On Friday, the White House released senior staff members’ personal financial disclosure reports.
A review of Larry Summers’ form reveals that Wall Street barons paid him a king’s ransom. The New York Times reports:
Mr. Summers, the former Treasury secretary and Harvard president who is now the chief economic adviser to President Obama, earned nearly $5.2 million in just the last of his two years at one of the world’s largest funds, according to financial records released Friday by the White House.
Impressive as that might sound, it is all the more considering that Mr. Summers worked there just one day a week.
Summers also received more than $2.7 million in speaking fees from recipients of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.
While Summers protects Wall Street insiders, women like Rep. Maxine Waters, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair and Stanford alumna, Brooksley Born, have pushed for greater regulation and oversight.
Congress’ TARP watchdog, Elizabeth Warren, is the latest woman to blow the whistle on the “banksters.” Warren told the New York Post:
The management of the institutions receiving subsidies from the government must be replaced.
It is crucial for these things to happen.
Japan tried to avoid them and just offered subsidy with little or no consequences for management or equity investors, and this is why Japan suffered a lost decade
Warren added:
We want to ensure that the Treasury gives the public an alternative approach to what is happening today, an approach with which we have deep concerns.
Indeed, something has to give. Poll after poll shows Americans do not want the federal government to keep bailing out these banksters.
William Black, a regulator during the Savings & Loan scandal and author of "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry," shares Warren’s outrage. He says the financial meltdown was driven by "fraud by top elites."
During an appearance on PBS’ Bill Moyers Journal, Black said:
But if you leave the failed CEOs in place, it isn't just that they're terrible business people, though they are. It isn't just that they lack integrity, though they do. Because they were engaged in these frauds. But they're not going to disclose the truth about the assets….
To know who committed the frauds. Whose bonuses we should recover. How much the assets are worth. How much they should be sold for. Is the bank insolvent, such that we should resolve it in this way? It's the predicate, right? You need to know the facts to make intelligent decisions. And they're deliberately leaving in place the people that caused the problem, because they don't want the facts.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner must do more than talk tough. He needs to apply his “single standard” to failed bank executives.
Geithner should start by firing Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis. BoA is no longer headquartered in San Francisco, but it still has a banker’s heart and a bankster’s worldview.
