Smirking Chimp | March 14, 2010
By Mike Whitney
You gotta see this! If this doesn't convince you that the Timothy Geithner knew about the securities shenanigans that were going on at Lehman, than I don't know what will.
Keep in mind, that Geithner ran Lehman through 3 "stress tests" prior to bankruptcy; all of which Lehman failed, and yet, nothing was done. Anton R. Valukas--the examiner who wrote the 2,200 page investigative-report which was released on Thursday-- has provided plenty of information detailing Lehman's “materially misleading” accounting and “actionable balance sheet manipulation.”
In other words, they cooked the books.
Eves Smith at Naked Capitalism sums up what was going on like this:
"Quite a few observers... have been stunned and frustrated at the refusal to investigate what was almost certain accounting fraud at Lehman. ....The unraveling isn’t merely implicating Fuld (Lehman CEO) and his recent succession of CFOs, or its accounting firm, Ernst & Young, as might be expected. It also emerges that the NY Fed, and thus Timothy Geithner, were at a minimum massively derelict in the performance of their duties, and may well be culpable in aiding and abetting Lehman in accounting fraud and Sarbox violations....
We need to demand an immediate release of the e-mails, phone records, and meeting notes from the NY Fed and key Lehman principals regarding the NY Fed’s review of Lehman’s solvency. If, as things appear now, Lehman was allowed by the Fed’s inaction to remain in business, when the Fed should have insisted on a wind-down ..... at a minimum, the NY Fed helped perpetuate a fraud on investors and counterparties.
This pattern further suggests the Fed, which by its charter is tasked to promote the safety and soundness of the banking system, instead, via its collusion with Lehman management, operated to protect particular actors to the detriment of the public at large.
And most important, it says that the NY Fed, and likely Geithner himself, undermined, perhaps even violated, laws designed to protect investors and markets. If so, he is not fit to be Treasury secretary or hold any office related to financial supervision and should resign immediately. (Naked Capitalism)
Repeat: "Accounting fraud", "collusion", "aiding and abetting." These are serious charges by a usually restrained blogger.
And this is from Zero Hedge:
"Lehman has become merely the latest example of all that is broken with today's crony capitalist system.... The evident conclusion is that the core driver of modern capitalist society is fraud at its very core, and nothing short of a massive revolutionary overhaul of the political system, which is the number one defender .. of very lucrative bribes and kickbacks originating from the same rotten Wall Street that (is) nothing but a sham filled with toxic assets" Zero Hedge
This story isn't going away. Someone has to go to jail. It's clear that Geithner acted as the "chief facilitator" of industrial scale securities flim-flam which led directly to the Great Crash of '08. He needs to be held accountable for his actions.
