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HavenWorks.com/people/a-z/p/paulson-henry-merritt-hank-jr Henry Paulson News |
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Henry Paulson News. Secretary of the Treasury Henry M Paulson, Jr.. - USTreas.gov
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 Henry
Merritt "Hank" Paulson Jr
HENRY PAULSON News:
Henry
Paulson
-  Corporate
-  Government
-  Politics
-  Florida
"TARP Shortchanged Taxpayers by $78 Billion, Watchdog Panel Says." ... "[United States] U.S. taxpayers are being shortchanged by about $78 billion through the Treasury Department’s bank bailout, the panel overseeing the program said." ... "The Treasury, when it was headed by [Republican President Bush's] Secretary Henry Paulson, received bank assets worth about $176 billion in exchange for capital purchases of $254 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Congressional Oversight Panel said in a report today." ... "“The loss estimate is conservative,” said [Florida Democratic] Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. “It could turn out that those assets in the end are worthless. These are massive handouts to favored institutions to try to make up with taxpayer money the mistakes they made with investor money.”" ... "TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program], which is part of the more than $9 trillion the government has pledged to rescue the financial system, has guaranteed $350 billion to banks so far, with another $350 billion set for use in coming months." -By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry -Bloomberg 
Henry
Paulson
- Corporate
- Government
-  Investigation
-  Legislation
"Bailout Lacks Oversight Despite Billions Pledged: Watchdog Panel Is Empty; Report Is Unfinished." ... "In the six weeks since lawmakers approved the Treasury's massive bailout of financial firms, the government has poured money into the country's largest banks, recruited smaller banks into the program and repeatedly widened its scope to cover yet other types of businesses, from insurers to consumer lenders." ... "Along the way, the [Republican President] Bush administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package." ... "Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed." ... "The legislation grants the special inspector, who is expected to be the primary overseer of the program, a budget of $50 million. The measure calls for him to conduct audits and investigations of how the government spends money under the bailout program, including on equity investments in firms. In particular, he is to report about any assets acquired and their value, plus an explanation of why they were acquired and details on individuals or companies involved in the transactions." ... "The leading candidate for the post is Neil M. Barofsky, a federal prosecutor in New York, and his nomination could come as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter." ... "For their part, lawmakers have yet to nominate the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel, though leaders of both parties said they hoped they would be named by the end of the month and start work by December." ... "The legislation also created a body called the Financial Stability Oversight Board, whose five members include [Republican President Bush's Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. But it has no staff of its own, and few expect that policymakers can conduct oversight of themselves. "It's sort of a joke in terms of oversight," a congressional aide said." (1, 2) -By Amit R. Paley -WashingtonPost
Henry
Paulson
- Government
-  Emergency
- Politics
- AIG
"Washington's $5 Trillion Tab: Fighting the financial crisis has put the U.S. on the hook for some $5 trillion a report says. So far." ... "For all the fury over [Republican President Bush's] Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $700 billion emergency economic relief fund, it seems downright puny when compared to the running total of the government's response to the credit crisis." ... "According to CreditSights, a research firm in New York and London, the U.S. government has put itself on the hook for some $5 trillion, so far, in an attempt to arrest a collapse of the financial system." ... "The Fed has taken on much of that total, including lending a cumulative $1 trillion in overnight or short-term loans since March to primary dealers through its emergency discount window and making a cumulative $1.8 trillion available through its term auction facility, a series of short-term transactions it began making available twice a month in January. It should be noted that a portion of the funds lent in these programs has been repaid and that the totals represent what has been made available." ... "The Fed also took on tens of billions in debt, including $29 billion in debt of Bear Stearns, and made $60 billion of credit available to American International Group (nyse: AIG - news - people ). It is committing $22.5 billion to set up a special purpose vehicle to manage some of AIG's residential mortgage-backed securities, and it is financing $30 billion of a second fund to hold $70 billion of multi-sector collaterized debt obligations on which AIG wrote credit default swaps." ... "The Treasury, in addition to the $700 billion raised in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, agreed to guarantee money market funds against losses up to $50 billion, will inject $40 billion of capital into AIG and is backing the conservatorship of Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac (nyse: FRE - news - people ), to the tune of $200 billion." ... "The FDIC [Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation], meanwhile, is guaranteeing $1.5 trillion of senior unsecured bank debt." ... "Not included in the total are the Fed's long-existing discount window lending to commercial banks, the mortgage modification plan announced by regulators on Tuesday, support for the Federal Home Loan Banks and a myriad of other programs." -By Elizabeth Moyer -Forbes
