Crooks on Wall Street? Oy!
Posted by TIKI AL at March 30, 2009 07:22 PMIf the Republicans come back with the same type of clowns in the White House that we saw in the last eight years, our country is going down the toilet. We simply cannot survive that kind of criminality, ideological rigidity and incompetence.
All the more reason we need more progressive Democrats in the House and Senate in 2010.
Posted by Craig at March 30, 2009 07:42 PMIn a time of nothing but constant jaw-dropping beyond-the-paleness, this one gets some kind of special oak leaf cluster. Jesus the god damn bloody fuck, is there anywhere these mobsters didn't toss their gasoline and matches?
What will these people do when they've stolen the last dollar from every productive thing and person on earth? Sell their children? Why would anyone doubt it?
Posted by Sharkbabe at March 30, 2009 08:02 PMFunny/sad, Summers did the same thing at Harvard, squandered their endowment of $320 billion. All he gets for that is a nice job with the current admin.
Posted by peter at March 30, 2009 08:46 PMMary: This highlights the severity of the crisis....Millard seems to rank right up with Cristopher Cox, Paulsen, Brownie, and other Bushies that simply walked away on January 20th to collect oversize pensions after basically burning the country to the ground.....the monumental task Obama faces is incredible, I am amazed at his calm demeanor inspite of a calamity.
The Boston Globe seems to have a knack for uncovering these scams; wasn't the Globe behind Madoff's unraveling??
Posted by Goyo at March 30, 2009 09:16 PMThe scary thing about the investment banks is that they believed their own propaganda. You can see this from the fact that Goldman Sachs, which is by a long way the smartest, has had to bail out senior people with loans and buyouts. They got caught in the same mess the market did, leveraged with their money tied up in assets they couldn't sell.
That's why the Obama Administration is making a terrible mistake putting economic recovery in the bankers' hands. They're not just greedy; they're short-sigfhted and foolish.
Peter:
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I cannot stand idly by in the face of such a lie.
Harvard's endowment took a big hit (IIRC @40 Billion) when BUSHCO's Financial malfeasence hit the fan in October 2008.
Summers, while Pres. of Harvard, said a few despicable things re: women, but he did not "squander" 320 Billion.
Facts are stupid things.
Posted by goalkeeper at March 31, 2009 06:51 AMIf actual facts are now in play, consider this from Alan Krueger, who is leaving Princeton to be an assistant secretary of the Treasury. He was writing last December on the PBGC question:
The decision to move a large share of the portfolio out of safe assets like Treasury bonds and into riskier but possibly higher-paying assets like stocks has been controversial.
The decision would have proved catastrophic had it been immediately acted upon because the stock market has fallen so far. Fortunately, P.B.G.C. has been slow to act on its new policy. By my back-of-the-envelope calculation, had the agency fully adopted its new investment policy at the start of last year, it would have lost around 12.2 percent of its assets by September 2008. Instead, it lost “only” 6.5 percent, or $4.2 billion.*
In fact, as of Sept 30 2008 the revised allocation had not been implemented; one wonders whether the newly hired money managers plunged in during the October madness.
Posted by Tom Maguire at March 31, 2009 09:10 AMAnd isn't there a Congressional hearing transcript from 10/24/2008? Starting on p. 102 PGBC head Millard begins with prepared remarks, on p. 112 he explains why they haven't actually moved any assets.
"Mr. MILLARD. No. The investment performance for fiscal year 2008, which concluded September 30th, and these are, again, I want to emphasize unaudited numbers, is based principally on the
prior policy. We have made very small changes so far in transitioning into the new policy because as we went into manager selection and as we talked to transition managers and we saw what was happening in the fixed-income markets, we saw things like the liquidity crisis, et cetera; it made sense to not only have a long-term strategy, we are not market timers, we are not trying to be a market timer, have a long-term strategy that is designed to pay our bills over time without having to turn to Congress for a multibillion dollar bailout, and at the same time as we transition, to do so in a deliberate and measured way.
Mr. COURTNEY. Then your testimony is then that this loss was not the result of any new policy?
Mr. MILLARD. Correct. The decline in our portfolio, the portfolio was approximately 70 percent [corrected to 30 percent] equities in September a year ago, and other than the fact that equities have dropped, we have not changed our allocation yet."
Chairman Miller held the hearing.
Posted by peter at March 31, 2009 08:08 PM