US Treasury misled public on Wall Street banks' bailouts, Report

Paulson is a crook and so was GW Bush. They left this country bankrupt and as GW said "Wall Street got drunk and we got the hangover." GW did not like regulations and when you let scum do what they want , they steal and he knew that. These were his have and have mores and they were paid back by letting them rip all of us off.

No. ya think?

I do believe that a lot of the current and possibly future financial difficulties can be handled by criminal prosecution of ne'er do wells. I generally oppose the death penalty but am willing to re-assess my beliefs.
Maybe we can send them to Texas for punishment but Michigan for prosecution. I would love to see the verdict handed down by a bunch of unemployed auto workers.
Maybe I'm just being a dick about this.

"An inspector general ... has singled out president Bush's treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, for painting an excessively rosy picture ... when the government pumped $125bn (£70bn) into America's ten top banks in September last year.

There's liars.

There's damn liars.

And there's Bush appointees.

Of course they did. Treasury appointees on this level are Wall Street people who push their agendas from within the government. Both parties provide a revolving door for Wall Street.

Oh god, will someone please pull corp. americans di*k out of my ass already?

How is this surprising at all? They started the TARP program to remove toxic assets from banks balance sheets. They used barely any of the bailout money for that purpose.

As hard as it is to do, you have to give Paulson some credit. The bailout was intended to solve the banks short term liquidity problems. That is exactly what it did.

One thing that a lot of articles neglect to mention is that this bailout money was made as a loan, not a giveaway. The US government is collecting billions of dollars in interest from banks and other companies paying back their bailout money.

Wow, you guys defending the gov and criticizing free market. We really are serfs...
Unfortunately, the market has never been free.

Nephwrack,
No need for a new currency? It's quite apparent what's going on here. Do you live under a rock? It doesn't take much research to see that the value of the dollar is and has been taking a nose dive. The price of gold is at it's all-time high--that alone should tell you something. As for Bildeberg, I have read up and done my own research on this group and have my own opinions. All I can say is have an open mind about conspiracy theories... The New World Order used to be a conspiracy theory, but now is common sense. Follow the money trail and you can make connections for yourself.

Send me your address and I'll send you an "I heart da Fed" T-shirt.

Here's a reply to anyone who thinks this was the work of big government :

You're blaming the muscle and ignoring the mafia.

The government IS a tool of private industry.

Fannie Mae and Feddie Mac once represented important and useful government institutions.

Now their heads were bribed and bought off by big corporations and banks so they could be used in this heist.

Completely Free markets inevitably destroy free markets because large corporations become more powerful than the state and then end up controlling the state with their wealth and influence. Our idiotic commitment to "free markets" has created an aristocracy which now runs this country because nobody since FDR or JFK had the balls to talk softly AND carry a big stick to big business.

Further taking the state out of the picture only INCREASES their power to the point where corporations would no longer control the government, they would BE the government.

No "free market" is ever truly -free- without regulations to prevent FRAUD. And that's what's running this whole damn economy right now, big time CON JOBS.

Here's a little tip, the government is misleading us about a LOT of things.

I have known for some time that we were mislead. I have told family and friends that the timing of this bailout was in relation to year end bonuses. The institutions did not have the cash to pay out so they came to the government. The government gave them a vurtual interest free loan to pay for this compensation. The American people need to wake up. Do you think this government would bail you out for mistakes that you have made? I think not!

This is what happens when Government Regulation play with markets. I'm not saying that private people are blameless but it started with the Feds not the fed.

Of the $15 trillion in mortgages in existence in early 2008, about one third were owned by, or were securitized by, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, the Federal Housing and Veterans Administration and other government agencies that subsidize mortgages.

When private companies bought the mortgages from the GSE they beleived that they had insurance from the feds if the mortgagtes fail (which as we know they did through the bailout).

The biggest contribution to the mortgages mess (which led to the financial mess) can be attributed to our Federal Government lending to high risk individuals and then selling the mortgages to investors who bought the high risk mortgages knowing that they were insured by the Fed. This is where socialism gets you.

"sorry, but we lied to you, stole all your hard earned tax dollars and gave it away to people who have been stealing from you and the government for the last 50 years, and we are not going after them because they have stole soo much from the government that they are now more powerful than us."

If one looks at the personal history of Hank Paulson it's not hard to see why, as George Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, Paulson eagerly transferred billions of US taxpayer dollars to bail out Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street financial firms collapsing due to their own unregulated and ultimately cataclysmic greed, and lied about the actual state of their condition.
Goldman Sachs was of course, Paulson's previous company, and the source of much of his now approximately 700 million dollar fortune.
Henry Paulson himself was one of the principal actors in removing any government oversight or regulation of Goldman Sachs trading activities. Paulson entire career it seems has been as one of the "usual suspects." Paulson was Staff Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon from 1970 to 1972. During the Watergate era he worked for President Richard Nixon, serving as assistant to (the indicted and convicted) John Ehrlichman from 1972 to 1973.
Paulson joined Goldman Sachs in 1974. In 2004 he successfully lobbied the US Securities and Exchange Commission to release major investment firms from the net capital rule which required US brokerage houses to hold reserve capital that would limit their leverage risk exposure. This also put the worldwide interests of the parent companies of major US brokerage firms beyond SEC oversight. This was the hole that the major US brokerage firms flushed the US and world economy into.
However, I'm sure it's just a matter of perspective. He did, after all, give millions of dollars to preserve land in Chile, and has pledged to give his fortune on his death to conservation causes.
I wish him godspeed in that endeavor.

Well what did ya'll think they were going to do ? Tell the truth . Then every one would reallize that it was a scam from the get go. It's just big money taking care of big money

The title - > is this really new news? This is exactly how the financial industry got messed up in the first place. People cheating and lying about the system and then on top of this the US Treasury comes to mix up the mess even more. This economy will be even more screwed up if we don't fix anything. The finance industry was just patched up for the moment, well see another big mess come 1 or 2 more years from now.

NO way !

The photo is funny. Cheap shirt, sports watch, and crooked tie. At the very minimum he needs an image consultant.

they won't replace the dollar. the only reason the euro came to be was because of the maddening tangle of different currencies in such close proximity in Europe.
hence the name "Euro" there will never be an "Amero", there is no effing need for it. sampierre, you prolly just got all kinds of flagged by the bildeberg group.

teheheee J/k

They all continue to mislead and will until the dollar is replaced with a new currency. The biggest heist in history and the majority of our country ignores it or refuses to try and understand.

It wasn't a "bailout". It was a "stick up"! We got jacked!! So, when that big chunk comes out of your paycheck every two weeks, remember where it's going, who is spending it and why. Look here to see for your self www.gao.gov, then look at the summary of table for the fiscal budgets.