Chris Dodd

Cuomo's Office Looking At Several Fixes For Merrill Bonuses

Zachary Roth | January 30, 2009, 2:06PM

As we told you earlier today, Bloomberg reported last night:

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo may demand the return of $4 billion in bonuses paid by Merrill Lynch & Co. just before it was acquired by Bank of America Corp.

But it turns out that may overstate the case a bit. A person familiar with the matter told TPMmuckraker that the investigation is considering several other possible remedies, including imposing fines and alleging violations of securities law -- as the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

The probe of Merill is still at an early stage. Depositions haven't yet been taken from former Merrill CEO John Thain, and Bank of America chief administrative officer J. Steele Alphin, both of whom have been subpoenaed to give investigators details on just when Bank of America learned about the bonuses, and about Merrill's massive fourth quarter losses.

If Cuomo doesn't try to get the money back, Congress might. Chris Dodd, who chairs the Senate Banking committee, declared at a press conference yesterday:

I'm going to be urging -- in fact not urging, demanding -- that the Treasury Department figures out some way to get the money back.

Bailout

Another Government Report Finds Treasury Is Screwing Up TARP

Zachary Roth | January 30, 2009, 12:08PM

Another day, another earnest report finding that the Treasury has messed up the bailout.

A new GAO report on issues of "transparency and accountability" in the TARP program finds that Treasury lacks "a clearly articulated vision" for TARP and "has made limited progress in ... communicating an overall strategy" for it.

From a summary of findings:

Treasury has continued to develop a system for detecting noncompliance with key requirements of the program but has not yet finalized its plans. Further, Treasury has made limited progress in formatting articulating and communicating an overall strategy for TARP, continuing to respond to institution- and industry-specific needs by, for example, making further capital purchases and offering loans to the automobile industry. In addition, it has not yet developed a strategic approach to explain how its various programs work together to fulfill TARP's purposes or how it will use the remaining TARP funds. While GAO does not question the need for swift responses in the current economic environment, the lack of a clearly articulated vision has complicated Treasury's ability to effectively communicate to Congress, the financial markets, and the public on the benefits of TARP and has limited its ability to identify personnel needs.

So it's not like we didn't know any of this. But it's worth being reminded, as often as possible, just what a mess of this program the federal government has made so far.

Barack Obama

UPDATED: Report: Cuomo May Demand Return Of Merrill Bonuses

Zachary Roth | January 30, 2009, 11:44AM

Bloomberg has a few more details about the developing investigation, conducted by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, into the bonuses awarded last month by Merrill Lynch.

It reports, sourced to "a person familiar with the matter," that Cuomo may demand the return of the bonuses -- estimated at as much as $4 billion, and apparently awarded on an accelerated schedule just before the firm came under the control of Bank of America at the start of 2009.

Bloomberg adds that Cuomo is also probing what Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Ken Lewis knew about the bonuses, and about Merrill's huge losses in the fourth quarter, which appear to have ben revealed B of A around the time the bonuses were awarded.

More broadly, Bloomberg reports, the investigation is focused on "whether the companies' shareholders had all necessary information about Merrill's finances and whether federal bail-out loans to Bank of America were used properly."

John Thain, Merrill's former CEO, was ousted as a Bank of America exec shortly after news of the bonuses, and the losses, became public. According to reports, Cuomo has already subponaed Thain.

President Obama yesterday called Wall Street's awarding of billions of dollars in bonuses "outrageous." Congress is considering adding "claw back" provisions to the next round of bailout money, which would allow the Treasury to get back money it invested in banks that was then spent in ways that departed from the purpose of the government's investment.

We've got our own contact in to Cuomo's office, and will let you know what else we find out...

Late Update: Looks like Bloomberg's report may have overstated the case a bit.

Bailout

UPDATED: Obama: Wall Street Bonuses "Outrageous"

Zachary Roth | January 29, 2009, 2:35PM

President Obama has weighed in on the controversy over Wall Street bonuses.

Obama this morning called the bonuses "outrageous", according to White House Robert Gibbs, speaking at a press briefing moments ago.

A report released by the New York State comptroller's office and written up today by the New York Times found that Wall Street firms awarded over $18 billion in bonuses, despite the financial crisis that many of them helped trigger.

Yestrday, it was reported that AIG paid $450 million in bonuses to the unit that sold those disastrous credit default swaps.

And of course, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating Merrill Lynch's awarding of billions in bonuses, on an accelerated schedule, before it went formally went under the control of Bank of America.

Late Update: Obama went further in comments to reporters today after meeting with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The presIdent said that awarding billions in bonuses "at a time when most of these institutions are teetering on the brink of collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to sustain them" is "the height of irresponsibility" and "shameful."

He added: "Show some restraint, and show some discipline, and show some sense of responsibility."

AIG

AIGers Who Sold Risky Deals To Get Millions In Bonuses

Zachary Roth | January 28, 2009, 11:31AM

What would you have to do not to get a bonus?

AIG, the insurance giant that was essentially nationalized in September, has confirmed to the Associated Press that it's paying bonuses to employees who sold credit default swaps -- the very deals that helped cause millions in losses, leading to the company's collapse.

According to news reports, the bonuses amount to $450 million -- or $1.13 million for each of the 400 staffers in the financial products unit.

In a statement, an AIG spokeswoman confirmed the bonuses, but not the dollar figure:

We adopted and disclosed this contractual retention program months before the government provided support to AIG. We did so because it was clear, given the market environment, that we would need to retain employees to manage the complex issues arising in our Financial Products business, which we are now unwinding.

An expert tells AP that it's possible AIG was contractually obligated to pay the bonuses. But that points up a larger problem: the TARP didn't allow the government to invalidate those agreements, as a bankruptcy judge would have been able to do. Since AIG and other firms were essentially bankrupt, there's a good argument that the same rules should apply.

Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain has come in for criticism (by TPMmuckraker, among others) for signing off on billions in bonuses, on an accelerated schedule, despite seeing massive losses and a government assisted takeover by Bank of America.

Bernard Madoff

A Thousand Mini-Madoffs Bloom

Zachary Roth | January 28, 2009, 9:55AM

Call them the mini-Madoffs: Investment advisers accused of conducting Ponzi scams that echo the one allegedly pulled off by the disgraced Wall Street money manager.

In recent weeks, both the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) and the New York Times report, a spate of mini-Madoffs has come to light

The Journal looked at SEC records and found an increase in cases in which the agency alleged Ponzi schemes. Last year, it brought at least 23 Ponzi cases, up from 15 in 2007. This year, it has already filed four. The paper explains why:

More schemes are emerging now, experts say, in part because of the economic downturn. Tough times have prompted people to seek to cash in their investments, only to find out their money is missing. New investment also dries up in slumps, making it harder for fraudulent funds to replenish their coffers and make the payments needed to keep their operations going.

Let's go down the list of the mini-Madoffs to emerge recently:

- Arthur Nadel, the missing Florida hedge-fund adviser, was arrested yesterday, accused by the feds of defrauding clients to the tune of millions of dollars.

- Nicholas Cosmo, a Long Island money manager, raised more than $370 million, promising eye-popping returns of 48 percent by funding commercial loans. But he lent little money and only about $746,000 remains, according to an affidavit. Cosmo surrendered to authorities Monday.

- Joseph S. Forte, an investment manager in Phildelphia, was accused by the SEC earlier this month of running a Ponzi scheme since at least 1995, claiming returns as high as 38 percent and raising $50 million.

- Darren Palmer, an Idaho Falls money manager, is being probed by state authorities, with investors claiming they lost up to $100 million in a Ponzi scheme.

- Marcus Schrenker, an Indiana financial adviser, was arrested in Florida earlier this month after apparently trying to stage his own death in a plane crash. He faces charges, in both states, of swindling investors.

- Rod Cameron Stringer of Texas is alleged by the SEC to have set up a Ponzi scheme that lured elderly investors, claiming annual returns of 61 percent.

- Robert C. Brown of California is accused by the SEC of using millions in clients' money "to pay for lavish personal expenses, such as upkeep on his Ferrari, limousine services and shopping trips."

- Anthony James of Florida set up a "classic Ponzo scheme", says the SEC, through which he got access to at least $2.4 million in client funds, which he used to pay for a six-bedroom home, a Porsche and season tickets to the Miami Heat.

There are more.

Sounds like the SEC's plans to beef up their enforcement unit can't happen quickly enough.

Bernard Madoff

SEC's Enforcement Chief On How To Stop More Madoffs

Chris Black | January 27, 2009, 1:49PM

After the Bernard Madoff fraud came to light, costing investors an estimated $50 billion, it emerged that the SEC had fallen down on the job, in part because, as we detailed last month, it had soft-pedaled its enforcement duty. And today, the head of the agency's Office of Compliance, Inspections and Examinations, Lori Richards, testified before the Senate Banking committee about how to prevent future Madoffs.

Richards said the agency plans to increase the frequency of its examinations of investment advisers, investigate the existence of unregulated advisers, and broadly consider different regulatory structures -- an idea that seems to have gained ground lately.

Richards said that in recent years, the number of registered investment advisers has grown past 10,000. OCIE has just 425 employees to oversee them. And Madoff wasn't even registered -- hence the need to begin monitoring them too.

It'll be a while until we know how all this will play out. But it certainly looks like under President Obama and new agency chair Mary Schapiro, enforcement will no longer take a backseat at SEC, as it did during the Bush years.

