Troubled Assets Relief Program

Bank of America Slammed With Federal Lawsuit For "Doing the [Mortgage Fraud] Hustle"

In more long-awaited fallout from the mortgage crisis, Federal prosecutors today sued the Bank of America and Countrywide Financial for a scheme to defraud the government via a program called "The Hustle." Yes, they called it "The Hustle." Its purpose: allegedly to process home loans at high speed ... More >>

NY GOP Wants Investigation Into Rep. Steve Israel's Sketchy Mortgage "Bailout"

The New York Post ran an "exclusive" story yesterday suggesting that Long Island Congressman Steve Israel's 2008 support of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) for financially strapped banks is the reason he was granted a "bailout" on the mortgage for his Dix Hills home. The bank that holds Isr ... More >>

Mitt Loves N.Y.: Henry Cornell

With Mitt Romney as its de facto go-to candidate, the roster of Restore Our Future, Romney's designated Super PAC slush fund, reads like a laundry list of New York City's wealthiest denizens. And, according to the Center for Responsive Politics and contrary to popular belief, Sup ... More >>

Surgin' Santorum! Rightbloggers Not So Frothy for This Week's Next President of the United States

The wheel of fortune has spun once again, and the GOP Next President of the United States of the Week is now Rick Santorum. Mind you, no one thinks Santorum will actually be the nominee. He's just running third in some optimistic polls -- of the Iowa caucuses, which is no bellwether. Yet all the wo ... More >>

Thomas Wu, Bent Banker Indicted For Taking Bailout After Defrauding Investors

​In a case that should resonate with the protesters down in Zuccotti Park, three San Francisco bank officials have been charged with fraud after receiving nearly $300 million in federal bail out money during the Bush era financial crisis. United Commercial Bank CEO Thomas Wu, along with vice ... More >>

Reshma Saujani's Road to Congress? Right Down Wall Street. Let Me Be Your Guide.

Pretend you're Reshma Saujani, 34, dazzling, born to an Indian family expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin, a Harvard and Yale Law School grad who returned to Africa to help build Nelson Mandela's post-apartheid government. It's late 2009 and everything you've done in your professional life since its i ... More >>

Inside Rick Lazio's Biggest Wall Street Deal—The Chummy E-Mails

Diverting nearly a billion in retiree benefits into subprime risk? Oh, just watch him work the e-mail.

People's Champion? Rick Lazio Is a Wall Street Creature

His fingerprints are all over the recent economic collapse

Cuomo Throws Haymaker at Bankers, Ducks Paterson Jab

State attorney general Andrew Cuomo this morning reached to take the first post-TARP scalp, accusing former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis of pulling a massive fraud on both taxpayers and shareholders. "Egregious and reprehensible" were two of the kinder words Cuomo used in unveiling a civil lawsuit ... More >>

We've Bailed out the Banks. When Do We Go After the Crooks Behind our Financial Collapse?

Rangel Under Investigation by House Subcommittee for Caribbean Trips

The House of Representatives is investigating five Democratic members for accepting "improper" travel arrangements, and our own Charlie Rangel made the cut. The Carib News Foundation sponsors an annual Multinational Business Conference on Caribbean affairs, and is said to have flown the lawmakers in ... More >>

Obama's Inspector General Problem

Hmmm, does the Obama administration have a problem with the watchdogs assigned to keep an eye on federal agencies? We ask because the Chicago Tribune is reporting that Obama's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner [pictured] is embroiled in a dispute with an inspector general overseeing the government fin ... More >>

Stress Tests: Banks Need to Raise $75 Billion to Stay Afloat

The results of Obama's stress test on the banks, for which 150 government agencies examined TARP-funded U.S. financial institutions to determine their states of health, are in. The bad news first: 10 of the 19 banks examined will need to raise $75 billion in additional capital to be deemed sufficien ... More >>

Gucci Mane Has Ice To Spare

Fuck mortgage-backed securities, default credit swaps, AIG, Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, Alan Greenspan, George W. Bush, Citigroup, Chrysler, Washington Mutual, Bernie Madoff, Sir Allen Stanford, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, suicide loans, TARP, GM, Wells Fargo, Jerome Kerviel, al-Qaeda, Iran, Osama b ... More >>

Who needs a bailout? The New York soldiers heading to Afghan War frontlines.

The frightening Taliban invasion of the Afghan capital Kabul, courtesy of Al Jazeera's Todd Baer. Compare the CNN and Al Jazeera stories. Bailout? If by accident of birth, you were in Kabul yesterday, you'd be dying to bail out. You would have been running for your life while crazed Taliban storm ... More >>

Obama Caps Compensation at TARP Companies at $500,000

Bad news for high rollers: the President says he and his Treasury Secretary agree that companies receiving TARP funds from the Feds will be instructed to cap executive compensation at half a million dollars. That's half a million per exec, not half a million total. Obama had previously expressed ... More >>

The mark of cane: Governor Paterson keeps getting blindsided by personal shots

From the New Yorker's "Your Eustace, 2009," the mag's annual contest for the best new version of Rea Irvin's classic cover, this entry (one of 12 winners — and my favorite) is "Eustace, the Undead New Yorker," by David Cook of Suwanee, Georgia. Further proof of the schizophrenic media cult ... More >>

Citifield To Lose Ugly, $400M Name?

The Wall Street Journal says that Citigroup is looking at forfeiting their naming rights to the new Mets ballpark. Citigroup claims not to be using their TARP funds from the federal government to pay for putting the name "Citifield" on the park -- just as they said the corporate jet they recently ha ... More >>

The stadium-naming deal? Make Citigroup and the New York Mets bail the public out for a change.

In what's obviously a P.R. move, Citigroup says it's looking into pulling out of a $400 million marketing deal with the New York Mets. Here's the current situation: Citigroup is supposedly on the hook to pay $400 million to the Mets for the naming rights to the unwarranted new stadium. Meanwhile, ... More >>

Cuomo May Seek Giveback of $4B Merrill Lynch Bonuses

The saga of the $4 billion in bonuses paid to collapsed Merrill Lynch just got funnier for everyone except the people who received the money. Having subpoenaed ousted Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain (and the head of Bank of America, which took the firm over) about the bonuses, AG Andrew Cuomo is said t ... More >>

From baseball to hardball: George Mitchell lands in Mideast to probe the deadliest beanball war -- Jews vs. Arabs

The Wall Street Journal, reporting from Davos, asks (gulp), "Is Capitalism, as We Know It, Dead?" Pumped up from his experience as chief investigator of steroids abuse in baseball, George Mitchell is now in for some really heavy lifting: the testosterone-laden, rage-filled Arab-Jew death dance i ... More >>

Citi Cancels Jet, Continues to Hold Back TARP Funds

When the New York Post revealed that CitiGroup, recipients of $45 billion in public largesse, had ordered a $50 million corporate jet ("JUST PLANE DESPICABLE"), reaction was swift and brutal. The Times noticed that Barney Frank had removed a TARP provision that would have prevented such a purchase. ... More >>

Circuit City Dies, 30,000 to be Laid Off

You may remember that in the early days of the TARP, people would ask why we were bailing out banks but not Circuit City, the troubled electronics chain that went bankrupt in November. They were told then that private sector capitalism would sort it out, and in late December Circuit City got a $1.1 ... More >>

GOP to Motor City: Drop Dead (Updated)

American kids' college plans face auto-destruct

Credit Crisis: The Story So Far

Putting it diplomatically: No on Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State

Shelved in fiction: 'Henry Paulson and the Toxic Assets'