As the government borrows more money (with a $104 billion record bond auction scheduled for next week) the Treasury Department has asked Justice to weigh in on how much oversight its inspector general can exercise. Jake Tapper at Political Punch has been following the controversy.
Officials of the Treasury Department admitted late Thursday that they have asked the Justice Department to weigh in on how much power they have over the Special Inspector General for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as SIGTARP. The push for a legal ruling on SIGTARP’s independence came after Special Inspector General Neil Barofksy had asked Treasury Department officials to hand over documents regarding a TARP recipient, a request that was denied.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in a letter to Secretary Tim Geithner earlier this week, said that he understood the denial to have been based on “a specious claim of attorney-client privilege.”
The entire issue of oversight has been emphasized by a Chicago Tribune story reporting that two other inspectors generals have recently been shown the door. In addition to Barofsky at Treasury, Gerald Walpin at Americorps and Judith Gwynne at the International Trade Commission are alleged by a senior Republican to be in trouble for asserting their independence.
The dispute comes as Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is looking into the abrupt firings within the last week of two other inspectors generals one of whom was fired by the White House and the other by the chair of the International Trade Commission. Both inspectors general had investigated sensitive subjects at the time of their firings. …
Walpin had led an investigation of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, Calif., a former NBA player and Obama supporter. Johnson started a nonprofit education program that Walpin’s office alleged had misused federal funds. In a letter sent late Wednesday to the White House, Grassley charged that a White House lawyer who delivered the news to Walpin and who was summoned to the senator’s office, “refused to answer several direct questions” about the dismissal. …
Separately this week, the International Trade Commission told its acting inspector general, who is not subject to White House authority, that her contract would not be renewed. Grassley had become concerned about her independence because of a report earlier in the year that an agency employee forcibly took documents from the acting inspector general.
The White House, for its part, called the dismissal of the Americorps Inspector General “an act of political courage”. However that may be, common sense dictates that the astronomical sums of money now at the disposal of government be watched carefully. The immortal words of Spiderman “with great power comes great responsibility” may also apply to those who handle vast amounts of money. And recently the sums have become so mind-bogglingly large that the public mind is numbed to them. William Pesek at Bloomberg, in an editorial commenting on news stories that two men traveling with $134 billion in US bonds in suitcases were being questioned by Italian customs officials, said he hoped the bonds were faked. But he added that in today’s topsy turvey world, he wouldn’t be surprised if they were real.
Think about it: These two guys were carrying the gross domestic product of New Zealand or enough for three Beijing Olympics. If economies were for sale, the men could buy Slovakia and Croatia and have plenty left over for Mongolia or Cambodia. Yes, they could have built vacation homes amidst Genghis Khan’s Gobi Desert or the famed Temples of Angkor. Bernard Madoff who?
These men carrying bonds concealed in the bottom of their luggage also would be the fourth-largest U.S. creditors. It makes you wonder if some of the time Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spends keeping the Chinese and Japanese invested in dollars should be devoted to well-financed men crossing the Italian-Swiss border.
This tale has gotten little attention in markets, perhaps because of the absurdity of our times. The last year has been a decidedly disorienting one for capitalists who once knew up from down, red from black and risk from reward. It almost fits with the surreal nature of today that a couple of travelers have more U.S. debt than Brazil in a suitcase and, well, that’s life. …
Counterfeit $100 bills are one thing; two guys with undeclared bonds including 249 certificates worth $500 million and 10 “Kennedy bonds” of $1 billion each is quite another.
The bust could be a boon for Italy. If the securities are found to be genuine, the smugglers could be fined 40 percent of the total value for attempting to take them out of the country. Not a bad payday for a government grappling with a widening budget deficit and rebuilding the town of L’Aquila, which was destroyed by an earthquake in April.
It would be terrible news for the White House. Other than the U.S., China or Japan, no other nation could theoretically move those amounts. In the absence of clear explanations coming from the Treasury, conspiracy theories are filling the void.
Conspiracy theories. We don’t want that, do we? Maybe we should ask the Inspector General about it.
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46 Comments
1. Alexis:wretchard:
When you talk about such things, I’m reminded of the “Mack the Knife Theme Song” from The Three Penny Opera.
The words are better in the original German.