Henry
Paulson
- Secret
- Corporate
- Government
- Politics
- Emergency
- Law
"Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose [$2 Trillion in taxpayer loans to banks] (Update2)." ... "The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral." ... "Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return." ... "``The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that's a big problem,'' said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. ``In a liquid market, this wouldn't matter, but we're not. The market is very nervous and very thin.''" ... "Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure." ... "The Fed made the loans under terms of 11 programs, eight of them created in the past 15 months, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression." ... "``It's your money; it's not the Fed's money,'' said billionaire Ted Forstmann, senior partner of Forstmann Little & Co. in New York. ``Of course there should be transparency.''" -By Mark Pittman, Bob Ivry and Alison Fitzgerald -Bloomberg
Henry
M Paulson Jr
- Illegal
- Corporate
- Government
- Politics
"A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks: With Attention on Bailout Debate, Treasury Made Change to Tax Policy." ... "The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the [Republican President] Bush administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention." ... "But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion." ... "The sweeping change to two decades of tax policy escaped the notice of lawmakers for several days, as they remained consumed with the controversial bailout bill. When they found out, some legislators were furious. Some congressional staff members have privately concluded that the notice was illegal. But they have worried that saying so publicly could unravel several recent bank mergers made possible by the change and send the economy into an even deeper tailspin." ... ""Did the Treasury Department have the authority to do this? I think almost every tax expert would agree that the answer is no," said George K. Yin, the former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan congressional authority on taxes. "They basically repealed a 22-year-old law that Congress passed as a backdoor way of providing aid to banks."" ... "The story of the obscure provision underscores what critics in Congress, academia and the legal profession warn are the dangers of the broad authority being exercised by [Republican President Bush's] Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. in addressing the financial crisis. Lawmakers are now looking at whether the new notice was introduced to benefit specific banks, as well as whether it inappropriately accelerated bank takeovers." ... "The change to Section 382 of the tax code -- a provision that limited a kind of tax shelter arising in corporate mergers -- came after a two-decade effort by conservative economists and Republican administration officials to eliminate or overhaul the law, which is so little-known that even influential tax experts sometimes draw a blank at its mention. Until the financial meltdown, its opponents thought it would be nearly impossible to revamp the section because this would look like a corporate giveaway, according to lobbyists." ... "More than a dozen tax lawyers interviewed for this story -- including several representing banks that stand to reap billions from the change -- said the Treasury had no authority to issue the notice." ... "Section 382 of the tax code was created by Congress in 1986 to end what it considered an abuse of the tax system: companies sheltering their profits from taxation by acquiring shell companies whose only real value was the losses on their books. The firms would then use the acquired company's losses to offset their gains and avoid paying taxes." ... "Lawmakers decried the tax shelters as a scam and created a formula to strictly limit the use of those purchased losses for tax purposes." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Amit R. Paley -WashingtonPost
 Auto
- Industry
-  Manufacturing
-  Jobs
-  Fuel
-  Retirees
-  Health
Care -  California
-  Nevada
- Henry
Paulson
"Dem Leaders Want Bush To Aid Auto Industry." ... "Democratic leaders in Congress asked the [Republican President] Bush administration on Saturday to provide more aid to the struggling auto industry, which is bleeding cash and jobs as sales have dropped to their lowest level in a quarter-century." ... "House Speaker [and California Democratic Representative] Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader [and Nevada Democratic Senator] Harry Reid said in a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the administration should consider expanding the $700 billion bailout to include car companies." ... ""A healthy automobile manufacturing sector is essential to the restoration of financial market stability, the overall health of our economy, and the livelihood of the automobile sector's work force," they wrote. "The economic downturn and the crisis in our financial markets further imperiled our domestic automobile industry and its work force."" ... "Automakers already want an additional $50 billion in loans from Congress to help them survive tough economic conditions and pay for health care obligations for retirees." ... "The money would be on top of the $25 billion in loans that Congress passed in September to help retool auto plants to build more fuel-efficient vehicles." -By Deb Riechmann -AP via -HuffingtonPost.com 
