Jan 27 - Paulson, Geithner should testify under oath

The Global Post has an article on some of the biggest thefts of diamonds ever. Frankly though, I'd like to see more in depth coverage of the biggest theft ever - namely, the past two years of Bush and Obama bailouts for their banker buddies Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and Robert Rubin.

Thankfully though - when it comes to the highly incriminating, November 2008 AIG / Fed emails that were written by NY Fed lawyers who were reporting to then-NY Fed President Tim Geithner - one House Committee intends to ask some questions:

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has been asked to join his successor Timothy Geithner in testifying before a House panel examining bailout payments to American International Group Inc.’s trading partners.

Paulson was invited to a Jan. 27 hearing set by Edolphus Towns, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, about the decision to fully reimburse AIG’s bank counterparties for $62.1 billion in derivatives. (by Hugh Son)

Since the fix is in, I doubt the Washington Power Brokers - Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Frank, etc. - will do anything. But who knows? Maybe HOGR member, our Congress member, Chris Murphy will step up, ask some real questions and demand some real accountability?

I'd like to see the following happen:

1) Every person that was included in those AIG / Fed emails subpoenaed to testify,

2) Geithner, Paulson, Bernanke and the rest of the bailout crew subpoenaed to testify,

3) All of them placed under oath, and

4) Asked two simple questions:

A) What did you know?
B) When did you know it?

People belong in jail for this theft. I mean, AIG was nothing more than a front man for this theft of American tax dollars.

At least one company agreed to take a 2% haircut on the AIG payments. And it was reported before that as far back as July 2008, counterparties were considering taking 40 cents on the dollar. Yet Geithner's team insisted on full payment.

Why?

And if Geithner knew nothing of the AIG / Fed emails, why hasn't he publicly repudiated the employees who did it? Why not call for them to be fired? Could it be that he's concerned that those employees would then be more likely to come forward and tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

I hope somebody in Congress starts to let the subpoenas fly. But in a somewhat unfortunate turn of events, the person who was most likely to do that was Senator Chris Dodd. And considering that he's now looking at the solid-gold, revolving door between Washington and Wall Street, I find it highly unlikely that he's going to go populist now and actually do the right thing.

Tim White