Jun 18, 2009 - 9:42 pm 2. wretchard:With the administration seeking to put more and more things under government oversight yet seemingly reluctant to subject itself to scrutiny, the question is how much oversight do we have? Not much, I would argue. Oversight is one of those quantities that don’t add up like natural numbers, but behave like checksums. Unless there’s some way of independently evaluating claims, then simply regulating something doesn’t remove the moral hazard. It doesn’t do away with systemic risk. The first task of any information system is to ensure that what is being measured is real. Otherwise you go down, perhaps like Air France 447, from bad information. And in oversight, separate pathways are more important than putting the mechanisms in series. The AP reports on a plan to put more things under government oversight.
And they are wondering who’s looking out for them. Sure. Well how about letting Chris Dodd look out for them? What’s wrong with that kind of oversight? If don’t like that answer the important question is to examine why.
One of the reasons the system of checks and balances works is that mutual suspicion is actually beneficial to the integrity of the system. Ultimately the unease about the firing of the inspectors general is that it undermines the diversity of the portfolio of information sources.
Jun 18, 2009 - 10:03 pm 3. Doug:Apropos bonds, this puts a human face on it.
Obama portrays bondholders as big money guys who will just have to suck it up
Jun 18, 2009 - 10:04 pm 4. Doug:(while he derides them as greedy bastards) when he ignores the law and issues his decrees from on high.
This article illustrates that real people suffer real pain as a direct result of his corrupt, dictatorial rule.
Before the issue heated up with responses from the Whitehouse, etc. Walpin stressed that the important aspect of his being fired, esp considering the way it took place, was the chilling effect it would have on other IG’s.
Jun 18, 2009 - 10:09 pm 5. Doug:Events since then have only magnified the importance of that message many times over.
Gerald Walpin speaks The inside story of the AmeriCorps firing.
Jun 18, 2009 - 10:13 pm 6. Doug:EDITORIAL – A witness to Walpin-gate
The White House excuse for firing an IG falls flat
The belated White House explanation for firing the AmeriCorps inspector general doesn’t ring true.
The White House claims Inspector General Gerald Walpin was effectively away without leave from his Washington office and that he was so “disoriented” and “confused” at a May 20 meeting that it made officials “question his capacity to serve.” An exclusive witness told The Washington Times both charges are baseless.
By all accounts, the May 20 meeting was contentious. It was then that Mr. Walpin chastised the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service for failing to exercise enough oversight over AmeriCorps grants.
Our witness, a staff member, said the board was hostile and rude.
He said the board repeatedly interrupted Mr. Walpin and peppered him with questions on multiple issues.
He fully confirmed Mr. Walpin’s account that the board excused Mr. Walpin for 15 minutes and that when Mr. Walpin returned to find his notepapers out of order, the board refused to give him time to get them straight.
Mr. Walpin says he had been working around the clock and was becoming ill at the meeting. Still, any confusion, the witness said, stemmed at least as much from the board’s hectoring behavior as from Mr. Walpin’s own doing.
Jun 18, 2009 - 10:22 pm 7. Doug:(from link #5)
Together, Brown and the top Corporation brass negotiated a deal. Johnson and St. HOPE would pay back about half of the $850,000 in AmeriCorps grant money it had received, and the suspension against Johnson would be lifted.
Walpin was very unhappy. First of all, he said it was a terrible deal for the U.S. government, because St. HOPE was essentially insolvent and would never pay the money back.
Second, he felt lifting Johnson’s suspension would dilute the effectiveness of future investigations; why should grant recipients worry about their misconduct if any sanctions can be so easily lifted?
In the end, Johnson was not suspended, not debarred, and was probably not going to pay the vast majority of the money back.
Walpin told the Corporation’s board of directors of his opinion. He told other officials. And he sent a report to Congress. “I was bringing Congress in to try to get its assistance in putting a spotlight on this,” he says.
Walpin’s actions undoubtedly angered top officials at the Corporation, and most likely at the White House as well. It would not be long before he was summarily dismissed. But he has no regrets. Whatever happens, he wrote recently, he is proud that he “refused to go along with the U.S. attorney’s office and the Corporation in bowing to the media and political pressure that resulted in this hasty settlement, contrary to the interests of the United States government.”
Jun 18, 2009 - 10:29 pm 8. whiskey:Michelle Obama is in the firing of Walpin up to her ears. Kevin Johnson was particularly close to her, and reputedly Lady McBeth was bigfooting the firing just like Hillary with Travelgate all those years ago.
Obama is even more corrupt than Clinton. Which is saying something.