Timothy Geithner

Treasury Issues New Rules On Bailout Lobbying

Zachary Roth | January 27, 2009, 11:43AM

On his first day on the job, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has issued new rules designed to curb lobbyists' influence over the bailout, limit conflicts of interest and increase transparency over the department's investment decisions.

From a Treasury statement:

Combating lobbyist influence in the EESA process: The Treasury Department will implement safeguards to prevent lobbyist influence over the program, including restricting contacts with lobbyists in connection with applications for, or disbursements of, EESA funds.

Keeping politics out of funding decisions: The Treasury Department will ensure that political influence does not interfere with EESA decision making, using as a model for these protections the limits on political influence over tax matters.

Certification to Congress on objective decision making: In reporting to Congress, the Office of Financial Stability (OFS) will certify that each investment decision is based only on investment criteria and the facts of the case.

The investment process will be transparent and based on objective criteria:

-Only banks recommended by the primary bank regulator will be eligible for capital investments.

-OFS will publish a detailed description of the investment review process undertaken by the regulators and OFS.

-The Treasury Department will ensure adequate resources exist to process applications as quickly as possible with priority to the date of the application as received by OFS and will formulate procedures to ensure integrity and regularity in the application process.

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that many of the banks receiving bailout funds continued to lobby the government -- including on the bailout itself.

The devil, of course, will be in the details -- and those details don't yet appear to be forthcoming. What sort of safeguards, for instance, will limit the lobbying and political influence? How will OFS guarantee that investment decisions are on the level? Etc. Etc.

Still, combined with Geithner's assurance in his confirmation testimony that Treasury will insist that banks do more to track the funds they receive, we can at least hope that the second half of the bailout will be slightly better run than the first.

John Thain

Report: Cuomo Subpoenas Thain On Bonuses

Zachary Roth | January 27, 2009, 11:11AM

CNBC's Charlie Gasparino just reported that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has subpoenaed former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain for testimony about Merrill's awarding of billions of dollars in bonuses in December.

Cuomo has been investigating the decision by Merrill to award the bonuses -- and in particular, the allegation that they were made on an accelerated schedule, before Bank of America took control of the company January 1.

Gasparino added that Bank of America chief administrative officer J. Steele Alphin, who Thain has claimed was aware of the bonuses, has also been subpoenaed.

Gasparino suggested that Cuomo could ultimately bring charges of criminal fraud against those involved in the payouts, under the Martin Act.

This looks like it could get should get interesting...

Late Update: CNBC has now posted a written story.

And here's Cuomo's statement on the subpoenas.

John Thain

Downbound Thain

Zachary Roth | January 26, 2009, 6:32PM

The John Thain rehabilitation campaign continues.

He hasn't been on The View yet, but the chair-throwing ex-Merrill CEO did the next best thing this afternoon, talking to Maria Bartiromo of CNBC about his departure last week from Bank of America, why he's not to blame for Merrill's multiple billion dollar losses, and the whether it was a good idea to spend $1.2 million of Merill's money redecorating his office suite. (Short answer: No, but it was a "different economic environment.")

Thain said he was "surprised" by his ouster at the hands of B of A CEO Ken Lewis, saying that results from the first 20 days of the merger, which went into effect January 1, were "very good."

He blamed Merrill's losses on positions the company held before he took over in 2007, and the larger market meltdown. "Over the course of the year I was at Merrill, I was constantly sheding assets," he said, referring to toxic mortgage assets. "We were in a position of owning very illiquid things that could not be sold and had to be marked down."

And he denied that Merrill's continued buying of mortgage assets into the fall were at the heart of the massive fourth quarter losses. "Did we continue to trade? Yes. Did we put on big risk positions ...? No... The vast majority of loses in the fourth quarter were from positions that had been there since I started."

As for the claim that Thain wasn't open with B of A about Merrill's losses, Thain said:
"They were seeing exactly the same info that we saw. We gave them complete access to everything we had."

Those billion dollar bonuses Thain signed off on? "If you dont pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise. Those best people can get jobs other places, they will leave."

And about that redecoration, Thain said it was a "very different economic environment." He added: "It is clear to me in today's world that it was a mistake. I apologize for spending that money on those things."

Asked by Bartiromo why he couldn't have left the office as it was when his predecessor as CEO, Stanley O'Neal, took off, Thain replied:

"His office was very different than the general decor of Merrill's offices. It would have been very difficult for me to use it in the form that it was in.

Watch the video of that exchange:

John Thain

You're So Thain: Ousted Ex-Merrill Chief Defends Record, Offers To Pay For Office Redecoration

Zachary Roth | January 26, 2009, 12:04PM

John Thain is fighting back.

The former Merrill Lynch CEO was ousted last week as a Bank of America exec after Merrill posted massive losses in the last quarter before its takeover by B of A. In December, Thain had approved billions of dollars in bonuses before the takeover went into effect. He also spent $1.2 million redecorating his office suite last year. (We catalogued our Top Ten Thain Moments here.)

Now CNBC has obtained a memo written by Thain to his former colleagues in which he defends his record, and offers to reimburse B of A for the redecorating spree.

Thain says that Merrill's 2008 bonuses totaled only 41 percent of 2007's, and that Bank of America was involved in the decision.

As for the fourth quarter losses, Thain calls them "very large and unfortunate" but adds that they "were incurred almost entirely on legacy positions and were due to market movements." In other words, not his fault.

That appears to run counter to the New York Times report that a substantial part of those losses came from Merrill's disastrous decision to continue buying mortgage assets into the fall, in the belief that the market had bottomed out.

Thain also says B of A knew about the losses as soon as Merrill did:

We were completely transparent with Bank of America. They learned about these losses when we did. The acting CFO of my businesses was Bank of America's former Chief Accounting Officer. They had daily access to our p&l, our positions and our marks. Our year end balance sheet target (which we more than met) was given to us by Bank of America's CFO.

Thain refers to "several topics that have been inaccurately reported in the press" but doesn't specify what the inaccuracies were.

CNBC is also reporting that in an exclusive interview, set to air at 4:15 today, Thain argued that the bonuses were necessary to retain top staffers.

The full memo follows after the jump...

Read more »

John Thain

Merrill Approved Dividend Payment To Stockholders Last November

Zachary Roth | January 23, 2009, 5:05PM

It turns out the billions in dollars in bonuses paid out by Merrill Lynch even as its new owner, Bank of America, was lobbying for more bailout money weren't the only questionable payments the firm made late last year.

BusinessWeek reports:

On Nov. 13, just three weeks before Merrill shareholders voted to approve the merger with BofA, Merrill's former board approved the payment of 35 cent-a-share dividend to all common stockholders. The payout drained another $565 million from Merrill's coffers at a time when the firm should have been building up cash, instead of spreading it around.

Now sure, one could argue that if Merrill had slashed the dividend to the bone, the brokerage's stockholders may not have voted for the merger with BofA. But Merrill's dividend payout came just weeks after Bofa announced on Oct. 6 it was slashing its dividend in half to 32 cents-a-share--a move the bank said would save it some $1.4 billion in cash each quarter. (The bank has since cut the dividend to a penny-a-share).

The magazine also offers an important, if obvious-when-you-think-about-it corrective to the fast-emerging narrative that Bank of America knew nothing about Merrill's huge fourth quarter losses until mid December (and had no reason to know any sooner.)

Says Bizweek:

Anyone with inside knowledge of Merrill's investment portfolio could have seen that the brokerage's investments in corporate loans and commercial real estate-related securities would all take a hit in the fourth-quarter. And that includes Thain & Co., as well as Lewis' team at BofA, which was conducting its due diligence on Merrill at the time.

No one comes out of this looking good.

Wall Street

The Thundering Herd Laid Low: A Merrill Lynch Timeline

Chris Black | January 23, 2009, 3:18PM

Key moments in the Merrill Lynch saga over the last year:

December 1, 2007 - John Thain begins his tenure as Merrill Lynch CEO, replacing Stanley O'Neal who had resigned after the company announced billion-dollar losses stemming form its mortgage investments.

September 15, 2008 - A deal is announced for Bank of America to buy Merrill, which, for the previous four quarters, has posted losses totaling $17 billion. The deal comes amid a broader financial crisis connected to the mortgage meltdown: that same day, Lehman Brothers declares the largest bankruptcy in American history, and the following day, American International Group is essentially nationalized.

October 14, 2008 - Bank of America gets $25 billion in bailout funds.

December 5, 2008 - Merrill and Bank of America shareholders vote to approve the takeover.

December 8, 2008 - Merrill's compensation committee approves payouts to staff totaling $3-4 billion, at least a month ahead of schedule. Some at B of A complain that the accelerated schedule was an effort to ensure that B of A could not cut the payments when it took over January 1.

Days later - Bank of America learns that Merrill's fourth-quarter losses were greater than expected. B of A begins lobbying the federal government for more TARP money to ease the takeover.

December 29, 2008 - Merrill bonuses paid, in the nick of time (sub. req.).

January 1, 2009 - Bank of America officially takes control of Merrill. It will later rename its brokerage division Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.

January 16, 2009 - Treasury announces it will give Bank of America another $20 billion in TARP money, to help it absorb the larger-than-expected Merrill losses.

January 16, 2009 - Bank of America reports a fourth quarter loss of $1.79 billion, including a $15.3 billion loss (sub. req.) posted by Merrill Lynch for the same quarter.

John Thain

John Thain's Top Ten Greatest Moments

Zachary Roth | January 23, 2009, 2:55PM

If there's one corporate honcho who's emerging as the poster boy for all the varied Wall Street sins that the financial crisis has exposed -- not just greed, but callousness, obliviousness and general incompetence -- its Merrill Lynch's former CEO John Thain.

