Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has once more reiterated that she will not run for president in 2012, going so far as to refer to her current role in government as "my last public position."
At a town hall meeting appearance in Manama, Bahrain on Friday, Clinton denied intentions to run for either president or vice president on the ticket with President Obama, who defeated her in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Some experts have also speculated that she could replace Robert Gates next year when he retires as secretary of defense.
"I think I will serve as secretary of state as my last public position," she said. Clinton's career has included not only her current position as secretary of state, but also eight years in the Senate representing New York.
Clinton has repeatedly laughed off rumors that she may seek the highest office in the country, and she was notablyout of the country during the midterm elections when Democrats lost control of the House.
When her current position is over, Clinton "would like to continue working to improve lives for others," she said, adding that she will "probably go back to advocacy work, particularly on women and children and probably around the world." This marks the first time Clinton has publicly discussed alternatives to political office in her future.
In returning to advocacy work, she could follow in the footsteps of her husband and former President Bill Clinton, who has largely turned to humanitarian work through his Clinton Foundation since leaving the White House.
Mrs. Clinton has formerly worked extensively for the rights of women and children. She went on to note that while she has had a "fascinating and rewarding public career," she particularly enjoyed her time as a lawyer for the Children's Defense Fund, which advocates for abused and neglected children, as well as her women's rights work,according to Reuters.
"I feel very lucky because of my parents and then my education, the opportunities that I've had, so I would like to continue working to improve lives for others," she added.
In addition to personal passions, Clinton also noted the strain of the job of president as a deterrent towards seeking further election.
"Every president, if you watch what they look like when they come into office, you can see their hair turn white because it's such a hard job," she said.
US Drone Attack Raises Uncomfortable Questions for Germany
A US drone attack in Pakistan in October is thought to have killed a German citizen. The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel would prefer the case to simply go away, but one parliamentarian is refusing to let it be forgotten.
When a German citizen is killed in a foreign country under mysterious circumstances, one might expect an outcry from politicians and the media. But the case of Bünyamin E., a German of Turkish descent who is believed to have died in Pakistan on Oct. 4, has caused remarkably little fuss in Germany -- partly because the 20-year-old was a suspected terrorist, but also because he was apparentlykilled by an American drone.
The case is awkward for the German government, as it involves the country's most powerful ally and also raises uncomfortable questions about whether Germany provided support for the targeted killing.
But one opposition politician in particular is determined not to let the government off the hook. Wolfgang Neskovic, a member of parliament for the far-left Left Party, has been pursuing the case and demanding answers from Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration.
The German government "has done everything to conceal the facts of the case," Neskovic told SPIEGEL ONLINE in an interview. "If German citizens are executed in a foreign country -- and that's the only way to describe the targeted killing by the US -- the German government has to provide both the general public and the parliament with sufficient information."
Possible Legal Consequences
One reason the case has not caused a greater outcry is due to fears of an impending terrorist attack in Germany, caused by a recent warning from Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, meaning that sympathy for the rights of suspected terrorists is limited. But Neskovic -- a member of the Bundestag's Parliamentary Control Panel, which monitors the work of Germany's intelligence agencies -- insists that the intentions of the alleged victims of the attack are irrelevant.
"It does not matter whether the people killed were actually terrorists or not," he said. He called for the circumstances of the fatal drone attack to be thoroughly cleared up. "The US should state whether it actually killed a German or not," he said, adding that the German government "cannot allow or support such attacks on German citizens."
Neskovic suggests the German government could bear partial responsibility for the attack. "The Germans would be complicit in the US's execution operation if they, for example, continued to give information to the US about German Islamists while knowing about a planned targeted killing," he said. "That could have legal as well as political consequences."
Open Questions
Bünyamin E. is believed to be one of three suspected Islamists from Germany who were killed in a US drone attack in the town of Mir Ali in Pakistan's North Waziristan region on Oct. 4. He was apparently the only one of the three with German citizenship, however.
