Wall Street Journal — Financial Firms Lobby to Cut Cost of TARP Exit
Writers Damian Paletta and Deborah Solomon cook up an angle that doesn’t go anywhere – that banks could face outrage for simultaneously increasing their fees to customers and seeking to reduce their own costs for paying back TARP loans. The story doesn’t even include the new lobbying reports that show the TARP banks spent less, but still considerable, money on the practice.
But amid allegations of rampant fraud and with $3 trillion and the independence of American banks at stake, the story is still of tremendous value for its clear, concise explanation of what the costs associated with getting out of TARP really are, how the Treasury could come to control banks that can’t escape and even some nifty graphics to explain to those more politically than financially inclined.
“Bankers say it is unfair to charge what amounts to a “prepayment penalty,” which makes it additionally onerous to escape TARP. Bank representatives say the cost of buying back the warrants could be equivalent to paying 60% annual interest on short-term loans. That, they argue, would exacerbate banks’ existing problems.”
New York Times – Banned Techniques Yielded ‘High Value Information,’ Memo Says
Adm. Dennis Blair – the national intelligence director – had favored releasing the interrogation memos produced by the justice department under the Bush administration and is a staunch opponent of the techniques, but he allowed that the use of the methods had resulted in intelligence that helped thwart attacks.
“Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
‘I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past,’ he wrote, ‘but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.’”
Wall Street Journal – Interrogation Views Spread With Help of Bush Aides
Hot on the heels of the release of the Justice Department memos authorizing harsh interrogations techniques for the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks, a Senate panel releases its own preliminary investigation into the practice.
The report found that the like-minded lawyers across the administration quickly disseminated the allowed methods and blocked objections to their use.
“The Senate report portrays a Defense Department eager to adopt the kind of aggressive tactics that the Justice Department authorized. It builds on previous investigations which disclosed that techniques employed by U.S. interrogators originated in the exercises used to train American personnel to resist methods they might face if captured.”
Washington Post — European Nations May Investigate Bush Officials Over Prisoner Treatment
In an unsurprising move, European and UN prosecutors are eager to bring charges against Americans for their interrogations of terrorists following the Sept. 11 attacks. They’ve been trying to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld in Germany for five years.
What’s interesting is that the desire to put Americans on trial in the Hague or elsewhere may actually be used as an argument for some prosecutions in the U.S.
“Martin Scheinin, the U.N. special investigator for human rights and counterterrorism, said the interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration clearly violated international law. He said the lawyers who wrote the Justice Department memos, as well as senior figures such as former vice president Richard B. Cheney, will probably face legal trouble overseas if they avoid prosecution in the United States.
‘Torture is an international crime irrespective of the place where it is committed. Other countries have an obligation to investigate,’ Scheinin said in a telephone interview from Cairo. ‘This may be something that will be haunting CIA officials, or Justice Department officials, or the vice president, for the rest of their lives.’”
New York Times — Quadrangle Is Facing Questions Over Pension Funds
Car demi-czar Stephen Rattner may not have jumped clear of the state and federal investigation into kickbacks paid to New York state officials to secure some of the billions of dollars in public pension investments there. The probe continues and has now spread to include New Mexico’s pension fund and more information about Rattner’s role. It’s now clear that Rattner played a significant role in obtaining access and used his political fundraising prowess and connections to get the job done.
While Andrew Cuomo, the SEC and others continue their probes, the commotion has exposed Rattner’s firm – Quadrangle – to the departures by investors worried that other shoes may drop.
“The deadline for their decision is Friday, according to four people familiar with the matter. For Quadrangle, the stakes are high. If its investors balk, the amount of fees that it collects annually on its funds would fall to about $19 million, from $35 million, according to a Quadrangle investor. Mr. Rattner’s firm also would lose its ability to make investments in new companies.”
