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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

it's all in the game


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in my email box yesterday was a WaPo investigative article by these fine reporters.
the amount of lawmakers that have reworked their portfolios by making a trade with a couple days of talking to either fed chairman paulson, tim geithner, or ben bernanke.
34 members of congress amended their portfolios in this way.
john boehner, speaker of the house, mr. conservative, mr. everything right , a 4 handicap golfer with an incredible tan was in on the action.
on january 23, 2008, boehner breakfastted with the federal reserve chairman paulson.
boehner would report the financial rearrangement of his personal portfolio.  boehner moved $100,000 from an aggressive mutual fund to a safer investment.
boehner was one of 34  members of congress to recast their financial portfolios during the crisis of 2008 after phone  calls or meetings with paulson, bernanke, or geithner, according to a washington post examination of  appointment calendars and congressional disclosure forms.
lawmakers, many in leadership positions, changed portions of their portfolios 166 times within 2 business days of  meeting or speaking with administration officials.
the party affiliation of lawmakers was about evenly divided between republicans and democrats 19-15.
what we have here are equal opportunity sleaze buckets.
boehner and his cohorts are special.
boehner, now speaker of the house, declined to discuss his transactions.  his spokesman, said that it didn't pose a conflict because a financial advisor executed them and that they were made in diversified mutual funds.
other lawmakers also said that their financial advisors handdled their trades. the conversations were coincidental and they did not adjust positions based on the conversations.
sen. bob nelson democrat nebraska and paulson spoke january 10, 2006, when the fannie mae and freddie mac fiasco was in the spotlight.
the next day he sold between $250,000 and $500,000 of his lehman brothers certificates of deposit for treasury notes.
this is not surprising and isn'ot the first of many previous exposes........


In January 2008, President George W. Bush was scrambling to bolster the American economy. The subprime mortgage industry was collapsing, and the Dow Jones industrial average had lost more than 2,000 points in less than three months.
"House Minority Leader John A. Boehner became the Bush administration’s point person on Capitol Hill to negotiate a $150 billion stimulus package. "
article continues with link.

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it's all in the game
jarrett

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