Over the last few days, the revelations about Thain's mismanagement of Merrill have been coming thick and fast -- culminating with his ouster yesterday as an executive at Bank of America, which bought Merrill at the height of the financial crisis last September.

Thain, a top John McCain backer who was tipped as a candidate for a White House post had the Arizona senator won the presidency -- has amassed quite a record in his short time at Merrill. Lavish personal spending, absentee leadership, bonuses for billions in losses -- it's almost been too much to keep track of.

So we've created a handy rundown of Thain's top 10 greatest moments over the last turbulent year. (You might also want to check out our Merrill Lynch timeline to brush up on how Thain's missteps fit in with the larger story of his firm's collapse.)

In rough chronological order, here are John Thain's top 10 greatest moments:

1. The Great Redecoration

Thain pays $1.2 million last year -- well after Merrill's huge losses on mortgage assets are known -- to refurbish his office suite. That includes $800,000 to interior designer Michael S. Smith, who's also redecorating the White House for the Obama family. (More Smith clients: Steven Spielberg, Michelle Pfieffer, and Cindy Crawford.)

Other expenses from the big redecorating project, all signed off on by Thain personally:

Area Rug: $87,784
Mahogany Pedestal Table: $25,713
19th Century Credenza: $68,179
Pendant Light Furniture: $19,751
4 Pairs of Curtains: $28,091
Pair of Guest Chairs: $87,784
George IV Chair: $18,468
6 Wall Sconces: $2,741
Parchment Waste Can: $1,405
Roman Shade Fabric: $10,967
Roman Shades: $7,315
Coffee Table: $5,852
Commode on Legs: $35,115

At this time, reports CNBC's Charlie Gasparino on The Daily Beast, Thain is "preaching the virtues of cost control, telling employees to reduce expenses including car services, entertainment and travel".

2. The Unfortunate Chair Incident

During a summer 2008 meeting with his top financial officer, Thain, angry about Merrill's huge mortgage-asset-related losses, hurls a chair against the wall, shattering a nearby glass panel.

3. Just Can't Quit Those Mortgage Assets

Even after Thain has been forced to beg Bank of America to save his desperate firm, his traders, thinking the market has "bottomed out", keep trading risky mortgage securities. Those, of course, are the very assets that had helped bring on the massive losses, mostly incurred before Thain's tenure, that made the Bank of America deal necessary.

4. The Bonus Fiasco

In October, Thain suggests he should receive a $30-$40 million bonus. By December, he compromises: $10 million. After a blizzard of public criticism, including from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, he drops his request for any bonus. Later, he denies having asked for one at all.

5. The In-Retrospect-Ill-Advised Ski Trip

In mid December, Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis learns that Merrill's fourth quarter losses will be much larger than expected. Lewis gets the bad news not from Thain himself, but from the transition team handling the merger -- perhaps because, after the losses surface, Thain takes off for his ski house in Vail. (A "person familiar with the matter" tells the Journal, hilariously, that Thain was "working and available" while in Vail.)

6. The Failure To Impress The New Boss

Asked by Lewis about the new losses, which will officially come to $15.3 billion, Thain "didn't really have a good grasp of what was going on,", one source tells the Wall Street Journal. Ultimately, the federal government will in January give Bank of American $20 billion -- on top of the bailout funds it had already gotten -- to help it absorb the Merrill losses.

7. The Troubling Lack Of Candor

Under Thain, Merrill appears not have been as forthcoming as it might have been with its new owner about the state of its books. A Bank of America spokesman tells the Journal today: "Their fourth quarter was way beyond anything they said would happen." Even worse, Thain may also have been less than straight with Merrill itself. He doesn't fully inform his own board that, thanks to Merrill's losses, the federal government might need to step in to ensure the B of A deal goes through, according to complaints from board members.

8. The Other Bonus Fiasco

Merrill, with Thain still in charge, accelerates its yearly bonus payments, doling out an estimated $3-4 billion in bonuses before January 1, 2009, when Bank of America will take control. Some at B of A believe the expedited schedule is designed to avoid giving B of A a chance to cut those payments. New York AG Cuomo is now reportedly investigating.

9. The In-Retrospect-Ill-Advised Planned Trip to Davos

Thain plans a trip to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum next week -- even though Bank of America has discouraged the idea.

10. The Final Act

Thain pays $483,320 for 84,600 shares of Bank of America. The following day, he's fired.

Well, at least now he can make it to Davos.

AIG

Merrill Traders To Mortgage Assets: I Wish I Knew How To Quit You

Zachary Roth | January 23, 2009, 10:10AM

Yesterday we told you about how Merrill Lynch paid out billions in bonuses to staff even as its new owner, Bank of America, was begging the government for another bailout to help it digest Merrill's massive losses on mortgage assets.

And today, buried in a New York Times story about the downfall of former Merrill CEO John Thain -- whose ouster as a Bank of America exec was announced yesterday -- is an intriguing nugget that suggests just how attached Merrill was to those toxic assets.

Reports the Times:

At a news conference announcing the merger, Mr. Lewis praised Mr. Thain. Mr. Lewis said Mr. Thain's new role had not been decided, adding: "That's a credit to John. It usually does not happen that way. And it was never about him, it was always about the deal."

But after Merrill appeared to be safely in Bank of America's arms, Merrill's traders began buying risky mortgage assets, thinking that the market had bottomed out, according to two people familiar with the firm's trading. Merrill also began to run up losses on equity derivatives and other instruments, they said.

That news conference to announce the "merger" took place September 15th.

So Merrill traders resumed buying mortgage assets after the crisis in the housing market was already abundantly clear. After the government had taken over the mortgage lenders Fannie and Freddie. After Lehman Brothers had announced it was filing for bankruptcy. After the US government had effectively taken over AIG. Above all, after Merrill itself had been bought by Bank of America, with help from $25 billion of government money.

And all those developments triggered by hundreds of billions of dollars in losses thanks to investments in bad mortgage assets.

And here's the larger point: Merrill's massive fourth quarter losses, which prompted B of A to seek a second government bailout, weren't caused only by investments made before the collapse of the mortgage market, and the extent of the financial crisis, became apparent. Rather, they were in part the result of continuing to buy bad mortgage assets into the fall.

No one would trust me to invest so much as the contents of their piggy bank. But I'd like to think that, by mid-September, even I'd have known that mortgage assets might not be the best bet.

Greedy and dumb. That's a toxic combination.

Bailout

Bailout Overseer To Ask Banks To Track Funds

Zachary Roth | January 22, 2009, 5:51PM

Could we finally be headed for a whole new level of transparency and oversight over the bailout funds?

Neal Barofsky, the inspector general for the TARP program, today sent a letter to Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Finance committee, announcing his intention to ask that banks that have received TARP funds report back to his office within 30 days on what they've done with that money.

Barofsky is addressing what's been the most glaring example of the lack of oversight that has characterized TARP so far -- and a problem that Elizabeth Warren's Congressional Oversight Panel has lamented on several occasions.

In the letter, Barofsky wrote, dryly, that the effort "will improve general transparency of the [TARP], and increase the ability of [the inspector general] and Congress to assess the effectiveness of TARP programs over time.

In explaining the need for the move, Barofsky added:

Even a basic examination of whether various TARP programs are successfully furthering the goals of EESA is made difficult if we do not know what was done with the money in the first instance.

It's not clear what authority Barofsky would have to compel the banks to disclose information, if they resisted. But it sounds like things are slowly getting on track.

Still, mightn't it have been smart to have started this effort last fall when bailout funds were first handed over, instead of waiting till now?

Bailout

Merrill Paid Billions In Bonuses, As New Owner Sought More Bailout Dollars

Zachary Roth | January 22, 2009, 4:40PM

It's got stiff competition, but Merrill Lynch may have just wrapped up the prize for the investment bank that best exemplifies Gordon Gekko's famed articulation of the Wall Street creed: "Greed is good."

The Financial Times reports (sub. req.) today that in early December, Merrill, which months earlier had agreed to be bought -- rescued, really -- by Bank of America, decided to pay out $3-4 billions in bonuses.

The bonuses were handed out on an accelerated schedule -- at least a month earlier than in previous years. And they were agreed to just days before Bank of America, realizing how much in toxic assets Merrill had on its books, went to the federal government asking for more taxpayer money to help it digest Merrill -- money that was eventually forthcoming.

One equity analyst told MarketWatch that the move, apparently initiated by then-Merrill CEO John Thain, was "simply outrageous and one of the more extreme examples of poor corporate governance we can think of."

You also might remember that Thain -- who today resigned as a Bank of America exec, amid criticism -- had originally asked the firm's compensation committee for a $10 million bonus for himself, as part of that round of payouts, though the committee at least had the good sense to decline the request.

And the Wall Street Journal now reports that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating the payouts -- part of a broader probe of executive compensation among Wall Street firms.

Just to get a clear sense of how this all went down, and what a boondoggle this looks to have been for Merrill, it's worth looking at a timeline of events:

- 9/14/08: Bank of America buys Merrill. Over the previous four quarters, Merrill had posted losses of more than $17 billion.

- 10/14/08: Bank of America gets $25 billion in bailout funds, largely in order to help it take on Merrill's losses.

- Fall 08: A proposal is made to Merrill's compensation committee that Thain receive a $10 million bonus.

- 12/05/08 - Merrill and Bank of America shareholders vote to approve the takeover.

- 12/08/08 - Merrill's compensation committee declines to approve the proposal on Thain's bonus, but nonetheless approves payouts to staff totaling $3-4 billion.

