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The TARP Email Trail: AIG And Citi Execs Clueless And Arrogant, Kashkari "Tough To Watch"
Following a few months of courtroom wrangling, Fox Business News has obtained a much-redacted 10,096 pages of Treasury Department documents on the bank bailout. Scrubbed of "proprietary" information and what would presumably be their most explosive revelations, the communiques exchanged between the Bush Administration and executives at Citigroup and AIG read something like "Dumb and Dumber and I Know It Seems Impossible But Even Dumber Than That." The first role would be played by the TARP overseer and cheerleader for the Italian automobile industry Neel Kashkari, whose aides nervously emailed one another as they watched him testify before the House Financial Services Committee on what exactly he was doing with their money.
But we wouldn't know how to answer, either, if we'd written the law that appropriated the trillion or so taxpayer dollars that paid bonuses to the clueless executives at AIG and Citigroup:Nason: How's it going?
Zuccarelli: Bad. Serious questions, too, not "chump" type questions. They're going to start to break Neel down soon, I'm getting worried he's going to start snapping.
Nason: This AIG stuff is tough to watch.
Zuccarelli: They killed him on exec comp. He didn't know answer.
First, because this crisis has been so far short on feminine bad guys, we have AIG general counsel Anastasia Kelly and Paula Reynolds, the company's restructuring officer. Marshall Huebner, the lawyer hired to represent the government kept trying to arrange conference calls with them, but they kept flaking out and forgetting to confirm the time. "I note that some of them do not have a sense of timeline," wrote another lawyer (also being paid by the hour with your tax dollars.) But OMG the AIG duo had no idea the holdup was the source of any irritation! Wrote Anastasia to Huebner later that day:
Paula and I love you (in the most appropriate way).But maybe because their $45 billion bailout was so puny compared to AIG's, Citigroup seemed most oblivious of all:
Though the details of what specifically held up an agreement with Citigroup at the end of last year are muddy, it's clear from the documents it dealt with compensation. What's also clear is that government officials were amazed that, even at the eleventh hour, Citi officials still didn't seem to understand that they would have to make concessions.You can say that a few hundred billion times!"Unbelievable," wrote Stephen Albrecht, the counselor to the general counsel at Treasury, summing up the situation.

















Under what reasoning is Treasury redacting these documents?
Could it be "National Security", or just the old CYA for Treasury officials?
Of course "Paula and I love you". You are allowing us all to justify billing our respective employers for the time spent trying, and not succeeding, to arrainge for a conference call.
March 27, 2009 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Most general counsels at that level have only one client, who nominally keep them on a very handsome retainer, and considering that there are a finite number of waking hours to any given week, I'm not sure how many excess billable hours those two can rack up.
But like I said, a company the size of AIG will keep general counsel like Anastasia Kelly on a very handsome retainer -- much the same way as then-ginormous Illinois Central Rail Road kept Abraham Lincoln at their legal beck and call, making him the one of the wealthiest men in Illinois for his professional troubles.
March 27, 2009 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Proprietary" information? Boy, if Nixon would have just incorporated his cabinet...
March 27, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
March 27, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
When the dust settles, and the admin peers into the empty vault of the Treasury and has to explain why the system is still trashed, but the pirates own the country and the government....
March 27, 2009 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
moondancing: Didn't South Park expose how the Fed makes decisions the other night? :)
March 27, 2009 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
the have to redact confidential business information to comply with secrecy agreements i am sure all parties involved had to sign....which is exactly the information we would all like to know.
on that note, i just bought 100 shares of AIG for 99 USD today.
March 27, 2009 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is it safe to assume that those secrecy agreements are made with themselves to insure that no light gets shown on this subject?
March 30, 2009 3:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
For the record, I hope no one ever supoena's my e-mails and publishes them to make me look like a fool. God forbid.
March 27, 2009 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is pretty scary, isn't it?
March 27, 2009 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
C'mon Obama administration - get rid or smarmy Neel Kashkari now!!!!!!!
The Treasury dept will continue to be tainted as long as Kaskari and his friends are still there!
March 27, 2009 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
They're trying to. Last I heard, the replacement dropped out due to vetting.
March 27, 2009 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fox did this? Some eager and good journalists deserve jobs at better news organizations!
March 27, 2009 6:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
What if the big names that are always being redacted are our politicians? How would we ever find out anything?
Enjoy.
March 27, 2009 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
And these guys were called Masters of the Universe.
March 27, 2009 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
What the hell is CashCarry still around for? He was Paulson's pick and the guy started lying on day 1. Should have been swept out with the Bush trash.
March 27, 2009 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
The best article I have read about Citibank was in New York Magazine--the week of March 9-16--it is must reading. The question I have is why haven't these clowns been arrested and locked up for what they have done.
Lost in all this mess is that between AIG, Citibank, Goldman Sachs--all the pensions for the entire world and monies that towns and cities, states, colleges, universities and endowments invested is the money these bastards gambled with to play their crap game. Screw them--make the funds sound again, dismantle these hideous investment banks and lock these pigs away for a long time.
This happened because of a veto proof majority that the Repugs had in 2000 when Clinton signed the crappy bill at Rubin's urging, a complacent SEC--made more impotent when Chris Cox arrived, the bond raters--the whole thing is revolting.
March 27, 2009 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
For those of you questioning Treasury's basis for withholding proprietary information, it doesn't seem out of the ordinary at all. Based on the circumstances, the redacted information is most likely financial information on the banks. This type of information is usually withheld under a FOIA exemption (#4) for confidential financial information.
March 27, 2009 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
So what will FOX Business do with this inforation? After all, this reflects badly on the Bush Administration. Maybe they should have left the monster in the bag.
March 27, 2009 10:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fox and actual investigative journalism...is this a prank? LOL, wow...and they'll probably sit on the information.
March 28, 2009 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is the greatest fraud in the history of the country - Teapot Dome is a tempest in the teapot in comparsson.
Where are the indictments?
Are they coming?
March 30, 2009 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink