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Leaked Network Memo
Reveals: Obama Controls Your Television Set
Big Hollywood
John Nolte
October 15, 2009
On September 10th of this year
the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) posted press release
informing the world that “from October 19-25, more than 60
network TV shows [will] spotlight the power and personal
benefits of service,” and that this “unprecedented block of
TV programming is the first wave of a multi-year ‘I
Participate’ campaign.”
On its face this all sounds
rather benign in that silly, liberal do-gooder kind of way. The
networks have launched these kinds of campaigns before and other
than some clunky exposition awkwardly inserted into your
favorite show to meet the mandate — no harm, no foul.
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Pfizer to pay record $2.3B
penalty over promotions
Repeat offender Pfizer
paying record $2.3B settlement for illegal drug promotions
Associated Press
Yahoo News
By Devlin Barrett
September 2, 2009
Federal prosecutors
hit Pfizer Inc. with a record-breaking $2.3 billion in fines
Wednesday and called the world's largest drug maker a repeating
corporate cheat for illegal drug promotions that plied doctors
with free golf, massages, and resort junkets.
Announcing the
penalty as a warning to all drug manufacturers, Justice
Department officials said the overall settlement is the largest
ever paid by a drug company for alleged violations of federal
drug rules, and the $1.2 billion criminal fine is the largest
ever in any U.S. criminal case. The total includes $1 billion in
civil penalties and a $100 million criminal forfeiture.
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AIG’s Greenberg, Smith Pay
$15 Million to Settle Accounting Fraud Charges
The Public Record
August 6, 2009
The Securities and
Exchange Commission today charged former American International
Group Chairman and CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg and former
Vice Chairman and CFO Howard Smith for their involvement in
numerous improper accounting transactions that inflated AIG’s
reported financial results between 2000 and 2005. The SEC
alleges that Greenberg and Smith are liable as control persons
for AIG’s violations of the antifraud and other provisions of
the securities laws. Smith also is charged with direct
violations of the antifraud and other provisions of the
securities laws.
The SEC alleges that
Greenberg and Smith were responsible for material misstatements
that enabled AIG to create the false impression that the company
consistently met or exceeded key earnings and growth targets.
According to the SEC’s complaint, Greenberg publicly described
AIG as the leader in the insurance and financial services
industry with a history of delivering consistent double-digit
growth. However, AIG faced numerous financial challenges under
Greenberg’s leadership that were disguised through improper
accounting.
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Goldman
Sachs Payments to U.S. Give 23% Return to Taxpayers
Bloomberg News
By Christine Harper
July 22, 2009
Goldman Sach's repayments to the
government of last year’s bailout money, including an
agreement today to repay warrants, generated a 23 percent
annualized return for U.S. taxpayers.
Goldman Sachs agreed to the
Treasury’s request for $1.1 billion to repay warrants the
government received when it invested $10 billion in the New
York-based firm last October. The payment is in addition to $318
million in preferred dividends.
That 23 percent return compares
with the 42 percent surge in Goldman Sachs’s share price since
October, and the 5.1 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s
500 Index. Goldman’s decision follows criticism of the bank by
lawmakers who questioned its decision to set aside a record
$11.4 billion to pay employees in the first half of the year.
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Chrysler
Appoints Steenland, TIAA’s Thompson to Complete Board
Bloomberg News
By Mike Ramsey and Dan Hart
July 6, 2009
Chrysler Group LLC, the U.S.
automaker run by Fiat SpA, said former Northwest Airlines Corp.
Chief Executive Officer Douglas Steenland will join the nine-
member board.
The automaker, which emerged from
bankruptcy on June 10, also named as directors the former
governor of Michigan James Blanchard, George Gosbee, chief
executive officer and president of Tristone Capital Inc.;
Sageview Capital LLC founding partner Scott Stuart; Ronald
Thompson, chairman of the board of trustees for Teachers
Insurance and Annuity Association, and R.R. Donnelley & Sons
Co. Chairman Stephen Wolf.
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The
Chrysler “Bankruptcy” Versus the U.S. Constitution
By Paul V Sheridan
Civil Justice Foundation National Champion
Dearborn,
Michigan
On April 30th
President Obama announced that my former employer was being forced into
bankruptcy by a group of minor investment firms who had “decided to hold out
for an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout."
Flanked
by his Auto Task Force, Obama complained, “They were hoping that
everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none. I do
not stand with them.” Here it
is emphasized that the White House stance presented for public consumption was
an alleged effort to avoid bankruptcy. So
why did it happen anyway? Perhaps
these minor firms served another purpose of the Obama Administration.
April
30th was the arbitrary deadline for major
stakeholders to offer concessions which justified that billions
of taxpayer dollars be transferred from their U.S. Treasury to
Chrysler. These “sacrifices” were broadly proclaimed as the basis
for avoiding bankruptcy. By
April 30th all major stakeholders were seated at the
table; the Canadian
Auto Workers, the United Auto Workers, the suppliers,
dealers and retirees of Chrysler, the major investors, Fiat,
and the American taxpayer.
But if these major players agreed to avoid bankruptcy,
what truly motivated the Obama bankruptcy announcement?
