Documents Reveal How Paulson Forced Banks To Take TARP Cash Remember the infamous meeting when then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had the heads of 9 major banks come down to Washington? It was then that he made them the offer they couldn't refuse. Take TARP cash, or else! Now Judicial Watch -- the conservative watchdog organization which was famous for giving the Clinton administration fits -- has uncovered secret documents from that meeting via the Freedom of Information Act. A few of them are really quite stunning. The first 1-pager is Paulson's talking points for the bank. It basically confirms that he put a gun to all their heads. It says they must agree to take their cash, and that if they protested, then each bank's regulator would force them to take it anyway. http://www.businessinsider.com/unco...-paulson-forced-banks-to-take-the-cash-2009-5 The part that surprises us most, or at least amuses us most, is that the agreements to take on billions of dollars in TARP money were just filled out in sloppy handwriting. Here's something interesting on the Goldman Sachs page, though. Unleess they got themselves confused with Citigroup or something like that, it looks as though Goldman was supposed to take $25 billion, but then bargained it down to $10 billion. Either that, or maybe it was a genuine accident. But really, can't you just get a new sheet of paper? We know it was an urgent situation, but sheesh. For now we'll just call it the Goldman Scratch. http://www.businessinsider.com/was-...lly-supposed-to-get-25-billion-in-tarp-2009-5
Maybe that was why no one AIG owed money to for their CDS' had to take any haircut on their payout at all, whereas non-AIG CDS's did.
GS was the only bank that had their amount changed. It makes you wonder if the conspiracies are not dead on