Jun 18, 2009 - 10:32 pm 9. Lifeofthemind:This from the same people who went ballistic over the Bush administration terminating US Attorneys who are expected to offer their resignations when a new President takes office.
The only two crimes specifically mentioned in the Impeachment clause are Treason and Fraud. The removal of the Inspectors to cover up for thefts is Fraud.
Jun 18, 2009 - 10:32 pm 10. Robohobo:Anyone seen the letter from Janet Contreras? The text can be found at Glenn Beck’s site.
When will someone file suit about TARP being un-Constitutional?
When will The Won release his school records?
When will he let us see his long form birth certificate?
When will the be a Special Prosecutor to investigate possible wrong doing on the part of The Won?
I am not holding my breath.
As the title of the post says, it seems that anything goes in DC these days.
Jun 18, 2009 - 10:48 pm 11. bob:Tip of the iceberg.
Jun 18, 2009 - 11:10 pm 12. buddy larsen:Financial Times is reporting the 134 bbl in US Treasury bonds are Mafia forgeries en route to Venezuela to be not redeemed but safely locked in a bank vault as collateral used to open lines of credit at the Venezuelan central bank.
Back story, the deepcapture dot com story of the global financial meltdown of last Autumn mentions the Genovese family (as well as the ‘russian mafia’) as prominenty involved in the the naked shorting that is now apparently being quietly cleaned up with taxpayer dollars at the DTCC (see the deepcapture story on same).
Middle story, it so happens that very recently the Genoveses and insiders at the Venezuelan central bank were caught running in all likihood a BIG laundering operation with the side benefit of a major attack on the Dollar.
Front story, now just a little while later at the Italian/Swiss border two mules get busted with $134,000,000,000 in about 250 pre-1982 paper bearer bonds in a suitcase.
How likely is THAT on its face um, value?
Looks to me like somebody from last month’s bust talked, and someone on the dirty end of the laundry line was told to deliver them bonds to the authorities or else ’something’ would happen that the narcotrafficantes/enemy agents/forgers/bolivarian hugo communists/russian mafia-kgb/genoveses -sicilian- mafia/ etcetera, wouldn’t like.
Can’t imagine what that would be. Oh yes i can. But anyway.
There’s so many “why else woulds” here but glaring is the fact that the two mules (Japanese, from our ally Japan, like the 9/11 Saudis from our ally Saudi Arabia, hmmm….) have apparently been released (watch, it’ll be a ‘error by a local police chief’) and their whereabouts are currently not known to the few reporters on this story –so says the FT article which is fast getting old.
No need to mention the timing of other events, but the rather savage undergraound financial attack that has been underway in spades since last summer on first the US banking system and now on the Dollar itself, has been really hot lately with BRIC summit in the Urals turning into an anti-dollar plenary session, the wild thing going on in an Iranian election that the Achmadinejad faction itself called into being, the NoKo brinkmanship (really hot now, USN tailing the NoKo ‘hot delivery’ freighter, China warning not to act, NoKo same, threatening nuclear war), all happening in the tipping point area of Dollar confidence brought on by the USA gov’t’s four-month escalating no-limits tsunami of fiat money creation in the background and in the foreground three straight ‘record’ sized Treasury bond auctions (well two so far and the new record 104 bbl in twos & sevens [thank goodness it’s the short end, where foreign demand is still stronger than the better-indicator-of-confidence long end) slated for next week (scroll down to see news on the bust, and far scarier news of a Vietnamese gov’t bond auction failure).
Jun 18, 2009 - 11:13 pm 13. Gary Rosen:Somebody explain to me how this is different from Nixon firing Cox and Ruckelshaus – the infamous Saturday Night Massacre.
Jun 18, 2009 - 11:30 pm 14. buddy larsen:A FARC, Chavez, & Genovese search.
Jun 18, 2009 - 11:41 pm 15. bob:Somebody explain to me where you get $134 billion worth of US bonds for the suitcase. I want some too. Heck I’d settle out for one of those Kennedy bonds, which I didn’t know existed until just now. Pay off my line credit, first thing. And get that place up in Canada by the lake I love.
Jun 18, 2009 - 11:51 pm 16. bob:Can you print ‘em at home on the computer?
Jun 18, 2009 - 11:52 pm 17. bob:Anything Doesn’t Go–
-/
Fakaroos, says Unca Sam. But can we believe Unca, these days?
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:06 am 18. Doug:Doubters will be shown black and white copies only, Bob.
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:10 am 19. bob:The originals are sequestered with The One’s college transcripts.
I don’t think he’s got any college transcripts. I don’t think he went to college. He doesn’t know to wipe fly guts off the palm of his own hand. I don’t believe nothing about him, anymore.
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:16 am 20. bob:Try as I might, I just can’t think of him as a mana-personality, in Jung’s terms, somebody charged with the magic of an imposing social mask.
I think of him as an Obamamanabanana personality, a dangerous fakaroo, a true threat to our country and wellbeing, whom I hope to see in jail some day, but not personally.
#13–It occured on a different day of the week, that’s how.
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:36 am 21. buddy larsen:bob, good gnus, your bond is at hand –that is if you got a politics bank (rather than a profits bank), why you just join up the party and get somebody at the bank to work with you. then you just take in any old piece of paper, say a page outta that sears catalogue out back, and they’ll agree it’s a bond. They put it in the safe and lend you cash money. Then you pay off your notes with that cash money. nobody knows no better, see, cuz nobody’s gonna redeem the page outta the sears cataloge, oops i mean the bond. and that my friend is the great thing about government/private hybrids like freddie mac and barney’s favorite, fanny.
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:39 am 22. Doug:Who is Barney’s favorite fanny?
Jun 19, 2009 - 1:05 am 23. buddy larsen:Anybody from his home state of Myasshastwozits.
Jun 19, 2009 - 1:13 am 24. hdgreene:With the administration seeking to put more and more things under government oversight yet seemingly reluctant to subject itself to scrutiny, the question is how much oversight do we have?
Well, you know how the left keeps redefining words? Well, Oversight now means Overlook, and with all the overlooking going on, especially in the Press, I would have to say we are getting all the oversight we deserve. Because when you are up so high and overlooking what is close to you, it is because you are looking out and Overseeing every one else. So it is all this overseeing that requires all this overlooking — I mean oversight. Ah, the voters will understand. Paul Krugman will explain it to them.
Jun 19, 2009 - 4:43 am 25. RWE:Sen Grassely was on TV a couple of days ago pointing out that he and Sen Obama were co-sponsors of a bill that required a minimum 30 day period to fire an IG.
IG Walpin was fired with one hour’s notice.
And yes, as LifeofMind points out the BIG controversies of the Bush Admin were firing a few Clinton Era Feds because of their performance, as well as the Scooter Libby prosecution. Well, Prince Obamachivelli has done 1000 times worse with the Walpin firings, while meanwhile his replacement in the Senate managed to do 1000 times worse than Scooter when it comes to lying in a testimony.
And the night is young, folks. Stay tuned. But not to NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN, where the fix is in.
Jun 19, 2009 - 6:11 am 26. joe buzz:Team 44 fires someone for doing their job and breaks a law that they helped craft in doing so. Then calls the action “an act of political courage”!
Jun 19, 2009 - 6:31 am 27. Pseudo-Polymath » Blog Archive » Friday Highlights:We are running out of room in the “you cant make this stuff up” folder. Their hubris is much worse than I had anticipated.
I read on a legal blog that Walpin was also working a case in New York that involved much larger sums of $ than the St. Hope fraud.
Cue the spooky intro to Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused.
[...] Who needs oversight when they’re “smart”. [...]
Jun 19, 2009 - 7:18 am 28. Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e72v5:[...] Who needs oversight when they’re “smart”. [...]
Jun 19, 2009 - 7:19 am 29. tomw:9. LOTM: The only two crimes specifically mentioned in the Impeachment clause are Treason and Fraud. The removal of the Inspectors to cover up for thefts is Fraud.
Remember, conspiracy to commit a crime is a felony in and of itself. Ask Nixon and … crap. I can’t remember his name – Libby? Who is in prison for forgetting whether he talked to or about Valerie Plame.
Jun 19, 2009 - 8:10 am 30. Doug:Walpin is correct, I’m sorry to say, in that his dismissal will send a chill through the IG corps. No one will ring the bell or is it bell the cat?
The law written by Congress was blatantly ignored. Should they not step up to the plate and correct the situation?
tom
Conservatives Launch Full Court Press On IG Firing
But the news out of Sacramento today may have a bigger ultimate effect in stoking the story. The Acting US Attorney there, Lawrence Brown, confirmed to the Sacramento Bee that the FBI is probing obstruction of justice allegations made by a former executive of St. HOPE, the local non-profit, formerly led by Johnson, that Walpin had been looking into.
