Posts Tagged ‘Timothy Geithner’

Frank Gaffney

Federal Reserve Bank of New York Subpoenaed in AIG Fraud Case

by Frank Gaffney

Here’s the latest in the question of the New York Fed, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the AIG bailout, as we’ve covered here at Big Government before (here and here). Last year, Iraq war vet Kevin Murray brought a lawsuit against the Treasury Department and Ben Bernanke (Murray vs. Geithner, et al) for its acquisition of AIG– a scheme that made the US taxpayer the world’s largest provider of Shariah-compliant insurance products. Lawyers David Yerushalmi and The Thomas More Law Center’s Robert Muise found, in the course of discovery, that that was just the tip of the iceberg.

ny_fed

Yerushalmi and Muise quickly realized that, in acquiring 77.9% of AIG, the New York Fed may have set up an illegal trust, with the knowledge that what they were to do was illegal. Tuesday, Murray’s attorneys issued a subpoena for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

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Posted Feb 10th 2010 at 10:51 am in Economics, Exclusives, Justice/Legal | 108 Comments

Frank Gaffney

Federal Court: No, the Government May Not Prevent Further Discovery of the Takeover of AIG

by Frank Gaffney

This week we broke the story of possible criminal wrongdoing in the government takeover of insurance giant AIG. In the last several months, the US government has tried, unsuccessfully, to throw out plaintiff Kevin Murray’s case, alleging that the government’s takeover of AIG puts it in the position of supporting and promoting Islam and Shariah finance.

In the discovery process attorneys for Murray, David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise (of the Thomas More Law Center), discovered that the takeover itself may have been illegal, and have attempted to get Treasury Secretary under oath to try and untangle this mess. Again, the Fed and the Treasury Department tried to stonewall.

This past Tuesday, Federal district court judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff rejected the Treasury Department’s and the Fed’s effort to prevent any further discovery while the government attempts to convince the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to overrule Judge Zatkoff’s earlier ruling rejecting the government’s motion to dismiss the federal lawsuit challenging the government’s takeover of AIG on First Amendment-Establishment Clause grounds.

Follow the “extraordinary move to depose a sitting Treasury Secretary”

Tim Geithner: The “extraordinary move to depose a sitting Treasury Secretary”

The lawsuit, captioned Murray v. Geithner et al., was brought by attorneys David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise, representing the plaintiff, Kevin Murray, a tax payer and former combat Marine who served in Iraq. The federal lawsuit alleges that the U.S. government’s takeover and financial bailout of AIG was in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

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Posted Feb 5th 2010 at 3:07 pm in Economics, Justice/Legal, News | 156 Comments

Frank Gaffney

Shariah Finance, Criminal Wrongdoing in the AIG Takeover: Will the Special Inspector General for the TARP Funds Investigate the Illegal Trust?

by Frank Gaffney

Yesterday we broke the story of possible criminal wrongdoing in regards to the bailout of AIG by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, then Director of the New York Federal Reserve, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Qaradawi

It appears that, through it’s 77.9% control of AIG’s equity and voting rights, the NYFed “sought to accomplish an illegal financial transaction through false means” by creating an “independent”: trust that was in fact not independent, placing it “in violation of federal anti-money laundering statutes (18 USC § 1956).” Here we elaborate a bit further, laying out the issue in the text of a letter submitted to Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General for TARP (SIGTARP)– as the government takeover of AIG was accomplished using funds provided to the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

First, however, some context: Crucially, these facts were discovered while securities litigator David Yerushalmi and the Thomas More Law Center was representing Iraq War vet Kevin Murray in Murray vs. Geithner, et al. Mr. Murray is rightfully horrified that the very doctrines of the enemy he faced in combat would be promoted by the US government. Specifically, prior to the U.S. government’s takeover of the insurance giant AIG, the company was the world’s leading promoter of Shariah-compliant finance products and businesses. Bailing out and forcefully (and illegally) taking ownership of AIG put the American taxpayer in the position of advocating Shariah-compliant finance, which is troubling on many levels:

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Posted Feb 3rd 2010 at 4:47 pm in Economics, Exclusives, Uncategorized | 93 Comments

Bob Parks

Obama: A Republican Plant?

by Bob Parks

Many of us had no idea the Republican Party had it in them, but to devise and implement such a plan was ingenious. Think about it; party leadership acting totally inept while a charismatic young Democrat presidential candidate captures the imagination of the normally lethargic youth vote, captures the senior vote, women, and even sends a thrill up the leg of the media.

obama-and-bush

And within a few short months after attaining the presidency, he conducts himself in a manner (personally and in office) that had not only invigorated his political opponents, but has them so energized they take to the streets and even march on The Capitol (more than once). One would have to conclude Barack Hussein Obama is either the most politically clueless president ever, or… is really a stealth Republican destroying the Democrat Party from within.

Is Barack Obama a Republican plant?

