world’s largest banks, including Goldman-Sachs, which received $30 billion from this program.
Is THIS a “breaking” news story which will generate more questions than answers, and lead us into bigger breaking news in coming days?
IMHO, yes, it certainly is. Based upon these revelations by Bloomberg’s Bob Ivry over the past 24-plus hours, it also might appear to some of us peasants that Goldman Sachs’ Chief Operating Officer Gary D. Cohn committed blatant perjury in his testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on June 30th, 2010. (More about this, down below.)
Has the sh*t just hit the fan in D.C., but nobody’s courageous enough to ask, “What the hell is that smell in the room?” Or, did someone in our Treasury Department confer with Goldman-Sachs’ legal counsel and advise (tacitly or otherwise) Mr. Cohn that it was okay to lie to the government’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission last year?
Follow me below the fold…
Fed Gave Banks Crisis Gains on $80 Billion Secretive Loans as Low as 0.01%.
Bob Ivry
Bloomberg Media
May 26, 2011 10:47 AM ET
Credit Suisse Group AG (CS), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) each borrowed at least $30 billion in 2008 from a Federal Reserve emergency lending program whose details weren’t revealed to shareholders, members of Congress or the public.
The $80 billion initiative, called single-tranche open- market operations, or ST OMO, made 28-day loans from March through December 2008, a period in which confidence in global credit markets collapsed after the Sept. 15 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Yesterday’s breaking news--a story about which even then-House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank was unaware until he learned of it in the past 24 hours—informs us that 20 of the world’s largest banks, including Goldman-Sachs, which was prominently mentioned in the Bloomberg article, received massive sums of cash at
“…interest rates as low as 0.01 percent that December, when the Fed’s main lending facility charged 0.5 percent.”
“This was a pure subsidy,” said Robert A. Eisenbeis, former head of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and now chief monetary economist at Sarasota, Florida-based Cumberland Advisors Inc. “The Fed hasn’t been forthcoming with disclosures overall. Why should this be any different?”
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which oversaw ST OMO, posted aggregate data about the program on its website after each auction, said Jeffrey V. Smith, a New York Fed spokesman. By increasing the availability of short-term financing when private lenders were under pressure, “this program helped alleviate strains in financial markets and support the flow of credit to U.S. households and businesses,” he said…
Tim Geithner is now Treasury Secretary. As President of the NY Federal Reserve Bank in 2008, he was not only aware of this secret lending facility, which commenced earlier in 2008 (before he was named as the Treasury Secretary-designate by the incoming Obama administration); he was directly responsible for managing this program’s implementation.
Six weeks ago, the MSM was ablaze with THIS story of how Senator Carl Levin’s Committee on Oversight and Investigations was, among other matters, forwarding to the Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution possible evidence of Goldman-Sachs’ executives perjuring themselves before Congress.
From Zero Hedge, on March 31st, 2011 (spelling it out, contextually and chronologically: over eight weeks prior to yesterday’s breaking story at Bloomberg):
Will Goldman COO Gary Cohn Face Consequences For Committing Perjury Before The FCIC?
ZeroHedge.com
03/31/2011 16:46 -0400
Christine Harper, Michael Moore and Bob Ivry have been quite busy today. After poring through the lifetime legacy project of their late colleague Mark Pittman, the trio may have just made a discovery that in a non-banana republic could be enough to at least force a special hearing into whether Goldman COO Gary Cohn committed perjury while testifying to the FCIC on June 30. The culprit: Goldman's (ab)use of the discount window not once, not twice, but five times. Well everyone else was doing it, especially Goldman's insolvent peers like JPM, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Wachovia, UBS, Credit Suisse and, well, everyone else. So what's wrong with that? Here's what: "Goldman Sachs President and Chief Operating Officer Gary D. Cohn told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission June 30 that “we used it one night at the request of the Fed to make sure our systems were linked with their systems, and it was for a de minimis amount of money.” Peter J. Wallison, a member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, then asked, “you never had to use it after that?” “No, and as I said, we used it on the Fed’s request,” Cohn replied. Alas, that is a lie. And last time we checked, lying to Congress under oath is not quite the right the way to conduct God's work (and yes, a perfectly innocuous "I don't recall" ala David Sokol from his CNBC interview would have sufficed). Alas no: Goldman just had to demonstrate how very immune from the legal process it is, by "risking" its credibility and reputation with the assumption that it is either never wrong, or, like Warren Buffett, that it can never be caught doing wrong. Well, it just was.
--SNIP--
We are confident that the corrupt "representatives" (of Wall Street interests) in Congress will get right on sending out a subpoena to Cohn asking him to explain why he lied under oath.
--SNIP--
…we feel our confidence waning... waning...
Eight weeks later, the public’s now informed of “…a secret bailout program used to "rape" the peasantry by the entitled kleptocrats, which nobody thought would be exposed, and would allow those in control to lie blatantly to Congress…”
Questions:
Did anyone at the Treasury Department communicate to Goldman-Sachs’ COO Gary Cohn that it was okay to perjure himself before FCIC?
Does this breaking story from yesterday effectively (or indirectly) undermine at least a portion Senator Levin’s Committee’s investigation?
Is this even greater breaking news staring us in the face?
Secretary Geithner, please…do tell us what the hell is going on here?!
At the very least, I’m sure Barney Frank and Carl Levin would appreciate the answers to these questions.
h/t to Kossack Route66, for his post, yesterday.