Rick Maya, who officially quit last week as St. HOPE’s executive director, claimed in a resignation letter written in April that a member of the St. HOPE’s board deleted Johnson’s emails during Walpin’s investigation into the misuse of funds at the non-profit.
Brown’s office now says it has asked the FBI to look into that allegation.
And even Brown’s own role in the saga is now being called into question. The Bee separately reports that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the ranking Republican on the House Oversight committee, today released a statement asking Brown to explain the legal basis for the complaint he filed in April, against Walpin, to a federal oversight body for inspectors general. Brown’s complaint — which came after the US Attorney’s office had declined to bring charges against Johnson — accused Walpin of withholding key information from his findings, and of acting “as the investigator, advocate, judge, jury and town crier” in the case. The complaint was cited by the White House as having contributed to its decision fire Walpin.
Issa wrote:
“The allegations that form the basis for your complaint seem very ordinary, which makes the fact that you pursued sanctions against Mr. Walpin seem extraordinary by contrast. This begs certain questions about the reasons the complaint was filed.”
Like we’ve said, this one isn’t going away any time soon.
Jun 19, 2009 - 8:20 am 31. Paul Milenkovic:People are questioning Mr. Obama’s motives. How about questioning the narrative about his smarts?
So the Prez’s henchmen put the squeeze on some dude “We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way. You have an hour to resign or you will be humiliated with being fired.” So the dude thinks, “Oh no, I have a wife and four kids in college, I had better resign and preserve my reputation so I can another job.” Not!
The dude is 77 years old for crying out loud. You fire a crusading geezer, and then you slander him for being a senile geezer, and you will get crusading geezerdom down your throat.
What are these people thinking? Maybe they have enough cover from the MSM to think they can do this. This kind of thing doesn’t even work in Illinois these days.
Jun 19, 2009 - 8:32 am 32. buddy larsen:IMHO, the admin isn’t being imperious here –it’s desperately trying to get the IG corp under control before the individual states –already organizing a demand for an open investigation of AIG –get behind the stonewall which some people had hoped would protect the trail of the entire financial crisis. The buildup of Credit default Swaps at AIG was Machine Gun Kelly’s machine gun, and those notorious AIG bonuses are going to get an airing if the states themselves have to force it.
Jun 19, 2009 - 9:02 am 33. joe buzz:imperious…… thats a right fancy word for a Texan to use.
Jun 19, 2009 - 10:15 am 34. Roderick Reilly:The swarm of IG firings and related irregularities (repeated accounts of trying to water down IG oversite of TARP and stimulus money, for instance) are either symptoms of substantial corruption, or are rumors and distortions being orchestrated by a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Since the American “right-wing” can’t find its own dick with both hands and a flashlight these days, it ain’t orchestration. What is actually happening are visible symptoms of what is likely to beoome the vastest example of political corruption in Amrican history.
What some are calling “socialism” is actually the use of increased government power to loot the American economic system on a perpetual basis as never before. It’s the beginning of kleptocratic socialism, or “social kleptocracy,” take your pick. Soon enough, the boards of America’s major corporations, and not just TARP recipients, will likely be stuffed with friends and relatives of Democrats, activists, and union bosses as never before.
Jun 19, 2009 - 11:16 am 35. DW:I’m getting a little nervous about the apparent lack of oversight in the “porkulous” bill, especially with the firing of the IG examining the Americorps records. At the risk of sounding like a pre-1960’s Alabaman, I fear we are in for Stealth Reparations in a big way. I think this is the ignored 800 lb gorilla in the room.
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:01 pm 36. maineman:I think DW’s got it right about why we’re being looted. It’s payback time. And the reparative demands are apparently global.
In the warped mind of the leftist, our success makes us responsible for everyone else’s failure.
Jun 19, 2009 - 12:25 pm 37. veracious:Sincere thanks buddy, for your condensed, layered financial overviews. I do not have time to read that material much.
Thanks Doug, for the Walpin accounts.
Thanks Wr, for your magical writing fingers.
Jun 19, 2009 - 1:13 pm 38. buddy larsen:buzz/33; thankee kindly. next i’m gonna figger out whut it means.
veracious/37; thanks, my pleasure, glad you find it useful!
35/36; related?
It’s being pushed by “Combat Fighter Pilot Tom” Harkin, who must’ve not heard of the Civil War, which in a USA with one tenth of today’s population cost 700,000 KIA, a loss which today would be seven million (roughly the entire population of today’s Virginia or Massachusetts) of the nation’s young men.
