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Treasury said Tuesday in its two-year retrospective on the Troubled Asset Relief Program that the net cost of TARP's AIG (AIG) bailout at current market prices is $5.1 billion. The cost of the AIG bailout has been subject of considerable head scratching in recent days, with TARP winding down and the terms of federal assistance to AIG changing for the umpteenth time....... After the proposed restructuring of AIG, TARP will hold 1.09 billion shares of AIG common stock, plus preferred equity interests in SPVs of approximately $22.3 billion, against a cost basis of $69.8 billion. Valuing the common equity at...

The $700 billion stimulus plan that was supposed to keep unemployment below 8% was just the tip of the iceberg. The actual amount of money leveraged to prop up the failing economy was closer to $12.8 trillion with a “t” ($12,800,000,000,000). This story is coming from that well know bastion of right wing conspiracy theorists known as P.B.S. It seems that our government, and by proxy each and every one of us, was on the hook for a great deal of more money than taxpayers were lead to believe. This video clip is an eye opener. You have to watch...

Not even sure where to start. Wednesday I saw a story stating Soros bought Citi for $1.3 Billion dollars and doubled his stake in Gold. Yesterday, I saw a story stating IMF was about to sell tons of Gold. Also yesterday, I saw a story stating China had sold our treasury bonds in a plan to buy Gold. So I started digging. I know, you're shocked. LOL. Here's the facts and links. Connect the dots. Let's start at the beginning. When Obama was elected, one of the first things he did was give $108 Billion dollars to the International Monetary...

Islamic megabank to launch in 6-12 months Thu, Feb 18 2010 MANAMA (Reuters) - The creation of a planned Islamic investment megabank is in "fairly advanced stages" and it will likely be launched in the next six to 12 months, an executive at a firm advising on the project said on Thursday. A plan to form the world's largest sharia-compliant lender -- which is being promoted by the chairman of Al Baraka Banking Group Sheikh Saleh Abdulla Kamel -- has been in the works for some years. Sheikh Saleh said last April the global financial crisis had delayed the project,...

Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) arranged a currency swap for Greece that it failed to disclose and that allowed the country, now facing a debt crisis, to hide the extent of its deficit, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The Wall Street bank managed $15 billion of bond sales for the European country after arranging the swap, Bloomberg reported, citing a review of the prospectuses. No mention of the swap was made in sales documents for the securities in at least six of the 10 sales Goldman arranged for Greece since the deal, the report said. It added the bank helped Greece...

February 14, 2010 Wall St. Helped Greece to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis By LOUISE STORY, LANDON THOMAS Jr. and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts. As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in...

MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES (in billions of dollars as of 12/09) China, Mainland 789.6 Japan 757.3 United Kingdom 2/ 277.5 Oil Exporters 3/ 187.7 Carib Bnkng Ctrs 4/ 179.8 Brazil 157.1 Hong Kong 146.2 Russia 128.1 Luxembourg 91.7 Taiwan 78.4 Germany 53.6 France 47.5 Canada 46.6 Korea, South 39.1 Ireland 38.8 Singapore 36.4 Thailand 31.7 India 31.6 Turkey 29.6 Norway 26.2 Mexico 26.2 Egypt 25.3 Netherlands 20.3 Sweden 19.4 Italy 19.1 Israel 16.6 Colombia 15.6 Belgium 15.3 Chile 12.2 Philippines 12.2 Australia 11.5 Malaysia 11.1 All Other 142.3 Grand Total 3597.5 Of which: For. Official 2404.6 Treasury Bills...

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. Yerushalmi and...

Adding insult to injury, the U.S. government has paid private firms nearly $160 million, to distribute funds from its severely mismanaged and fraud-infested program to bail out the nation’s financial institutions. Rife with waste and abuse the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has already proven to be a troubling experiment of U.S. tax dollars with virtually no oversight. In fact, dozens of criminal investigations have been launched into the controversial bailout and the risk is only going to grow, according to a Treasury Department Inspector General report issued last spring. So far investigations have centered on securities fraud,...

While many accounts have been written about the extremely 'shady' dealings which Goldman Sachs has/had with AIG – which led directly to AIG's $180 billion bail-out – unless I've missed it, one of the key issues has been soft-pedaled and another has been ignored altogether. These two topics which I intend to discuss are a) that Goldman Sachs used AIG as its financial 'toilet'; and b) that Goldman Sachs had begun openly and deliberately misrepresenting assets/investments to investors starting in 2006 or 2007 – at a time when all the other banker-oligarchs were continuing to assert their “mark to model”...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (GYT'-nur) says the U.S. government "will never" lose its sterling credit rating despite big budget deficits and a newly increased debt limit that now tops $14 trillion. [Snip] Moody's Investors Service recently issued a warning that the government's credit rating could eventually be in jeopardy if nation's finances don't improve. The cost of borrowing would increase significantly if the ratings service lowered the credit rating, also known as a bond rating, for U.S. Treasuries. Geithner tells ABC's "This Week" that will never happen.