Pulling Back the Curtain Part 2: The Wall Street Circle of Hell

Two days ago, on January 11th, it was reported that it will take until November of 2018 before we will be able to fully understand the actions behind the bailout of American International Group. Information has come to light detailing that the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a request from AIG in May of last year to keep secret "confidential commercial or financial information", in particular, information regarding the transferring of bailout money from AIG to the coffers of companies like Merril Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.The story, as usual, was glossed over, but has been brought to public attention in light of the revelation last week of a batch of emails showing then-Fed president Timothy Geithner asking AIG to keep the bailout information secret. That's a lot on the plate of an administration that has a memorandum on the White House website stating

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

But then again, the Obama administration seems more concerned with corporate backroom shenanigans than with the horse he rode in on: being concerned for the safety and well being of the everyday, working class citizen. And of course, at the center of these particular corporate shenanigans is Timothy Geither, who, when we left off, just left the Treasury Department after serving under the tutelage of Bob Rubin and Larry Summers to take positions in the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Monetary Fund and at some point the Trilateral Commission.

In 2003 Geithner would be appointed as the 9th President of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Though generally painted by the Right-wing media as a leftist or communist conspiratorial plot, the Federal Reserve is in reality quite the opposite: almost every person involved in the creation of the Fed was tied to the Pilgrims Society, an organization comprised of the capitalist elite interested in the close cooperation of the U.S. and Great Britain. This is a fascinating topic that unfortunately must be extremely abridged here, yet hopefully covered in depth in the future. According to the now defunct (though cached through Google!) Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics, banks, insurance firms and other companies with extensive ties to the Pilgrim's Society include AIG, Blackstone (mentioned in Part 1, linked to AIG and Kissinger Associates), Chase Manhattan, Citibank, General Electric, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Kuhn, Loeb & Co. (instrumental in the creation of the Federal Reserve), J.P. Morgan and Co, J.P. Morgan and Chase, Morgan Stanley, etc. Trilateralist/former Chairman of the Federal Reserve/head of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board Paul Volcker is a member of the Pilgrim's Society.

In 2006 Tim Geithner was invited to join the Group of Thirty, "an international body of leading financiers and academics which aims to deepen understanding of economic and financial issues and to examine consequences of decisions made in the public and private sectors related to these issues.". Founded in 1978 by Geoffery Bell on behalf on the Rockefeller Foundation, G30 has an extremely prestigious membership list: Paul Volcker is the Chairman of the Board of Trustee, while Vice Chairman is Jacob A. Frenkel, a Trilateralist who works for American International Group. The Consular and Director Jamie Caruana works at the IMF, the Governor of the organization Stanley Fischer is member of the Trilateral Commission (and also president of CitiGroup), as is William R. Rhodes (Senior Vice Chairman of CitiGroup) and E. Gerald Corrigan of Goldman Sachs. Corrigan, not surprisingly, is part of Geithner's 'economic brain trust' alongside fellow G30ers Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, and Lawrence Summers. Given the people and ties with the G30, it would seem that this may be the nucleus that formed the beginning of the bailout era.

The first bailouts would occur in 2008, under the Bush administration Secretary of Treasury Henry M. Paulson. Paulson, of course, was an eight year veteran of Goldman Sachs prior to his appointment as Treasury Secretary. Bear Sterns would be bailed out in in March, followed later by the first bailout of American International Group and then CitiGroup. At the center of the negotiations with Paulson would be Timothy Geithner, all the while mingling with the executives of the bailed out companies at organizations such as the G30. And yet Obama would give Tim a key position in the administration. Why? Is it that Obama is simply a bumbling buffoon, overlooking the incestuous connections between Wall Street and his those of his so-called "progressive" agenda and the tremendous fuck-ups that have resulted, or is he, like the of the emblem of the Fabian society, a wolf in sheep's clothing, seducing the country with Utopian Lullabies so people won't wake up and the smell the coffee that he is just another Bush?

Either way, key to the picking of Timothy Geithner for Obama's Secretary of Treasury is Michael Froman, the deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. Oh yeah, he's also a member of the Trilateral Commission. Matt Taibbi's excellent Rolling Stone magazine article "Obama's Big Sellout" has covered these circumstances in depth, showing just how deep these series of underhanded backroom political maneuvers run. Froman, a close friend of Barack Obama since their Harvard days, has a lot in common with Geithner: they both share a common mentor in Robert Rubin, who he would later introduce to Obama. Froman would also donate the large sum of $200,000 to the Obama campaign, but I'm sure he could afford it; after all, he is a high ranking executive at Citigroup. He actually got his job there from his former boss, Bob Rubin, who took up residence at the company after his disastrous stint in the Clinton administration, but as Taibbi points out, it doesn't end there. Froman's hand picks for Obama's economic team include Bob Rubin's son, Jamie Rubin, another veteran of the Clinton White House. In fact, Rubin cohorts are filling the current administration: Larry Summers, the director of the NEC, worked with Rubin, Geithner and Froman at the Treasury, and his direct underling Jason Furmann is a director of the Hamilton Project, an economic initiative at the Brookings Institute founded by Rubin. Another person from Obama's NEC is Diana Farrell, known for her defense of shipping U.S. jobs oversees. She worked at Goldman Sachs under Rubin. Goldman alum Gary Gensler was appointed by Obama to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and he worked with Rubin under Clinton. The first director of Rubin's Hamilton Project is liberal capitalist Peter Orszag, Obama's pick for head of the Office and Management and Budget. The list goes on and on, and ultimately gives more questions than answers. Though we do have one answer: with people like Bob Rubin and Jamie Rubin and Michael Froman, all interconnected at multiple levels with Obama and CitiGroup, can it be any surprise that the man who helped negotiate the bailout of the company would be rewarded in such a manner?

And what of ol' Henry Paulson? What benefit would he have with bailing out CitiGroup? Well, one thing to consider is that in October of 2008 there were rumours of Goldman Sachs buying out CitiGroup. Henry M. Paulson is a former Goldman Sachs executive, and any doubt about his allegiance to his former corporation should be shattered when you consider that billions of dollars of his $185 billion bailout to A.I.G. wound up in the hands of Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs was actually the second biggest campaign contributor to Obama at $994,795, with CitiGroup not falling far behind with $701,290. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co, which according Bloomberg is the biggest asset of Goldman Sachs, donated $695,132.

So now we have the circumstances that led to Geithner being picked for the Treasury in Obama's administration, thus setting the stage for the Obama bailouts that have led to the greatest robbery in American history by a consortium of big businesses - both national and international - by an apparent money laundering device - American International Group. Next we'll cover the role of AIG and Goldman Sachs in the U.S. government in our further attempt to pull back the curtain.