 Giuliani
- Paulson
- Corporate
- Government
- Law
- Politics
-  History
"The Rich Are Staging a Coup This Morning ...a message from Michael Moore." ... "The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, [Republican President] Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. [United States] Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door." ... "No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday's New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:" ""Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.""Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even [Republican] Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to "consult" in the bailout." ... "The problem is, nobody truly knows what this "collapse" is all about. Even [Republican President Bush's] Treasury Secretary [Henry] Paulson admitted he doesn't know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can't figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone. " -By Michael Moore
Henry
Paulson
- Financial
- Crisis
- Politics
- Legislation
"Bad News For The Bailout: The [Republican President Bush Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson Plan." ... "At a Senate Banking Committee hearing Tuesday, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle complained of being rushed to pass legislation or else risk financial meltdown." ... "In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy." ... ""It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."" -By Brian Wingfield and Josh Zumbrun with contributions by Liz Moyer -Forbes
 Dick
Cheney - Henry
Paulson
- Corporate
- Government
-Lawmakers
- Politics
"White House Dispatches Team to Push Economic Bill." ... "The White House today is drumming up extraordinary pressure on Congress to approve its plan to enact a $700 billion mortgage bailout fund, suggesting the markets cannot wait much longer and dispatching Vice President Cheney and other top officials up Pennsylvania Avenue to jawbone lawmakers." ... "Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who collaborated in drawing up the proposal, are testifying this morning on Capitol Hill in an effort to defend their handiwork." ... "[Republican President Bush's Deputy Press Secretary Tony] Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough." -By Keith Koffler -RollCall.com
Henry
Paulson
- Corporate
- Government
- Legislative
- Politics
"Good ideas and lies." ... "So, this morning [Republican President Bush's Treasury Secretary] Hank Paulson told a whopper:" [Hank Paulson:] "We gave you a simple, three-page legislative outline and I thought it would have been presumptuous for us on that outline to come up with an oversight mechanism. That’s the role of Congress, that’s something we’re going to work on together. So if any of you felt that I didn’t believe that we needed oversight: I believe we need oversight. We need oversight.""What the proposal actually did, of course, was explicitly rule out any oversight, plus grant immunity from future review:" "Sec. 8. Review.""I’m not playing gotcha here. This is telling: if Paulson can’t be honest about what he himself sent to Congress — if he not only made an incredible power grab, but is now engaged in black-is-white claims that he didn’t — there is no reason to trust him on anything related to his bailout plan." -By Paul Krugman/Blog -NYTimes
Henry
Paulson
- Government
- Politics
-  US
-  Foreign
"Foreign Banks Can Unload Bad Debt Too: Paulson." ... "[Republican President Bush's] Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Sunday that foreign banks will be able to unload bad financial assets under a $700 billion U.S. proposal aimed at restoring order during a devastating financial crisis." ... ""Yes, and they should. Because ... if a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution," Paulson said on ABC TV." -CNBC
Henry
Paulson
- Corporate
- Government
- Illegal
-  Accounting
- Politics
- History
- US
- Global
"Can you trust a Wall Street veteran with a Wall Street bailout?" ... "Making the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows, [Republican President Bush's] Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson repeatedly said today's financial problems were long in the making. He should know. He was part of the Gold Rush that has brought the global financial system to the brink of collapse." ... "Paulson presided over one of the most profitable runs on Wall Street as chairman and chief executive officer of investment banking titan Goldman Sachs & Co. from 1999 until [Republican] President Bush nominated him on May 30, 2006 to take over the Treasury Department." ... "But with Paulson now seeking virtually unfettered authority to administer the largest bailout of the financial industry in U.S. [United States] history, many are wondering whether Paulson also doesn't come with enormous potential conflicts of interest." ... "Paulson has surrounded himself with former Goldman executives as he tries to navigate the domino-like collapse of several parts of the global financial market. And others have gone off to lead companies that could be among those that receive a bailout." ... "The administration's draft law also would preclude court review of steps Paulson might take, something Joshua Rosner, managing director of economic researcher Graham Fisher & Co. in New York, said could be used to mask previous illegal activity." ... "The Treasury proposal sent to Congress also offers no process to hire asset managers in an open and competitive process. That's particularly questionable given that Wall Street players are now hiring Wall Street players, Rosner said." ... ""This seems to invite a