- Days later: Bank of America learns that Merrill's fourth-quarter losses were greater than expected. B of A begins lobbying the federal government for more TARP money to ease the takeover.

- 12/29/08 - Merrill pays bonuses paid, at least a month ahead of the usual schedule.

- 1/16/09 Treasury says it will give Bank of America another $20 billion in TARP money, to help it absorb the larger-than-expected Merrill losses.

- 1/16/09: Merrill reports a $15.3 billion fourth quarter loss.

The payouts are made even more shocking by the fact that, as a TPM reader pointed out this afternoon, in the current climate, staffers hardly require massive incentives to stay on -- which is usually the justification given for lavish bonuses. After all, it's not as if they're fighting off job offers from other thriving competitors.

Something Tim Geithner and co. might want to keep in mind the next time a failing bank comes begging for more taxpayer money.

Securities and Exchange Commission

No More Madoffs: Schumer, Shelby Want Beefed Up Efforts to Combat Financial Fraud

Zachary Roth | January 22, 2009, 2:24PM

The wages of Madoff continue to grow...

A new bill being introduced by Senators Chuck Schumer and Richard Shelby would aim to crack down on financial fraud by adding hundreds of new prosecutors and investigators to the Department of Justice -- including the FBI -- and the Securities and Exchange Commission, at a cost of $110 million.

A press release explains:

In recent months, amid the financial crisis that has roiled the U.S. economy, a rising number of securities and accounting fraud cases have surfaced, accounting for billions of dollars in losses for investors. But the agencies on the front lines of policing the Wall Street's top financial institutions and investment managers have been hamstrung by a lack of resources.

And it quotes Schumer:

Our white collar crime divisions are under-staffed, under-funded, and overwhelmed," Schumer said. "When a wave of violent crime sweeps through a city, the immediate response is to beef up the police forces, putting more cops on the beat, extending overtime, and making sure the city returns to safety. Our reaction to the financial crisis and the massive and complex financial fraud investigations that loom should be no different.

In recent weeks, there has been talk of re-structuring the financial regulatory system, of which the SEC is a major pillar, in response to the current financial crisis. So we'll see how this new effort fits in.

Read more »

Bernard Madoff

Did SEC Fail To Follow A Path To Madoff In 1992?

Zachary Roth | January 20, 2009, 1:31PM

In recent weeks, the evidence that Bernard Madoff's alleged fraud goes back longer, and implicates more people, than we at first knew, has seemed to grow. And over the weekend, the New York Times added to that impression, with a lengthy takeout on a 1992 SEC investigation into Frank Avellino, an accountant tied to Madoff, who has admitted to not keeping conventional records.

Despite several red flags, the probe ended with Avellino paying only a small fine, and it never appears to have questioned Madoff's own operation.

Here's what seems to have happened:

Avellino and Madoff had had ties going back to the late 1950's, when Avellino worked as an accountant at a firm run by Madoff's father-in-law. Madoff even briefly ran his securities business from Avellino's office.

As the years passed, Avellino gradually shifted the focus of his business from accounting to raising money for Madoff's investment business. Then in 1992, the SEC received marketing materials showing that Avellino and his partner, Michael Bienes, had promised investors returns of up to 20 percent a year. Suspecting a Ponzi scheme, the government launched an investigation.

Avellino's explanation was simply that Madoff -- by then one of Wall Street's biggest stock traders -- was managing the money. Avellino said that if Madoff ever fell short of achieving a 13-20 percent return for investors, then Avellino and Bienes would make up the difference.

And that seems to have satisfied the SEC. As the Times puts it:

No one at the securities commission seems to have questioned why Mr. Avellino and Mr. Bienes offered clients a double-digit guaranteed return on money that they did not even control. Nor do the records offer any hint that the commission considered whether Mr. Madoff, rather than Avellino & Bienes, might be operating a Ponzi scheme.

Avellino returned money to investors, paid a fine, and shut down his business.

But when an audit was conducted by Price Waterhouse, it was discovered that Avellino didn't keep proper records. When Price Waterhouse asked Avellino to do so for 1992, he refused, writing:

"My experience has taught me to not commit any figures to scrutiny when, as in this case, it can be construed as 'bible' and subject to criticism. In this present instance, quite severely. I explained how the profit and loss can be computed from the records you now hold in your possession that Bernard L. Madoff and I supplied."

Still the SEC did nothing, and by the end of January 1993, the audit, too, was over.

Madoff and Avellino appear to still have ties. Madoff's current lawyer, Ira Sorkin, represented Avellino during the 1992 investigation. There's also this:

.In 2003, the Avellinos bought a $4.5 million house in Palm Beach less than five blocks from Mr. Madoff's house there. Their Manhattan apartment is similarly close to Mr. Madoff's apartment.

And Avellino may have been wired into Madoff's alleged fraud right up until the end. the Times reports:

A lawsuit claims that Mr. Avellino warned his housekeeper, who had invested with him, that her money was lost 10 days before Mr. Madoff's fraud became public.

There have been no indications that Avellino is a target of the SEC's current Madoff investigation. But at the least, he's a figure worth keeping an eye on.

Bailout

Congress: We'll Lose A Quarter Of TARP Funds Spent So Far

Zachary Roth | January 20, 2009, 11:18AM

Since we spilled a lot of pixels late last week on the question of whether taxpayers might get back the money the Treasury spent on the financial bailout, it's worth noting that, according to Congress's in-house accountant, we certainly haven't yet.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report Friday afternoon which found, as summarized in a post on the CBO website: "We expect the government to recover about three quarters of its initial investment" of $247 billion. In other words, according to CBO projections, we'll likely make back around $183 billion, but will still be down around $64 billion.

Of course, that's only one small data point in an enormous sea of complexity. It covers only the first third of the $700 billion allocated by Congress -- a figure that could still grow even further. More importantly, the major factor in determining what we get back will be the ongoing solvency of the banks we "invested" in -- something not even the CBO can predict.

But it at least gives us a preliminary measure. If, when all is said and done, we'd made back three quarters of the money we put in, and avoided a complete financial collapse, a lot of people would see that as an acceptable result. But we're a long way from that point right now.

"The Congressional Budget Office estimated Friday that taxpayers could lose $64 billion
on investments made with the first third of the $700 billion Troubled
Asset Relief Program, despite assurances by U.S. officials that the
rescue could make money for the U.S. government."

Bailout

Obama Team: We Promise We'll Do Second TARP Differently

Zachary Roth | January 16, 2009, 1:53PM

Looks like Barack Obama's word is worth quite a lot just now. About $350 billion, in fact.

To explain:

Congress has been talking tough lately, for good reason, about the need to impose strict conditions on the second $350 billion for the bailout -- lest it meet the same fate as the first $350 billion, which, at least for now, appears not to have eased lending or stabilized the housing market.

But yesterday, the Senate went ahead and voted not to block the incoming administration from getting the money -- despite the fact that there are no strings attached. Congress could still add restrictions, of course, but, as we've reported in depth over at Election Central, leaders in both the House and Senate have suggested that they won't. Instead, they're apparently willing to accept the Obama team's voluntary assurances that they'll do things differently from the Bush crew.

As for those voluntary assurances, they're not nothing. As laid out in a letter to Congressional leaders by Larry Summers, who'll run Obama's White House Economic Council, they read as a pointed indictment of the current administration, which failed to do any of them.

For instance, Summers pledged:

The Treasury will require detailed and timely information from recipients of government investments on their lending patterns broken down by category.

and:

Executive compensation above a specified threshold amount [will] be paid in restricted stock or similar form that cannot be liquidated or sold until the government has been repaid.

and:

Prevent shareholders from being unduly rewarded at taxpayer expense. Payment of dividends by firms receiving support must be approved by their primary federal regulator. For firms receiving exceptional assistance, quarterly dividend payments will be restricted to $0.01 until the government has been repaid.

and:

Preclude use of government funds to purchase healthy firms rather than to boost lending.

Limit assistance under the EESA to financial institutions eligible under that Act. Firms in the auto industry, which were provided assistance under the EESA, will only receive additional assistance in the context of a comprehensive restructuring designed to achieve long-term viability.

And perhaps most important:

Implement a sweeping foreclosure mitigation plan for responsible families including helping to reduce mortgage payment for economically stressed but responsible homeowners, reforming our bankruptcy laws, and strengthening existing housing initiatives like Hope for Homeowners.

Those all sound like crucial ideas. But it'd be nice if we didn't have to take anyone's -- even Obama's -- word for it.

Bailout

TARP: What Did We Get For Our Money?

Zachary Roth | January 16, 2009, 11:54AM

Remember how, back when Congress was negotiating with the Bush administration over the terms of the bailout, one of the major sticking points was Rep. Barney Frank's insistence that taxpayers receive equity in the companies we were saving, so that we could at least get our money back down the road? Well, Frank largely won on that point. We're now all part owners of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, and all the rest.

But that only leaves more questions. What kind of a deal did Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson strike on our behalf with these firms? And more broadly, given the astronomical amount of money we're talking about and the massive deficits we already face, we need to know how we should think about what we've done. Have we invested the $350 billion that Congress has given so far, with a realistic expectation of at least being re-paid -- as Paulson, who has called it "an investment, not an expenditure," argues. Or is it more accurate to think of that sum as already spent and unrecoverable, simply the cost of preventing financial armageddon?

It's too soon to know how much of that money we'll get back, because the answer depends on the fate of the market -- something we all know better than to try to predict. But it's worth considering some of the key factors that will determine that answer.

In terms of Treasury's investment, it seems clear we got a bad deal.