Officially, the authorities have not yet confirmed if a German citizen died in the attack, but sources in the government told the German magazine Stern that they assume Bünyamin E. was one of the people killed. Germany's Federal Public Prosecutor is currently looking into the case to see if it needs to open an investigation.
The US is increasingly using drones for air strikes in Pakistan's border area, with the CIA controlling the unmanned aircraft from the US. Drone attacks against insurgent targets form a key part of US President Barack Obama's anti-terror strategy, and are estimated to have killed over 500 people in 2010 alone. The approach has been criticized by some human rights experts as violating international law, given that Pakistan is not a war zone.
'Fire and Brimstone'
"Such attacks are happening outside the law," says Neskovic. "International law does not provide any legal basis for the killing of suspected terrorists outside of a combat situation. … No intelligence service has the license to kill."
According to Neskovic, if other countries adopted such a strategy, the entire world would become a war zone, with "American drones over the Brandenburg Gate (in Berlin) and North Korean drones over Washington."
Neskovic reserves his strongest criticism for the American president, who he sees as being ultimately responsible for the drone attacks. "Barack Obama is not God, able to freely decide about life and death," he says. "Nevertheless he behaves like an Old Testament God who kills people as he sees fit with fire and brimstone."
"Dick Cheney's involvement with bribery and corruption in Nigeria. Bribes and diversion of money. Dick CheneyDick Cheney, for Vice-President, under Bush, is being charged by Nigerian officials for his part in the bribery scandal developing there. Recently Nigeria arrested employees of Halliburton company in connection with this." An arrest warrant "will be issued and transmitted through Interpol," said Godwin Obla, the prosecuting counsel at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in Nigeria." Huffington Post.
Cheney was CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000 when he took up his role as US vice-president. It was during that time that an alleged bribe of $180 million bribe was paid to gain contracts to build a $6 billion natural gas facility on Bonny Island, Nigeria.The Nigerian authorities are determined to issue an arrest warrent for Cheney, to be served through Interpol. While there may be no substance to the latest charges, Halliburton has been forced to pay US regulators millions for their violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."In the U.S., KBR and Halliburton agreed to pay $579 million to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission in February 2009 for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1977 law that bans bribery of foreign officials to obtain or retain business, in Nigeria from 1994 to 2004. In the same scandal, Technip agreed to pay $338 million in late June 2010, and 10 days later Snamprogetti–formerly a unit of Eni and later a unit of Saipem–agreed to pay $365 million.Taken together, the companies have paid $1.28 billion to U.S. regulators."The Wall Street Journal Share: Credibility Reach Bookmark Remove Bookmark Global ReachThis report's viewers come from the following countries:United States of America (86.6%) Canada (4.2%) United Kingdom (1.3%) Israel (1.1%) 22 other countries (5.7%) READ MORE: bribes, corruption, nigerian oil, natural gas plant, Dick Cheney, Halliburton, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Interpol, law crime, Halliburton Company, Godwin Obla, business-news, Nigeria, Lagos, George W. Bush, United States, international relations, KBR, Anti-corporate activism, Business Finance, Lafayette, Louisiana, Private military contractors, Nigerian, corporate crime "
By The Washington Times 7:02 p.m., Thursday, December 2, 2010
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is poised to add the Internet to its portfolio of regulated industries. The agency's chairman,Julius Genachowski, announced Wednesday that he circulated draft rules he says will "preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet." No statement could better reflect the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality of Obama administration policies.
With a straight face, Mr. Genachowski suggested that government red tape will increase the "freedom" of online services that have flourished because bureaucratic busybodies have been blocked from tinkering with the Web. Ordinarily, it would be appropriate at this point to supply an example from the proposed regulations illustrating the problem. Mr. Genachowski's draft document has over 550 footnotes and is stamped "non-public, for internal use only" to ensure nobody outside the agency sees it until the rules are approved in a scheduled Dec. 21 vote. So much for "openness."
