Geithner = Dupe?

Last week I posted that Geithner reminded me of Bobby the day after Jack got shot. This blogger suggests that Geithner was at best a willing dupe of the Goldman Sachs crew.

Facts About Goldman Sachs
An open forum for facts and discussion about what part Goldman Sachs and their executives played in the current Global Economic Crisis.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Geithner - Goldman - PIMROCK
I received this from a reliable source. I cannot verify everything in this post, but I don't see anything out of place or totally off the wall. - Mike

I've been peeling the onion on Geithner, and I keep coming up with more onion. What I've learned, however, allows me to shed a little light on "PIMROCK" (PIMCO, BlackRock)..

Pete Peterson, former Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, hand picked Geithner for the position of NY Fed President. Geithner was a Senior Fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations. Peterson was co-founder and CEO of the Blackstone Group hedge fund, which spun off BlackRock. 49% of BlackRock is owned by Merrill Lynch. Merrill Lynch is owned by Bank of America. Bank of America and Bank of America bonds have arguably taken over from Citigroup as the most important financial stock and bonds to watch.

Geithner, who was little more than a glorified clerk, was made President of the NY Fed in 2003. His boss and chief advisor was Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Alan Greenspan works today as a consultant for PIMCO. "Why would PIMROCK go along with this?.....because they hold $100B in J.P. Citi of America bonds, and they've received assurances that if we can get the nation out of the financial pickle it's in, there will be no haircuts on those bonds." (quoting Waldman).

Who really ran the NY Fed when Giethner was President? Well, his three "class-A" Directors were Jamie Dimon, Stephen Friedman and Richard Fuld.

Jamie Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan, receipient of at least $25 billion in TARP money and another $30 billion in Fed funds collateralized by Bear Stearns paper (which had been formally managed by BlackRock, and is now being paid for by the US taxpayers). The Bear Stearns give away to JPM was supposed to be Geithner's idea, but it had to be Dimon's idea. After all, Geithner is worth $1.6 million while Dimon is personally worth over $2 billion. Who was the real force behind that deal?

NY Fed board member Stephen Friedman, also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, was Chairman of Goldman Sachs until 1994. Friedman still sits on Goldman's board. I think it's safe to say he's got the Fed looking after Goldman Sach's interests. But, just in case, there is Edward F. Murphy, Execuitve VP of the NY Fed. Murphy was A former VP and CFO at Goldman Sachs.

Former Lehman CEO, Richard Fuld, who resigned his position on the NY Fed Board when Lehman collapsed, was the sacrificial lamb. The Lehman collapse had to happen, if for no other reason, so that Geithner could send Dimon $138 billion to give to Citigroup to cover the $138 billion in bad paper it was stuck with. So, even though Lehman went down, those Citigroup/Bank of NY Mellon bondholders walked away whole. Geithner had to protect his old Treasury boss, Rubin, who had over $100 million stuck in Citigroup.

Ironically, another of Geithner's former bosses, Larry Summers, who was working for the D. E. Shaw & Co., a hedge fund that Fortune Magazine called, "the most intriguing and mysterious force on Wall Street", and that specialized in acquiring the assets of distressed companies, dumped a 20% share of that quant company on Lehman in 2007.

I guess Shaw & Co. had learned its lessons about bad assets after it had been clobbered during the LCTM (Long Term Capital Management) crash. If you remember, it was Summers who negotiated the LCTM bailout. It looks like he finally got rewarded by Shaw & Co., a company best known for its "quantitave investment strategies particularly statistical arbitrage". Anyway, don't cry for Richard Fuld, he still walked away with over $22 million. Fuld, GE CEO Jeff Immelt and GS CEO LLoyd Blankfein all sit on the board of the Robinhood Foundation. I ain't making this stuff up.

E. Gerald Corrigan was the 7th President of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY and the Vice-Chairman of the Fed Open Market Committee. He had one of the strongest influences on Geithner. Who else influenced Geithner when he was NY Fed Chairman? According to Corrigan, "He (Geithner) brings in groups of people. That includes, at times, some of his old Treasury buddies"(he's talking about Rubin and Summers). "As I said, he has really worked at this networking thing I keep talking about". Rubin, of course, was not only Geithner's former boss at Treasury, but he was also a former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Corrigan, by the way, is now a Chairman at Goldman Sachs.

John Thain, that other Goldman Sachs guy, once bragged about his access to Geithner. He said, "sometimes I talk to him multiple times a day".

Remember, John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch and of $35,000 toilet fame (where much money was flushed), when Merrill owned BlackRock, had, at one time, been COO at Goldman Sachs until 2003. Then he went on to become Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.

So, when BlackRock was controlling the Bear Stearn/JPM "assets" at the Fed, it was Thain, the former Goldman Sachs COO, who managed the company that owned the company that "managed" the toxic Fed (now taxpayer) assets. It gets complicated, but whether it was Thain managing the BS/JPM assets, or Thain running the NY Stock Exchange, it's just one more Goldman Sachs crony running another part of the corrupt business universe. All we can do is to continue to CONNECT THE DOTS.......