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Posted Dec 22nd 2009 at 5:29 am in Featured Story, Obama, Politics | 160 Comments

Thomas Del Beccaro

Time to Pass The Buck and Start Pointing Fingers: Obama Living Up to His Absentee Legislator Past

by Thomas Del Beccaro

During the Presidential “Media Fest” Campaign of 2007/08, many tried to impress upon the American people that Obama was an empty suit.  Quite simply, he had no significant legislative achievement to call his own.  Heck, as an Illinois State Senator, Obama voted “present” nearly 130 times, according to the New York Times:  “effectively sidestepping” issues.  The point of those who pressed Obama’s lack of executive experience and sidestepping tactics was that we could not afford a President who would do the same.

obama_contempt

Ten months into the Obama Presidency, it is pretty clear that Obama is living up to his Absentee Legislator past.  Painful examples abound:

  1. Trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Criminal Court.  Arguably one of the most detrimental legal and foreign policy decisions of our time, and Obama openly admits it wasn’t his call – it was an underling’s call – Eric Holder.  It was a terrible decision and, as Senator Lindsey Graham pointed out, an unprecedented decision.  While I doubt Obama sat purely on the sidelines on this decision, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that someone other than Obama has to take responsibility for this decision – good or bad.  And when it goes bad, then Obama will simply dump Holder.  Problem solved.
  2. Health Care.  What’s a President to do when he is devoid of any significant legislation to his name?  Allow the most significant piece of legislation in the last 40 years to be written and managed by others.  Literally.   Before us is the biggest makeover of the relationship of the private sector and government since the Great Depression and Obama is merely a passenger on a bus being driven by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  When it fails the American people, and it will, Obama will rightfully claim it wasn’t his bill.  Such is the prerogative of an Absentee President.
  3. The Stimulus Bill.  It’s failing.  Indeed, over 3 million jobs have been lost since the Stimulus Bill was passed – a bill laden with pork because its passage was driven by someone other than Obama (not to say he would have passed a trimmed down bill).  Beyond that, we find out that the AIG bailout money was misspent – who would have thought?  Since the President can’t be in charge of such failures, and Obama can’t blame Pelosi or Reid,  the fall guy will be Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner – because, in time, simply blaming President Bush won’t be effective anymore.
  4. The November Elections.  Even though Obama went and put his personal prestige on the line for New Jersey Governor Corzine, Corzine was soundly beat – as was the Democrat candidate in Virginia – a race Obama wouldn’t touch.  But those results, according to Obama, had nothing to do with him – those were races with local implications not national influences.

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Posted Nov 29th 2009 at 10:03 am in Congress, News, Obama, Politics | 162 Comments

Publius

Geithner: Economy Is Better By Any Measurement

by Publius

This morning, in testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that, by any measurement of the strength and stability of the US economy, the economy today is better than it was when Obama took office. Sheesh, tell that to the millions of people who have lost their job since January.

Apparently, “any measurement” doesn’t include the unemployment rate, job growth, number of jobs, wage growth, hours worked, home foreclosures, rate of mortgage delinquencies, etc.

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Posted Nov 19th 2009 at 9:57 am in Economics, News, Obama, Politics | 78 Comments

Dr. Paul Moreno

Obama’s Paper Chase

by Dr. Paul Moreno

The Federal Reserve’s purchase of $300 billion in Treasury debt, as well as its purchase of mortgage-backed securities, has aptly been described as “monetizing the U.S. government debt,” with appropriate concern that it will fuel inflation. 

If President Obama fancies himself a twenty-first century Abraham Lincoln, then we need Timothy Geithner to be his Salmon Chase. Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary was remarkably successful at financing the Civil War, with only limited inflation, and remarkable fidelity to the Constitution.

 Abraham_Lincoln

Chase was a radical Ohio abolitionist before the war (sometimes called the state’s “attorney general for runaway Negroes”), and a relentlessly ambitious rival of Abraham Lincoln. After Lincoln beat Chase for the 1860 Republican nomination, he made him his Secretary of the Treasury. Almost all historians regard Lincoln’s ability to keep Chase on board as one of the marks of his genius as a statesman.

Chase was also a hard-money man, and abhorred paper money—especially the paper emitted by state banks, excoriated (if somewhat exaggeratedly) as “wildcat banks”– creditors were said to have to battle wildcats to attempt to redeem the worthless notes of these reckless frontier banks. Chase believed that the United States needed a national currency, issued by a national banking system. As the Civil War’s costs grew exponentially, Congress pressed him to monetize the government’s debt by issuing Treasury notes unredeemable in gold or silver, and to declare them to be legal tender for all debts—the “greenbacks,” which color our paper money to this day. Chase stuck to his constitutional guns for as long as he could, but finally gave in. But he “hated the crime about to be committed,” as historian Bray Hammond put it. By the end of the war, Chase got his national banking system, and had eliminated unconstitutional state-bank paper currency.

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Posted Sep 30th 2009 at 8:15 am in Economics, History, Obama | 25 Comments