The issue of "net neutrality" is nothing new, but the increasing popularity of online movie streaming services like Netflix have highlighted an area of potential concern. When someone watches a film over the Internet, especially in high definition, the maximum available capacity of the user's connection is used. Think, for example, of the problems that would arise at the water works if everyone decided to turn on their faucets and take a shower simultaneously. Internet providers are beginning to see the same strain on their networks.
In some cases, heavy use of this sort slows the Web experience for everyone sharing the same lines. That has prompted some cable Internet providers to consider either charging the heavy users more or limiting access to the "problematic" services. Of course, if cinema buffs find themselves cut off from their favorite service, they're going to be mad. If companies don't act, they're just as likely to find irate customers who don't want their experience bogged down by others.
It's not clear why the FCC thinks it needs to intervene in a situation with obvious market solutions. Companies that impose draconian tolls or block services will lose customers. Existing laws already offer a number of protections against anti-competitive behavior, but it's not clear under what law Mr. Genachowski thinks he can stick his nose into the businesses that comprise the Internet. The FCC regulates broadcast television and radio because the government granted each station exclusive access to a slice of the airwaves. Likewise when Ma Bell accepted a monopoly deal from Uncle Sam, it came with regulatory strings attached.
No such rationale applies online, especially because bipartisan majorities in Congress have insisted on maintaining a hands-off policy. A federal appeals court confirmed this in April by striking down the FCC's last attempt in this arena. "That was sort of like the quarterback being sacked for a 20-yard loss," FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell told The Washington Times. "And now the team is about to run the exact same play. ... In order for the FCC to do this, it needs for Congress to give it explicit statutory authority to do so."
Freedom and openness should continue to be the governing principles of the Internet. That's why Mr. Genachowski's proposal should be rejected and Congress should make it even more clear that the FCCshould stop trying to expand its regulatory empire.
Some of the latest news related to the WikiLeaks release of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables that continues to generate headlines around the world:
— Britain's The Independent says WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is "expected to be arrested in the coming days after Swedish prosecutors filed a new warrant with British authorities." As we reported yesterday, Assange is thought to be in the U.K. and the Swedish warrant isn't about the leaks. It's about an alleged rape. Assange says he's innocent.
— But Assange may be "live" on The Guardian's website starting around 8 a.m. ET. He's supposed to be in the comments thread at that link. That is, says the Guardian, "if he can get access to the Internet. ... a big if at the moment." (Update at 8:05 a.m. ET:This probably shouldn't surprise anyone, but the Guardian's webpage where Assange is supposed to join the conversation isn't loading for us at this moment. Perhaps it can't handle the traffic?)
— And about Assange's access to the Internet ... the website's domain name system provider withdrew service from WikiLeaks.org yesterday because of hacker attacks that had "threatened the rest of its network," the Associated Press writes. WikiLeaks moved to a Swiss provider, changing its url to wikileaks.ch.
— The New York Times says some of the leaked cables "depict heavy Afghan graft, starting at the top." NPR's Jackie Northam reported on Morning Edition that the messages highlight "two pervasive challenges the U.S. faces in Afghanistan: corruption and dealing with President Hamid Karzai. ... The cables clearly show how pervasive, corrosive and just how far up the political ladder the corruption reaches."
WikiLeaks Website Dns Down While Owner Julian Assange Arrest Within Days
Is this is the one we have all been warned about? It seems that the World wide web is now being censored and controlled like the radio and television these days. With the latest news coming in about founder of controversial website WikiLeaks , Julian Assange we can only guess on why the government has a very big vendetta on the poor guy.
Julian Assange is responsible for releasing some heavy duty data on the US Government and its under the rug activities. The sad part is that if all of this content is true then why are the people of the world putting up with it? Are we really that far gone? Is this world in a lucid dream that is to far in its sleep state?