Then there’s this very large investment in social welfare, which since LBJ’s Great Society has been the record of a society trying hard to do right (note the forty years of very large social programs and the near-vertical progressivity of the tax tables which have paid for them).
Harkin, and his sort, are IMHO a condescending and self-consciously patronizing insult to every American of every race.
Jun 19, 2009 - 1:29 pm 39. Herb:This string is why I read the BC.
I saw the story on Drudge about the 134 Billion in bonds. Just blew past it. Buddy put it in perspective. Well the gummint says they’re fakes. That’s gonna put a dent in the national debt.
Jun 19, 2009 - 3:15 pm 40. Darren:Not a big dent, $134 billion is less than 2% of the national debt.
Plus, the reporters got it wrong, though only by three orders of magnitude, which I suppose is close enough under current journalistic standards. It was $100 million, not billion, in fakes. It is a shame that such an egregious error, even if deliberate, is unable to pop eyebrows anymore. After all, the Treasury plans to float $107 billion in T-bills next week alone. More people are going to have to learn exponential notation if this is our long-term monetary policy.
If we ever get to the hyperinflation that seems to be coming, I want to buy my coffee with a $10 million dollar bill with Barack Obama’s picture on it, and get a $5 million bill for change with Tim Geither on that. We put Washington and Hamilton on our currency to memorialize their contributions, should our currency be debased it’s only right that we memorialize the architects of that as well. We need to make them famous.
I feel a Facebook group coming on.
Jun 19, 2009 - 5:10 pm 41. buddy larsen:The new dollar coins look –and feel, even –like chocolate patties with gold foil wrap. They could hardly look any cheaper or be any less serious. Almost no relief indent, and, i guess to make sure we ‘get it’ they made ‘em gold colored. As in, “we want you to think of the dollar as gaudy dishonest junk”. Or maybe the design team just felt that way and it came out as truth will. Whovever it is that guided this project, i’d give long odds is from among the ‘level playing field’ people.
Jun 19, 2009 - 5:51 pm 42. Doug:Thank you veracious for your unimpeachable veracity.
—
The ‘Domino Theory’ in the IG Scandal
The firing of an inspector general starts a probe that could topple the Democrats’ agenda and seriously damage the president’s credibility.
In background discussions Thursday, several GOP strategists spoke of the contrast between Democrats’ effort to impose new government “reforms” while, at the same time, the Obama administration appears to be muzzling inspectors generals, who are tasked with providing independent oversight to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in federal agencies.
Jun 19, 2009 - 6:46 pm 43. Marcus Aurelius:Hmmm, it is beginning to sound as if selling US Debt will now require the seller giving up some value for a risk premium. I wonder if this event will ever be the subject of a Locked Up Abroad episode.
Jun 19, 2009 - 7:16 pm 44. Karen Yvonne:Buddy @12: Financial Times is reporting the 134 bbl in US Treasury bonds are Mafia forgeries en route to Venezuela to be not redeemed but safely locked in a bank vault as collateral used to open lines of credit at the Venezuelan central bank.
Then there’s this report from the Tulsa World a couple days ago:
Rigs go idle as Venezuela delays payments -
The number of Helmerich & Payne rigs still working in Venezuela is down to three and could zero-out by autumn, officials with the Tulsa-based drilling company confirmed Wednesday. Helmerich & Payne Inc. has been allowing rig contracts to expire gradually as Venezuela’s state-run oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, gets behind in payments for services. Eight of the 11 rigs in Venezuela are now idle, up from five on April 30. PDVSA has made “limited progress” in making payments, but the accounts are still more than $100 million behind, Helmerich & Payne stated in a presentation to investors Wednesday. ConocoPillips and some other companies have ceased operations in Venezuela over financial disputes in recent years, but Helmerich & Payne “will continue with previously stated approach in trying to work through issues,” said the online investors presentation.
Maybe the mysterious bonds suitcase is just an uncomplicated case of Hugo trying to get some bills paid, one way or another.
Jun 19, 2009 - 10:25 pm 45. Doug:How Republicans can crack the AmeriCorps scandal
Jun 20, 2009 - 4:48 am 46. Steynian 366 « Free Canuckistan!:[...] AS THE GOVERNMENT borrows more money (with a $104 billion record bond auction scheduled for next week) the Treasury [...]
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