Who benefits from bankruptcy?
And most importantly, who loses?
Within
minutes of the Obama announcement, plaintiffs all over America
received a document entitled, “Notice
of Suggestion of Bankruptcy.”
This frantic distribution by Chrysler lawyers occurred
before New York Judge
Arthur “Enron” Gonzalez had even read the Chrysler’s
Chapter 11 filing!
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AIG
Investors Gather Amid Search for Fifth Chief Since 2005
Bloomberg News
By Hugh Son and Tian Huang
June 29, 2009
American International Group Inc.
investors gathering for the insurer’s annual meeting tomorrow
are again waiting for a new chief executive officer to help
return the company to profitability.
AIG, which is selling assets to
repay a $182.5 billion U.S. bailout, hired executive search firm
Spencer Stuart to find a replacement for outgoing CEO Edward
Liddy, according to two people familiar with the situation.
Liddy, 63, said last month that he wanted to leave the New
York-based company as soon as a successor is appointed.
A new leader “needs to show
investors that there’s something at the end of this and that
they will survive,” said Rose Grant, managing director at
Boston-based Eastern Investment Advisors, which sold its AIG
stock. “I can’t imagine morale is the best right now.”
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Capital Eye Report: Credit
Rating Agencies Under Fire Drop More Dollars on Political
Influence
Capitol Eye Blog
Open Secrets
By Michael Beckel
May 14, 2009
As Congress and the Securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC) eye new rules and regulations to
ameliorate the financial turmoil, credit rating agencies are
coming under increased scrutiny and are reaching out to K Street
for a helping hand.
The 10 firms accredited by the SEC to issue credit ratings spent
$370,000 on lobbying during the first three months of 2009, an
increase of 42 percent compared to the 1st Quarter of 2008, the
nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found.
Seventy-eight percent of that total comes from the so-called
"Big Three" credit rating firms, whose inflated
ratings of risky securities reportedly helped precipitate the
financial crisis, according to some.
CRP has also found that employees of these 10 companies and
their family members contributed more than $122,400 to federal
candidates, parties and committees during the 2008 election
cycle, nearly double the amount contributed during the 2004
presidential election cycle. Of the contributions given in the
last election cycle, 74 percent went to Democrats.
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Carlyle Settles With New
York in Pension Case
The New York Times
By Danny Hakim
May 14, 2009
The Carlyle Group, one of the
largest and most politically connected private equity firms,
will pay $20 million and make broad changes to its practices to
end an inquiry by New York’s state attorney general, Andrew M
Cuomo, into its pension business.
Under the deal, Carlyle will no
longer use intermediaries, known as placement agents, to gain
investment business from public pension funds nationwide, and it
will curtail its campaign contributions to elected officials who
oversee pension funds.
Carlyle executives and the firm
will not face any further action, including criminal
prosecution, by Mr. Cuomo’s office. Mr. Cuomo hopes to use the
settlement as a model for an industrywide overhaul of how hedge
funds and private equity firms interact with public pension
funds.
In addition, the settlement could
bring new urgency to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s
deliberations about whether to bar investment firms and their
executives from making campaign contributions to officials who
oversee public pensions.
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Ailing Banks Need $75 Billion,
U.S. Says
The New York Times
By Edmund Andrews
May 7, 2009
After subjecting the nation’s
biggest banks to the most public scrutiny in decades, federal
regulators ordered 10 of them on Thursday to raise a total of
$75 billion in extra capital and gave the rest a clean bill of
health.
The long-awaited results of the
“stress tests” set off an immediate scramble by major
institutions for more capital. By June 8, they must give
regulators their plans for raising the money, and raise it by
November.
The verdict was far more upbeat
than many in the industry had feared when the tests were first
announced in February. And the banks that came up short will
have to raise much less than some analysts had expected as
recently as a few days ago.
-------------
But while the adverse situation
was supposed to be unlikely, it is not that much worse than what
has happened so far. Unemployment hit 8.5 percent in April and
could top 9 percent as early as Friday, when the Labor
Department releases its employment report for May.
Bank of America was told it would
have to come up with $34.9 billion. Wells Fargo will have
to find $13.7 billion. And Citigroup will have to produce
another $5.5 billion, on top of the $52.5 billion that it had
planned to acquire by letting the Treasury become its biggest
single shareholder as part of a broader deal.
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AIG
bonuses four times higher than reported
Politico
By Eamon Javers
May 5, 2009
The
2008 AIG bonus pool just keeps getting larger and larger.
In a response to detailed questions from Rep. Elijah Cummings
(D-Md.), the company has offered a third assessment of exactly
how much it paid out in bonuses last year.
And the new number, offered in a document submitted to Cummings
on May 1, is the highest figure the company has disclosed to
date.
AIG now says it paid out more than $454 million in bonuses to
its employees for work performed in 2008.
That is nearly four times more than the company revealed in late
March when asked by POLITICO to detail its total bonus payments.
At that time, AIG spokesman Nick Ashooh said the firm paid about
$120 million in 2008 bonuses to a pool of more than 6,000
employees.
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