TARP injected capital into the banks largely by buying preferred stock at a dividend rate of 5 percent per year -- that rises to 9 percent after 5 years -- in return for an equity stake in the companies. We also got warrants to buy common stock in the future at a fixed price.

But given the risk involved in the transaction -- investing in banks that were on the brink of collapse -- experts say we should have gotten more than 5 percent. "We could have gotten better terms," Simon Johnson, the former chief economist for the IMF, and now a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told TPMmuckraker.

Demetri Papademetriou, president of the Levy Economics Institute, agrees. He points out that the governments of Britain, France, and Greece all conducted similar stock purchases, and got a dividend rate of 10 percent.

And Bloomberg recently calculated that, although Treasury invested twice as much as Warren Buffett did in Goldman Sachs, it gained only one fourth of the value.

Papademetriou believes that an ideological aversion to anything that smacks, however mildly, of central planning, partly explains why Paulson failed to drive a hard bargain. "There is a reluctance from the US government to be very involved in the private sector," he said.

Barry Ritholtz, the chief market strategist for Fusion IQ, an institutional research firm, says "incompetence" on Paulson's part is as much to blame. "There no such thing as half pregnant, and there's no such thing as half a virgin," he says. "If you're gonna do it, you can't say, we're gonna do it but we're gonna do a shitty job."

Of course, the department has argued from the start that making a good investment wasn't its goal. In a December speech to mortgage bankers, Treasury's bailout czar, Neel Kashkari, declared: "We're not day traders, and we're not looking for a return tomorrow. We are looking to try to stabilize the financial system, get credit flowing again."

But that gets us into the broader question -- for which there's no easy answer -- of how to think about the TARP money.

It's not right, say most experts, to think of this simply as government spending, akin to spending on, say, the Iraq war. The idea, of course, is that once the mortgage market stabilizes, the companies in which we've invested will eventually be able to write down their toxic assets, sell them off, and return to profitability. That will allow them to liquidate -- essentially, to buy back -- the stock we've bought, (something they're required by the terms of the deal to do before they can raise more capital). We'll have profited from the dividends, and will also be able to exercise our warrants to buy more stock at an advantageous price. That's why Frank insisted on equity in the first place.

But some say that may not happen. We simply don't know the true amount of bad debt that these banks have on their books -- and it's not clear that Treasury did either when it struck the deals.

But the signs aren't good. In early December, the Associated Press calculated that the warrants we bought via TARP, valued at a total of $27 billion, are now worth less than $18 billion. So if we exercised those warrants in December, we'd have been out over $9 billion.

And since then things seem to have gotten worse. Bank of America announced this week it needed a second bailout -- in the end, $20 billion -- because it hadn't realized just how toxic were the assets it took on in when it bought Merrill Lynch.

So even though Treasury says its goal wasn't to turn a profit but rather to stabilize the market, it's unclear whether it'll succeed in that -- right now, most signs suggest it hasn't yet. And that's the key question: If that longer-term stabilization doesn't happen, of course, we won't get much of our investment back, because the companies in which we've invested will fail, or be unable to turn a profit.

"These companies are insolvent. They have more liabilities than assets." says Ritholtz. The exact situations differ from firm to firm, but Ritholtz says that Citigroup, for example, in which we've invested $45 billion, "is sitting on tens of billions of toxic assets. So why would stock go up?" Ritholtz calls it "highly unlikely" that Citigroup will eventually have something to pay back. As for AIG, for which we're in $85 billion, he believes it's "inconceivable."

The situation isn't helped by the low level of transparency about their true positions that many of these companies appear to practice. Audit Integrity, which conducts accounting and governance risk analysis for public companies released a report last month finding that many of the big banks we've lent to -- including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase -- "are likely in worse condition than publicly disclosed," because of the high likelihood that they'll restate their earnings, or provoke government regulatory action or stockholder litigation.

As if to prove the point, on Tuesday Goldman raised its estimate of expected losses stemming from its toxic assets to $2.1 trillion, up from $1.2 triillon last March.

So where does all this leave us? Congress is getting set to hand over another $350 billion for more bailouts, but this time it's insisting on more help for homeowners facing foreclosure. By stabilizing the mortgage market, that could also help Wall Street -- allowing us potentially to recoup our investment.

So that $350 billion already spent may not be gone. But it's by no means clear what we'll end up getting for it.

Bailout

Levin Will Release TARP Contracts After All

Zachary Roth and Elana Schor | January 13, 2009, 6:15PM

There's been some confusion today over the question of whether Sen. Carl Levin intends to publicly release ten contracts, signed by the Treasury Department with banks receiving bailout funds, that Treasury has agreed to give him.

We just got the following statement from Levin's office:

Senator Levin intends to release the documents, consistent with Senate rules, after reviewing them for proprietary information.

So that clears that up.

But it leaves a larger, related confusion. As we reported earlier this afternoon, many of the firms that received bailout funds (including a number that appeared in Levin's list) have filed, with the SEC, the "Letters of Agreement" they signed with Treasury. These letters appear to be detailed contracts spelling out the terms of the transactions in question, and are publicly available on the SEC site.

We've asked Sen. Levin's office what additional information is included in the contracts he's referring to, and will keep you posted.

Bailout

Have Some Firms Released Bailout Terms In SEC Filings?

Zachary Roth | January 13, 2009, 4:53PM

So we're confused about something.

Yesterday, as we reported, Sen. Carl Levin announced that the Treasury Department had agreed to release the contracts for bailout funds that it signed with 10 firms -- though it remains unclear whether Levin's office will release them publicly.

But at least some of those companies appear to have filed documents with the SEC covering their receipt of the funds. These "Letters of Agreement" are contracts signed by bailout czar Neel Kashkari and firm executives, which spell out in detail the amount of capital the firms are receiving, on what terms, and even cover issues like executive pay limits.

For instance, here's the one for AIG (not technically a part of the TARP program) which seems similar to what Levin has obtained.

And here's the agreement Treasury came to with American Express, signed by the firm's CEO Kenneth Chenault.

And the database appears to contain similar Letters of Agreement for hundreds of other companies that have receive TARP funds -- though it's not clear that it contains such letters for all the firms Levin has asked for.

We called Levin's office to ask whether there's additional information -- beyond what's in the SEC filings -- contained in the contracts Treasury has agreed to hand over, but have not yet received a response.

Late Update: And here's what seems to be Bank of America's "Letter of Agreement" with Treasury, signed October 26. B of A is another firm that Treasury has agreed to release its contract for, according to Levin's announcement. It has received $15 billion in TARP funds.

And here's the same thing for Bank of New York Mellon, which got $3 billion in TARP funds back in October, and is another firm for which Treasury has agreed to its release the contract to Levin.

Bailout

Levin: "My Instinct Would Be To Release" TARP Contracts

Zachary Roth and Elana Schor | January 13, 2009, 1:43PM

After Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate subcommittee on investigations, announced yesterday that he is getting copies of the contracts for companies receiving bailout money under the TARP program, we were thrilled to finally see what terms the government insisted on for taxpayer funds. But this morning in the New York Times, a Levin aide was quoted as saying that his office would not publicly release the contracts. And a Levin spokeswoman told TPMmuckraker the same thing in an email.

What gives, we asked.

And it turns out Levin is asking the same question. When we asked why his office would keep the bailout contracts under wraps, he replied simply: "My instinct would be to release them." He pointed out that legal restrictions might limit the dissemination of the info but said he would consult with his counsel on the matter.

We're still waiting to hear the reason why the contracts can't be made public, if indeed they can't. We'll keep you posted.

Bailout

Treasury To Release Some TARP Contracts

Zachary Roth | January 12, 2009, 7:04PM

Looks like the Senate may finally be prying loose a bit more information from the Treasury Department about its bailout spending.

We just received the following statement from Sen. Carl Levin:

The Department of Treasury assured me today that there will be no need to serve a subpoena, because they will provide the documents I have requested, beginning tomorrow," said Levin. "It should not have taken two months and a subpoena threat, but I -- along with Senator Susan Collins who supports obtaining these documents -- look forward to receiving the documents this week."

The Treasury Department has agreed to provide copies of the TARP contracts issued to ten companies: AIG, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, State Street Corporation, and Wells Fargo.

Levin, the chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, had said he wouldn't vote for releasing the additional $350 billion in TARP funds requested by the Treasury unless the department revealed more information about the contracts it signed in connection with the first $350 billion.

Bank of New York Mellon has contracted with the treasury to help manage the TARP program.

We've called Levin's office to find out about getting our own copies of these contracts...

Bailout

Who's Running TARP? You Might Not Wanna Know

Zachary Roth | January 12, 2009, 6:35PM

Last week, Congress's oversight panel for the TARP funds confirmed in a report that the Treasury Department essentially has no idea what banks have done with the astronomical sums they've been handed.

Given this lack of information, we figured it might at least be helpful to know a bit about a few of the people at Treasury who are in charge of administering the massive program, and what their backgrounds might tell us about the way they've gone about it.

As the New York Times reported back in October, many of those people are former execs at Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street behemoth that used to be led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Most prominent among those is Neel Kashkari, the 35-year old former Goldman VP who was appointed by Paulson in October as the interim head of the Office of Financial Stability (OFS), which is in charge of implementing the bailout. Kashkari's role is said by the Times to have "evolved" after Paulson changed the original bailout plan, so that Treasury would invest money directly in troubled banks.

But less attention has been paid to another Goldman alum, Kendrick Wilson, who was brought in -- after a personal call from his old Harvard Business School buddy, George W. Bush -- to advise Paulson on how to fix the financial markets.