We can only hope that the attack on this man will wake the general public up and alert them that there is something very wrong with this whole situation.
Lets pray that God reveals all truth from the rooftops and Justice be done may heaven fall…
By John Byrne Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 -- 8:37 am
The energy services company Dick Cheney ran prior to becoming Vice President of the United States was atop the tongue of liberals each time it was awarded a contract in Iraq.
Now the company's name, Halliburton, is being spoken somewhere else: Nigeria.
According to a story filed late Wednesday, Cheney will be indicted in a Nigerian bribery case as part of an investigation into an alleged $180 million bribery scandal.
"Last week, Nigeria arrested at least 23 officials from companies including Halliburton, Saipem, Technip and a former subsidiary of Panalpina Welttransport Holding AG in connection with alleged illegal payments to Nigerian officials. Those detained were all freed on bail on Nov. 29," Bloomberg News' Elisha Bala-Gbogbo wrote.
"Authorities in the West African nation are probing Halliburton, Saipem and Technip for the alleged payment of $180 million in bribes to win a $6 billion liquefied natural-gas contract," Bala-Gbogbo added. "Panalpina is being investigated for illegal payments it allegedly made to Nigerian customs officials on behalf of Royal Dutch Shell Plc."
The prosecuting counsel for the country's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission said that indictments will be handed down in the next three days and that an arrest warrant for Cheney "will be issued and transmitted through Interpol."
Adds Bloomberg, "Obla said charges will be filed against current and former chief executive officers of Halliburton, including Cheney, who was CEO from 1995 to 2000, and its former unit KBR Inc., based in Houston, Texas; Technip SA, Europe’s second-largest oilfield- services provider; Eni SpA, Italy’s biggest oil company; and Saipem Construction Co., a unit of Eni. Obla didn’t identify the former officials whom he said held office when the alleged bribes were paid."
The Nigerian project, started in the early 1990s, was worth almost $5 billion to TSKJ, a partnership that included a KBR predecessor, as well as companies from France, Japan and the Netherlands.
At issue are payments made to Tristar, a Gibraltar company that had a consulting arrangement with a corporation formed by TSKJ to "administer the contracts and execute the work" in Nigeria, a Halliburton spokeswoman said in response to questions.
KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton, was formed when Halliburton acquired Dresser Industries Inc. in 1998. It was a combination of Halliburton's Brown & Root and Dresser's M.W. Kellogg Co. Officials from the SEC and Cheney's office declined to comment.
Early on Thursday, Halliburton said they hadn't seen the new charges, but still denied their involvement.
"Halliburton's oil-field services operations in Nigeria have never in any way been part of the LNG project and none of the Halliburton employees have ever had any connection to or participation in that project," Tara Mullee Agard, a spokeswoman for the Houston-based company, said in an e-mailed response to Bloomberg.
Added Bloomberg: "Halliburton Co., the world's second- largest oilfield-services provider, said it hasn't seen any amended charges by Nigerian authorities who plan to indict current and former employees in a bribery scandal."
Failure by Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts, especially locking in the 15 percent capital gains tax rate, will spark a stock market sell off starting December 15 as investors move to lock in gains at a lower rate than the 20 percent it would jump to next year, warn analysts.
While it is unclear how bad the sell off could be, it could wipe out the year's gains, they warn.
"Capital gains tax rate will increase from 15 to 20 percent if the tax cuts are not extended. The last time the capital gains tax rate increased--on Jan. 1, 1987 from 20 to 28 percent--investors realized their gains at the lower tax rate," said Daniel Clifton at a Washington partner at Strategas Research Partners. "We would expect a similar effect this time around as investors see the tax rate going up and choose to realize their gains and incur the 15 percent tax."
In a memo to clients, Clifton says that the date most clients are focused on is December 15th for a deal in Congress before beginning to sell. One reason: Many stock options expire that day and investors have to act.
