Update: Bernanke gets Grilled on the Hill…
Update: Ben doing very very well in his testimony, Markets are ecstatic about it, Dow up 148…
Fed Chairman Bernanke under subpoena before Issa and Towns’ House Oversight and Government Reform Panel on BofA/Merrill merger
CNBC Live Stream Here
Ben’s prepared statement:
…Bernanke, in prepared testimony to a House committee investigating the matter, said he did not threaten action against Bank of America’s CEO Kenneth Lewis or the bank’s board members if they decided to abandon the takeover.
“Neither I nor any member of the Federal Reserve ever directed, instructed or advised Bank of America to withhold from public disclosure any information relating to Merrill Lynch, including its losses, compensation packages or bonuses or any other related matter,” the Fed chief said.It marked Bernanke’s first public comments since the House committee launched an investigation earlier this year into whether he or other government officials bullied Bank of America to stick with its plan to combine the two financial powers after Lewis found out about Merrill’s financial woes….
FD-MiM are shareholders…a list of our previous posts here
Update: Witchhunt Inquisitor accidentally catches self: while hoist on petard claims her ‘role’ is to get control of Congress and the Presidency, not to actually object to unConsititional actions…but she did ‘fight the war’…
Oh thank Gawd SOMEONE mentioned this, it is Rep. Pete Hoekstra R-MI –The Note :
Hoekstra, however, said he finds is “very difficult to believe” that intelligence officials would intentionally mislead leaders of the House intelligence committee, as Pelosi is alleging.
He also blasted Pelosi for saying that, since she felt she couldn’t change Bush administration policies, she turned her attention to electing a Democratic congressional majority.
“What I heard her say — and I was quite taken aback by her when she said — was that politics are more important than national security,” Hoekstra said. “That’s a very dangerous precedent.”
Bond said there have been numerous instances where congressional leaders have privately influenced administration policy on intelligence matters, though he declined to offer specfics.
“It’s no excuse to say, ‘I was powerless.’ That’s what oversight is all about,” he said. “There are a whole range of actions, and she did not take them.”
Nora Desmond Nancy Pelosi has gone off the rez…
BWAHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! BWAAAFRAKKINHAAAAAAA!!!!! Oh my side hurts now! BWAAAAAAHAAAAA!!!!!
Pelosi Press Briefing Transcript Courtesy of Legal Insurrection:
QUESTION: Do you wish now that you had done more? Do you wish…
PELOSI: No.
QUESTION: … it had been your own letter?
PELOSI: No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, the point is, is that we had the conversation. They told us they had legal opinions. As I say in my statement, we now know what they didn’t inform us then, that there were other opinions within the executive branch that concluded that these interrogation techniques were not legal. So no letter or anything else is going to stop them from doing what they’re going to do. My job was to change the majority in Congress and to change — to fight to have a new president, because what was happening was not consistent with our values, certainly not true, and — and something that had to be changed….
(Hear that boys and girls? Her JOB was to change the majority and to fight to have a new TOTUS not to you know TAKE ACTION OF ANY SORT…)
Ben on the Hill….
Poor Ben Bernanke will be back on the Hill today, 10:00am EST
CNBC LIVE streaming Video when it begins
The GOLD bugs are with me in rejecting the baseless rally yesterday, now at 913.5 up 11.3 today…
Video Update: GM CFO Ray Young says co won’t make June 1st $1Billion debt repayment…
Update 2: CNBC’s Phil LeBeau
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Update: Bloomberg:
General Motors Corp., trying to avoid a U.S.-backed bankruptcy on June 1, may close plants and scrap models as much as four years sooner than planned to lower its break-even point, people familiar with the effort said….
…The new plan may require GM to complete many of the reductions in models and dealers planned by 2014 as soon as next year, allowing earlier plant and job reductions, people briefed on the talks said. GM said March 31 that by 2014 it would trim dealers to 4,100 from 6,122, nameplates to 36 from 43, and U.S. assembly capacity to 2 million vehicles from 2.8 million.
The bond offer may include some framework of GM’s plan to cut $20.4 billion in obligations to a United Auto Workers union- run retiree-medical fund by more than half, two of the people said. The bond offer may disclose what portion, if any, of U.S. loans would be converted to equity, one person said.
–the flintstones car at the new york international auto show–
Breaking from WSJ on CNBC Chyron…
This is in addition to GM CEO Fritz Henderson commenting bankruptcy more likely…
they are really putting the hammer down on the bondholders..were I they, I would NOT cut a deal, I would wait for my bankruptcy judge, but the pundits say a MI bankruptcy judge will be under HUGE political pressure to wipe the bondholders out anyway…
say hello to Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman’s Little Friend..a Flintstone mobile, perhaps all we will be allowed to purchase until they reinvent the wheel..
A vehicle that meets Waxman/Pelosi emission standards
We will then get sued by people behind us as our feet produce a cloud of dust they can claim MIGHT somehow damage them as a pollutant…
Good Grief….
Moderate in the Middle 