Read more »

Bernard Madoff

Judge Lets Madoff Stay Free On Bail

Zachary Roth | January 12, 2009, 12:24PM

A judge has ruled that against revoking Bernard Madoff's bail, meaning the disgraced investment advisor will get to stay in his $7 million Upper East Side apartment -- albeit under house arrest and 24-hr surveillance -- while awaiting trial.

Prosecutors had argued that Madoff should be sent to jail, after he mailed more than $1 million worth of personal items, including gold necklaces and watches, to family and friends, contravening a court order freezing Madoff's assets.

Madoff's lawyers contended that he simply didn't realize that mailing the items would contravene the order.

CNBC adds:

A court hearing tentatively scheduled for Monday on the criminal charges against Madoff has been adjourned for 30 days, his lawyers said.

Henry Paulson

Warren On Tracking Bailout Funds: "This Isn't Rocket Science"

Zachary Roth | January 9, 2009, 3:54PM

During her interview on CNN, Elizabeth Warren got to spend a little less time dealing with inane knee-jerk responses from anchors, and a little more time explaining the crux of the issue: that the Treasury Department isn't tracking its bailout spending.

Some excerpts:

This isn't rocket science. This isn't some strange thing we're asking for. If you're gonna take that much money from American taxpayers, you've gotta have the banks tell what they're going to do with it. We have to have some way of telling if its working. and if you don't have accountability, if you don't have metrics in place, you're really just kind of handing it out there and hoping for the best.

And:

Treasury did not say: tell us what you're going to do with the money. Tell us how you used it. That just hasn't happened. There's no basic accountability in the system.

Warren also laid out the intriguing idea of establishing a product safety commission for financial products, just as we have for toasters, car seats, and other consumer products.

And she ended with an Eliot Ness-like pledge to keep up the fight. Asked by CNN's Tony Harris whether she'd continue to try to track the bailout spending, she replied, with brio: "You bet!"

Here's the whole thing:

Bailout

Paulson Responds To Stiglitz Criticism

Zachary Roth | January 9, 2009, 2:26PM

We just highlighted a Bloomberg story in which Joseph Stiglitz and other economists story slammed Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for not driving a hard enough bargain on behalf of taxpayers when investing the TARP funds.

So it's probably only fair that we post Paulson's response, from an interview Bloomberg TV just conducted with Paulson:

Well, what we were looking to do was not to replicate one off private sector deals. The market was under great stress and the private sector was extracting very, very severe terms and what we were attempting to do, which I think we did successfully was design a program that would be accepted by a large group of healthy banks with terms that replicate what you would get in normal market conditions. And the other point I will make here - this is an investment and I find it highly, highly likely that the taxpayer will get this money and get this money back with a profit because these are preferred, these are - as long as the financial system remains intact and stable, which it will, that these will come back to the taxpayer.

And our objective was not to say how tough a deal can we give to the banks because then what we would have is we would have a - not a program for healthy banks. We would have a failing bank program and it would have a much different complexion. And again, I think history will show that the financial system needed a lot of capital and if you leave it to the banks to say I really need capital, what you're going to get is you're only to get them when they're desperate. And otherwise, what they're going to do is shrink and not play the role we need them to play and pull in their horns. And we needed to get a program that would be accepted by a lot of banks and would provide very much needed capital. So that was the philosophy of the program.

Bailout

Stiglitz: Goldman Would Have Fired Paulson For Bailout Investments

Zachary Roth | January 9, 2009, 1:36PM

Lately at TPM, we've been wondering about exactly what kind of deal taxpayers got on that whole $700 billion bailout that the Treasury isn't doing much to track.

And along comes Bloomberg with a report that suggests we might not want to know the answer.

The lead data point:

[Treasury Secretary Henery Paulson] invested $10 billion in Goldman Sachs in October, twice as much as [Warren] Buffett did the month before, yet gained warrants worth one-fourth as much as the billionaire.

So Buffett's investors got a better deal than taxpayers. Bloomberg explains:

Paulson left money on the table in three ways, according to [former IMF chief economist Simon] Johnson: accepting fewer warrants than Buffett did; setting the certificates' price trigger, or strike, above market values; and receiving an annual yield on the preferred shares that is half of what Buffett will get for the first five years.

And Bloomberg has some damning quotes about Paulson's investing. Johnson calls them "just egregious," adding: "You want to do it the way Warren does it."

And according to Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz: Paulson said "he had to make it attractive to banks, which is code for 'I'm going to give money away.'"

Stiglitz continued: "In many ways, it's not only a giveaway, but a giveaway that was designed not to work."

And he added: "If Paulson was still an employee of Goldman Sachs and he'd done this deal, he would have been fired."

Bailout

Warren Panel to Treasury: Do More To Limit CEO Pay

Zachary Roth | January 9, 2009, 1:17PM

As for the issue of limits on executive pay, which Congress insisted on including in the TARP, the Warren report says:

While some executives at some financial institutions have voluntarily reduced their compensation, there is no uniform program in place. Treasury has the power to set the "terms and conditions" of any purchase it makes using the TARP funds.

Treasury had opposed the limits from the start, arguing that they would discourage banks from participating in the program.

Wall Street

Treasury: You Never Said We Had To Make Banks More Consumer Friendly!

Zachary Roth | January 9, 2009, 1:10PM

In places, the panel appears outright angry -- understandably -- at Treasury's stonewalling on key questions:

The Panel's fourth area of inquiry focused on what financial institutions have done with the taxpayer money they received. As indicated in question 1 above, Treasury appears to believe the question is beside the point because their goal for the CPP is to stabilize the financial system and to restore confidence in financial institutions.

This, they believe, will eventually increase the flow of credit. Treasury argues that there are several reasons why the TARP investments will be slow to produce increased lending: (1) The CPP began only in October 2008, and the money must work its way into the system before it can have the desired effect. (2) Because confidence is low, banks will remain cautious about extending credit, and consumers and businesses will
remain cautious about taking on new loans. (3) Credit quality at banks is deteriorating, which leads banks to build up their loan loss reserves. For example, Treasury notes that the level of loan loss provisioning by banks doubled in the third quarter from one year ago. Treasury seems to be suggesting these larger trends may be obscuring the effect of TARP funds. The Panel understands the reasons why measurement of banks' use of TARP funds may be difficult.

Nevertheless, the Panel believes such direct measurements at the level of individual TARP recipient firms are important for determining the extent to which the funds are having a direct benefit to businesses and consumers.

And the report highlights Treasury's amazing unwillingness to require banks that get government money to take actions that are in the public interest:

[T]he Panel asked whether Treasury's actions preserved access to consumer credit, including student loans and auto loans at reasonable rates, and
whether Treasury was taking action to ensure that public money could not be used to subsidize lending practices that are exploitive, predatory, or otherwise harmful to customers. Treasury answered that its TARP programs to preserve access to consumer credit do not involve encouraging or mandating banks to take consumer-friendly actions with respect to credit cards or other consumer loans. (our itals)

Bailout

Warren Panel Slams Treasury's "Shifting Explanations"

Zachary Roth | January 9, 2009, 12:45PM

Perhaps the Warren report's starkest expression of frustration with Treasury's lack of information comes in the executive summary:

The Panel's initial concerns about the TARP have only grown, exacerbated by the shifting explanations of its purposes and the tools used by Treasury. It is not enough to say that the goal is the stabilization of the financial markets and the broader economy. That goal is widely accepted. The question is how the infusion of billions of dollars to an insurance conglomerate or a credit card company advances both the goal of financial stability and the well-being of taxpayers, including homeowners threatened by foreclosure, people losing their jobs, and families unable to pay their credit cards. It would be constructive for Treasury to clearly identify the types of institutions it believes fall under the purview of EESA and which do not and the appropriate uses of TARP funds. The need for Treasury to address these fundamental issues of strategy has only intensified since our last report.

Later in the report, a similar theme is picked up:

While Treasury's letter provided responses to some of the Panel's questions and shed some light on Treasury's decision-making process, it did not provide complete answers to several of the questions and failed to address some of the questions at all.

Bailout

Warren Panel: Treasury Not Doing Enough For Homeowners

Zachary Roth | January 9, 2009, 12:29PM

The Warren report also hits Treasury for not doing enough to prevent mortgage foreclosures, as Congress directed -- while giving billions to Wall Street banks:

While the statute contemplates that foreclosure mitigation would be accomplished through the purchase of mortgage-related assets, many believe that Treasury has clear authority to use a portion of the $700 billion to address mortgage foreclosures in other ways. For Treasury to take no steps to use any of this money to alleviate the foreclosure crisis raises questions about whether Treasury has complied with Congress's intent that Treasury develop a "plan that seeks to maximize assistance for homeowners."

Bailout

Warren Panel: Treasury Eroding Confidence It Seeks To Restore

Zachary Roth | January 9, 2009, 12:19PM

More from the report of the Congressional Oversight Panel, chaired by Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren, on Treasury's spending of TARP funds:

First a bit of backstory. In its first report issued last month, the panel asked a series of questions about what Treasury was doing with the money -- questions it was unable to answer because the department didn't appear to have adequately tracked its own spending.

Late last month, Treasury issued a response that provided almost no new information whatsoever. As we noted, one paragraph appeared twice, in virtually identical form, in response to two different questions posed by Warren.

Now this new report finds that the problem is a long way from being fixed:

The Panel still does not know what the banks are doing with taxpayer money.