The later Congress acts, he tells Whispers, "the more pressure that will build on the stockmarket."
Worse, talk that Congress will simply pass retroactive fixes to the tax system won't help, since investors will take the sure thing and sell rather than rely on Capitol Hill. "Fixing the issue next year will not negate these negative impacts," said Clifton.
Ditto for a retroactive fix to the alternative minimum tax, he writes in the client memo. "The talk of retroactively fixing the tax cuts ignores the fact that the AMT patch cannot be retroactively fixed and is the largest component of the tax increase. Hence, in March and April, 27 million taxpayers will be facing an additional $70 billion in tax payments. The hit to consumer spending would be particularly significant," he writes.
Fed Opens Books, Revealing European Megabanks Were Biggest Beneficiaries
by Shahien Nasiripour - Common Dreams
NEW YORK -- The Federal Reserve on Wednesday reluctantly opened the books on its monumental campaign to save the financial system in the midst of the recent crisis, revealing how it distributed some $3.3 trillion in relief.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The data revealed that the Fed's aid was scattered much more widely than previously understood (to cover fraudulent derivative sales? - ed.)
The data revealed that the Fed's aid was scattered much more widely than previously understood. Two European megabanks -- Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse -- were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities (also known as "toxic derivatives" - ed.)
The Fed's dollars also flowed to major American companies that are not financial players, including McDonald's and Harley-Davidson, through unsecured short-term loans.
The measure, initiated in Jan. 2009 to stimulate the flow of credit and keep household borrowing costs low, led the nation's central bank to purchase more than $1.1 trillion in mortgages packaged into the form of securities. The mortgage bonds are backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the twin mortgage giants now owned by taxpayers.
Deutsche Bank, a German lender, has sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities, Fed data through July shows. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.
The data had previously been secret. It was released Wednesday per the recently-enacted law overhauling the federal financial regulation. The Fed, ferociously backed by the Obama administration, fought lawmakers' desire for full disclosure throughout the financial reform debate.
Deutsche Bank, a German lender, has sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities, Fed data through July shows. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.
The data had previously been secret. It was released Wednesday per the recently-enacted law overhauling the federal financial regulation. The Fed, ferociously backed by the Obama administration, fought lawmakers' desire for full disclosure throughout the financial reform debate.
As detailed in "Bankers Gone Wild", mortgages were cranked out by unscrupulous mortgage brokers, then bundled together into mortgage securities, which were in turn re-sold to investors as triple-A investments, even though the bundles included sub-prime mortgages already defaulting as US jobs were shipped overseas.
These mortgage-backed securities are a Wall Street invention! And at first they appeared to be immensely profitable, so not only were US financial corporations, investment houses, and pension funds buying them, but so too were non financial corporations and major foreign banks including Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse.
Worse, we now know that individual mortgages were pledged as collateral to multiple security bundles, which is illegal! This is briefly mentioned at 3:48 in the next video.
What appears to have happened is that the European banks realized that the American investment firms selling those mortgage-backed securities were engaging in fraud! Greenspan has admitted to such.
Obviously, the people of Europe are refusing to be chained to a global bank and seem far more worried about their freedoms than their American counterparts. Yet a quick Google search shows the media encouraging the nations hit with this massive financial fraud to apply to the IMF for more loans, never mentioning that in their indebtedness lies the end of their national sovereignty!
Ultimately the European banks are never going to sit still for fraud, even from Wall Street, and even from the USA! In order to reduce their losses and avoid more IMF entanglements, the European banks demanded a refund on those fraudulent investment packages. No doubt the Wall Street mortgage fraudsters refused, suggesting that the bankers of Europe dump their losses on their populations just as the American banks were being forced to do. That some European banks did so explains why so many European nations are in financial trouble. However, the larger European banks may have decided to "get tough" with the Americans, and this may explain the mysterious electronic run on the US financial system in February 2009, which almost crashed the US economy. Strangely, the American people were never informed who had initiated the financial transfers, even though obviously this information is recorded in the transactions on the computer systems.