risk of collusion between sellers and buyers to the detriment of the taxpayer," he wrote." ... "At a minimum, there's irony in Paulson being in charge of so large a bailout." ... "In the last annual report at Goldman that Paulson signed off on in November 2005, a year in which he received $38 million in compensation, investors were clearly told that the federal government wouldn't be there to save them from bad investments." ... "In 2002, Paulson received $12.1 million in compensation, including a $6.3 million bonus — an improvement over the previous three years when Wall Street accounting scandals unsettled investment banks, including a $1.5 billion settlement Goldman and other banks paid for issuing overly bullish research reports that promoted deals the banks themselves were involved in." ... "Published reports said Paulson received $30 million in compensation and salary in 2003." -By Kevin G. Hall -McClatchyDC.com
Henry
Paulson
- Government
- Money
- Politics
- Law
- American
International Group - Calif
"Bush Asking For $700 Billion Bailout." ... "Struggling to stave off financial catastrophe, the [Republican President] Bush administration on Friday laid out a radical bailout plan with a jawdropping price tag _ a takeover of a half-trillion dollars or more in worthless mortgages and other bad debt held by tottering institutions." ... "Congressional officials said they expected a request for legal authority to buy up the bad loans, at a cost in excess of $500 billion to the government." ... "The federal government already has pledged more than $600 billion [Reuters reports: $900 billion] in the past year to bail out, or help bail out, some of the biggest names in American finance. That includes the rescue of investment bank Bear Stearns in March, the takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac earlier this month and the takeover of the world's largest insurance company, American International Group, just this week." ... "In a session with House Democrats, they described a plan where the government would in essence set up reverse auctions, putting up money for a class of distressed assets _ such as loans that are delinquent but not in default _ and financial institutions would compete for how little they would accept for the investments, said [California Democratic Representative] Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif. [Democratic-California], who participated in the call." ... ""You give them good cash; they give you the worst of the worst," Sherman said of the plan, which he complained that Bush and his economic advisers were trying to panic lawmakers into rubber-stamping." ... "[Republican President Bush's Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson rejected Democrats' calls to include tighter regulations, corporate reforms or limits on executive compensation as part of the measure, Sherman said. "He's doing his best to paint a picture of the sky falling, and then he says, because the sky's falling, you have to do it my way."" -By Tom Raum and Jeannine Aversa with contributions by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Martin Crutsinger, Andrew Taylor, Marcy Gordon, David Espo, Jim Abrams, and Joe Bel Bruno -AP via -HuffingtonPost.com
Henry
Paulson
- Government
- Money
-  Housing
- Politics
- Historic
"U.S. seizes Fannie and Freddie: Treasury chief Paulson unveils historic government takeover of twin mortgage buyers. Top executives are out." ... "Federal officials on Sunday unveiled an extraordinary takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, putting the government in charge of the twin mortgage giants and the $5 trillion in home loans they back." ... "The move, which extends as much as $200 billion in Treasury support to the two companies, marks Washington's most dramatic attempt yet to shore up the nation's housing market, which is suffering from record foreclosures and falling prices." ... "The sweeping plan, announced by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and James Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, places the two companies into a "conservatorship" to be overseen by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Under conservatorship, the government would temporarily run Fannie and Freddie until they are on stronger footing." ... "Freddie CEO Richard Syron and Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd will no longer run the agencies, while the FHFA will assume control of the boards." ... "The government, in agreeing to backstop the firms, said it would receive $1 billion in each company's senior preferred stock. The government will also receive a quarterly dividend payment and the right to own 79.9% of each company." ... "Fannie and Freddie have become virtually the only source of funding for banks and other home lenders looking to make home loans. Their ability to do so is crucial to the recovery of the battered home market and the broader U.S. economy." ... "The two firms buy loans, attach a guarantee, then sell securities backed by the loans' income stream. All told, they own or back $5.4 trillion worth of home debt - half the mortgage debt in the country." ... "The cost of the government intervention remains unclear however. Experts argue that it will depend in large part on the structure of the rescue, the direction of home prices and mortgage default rates." ... "Still it seems almost certain it will run into the billions and will most likely eclipse such other high-profile government bailouts including than the Federal Reserve's $29 billion backing of Bear Stearns assets when it was taken over by J.P. Morgan Chase." -By David Ellis with contributions by Tami Luhby and Patricia Sellers -CNN
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