Posted on 05/14/2009 6:22:16 AM PDT by kellynla
NEW YORK -- The chief executives of the country's nine largest banks had no choice but to accept capital infusions from the Treasury Department in October, government documents released Wednesday have confirmed.
Obtained and released by Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan educational foundation, the documents revealed "talking points" used by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson during the October 13 meeting between federal officials and the executives that stressed the investments would be required "in any circumstance," whether the banks found them appealing or not.
Paulson also told the bankers it would not be prudent to opt out of the program because doing so "would leave you vulnerable and exposed."
It's no secret that some of the banks had to be pressured to participate in the program, with several bank CEOs saying they had been strongly encouraged to take the funds. But the documents are the first proof of the government's insistence.
"These documents show our government exercising unrestrained power over the private sector," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement.
A phone call to the Treasury for comment was not immediately returned Thursday morning.
The outcome of that fateful meeting _ which resulted in the government taking direct stakes in the banks through $125 billion in preferred stock purchases _ marked a shift in the government's strategy to fixing the financial system.
The Treasury had first decided to use a chunk of the $700 billion financial bailout package to pay for taking partial ownership stakes in banks, rather than using the money to buy rotten debts from financial institutions. The idea was that the investments would instill confidence in the system and get banks to lend again following the freeze of the credit markets.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
...to hostile govt "audits"
The bank executives who marched to Congress to demand that TARP be created should have been fired long ago. Such socialists have no place working in the financial sector, even as janitors in a bank branch.
Government sanctioned extortion? These criminal acts should not go unpunished, although they probably will...
It’s time to take back the country.
“These documents show our government exercising unrestrained power over the private sector,”
in other words... Fascism
I am still convinced that this "force" was merely face saving cover for the bank executives who wanted the TARP money but had too much pride to ask for it. I base this on the fact that this bailout money was not offered to the banks until after some of the banks demanded it.
Can’t stockholders sue? Geez, a million lawyers in the US, and nobody has an opinion.
WP is hard at work with the bait and switch in the hopes that no-one will notice what Obama is doing(which is worse than anything Paulson ever dreamed up).
Obama has quadrupled the budget deficit in less than 4 months...he changed the stock in the banks to common stock(which means that the american taxpayer will not be paid back,among other things)... and Obama has refused to allow the banks to pay back the TARP money to remove the government from ‘ownership’.
Obama is a thug and his minion brownshirts in the media are doing everything they can to provide him cover for his lawlessness and abuse of power. I am all for Judicial Watch taking a look at Paulson et al(Goldman Sacs..Obama’s largest donor)..but they really need to look the abuse of power coming from the Obama Administration too.
This backs up 100% what my friend at Northern Trust and my bankers at a small suburban bank told me in November, 2008. Liberals and suburbanites in denial, as well as the bombastic Bill O’Reilly, kept saying the “government wouldn’t do that.”
“This backs up 100% what my friend at Northern Trust?”
I would be interested in what your friend at Northern Trust had to say...I’m a huge fan of regional banks...interesting that none of the regional banks are in trouble...and in fact are doing and have done very well!
We’ve got over 8,000 banks in America; so letting a few of the big banks like Bank of Amigo fail wouldn’t be the end of the world...
Forced Control of Banks, Forced Collapse of the Banking system as we know it = Absolute Control right down to food production. After Government issued Health Care, Government controlled farms will surely follow.
Unless the Gelding Old Party gets a testicle & spine implant before next year and we can begin to vote these Leftists out of office.
“Unless the Gelding Old Party gets a testicle & spine implant “
We need to be much more involved in the lead up to these elections than we have in the past. This may not be good news for those of us who’ve just been living in blissful isolation - hoping all this would just go away.
“We need to be much more involved in the lead up to these elections than we have in the past. This may not be good news for those of us who’ve just been living in blissful isolation - hoping all this would just go away?”
Well, I see you just signed up last year but those of us who have been around FR for many years, we have been taking it to the Leftists for many, many years on local, state & federal levels and we will continue to do so.
I always wondered why or how stockholders would allow people who are clearly unqualified to end up at the top spots of these banks anyway. Going beyond that, why do they allow for bonuses to be paid for executives who are not keeping the bank profitable?
Added to the list
WP is hard at work with the bait and switch in the hopes that no-one will notice what Obama is doing(which is worse than anything Paulson ever dreamed up).
Obama has quadrupled the budget deficit in less than 4 months...he changed the stock in the banks to common stock(which means that the american taxpayer will not be paid back,among other things)... and Obama has refused to allow the banks to pay back the TARP money to remove the government from ‘ownership’.
. . . I am all for Judicial Watch taking a look at Paulson et al (Goldman Sacs..Obama’s largest donor) . . . but they really need to look the abuse of power coming from the Obama Administration too.
The exposure of the conditions under which solvent banks were forced into TARP is a necessary precondition for delegitimating the authority Obama has assumed over the banks (and their employees) on the pretext that "they took government TARP money."
That makes perfect sense. Thanks for your post.
and the hits just keep on coming...
**GREEN ALERT: Hidden Carbon Tax Provision in Paulson’s Bailout 2.0**
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2095909/posts
Henry Paulson is a confirmed environmentalist and global warming true-believer who abused his power at Goldman Sachs. While Paulson headed Goldman Sachs he simultaneously headed the Nature Conservancy and his wife was a former Conservancy board member. (See “In Goldman Sachs We Trust: How the Left’s Favorite Bank Influences Public Policy,” by Fred Lucas, Foundation Watch, October 2008.)
Henry Paulson presided over Goldman Sachs’s donation of 680,000 acres of land it owned in Tierra del Fuego, Chile to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.
One of the trustees of the Wildlife Conservation Society was H. Merritt Paulson, the son of Henry Paulson.
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