This "attack" may have been a warning from the European main banks to the US to make good on the bad investments, or risk full public exposure for the mortgage backed securities fraud!
Soon after, we learned that the Federal Reserve was handing out trillions and trillions of dollars, loans which the American people are expected to repay, only the Federal Reserve refused to say who was getting the money, and even implied that exposure of the recipients of these trillions of dollars might pose a threat to the US economy. Now, nearly two years later, we find out that the Federal Reserve was buying back the mortgage-backed securities from European banks including Deutsche Bank and Credit Suiss. The reason this was kept secret was that the American people were being told that all these "bailouts" would be repaid, yet common sense tells us that profit cannot be made from an exposed fraud! The Fed could not admit too owning all those mortage-backed securities without being forced to answer the question of just exactly why they were not producing any earnings, with the usual "it was all the borrowers' fault" excuses wearing thin even then! As cash left the nations financial system to cover the repurchase of the fraudulent mortgage backed securities, banks found their balance sheets slipping into the red. The banks were being driven into insolvency making good on the bad paper and this is what triggered the epidemic of fraudulent foreclosures. Banks needed real assets on their balance sheets as quickly as they could to get their balance in the black and their banks out of insolvency. So shortcuts were taken which became known as "foreclosuregate". For some banks, it was too late. Hundreds of banks either dragged down by the fraudulent mortgage securities or made insolvent buying back the bad paper, have been shut down. For other major banks and financial institutions, the tactic worked and they stayed afloat, for which making millions of Americans homeless seemed a small price to pay! Indeed one might explain the hitherto unexplained reluctance by the Federal Government to stem the offshoring of American jobs as a deliberate policy of setting up Americans to lose their homes in order to preserve the capital structure of the banks!
In other words, the American people were looted to make good on the fraud perpetrated by Wall Street not only against American financial institutions, but bankers in the Eurozone as well.
The Wall Street Fraudsters should have gone to jail. But they walk free and clear, saved from the FDIC and prison, heading into a wonderful holiday with record-setting bonuses to spend while ordinary Americans have been made jobless, homeless, and hungry to keep the criminals out of prison.
The Mortgage Backed Securities fraud is the biggest fraud in the history of the United States, and as today's revelations make clear, we still do not know the full scale of the financial rape this nation has suffered.
Fed aid in financial crisis went beyond U.S. banks to industry, foreign firms
By Jia Lynn Yang, Neil Irwin and David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 2, 2010; 12:15 AM
The financial crisis stretched even farther across the economy than many had realized, as new disclosures show the Federal Reserve rushed trillions of dollars in emergency aid not just to Wall Street but also to motorcycle makers, telecom firms and foreign-owned banks in 2008 and 2009. The Fed's efforts to prop up the financial sector reached across a broad spectrum of the economy, benefiting stalwarts of American industry including General Electric and Caterpillar and household-name companies such as Verizon, Harley-Davidson and Toyota. The central bank's aid programs also supported U.S. subsidiaries of banks based in East Asia, Europe and Canada while rescuing money-market mutual funds held by millions of Americans. The biggest users of the Fed lending programs were some of the world's largest banks, including Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Swiss-based UBS and Britain's Barclays, according to more than 21,000 loan records released Wednesday under new financial regulatory legislation. The data reveal banks turning to the Fed for help almost daily in the fall of 2008 as the central bank lowered lending standards and extended relief to all kinds of institutions it had never assisted before. Fed officials emphasize that their actions were meant to stabilize a financial system that was on the verge of collapse in late 2008. They note that the actions worked to prevent a complete financial meltdown and that none of the special lending programs has lost money. (Some have recorded healthy profits for taxpayers.) But the extent of the lending to major banks - and the generous terms of some of those deals - heighten the political peril for a central bank that is already under the gun for a wide range of actions, including a recent decision to try to stimulate the