White House

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from a collapsed offshore drilling rig could affect White House plans to extend offshore drilling, press secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged as the oil slick threatened onshore sites from the Louisiana wetlands to the Sarasota beaches and disrupted fishing and energy industries. As oil giant BP mobilized resources to try to stop the leak and to mitigate its damage, President Barack Obama called the spill “potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.” However, some critics charged that the administration’s slow response to the rig accident and Obama’s decision to take part in the humorous proceedings at the White House Correspondents Dinner as the disaster unfolded has been as bad as the Bush administration’s sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans.

Even as the GOP has gotten some harsh words for having its two SEC commissioners side with Goldman in the recent vote to press charges against the squid, Darrell Issa has decided to turn the tables, and is demanding all correspondence between the Syndicate Encouraging Corruption and "White House aides, Democratic Party committee officials, or members of Congress or their aides" Politico reports. The reason - Issa is asserting that Friday’s fraud filing against Goldman Sachs raises “serious questions about the Commission’s independence and impartiality.” On the other hand, letting rampant corruption run amok and unobstructed on Wall Street with or without any form of regulatory framework (as worthless and totally corrupt as Dodd's bill is) does not seem like such fair exchange to us.

Just headlines for now. Headlines will turn to headaches for Goldman longs shortly. And what will really set off the migraine is the just released announcement that the European Commission will back a Tobin Tax on financial institutions. We are fairly confident that this would not be proposed without at least a preliminary nod from their counteparts across the Atlantic. We believe that the slow but certain conversion of the banking sector into a utility industry is now reality. And yes, bonuses in utilities max out at 25% of the base, not 2,500%.

Not that this should surprise anyone at all, but it does seem to sound pretty official now.

Bloomberg: "Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner “was not involved” in decisions by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York when it told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks in 2008, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs set the rumor mills a-grinding with a statement earlier today that may be a preemptive strike against any surprise "uptick" in unemployment. But this would not be the first time the administration made such a leak.

CNNMoney published a story how stimulus spending has created or saved some 650,000 jobs- a figure reported by the White House today. But as I read the story, and the reasons/excuses for its complex claims of job creation/preservation- can someone please stand-up if your job was created by stimulus spending?

DXY Breaks 75, No Statement From White House Over Dollar Coma Forthcoming

Well of course it works... What else did you expect? One million jobs and counting.

Senator Cornyn foolishly thinks McCarthyism has no place in 2009. And here we were, happy recipients of the first one million flagged complaints in less than 24 hours...

Developing story: this means that unemployment will either be allowed to reach its true, "unadjusted" levels in the low teens shortly, or will be kept artificially low for 2-3 months, allowing that to be spun as a green shoot by CNBC. Time will tell.

Developing story: this means that unemployment will either be allowed to reach its true, "unadjusted" levels in the low teens shortly, or will be kept artificially low for 2-3 months, allowing that to be spun as a green shoot by CNBC. Time will tell.

In a story becoming more bizarre by the minute, ABCNews has now picked up on the Perella Weinberg scent with some new twists. According to ABC, White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton claims that the allegations by Tom Lauria, global head of the Financial Restructuring and Insolvency at White & Case are "completely untrue".

Update - please see additional FOIA information at end of post.

Larry Summers, who was not only Tim Geithner's predecessor as the 71st Secretary of the Treasury (from 1999 to 2001), but also the 27th President of Harvard University, and is currently the top White House economic advisor and serves as a director of the National Economic Council, apparently has a fond place in his heart and bank account for his most recent employer, $30 billion rocket scientist infested hedge fund D. E. Shaw (nothing like signing an NDA before conducting interviews).