Behind the Goldman Sachs-AIG Scandal
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on January 14th, 2010 5:30 am by HL
Behind the Goldman Sachs-AIG Scandal
James Keller, RealClearMarkets
The Goldman Sachs-AIG scandal may be worse than we think. Former New York Fed President and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is being castigated for paying off AIG's counterparties – Goldman foremost among them – 100 cents on the dollar and then keeping these payments secret. But it seems likely that Goldman actually got much more than 100%. What is worse, Goldman may have received this windfall by trading on information that was deliberately withheld from the public. A brief recap of the Goldman-AIG story is necessary. Goldman has revealed that it had $20 billion in…
Take the ‘Crony’ Out of ‘Crony Capitalism’
John Stossel, RealClearPolitics
When Judge Richard Posner, the prolific conservative intellectual, released his book “A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent Into Depression” last year, you might have thought the final verdict was in: Capitalism caused the economic downturn and high unemployment.That this verdict was pronounced by someone like Posner, who is associated with the University of Chicago and the free-market law and economics movement, gave moral support to all the politicians who were intent on exploiting the recession (as they exploit all crises) to increase government control…
Would Dems Try to Delay Seating Scott Brown?
Memoli & Trygstad, RCP
Should Republican Scott Brown pull off an upset victory in next week's special election in Massachusetts, Senate Democrats may seek to use the chaos surrounding the appointment of Roland Burris last year as a precedent for delaying the swearing in of a man who campaigned as the 41st “no” vote on health care reform.When the disgraced and soon-to-be-impeached Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich chose Burris for Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat, Democratic leaders delayed seating him by citing a statute that required a formal certificate of election to be signed by all appropriate…
