Behold the power of finance capital. Despite shitting the bed and making us all clean it up, Wall Street will remain essentially the same as the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) caved to the banksters and will continue to allow a cartel to control the derivatives market. Under pressure from Wall Street lobbyists, federal regulators [...]

And the circle is complete. Tim Geithner’s first post-Treasury Secretary job will be as a “distinguished fellow” at the Council On Foreign Relations. For the uninitiated, the Council On Foreign Relations is a more or less open conspiracy to use the American government as a vessel for advancing Big Business’ interests abroad. CFR represents America’s [...]

In a new report the Special Investigator for TARP cites the Treasury Department for allowing excessive pay to bailout companies: SIGTARP found that once again, in 2012, Treasury failed to rein in excessive pay. In 2012, OSM approved pay packages of $3 million or more for 54% of the 69 Top 25 employees at American [...]

Transcripts released by the Federal Reserve reveal the central bank misinterpreted the downswing in the housing market as a positive signal of the market pricing in risk rather than the beginning of a bust that would quickly unravel the financial markets. From the Financial Times: Top officials at the US Federal Reserve took months to [...]

Congress’ failure to pass a debt ceiling bill has lead to the Treasury Department taking “extraordinary measures” to continue to pay the nation’s debts. Treasury Secretary Geithner has now written a letter to Congress saying his is running out of tricks. From the Treasury Department: Treasury currently expects to exhaust these extraordinary measures between mid-February [...]

Jack Lew, veteran of Citigroup and current White House Chief of Staff, will be our next Treasury Secretary: President Obama will on Thursday afternoon announce his intent to nominate Jack Lew to serve as treasury secretary, the White House said. The pick, widely reported on Wednesday, will come at a 1:30 p.m. ceremony in the [...]

A long and storied career of betraying the public interest to serve Wall Street greed will end this month: Geithner has indicated to White House officials he wants to carry through with his plan to leave the administration by the end of this month, even if a deal on the debt limit isn’t in place, [...]

In what borders on performance art, AIG is launching a public relations campaign to thank American taxpayers for letting them extort bailout money from Congress.

Swiss bank UBS will pay $1.5 billionfor their role in the Libor rate-rigging scandal. The sum is over three times the fine imposed on Barclays Bank for the same violations. UBS also admitted to one count of wire fraud in its Japanese unit, according to the Justice Department. Much of the rate rigging in the [...]

Some skullduggery on the Senate floor today. If I can piece together what happened, Mitch McConnell up and requested unanimous consent for an immediate vote on the Geithner plan – the initial offer that the White House made to avert the fiscal slope. And Harry Reid, calling it a “stunt,” objected to the UC request. [...]

Jenni LeCompte at the Treasury Department fleshes out the permanent debt limit de-fanging proposal that Tim Geithner offered as part of the initial White House term sheet on the fiscal slope. She adds the nice touch of calling it the McConnell proposal, since the Republican Senate leader offered a version of it, which actually went [...]