It continues:

The recent refusal of certain private financial institutions to provide any accounting of how they are using taxpayer money undermines public confidence ... For Treasury to advance funds to these institutions without requiring more transparency further erodes the very confidence Treasury seeks to restore

Bailout

Oversight Panel Report Slams Treasury, Again, On TARP Funds

Zachary Roth | January 9, 2009, 11:57AM

The panel appointed by Congress to track Treasury's use of the bailout funds has released its second report -- and its conclusions are even more worrying than the first.

One excerpt:

It is not enough to say that the goal is the stabilization of the financial markets and the broader economy," the panel wrote in a monthly report published today. "The question is how the infusion of billions of dollars to an insurance conglomerate or a credit card company advances both the goal of financial stability and the well-being of taxpayers, including homeowners threatened by foreclosure, people losing their jobs and families unable to pay their credit cards.

We'll have many more soon...

Bill Richardson

New Mexico Probe Just the Tip Of the Iceberg On Municipal Bond Scams?

Zachary Roth | January 9, 2009, 11:45AM

Ever since New Mexico governor Bill Richardson withdrew his nomination for Commerce Secretary citing an investigation into the company that obtained a contract to advise the state on bond deals, news reports have been making reference to a broader nationwide probe of alleged price-fixing and corruption in the municipal bond industry, which the New Mexico investigation grew out of.

Here at Muckraker, we've started looking into that larger ongoing story, and today the New York Times delivers a helpful takeout on the subject -- though many of the details still remain murky.

As the paper explains, federal and state investigators have over the last few years gathered evidence of what looks like a collusion scheme by financial firms that work with state and local governments on municipal bond deals worth around $400 billion each year.

Explains the paper:

E-mail messages, taped phone conversations and other court documents suggest that companies did not engage in open competition for this lucrative business, but secretly divided it among themselves, imposing layers of excess cost on local governments, violating the federal rules for tax-exempt bonds and making questionable payments and campaign contributions to local officials who could steer them business. In some cases, they created exotic financial structures that blew up.

And crucially, the paper makes clear that this isn't just an isolated case, but rather goes to the very heart of the municipal bond system.

People with knowledge of the evidence say investigators are not just looking at a few bad apples, but also at the way an entire market has operated for years.

A former IRS investigator estimated to the Times that as much as $4 billion has vanished into the system as a result of the schemes.

A source tells the paper about evidence that sheds light on one way in which the scam works. People from firms that have contracted with local governments to help them pick their bankers were taped telling the bankers: "We want you to bid on this deal, but you're not going to get it -- you're going to get the next one. We want you to submit a sloppy bid." Then, in some cases, banks would be paid in cities where they did not work, to reward them for throwing the other contract to a competitor.

Part of the problem appears to be the lack of regulation, especially of companies that have emerged in recent years to advise governments on complex derivatives deals like swaps and options.

The Times explains:

The packages are presented as money-savers to the municipalities, which may want to protect themselves against interest rate changes. But over the last year, as turmoil spread through the credit markets, some of the derivatives have blown up, leaving local governments stuck with unexpected costs.

CDR, the firm that's being investigated in New Mexico, leading to Richardson's withdrawal, is one such company that handles derivatives.

That firm and two that do similar work -- Investment Management Advisory Group, (known as "Image"), and Sound Capital Management -- had their offices raided by the FBI in 2006 as part of the investigation.

The former Treasurer of the city of Phladelphia is currently in jail for accepting illegal payments in exchange for giving city bond business and other contracts to selected companies. CDR and Image appeared frequently in the indictments, and CDR was found to have paid for the Treasurer's trip to the Super Bowl, but neither firm was formally charged.

Financial services companies including JP Morgan Chase, AIG, and Merrill Lynch have been subpoenaed as part of the investigation.

The exact mechanism or mechanisms by which these scams works remains a bit obscure, and may vary from case to case. But the broad picture is clear: financial firms, including some Wall Street powerhouses (at least until recently) are suspected of colluding to rip off state and local governments -- that is, taxpayers -- for billions.

We'll be staying on top of this...

Bailout

Fed Mum On Efforts To Prevent Conflicts Of Interest For Investment Firms

Zachary Roth | January 8, 2009, 4:21PM

As regular Muck readers know, we've been tracking the transparency -- or lack thereof -- of the Federal Reserve's program to buy up $500 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities in an effort to boost the housing market.

And today it's worth focusing on the issue of conflicts of interest.

The four outside investment firms hired by the Fed to manage the program -- Blackrock Inc., Goldman Sachs, Wellington Management, and PIMCO -- began buying up assets this week. So one assumes that the conflict of interest provisions that the Fed has said it has in its contracts with the four companies must be firmly in place by now.

But the Fed still is telling us almost nothing about what those crucial provisions entail. A department spokesman did not respond to a call from TPMmuckraker requesting information on what the Fed is doing to guard against conflicts of interest among the investment firms managing our money.

So far, all we know on the subject is what the Fed told us in a fact sheet posted last month on its website:

What measures will the Federal Reserve take to ensure that an investment manager implementing the MBS program will not have an unfair advantage relative to other market participants due to the information it receives about the MBS program?

Each investment manager will be required to implement ethical walls that appropriately segregate the investment management team that implements the Federal Reserve's agency MBS program from other advisory and proprietary trading activities of the firm. The New York Fed will monitor each investment manager's compliance with this requirement.

What sort of "ethical walls"? How will they work? How will the Fed monitor each investment manager's compliance? (After all, the Treasury doesn't appear to be taking its duty to monitor similar conflicts with TARP money all that seriously).

We're still in the dark.

It bears repeating: this isn't an abstract issue. The potential for these firms to improperly use, in their other investment work, the information they've been granted access to is enormous. Relatedly, the Fed's broader stonewalling on the structure of the contracts (or anything to do with the contracts whatsoever!) means we have no guarantee that the firms are being incentivized to get taxpayers the best possible deal.

Bernard Madoff

Madoff Had Signed Checks To Employees In Desk At Time Of Arrest

Zachary Roth | January 8, 2009, 12:56PM

The Wall Street Journal is reporting on its homepage that, according to prosecutors, Bernard Madoff had $173 million in signed checks made out to his friends and employees in his office desk at the time of his arrest.

News reports immediately after Madoff's arrest revealed that, after confessing the alleged fraud to his sons, he asked them for time to distribute bonuses to his firm's employees.

From the Journal at the time:

Mr. Madoff told them he planned to surrender to authorities, but first, he wanted to pay certain employees portions of the $200 million to $300 million dollars that was left.

And earlier this week, the Associated Press reported:

Prosecutors on Monday said disgraced financier Bernard Madoff violated bail conditions by mailing about $1 million worth of jewelry and other assets to relatives and should be jailed without bail.

Investigators have been working to figure out what Madoff did with the billions he's alleged to have stolen.

Yesterday, the Journal reported that shortly before his arrest, Madoff received $250 million from Carl Shapiro, an early friend and backer, in what was believed to be an effort to stave off his firm's collapse.

Wall Street

Obama Getting Serious About Financial Re-Regulation

Zachary Roth | January 8, 2009, 11:08AM

We've heard talk from various quarters in recent weeks about the pressing need to re-regulate the financial markets, in response to the SEC's failure in the Bernard Madoff case, and to the broader financial crisis.

And in his interview yesterday with CNBC, Barack Obama added a bit more detail to the picture of what we can expect, and when.

Perhaps most importantly, he suggested that the overlapping "alphabet soup" of financial regulatory agencies -- the SEC, the FDIC, the OTS, and so on -- might be combined into one super-regulator. He signaled he'd be more interested than his predecessor in working with overseas allies on a global financial regulatory system. And he said he'll have a proposal by early spring.

Here's his answer in full:

CNBC: How extensive an overhaul of the financial regulatory apparatus will you propose and support? When will you do that? And do you think there is a global regulatory apparatus that needs to be created? You've got the G-20 coming up in April in London.

Obama: Well, by the time that G-20 meeting takes place, we, I believe, will have presented our approach to financial regulation. I think some international coordination has to be done. But right now, we just have to take care ... (unintelligible) ... and Wall Street has not worked, our regulatory system has not worked the way it's supposed to. So it's going to be a substantial overhaul. We're going to have better enforcement, better oversight, better disclosure, increased transparency. We're going to have to look at this alphabet soup of agencies and figure out how do we get them to work together more effectively. We've got to stop splintering functions in such a way that capital in one form is treated one way and capital in another form is treated another way, because these days in global financial markets, they're all fungible. And there's systemic risks that are possible, whether it's in the form of derivatives or insurance or traditional bank deposits. So we've got to update the whole system to meet the needs of the 21st century. This is an assignment that my team is already beginning to work on and I think that we will have, fairly shortly, a package that we've worked alongside Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, to present to the American people.

In a sign pointing in a similar direction, Obama yesterday announced that he intended to keep Sheila Bair on as chair of the FDIC (pending any massive reorganization of the regulatory system that would abolish the agency, presumably). Though she's a Republican, Bair, who has pushed for stronger efforts to prevent foreclosures, was described by the New Republic as "the high-ranking government official most likely to attack Obama's economic policies from the left."

Ben Bernanke

In Reversal, Fed Now Won't Release Key Doc On Asset-Buying Program

Zachary Roth | January 7, 2009, 11:08AM

Last week, we looked at the process by which the New York Federal Reserve selected four investment firms to manage its program to purchase $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities, in order to bolster the housing market.

Or at least, we tried to.