economy by buying $600 billion in U.S. bonds. "The American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America," said Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime Fed critic whose provision in the Wall Street regulatory overhaul required the new disclosures. "Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations. As a result of this disclosure, other members of Congress and I will be taking a very extensive look at all aspects of how the Federal Reserve functions." The Fed launched emergency programs totaling $3.3 trillion in aid, a figure reached by adding up the peak amount of lending in each program. Companies that few people would associate with Wall Street benefited through the Fed's program to ease the market for commercial paper, a form of short-term debt used by major corporations to fund their daily activities. By the fall of 2008, credit had frozen across the financial system, including the commercial paper market. The Fed then purchased commercial paper issued by GE 12 times for a total of $16 billion. It bought paper from Harley-Davidson 33 times, for a total of $2.3 billion. It picked up debt issued by Verizon twice, totaling $1.5 billion. "It is hard to say what would have happened without the facility, and how its absence might have affected GE, but overall the program was extremely effective in helping stabilize the market," GE spokesman Russell Wilkerson said by e-mail. Verizon spokesman Robert A. Varettoni said that it was "an extraordinary time," adding that there was no credit available otherwise at the time. The data revealed that the Fed continued making purchases into the summer of 2009 - after the official end of the recession - showing that it was still concerned about a fundamental part of the financial system even as economic growth was returning. The disclosure shows "how really profound the financial crisis was in the fall of 2008 and the firepower the Fed mustered in response," said analyst Karen Shaw Petrou of Federal Financial Analytics. Foreign-owned banks also benefited from the Fed's commercial-paper facility. The Korean Development Bank, owned by the South Korean government, used the program to the tune of billions of dollars, including a $407 million short-term loan on a single day. Many foreign banks, including the French BNP Paribas, the Swiss UBS and the German Deutsche Bank, took extensive advantage of various programs. Even a major bank in Bavaria benefited, as well as another one headquartered in Bahrain, a tiny island country in the Middle East. Another Fed program allowed investment banks for the first time to borrow directly from the Fed as officials sought to stem the panic that had taken down Wall Street titan Bear Stearns. The central bank assisted 18 companies through this program. Among the biggest beneficiaries was Citigroup, which in a single day in November 2008 borrowed $18.6 billion from the Fed. The data also demonstrate how the Fed, in its scramble to keep the financial system afloat, eventually lowered its standards for the kind of collateral it allowed participating banks to post. From Citigroup, for instance, it accepted $156 million in triple-C collateral or lower - grades that indicate that the assets carried the greatest risk of default. Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher defended the Fed's actions during the financial crisis, saying the central bank "stepped into the breach" in its role as a lender of last resort. "That's what we are paid to do," he said. "We took an enormous amount of risk with the people's money," he acknowledged. But the crisis lending programs are now all closed, he said, "and we didn't lose a dime, and in fact we made money on every one of them." The banks universally hailed the Fed on Wednesday. "In late 2008, many of the US funding markets were clearly broken," Goldman Sachs said in a statement, echoing similar comments made by Bank of America and Citigroup. "The Federal Reserve took essential steps to fix these markets and its actions were very successful." By 2009, Goldman and other Wall Street firms were reporting their best profits ever. That allowed these banks to pay out huge salaries again, but it also drew the ire of lawmakers and ordinary Americans. Sanders, for one, said these banks got off easy while receiving extraordinary aid. In rescuing these firms, the Fed never required them to lend to small businesses, modify the mortgages of homeowners or invest in a way that would create jobs. "We bailed these guys out, but the requirements placed upon them had very little positive impact on the needs of ordinary Americans," Sanders said. yangjl@washpost.com irwinn@washpost.com hilzenrath@washpost.com
![[Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The data revealed that the Fed's aid was scattered much more widely than previously understood.]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/bernanke_1.jpg "bernanke.jpg")
