Search Results for: jack lew

By Pam Martens: February 26, 2013  Today, an august body of the United States Senate will vote on President Obama’s nomination of Jack Lew to be the next Treasury Secretary, a post that oversees the paying of the country’s bills, collection of taxes, printing of the country’s currency, issuing the Nation’s debt securities and maintaining the stability of the financial system. The full Senate will likely vote in a matter of days thereafter.  And yet, the man who will be voted on by the Senate Finance Committee today will not give straight answers to the most basic of questions about $1.4 million in loans from his previous employer, New York University, and the assumption and modification of those loans by his next employer, the bailed out banking institution, Citigroup.  A mortgage loan is typically a straightforward matter that doesn’t require multiple rounds of written questions. But in Lew’s case, Senator … Continue reading →

 By Pam Martens: February 25, 2013  Have you ever landed a new job with a private employer who bought you a $1.3 million house and paid you a bigger salary than your boss. Did you ever have an employment contract that called for awarding you a bonus of $940,000 if you could somehow advance yourself from shepherding an insolvent bank to a “full time high level position with the U.S. government or regulatory body.” How about getting a deal where your company will leverage your investment in a Cayman Islands fund by chipping in $2 for every $1 you put in and let you keep all the winnings. Did you ever refinance a mortgage loan, take out $352,195 in new cash and not have to pay a legally mandated mortgage recording tax?    I don’t know of anyone in America who has these kinds of skeletons popping out of their closets … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 22, 2013 You know the President’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, is in trouble when media from the left, right and center of the political spectrum are shredding the mild-mannered, bespectacled numbers cruncher. For good reason, I might add.  Lew will now have more embarrassing details to explain (or not, as has become his custom). We’ve dug out the details of his head-spinning mortgage deals with his two former employers,  New York University and Citigroup. This comes on the heels of the bombshell dropped by Senator Orrin Hatch in the confirmation hearing regarding Lew’s cozy employment agreement with Citigroup that paid him a bonus of $940,000 if he could somehow manage to secure a “full time high level position with the United States Government or a regulatory body.” The insolvent bank had just been bailed out by the taxpayer, making the $940,000 bonus accepted by Lew … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 14, 2013  At last we know how the grease is funneled to that revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. One only gets a $940,000 bonus from Wall Street’s Citigroup if you can land a “full time high level position with the United States Government or a regulatory body.” It can’t be just a part-time job, mind you; and you can’t be rank and file. Citigroup’s dangling carrot will only pay $940,000 if the company can add a “high level” government mover and shaker to their gold-plated Rolodex. This was the bombshell dropped by Senator Orrin Hatch yesterday in Jack Lew’s confirmation hearing for one of the highest offices in the land – Secretary of the U.S. Treasury who will also head the body that makes critical decisions impacting Citigroup – the Financial Stability Oversight Council. (Lew held an executive position with Citigroup at the time of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 11, 2013  Senator Chuck Grassley set off a media uproar on Friday when he reported that President Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, had owned a Citigroup investment housed at a Cayman Islands building that President Obama has previously suggested was a tax scam due to almost 19,000 corporations being registered at that address. Lew had worked as a Deputy Secretary in the State Department for almost two years before he sold the investment in 2010 after returning to government service from Citigroup.  The response from the White House has been that Lew made this disclosure known to the Senate for his confirmation hearing in 2010 and the Senators didn’t raise any issues with it.  We first reported Lew’s investment in the Citigroup Venture Capital International (CVCI) private equity fund on January 14 of this year. In that report, we attached the financial disclosure report that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: January 28, 2013 There has been much ado by media and public interest groups about Jack Lew’s time spent at Citigroup and whether that renders him unfit to be President Obama’s nominee to head the U.S. Treasury Department. Lew sat on Citigroup’s management committee and in his last position at the firm in 2008, he was Chief Operating Officer at Citi Alternative Investments (CAI), the unit that housed a trifecta of toxic speculation, including proprietary trading, hedge funds that were imploding, and the Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) that housed $50 billion in subprime debt – an amount that Citigroup understated in financial reports to the SEC and public by $39 billion. It was the SIVs in Lew’s division that toppled Citigroup into the arms of the U.S. taxpayer. Lew only joined Citigroup in June of 2006. The company had set its course for disaster eight years earlier … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: January 14, 2013 It has been previously reported that President Obama’s Treasury Secretary nominee, Jacob (Jack) Lew, earned millions in salary and bonus from Citigroup in the brief two and one half years he worked there. That should not come as a surprise to anyone.  Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin left his post as Treasury Secretary in 1999 to join Citigroup and was paid $120 million over the next eight years for non-management work. Citigroup is the mega bank the Securities and Exchange Commission charged with lying about its financial condition while Lew worked there in an executive position.  Citigroup went from lying about its finances in 2007 to cumulatively requiring over $2.51 trillion in Federal Reserve loans, TARP capital and Federal asset guarantees to remain afloat during the financial crisis. During Lew’s stint at Citigroup, July 2006 through early 2009, Citigroup lost 85 percent of its … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: January 10, 2013  Jacob (Jack) Lew, currently serving as President Obama’s Chief of Staff, is slated to be nominated by the President this afternoon for one of the most critical posts in the country – Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.  The Treasury department played a central role in the 2008 to 2010 bailout of Wall Street and it would play an equally central role should there be another financial collapse.  Having a deep background in understanding the trail of deregulation that led to tens of trillions of dollars in highly leveraged, off balance sheet derivatives trading over the counter beyond the view of regulators should be the number one priority for a Treasury Secretary.  Understanding how those derivatives ended up threatening insured deposit banks because of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act should be requisite knowledge.  Without that understanding, the post will be held by a man … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: April 29, 2014 Mary Jo White, the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, will appear before the House Financial Services Committee this morning at 10 a.m. to boast about the past year’s accomplishments at the SEC and possibly handle a few queries about the growing public perception that stock markets are rigged.  White’s appearance before a Congressional panel comes at a time when the SEC is undergoing a serious discrediting of its oversight of Wall Street. Earlier this month, James Kidney, an SEC trial attorney who retired at the end of March, unleashed a firestorm of negative attention on morale inside the SEC. In a March 27 retirement speech, Kidney criticized upper management for policing “the broken windows on the street level” while ignoring the “penthouse floors.” Kidney blamed the demoralization at the agency on its revolving door to Wall Street as the best and brightest … Continue reading →