A fact sheet on the website of the New York Fed, announcing the details of the program stated that "a competitive request for proposal (RFP) process was employed" to select the four firms -- Blackrock Inc., Goldman Sachs, Wellington Management, and PIMCO. A Fed spokesman declined last week to give TPMmuckraker any information about the value of the contracts or the nature of the firms' successful bids. But he did tell us that he expected to be able to provide us with a copy of the RFP, after it had been inspected by Fed lawyers.

But now things seem to have changed. The spokesman hasn't responded to our followup calls, placed this week, about the RFP. In other words, not only will the Fed not tell us how much its paying the firms to manage our money, it won't even release the document it used to solicit bids for the contract.

As for the firms themselves, they've been just as tight-lipped. As we noted at the time, the first three referred us to the Fed, and PIMCO didn't return our calls at all.

To be clear, there's no evidence that these firms were improperly selected -- though the fact that PIMCO's founder was, as we've reported, loudly calling back in September for the government to launch just such an MBS purchase program does create some interesting optics, at the least.

But don't taxpayers have a right to know some basic details about the process by which these private investment firms -- at least one already the recipient of massive government largesse -- were hired to manage our money? We think so...

Bernard Madoff

SEC IG Can't Compel Testimony From Key Madoff Witnesses

Zachary Roth | January 6, 2009, 11:38AM

Yesterday we noted that, based on his testimony before Congress, SEC Inspector General David Kotz appears to be conducting an aggressive investigation of the agency's failures in connection with the Bernard Madoff case.

But on one crucial point, Kotz's tetimony was much less heartening.

Questioned by lawmakers about his authority to gain access to documents and witness testimony, Kotz admitted that he didn't have the power to subpoena former SEC employees for their testimony. (We'll post the video or the relevant portion of the transcript when it becomes available.)

Here's why that matters. Three SEC enforcement staffers -- Assistant Regional Director Doria Bachenheimer, Branch Chief Meaghan Cheung, and Staff Attorney Simona Suh -- were listed on the "closing document" for the 2006-07 inquiry into Madoff, which has emerged as exhibit A in the case against the agency. According to an SEC enforcement source, only Suh, the most junior of the three, remains at the agency. (A receptionist at the agency's New York office, where all three had been based, confirmed to TPMmuckraker that Bachenheimer and Cheung no longer worked at the SEC.)

So Kotz wont have the power to compel testimony from the two SEC staffers who were perhaps the most central on-the-ground players in the agency's failure to catch Madoff. That may well limit his ability to draw broad conclusions about the SEC's slip-up, and how to avoid similar mishaps in the future.

Bernard Madoff

Lawyer: Whistleblower Still Wants To Testify

Zachary Roth | January 5, 2009, 6:24PM

We noted earlier today that Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos over the weekend cancelled his scheduled testimony before a House committee, citing illness. Markopolos had been one of the key witnesses scheduled to appear, so his eleventh-hour withdrawal raised a few eyebrows.

We've now spoken to Markopolos' lawyer, Phil Michael, who assured TPMmuckraker that his client was incapacitated and unable to leave his home, and that Markopolos still intends to find a time to testify in the near future.

We look forward to hearing from him.

Bernard Madoff

Prosecutor: Madoff Violated Bail By Sending Assets To Relatives

Zachary Roth | January 5, 2009, 4:52PM

Did Madoff violate bail?

The Associated Press reports:

Prosecutors on Monday said disgraced financier Bernard Madoff violated bail conditions by mailing about $1 million worth of jewelry and other assets to relatives and should be jailed without bail.

"The defendant's recent actions amount to obstruction of justice," Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt told a judge at a hearing in federal court in Manhattan.

Madoff's lawyer, Ira Sorkin, described the items as heirlooms that included cufflinks and antique watches. He said they were not significant assets. The items were sent to Madoff's children and to unidentified friends vacationing in Florida.

The prosecutor said the case against Madoff "is strong and getting stronger."

Bernard Madoff

SEC IG, Probing Madoff, Looks To Be On The Warpath

Zachary Roth | January 5, 2009, 4:24PM

SEC Inspector General David Kotz, who is conducting an investigation into the agency's failure to detect Bernard Madoff's alleged "$50 billion ponzi scheme" despite conducting several probes of Madoff's business over the last decade, testified before Congress today.

And from the sound of his opening statement, his inquiry could be worth paying attention to.

Here, paraphrased, are a few highlights from the statement:

- Kotz has asked SEC employees to preserve relevant documents.

- He has sought information from the office of SEC chair Chris Cox, and with senior officials from the agency's compliance section, whose performance is at the heart of concerns that the SEC fell down on the job.

- He has obtained emails sent by former and current employees, both those at the Washington DC headquarters and in the New York and Boston regional offices.

- He hopes to add four new investigators to his team, and is seeking additional office space and administrative help.

- He has scheduled an on-the-record interview with Harry Markopoulos for later this month. Markopolos, who first rasied concern about Madoff's business in a lengthy complaint to the SEC, was scheduled to testify before Congress today but cancelled, citing illness.

- He'll probe conflicts of interest at SEC stemming from Madoff's and his family's relationships with SEC officials.

- He'll also look at the overall operations of the enforcement division.

- And his probe will be "independent and as hard-hitting as necessary."

More news from today's hearing to follow...

Bernard Madoff

Madoff Whistleblower Cancels Congressional Testimony

Zachary Roth | January 5, 2009, 12:39PM

When the House committee that will hold hearings today on Bernard Madoff and the role of the SEC announced its witness list, one of the most interesting names was that of Harry Markopolos. The former rival investor to Bernard Madoff, who had first argued in a complaint to the SEC that Madoff's business was not on the level, was the closest thing this scandal has had to a heroic whistleblower.

But now Markopolos has pulled out, citing illness. Given the low public profile he has maintained since his role in the scandal became public, that move raised our interest.

A spokesperson for Rep. Paul Kanjorski, who chairs the sub-committee holding the hearings, told TPMmuckraker in an email, referring to Markopolos: "He has said that he looks forward to testifying at a subsequent hearing."

So perhaps we'll get to hear from him in the end. But until we do, this will bear watching.

Barack Obama

Obama's Pick For SEC Chair Didn't Catch Madoff While At Finra

Zachary Roth | January 5, 2009, 11:56AM

The Wall Street Journal has a deeper look at the various government investigations into Bernard Madoff's business, stretching back over the last 16 years -- all of which failed to detect the alleged "$50 billion ponzi scheme" that Madoff is said to have been running.

Among other nuggets, the Journal reports:

The failure to stop Mr. Madoff also is an embarrassment for Mary Schapiro, the Finra chief who has been nominated by President-elect Barack Obama as the next SEC chairman. Finra [the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, an industry-run watchdog for brokerage firms] was involved in several investigations of Mr. Madoff's firm, concluding in 2007 that it violated technical rules and failed to report certain transactions in a timely way.

Ms. Schapiro declined to comment. Mr. Cox has previously acknowledged mistakes by the SEC. The agency declined to comment.

Close SEC watchers generally have said they expect that under Schapiro, the agency will be a more vigilant watchdog than it has been under President Bush's various chairs, culminating with Chris Cox.

Still, Finra's failure, under Schapiro, to catch Madoff is another reminder that, even though the SEC's problems were in part a result of the pure free-market ideology to which the Bush administration largely subscribed, those problems likely won't immediately be solved by the change of administrations.

Bernard Madoff

Report: SEC Probing Other Madoff-Style Ponzi Schemes

Zachary Roth | January 2, 2009, 5:17PM

Was Madoff just the tip of the iceberg?

The SEC is investigating at least one case in which investors may have been cheated out of as much as $1 billion, by money managers using tactics similar to those alleged to have been employed by Madoff, Bloomberg reports, based on anonymous sources "with knowledge of the inquiries."

It adds:

Regulators may discover additional Ponzi arrangements as declining stock markets prompt investors to withdraw their cash and they question how their money is being managed. This week, the SEC said it halted what the agency described as a $23 million scam targeting Haitian-Americans, and said the Florida- based operators had tried as recently as last month to bring in more investors.

And it throws in an additional nugget of news stemming from Madoff's providing a list of his assets to the SEC on Wednesday:

A catalog of Madoff's assets provided by his attorneys to the SEC on Dec. 31 hasn't revealed any major sources of additional cash, a person familiar with the matter said.

Bailout

Firms Hired By Fed To Manage Our Assets Won't Say How Much They're Being Paid

Zachary Roth | January 2, 2009, 2:09PM

So, how much are the four firms hired to manage the Fed's mortgage-backed securities purchase program getting paid for their work, and how did they get the contracts in the first place?

They're not saying.

We called Blackrock Inc., Goldman Sachs, Wellington Management, and PIMCO to ask them about their recently announced contracts to manage a total of $500 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities, on behalf of the Federal Reserve. Spokespeople for the first three firms told us they were referring all questions to the Fed. Representatives for PIMCO -- whose founder said in September that his firm would manage a very similar Treasury program for free, out of patriotic duty -- have not responded to two messages.

A spokesman for the New York Fed told TPMmuckraker he'd get back to us with more information.

"The selection of these managers seems incredibly opaque," Jeffrey Gundlach, the chief investment officer for the invesment firm TCW, and an expert in mortgage-backed securities, told TPMmuckraker.

Indeed, the Fed has so far provided little detailed information on the process by which these firms were selected. In a fact sheet posted on their website, the Fed wrote:

Because of the size and complexity of the agency MBS program, a competitive request for proposal (RFP) process was employed to select four investment managers and a custodian ... The selection criteria were based on the institution's operational capacity, size, overall experience in the MBS market and a competitive fee structure.

We'll keep you posted on what we learn from the Fed...