A watchdog group has found that the U.S. Treasury Department allowed big raises for executives at three firms being bailed out during the financial crisis. The special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program published findings that show the Treasury approved 18 requests for paydays around $100,000 -- and even up to $1 million -- for leaders at General Motors, American International Group and Ally Financial, despite rules that limited pay. Together, the three firms received close to $250 billion in bailout money. The Treasury official who approved the raises said the pay wasn't excessive.

Via:

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said Treasury approved all 18 requests it received last year to raise pay for executives at American International Group Inc., General Motors Corp. and Ally Financial Inc. Of those requests, 14 were for $100,000 or more; the largest raise was $1 million.

Treasury also allowed pay packages totaling $5 million or more for nearly a quarter of the executives at those firms, the report says.

Also noted: A $200,000 raise was approved for an executive of Ally’s mortgage-lending subsidiary Residential Capital LLC just weeks before ResCap filed for bankruptcy protection. Ally was GM’s financial arm until it was taken over by the government in the bailout.

“We ... expect Treasury to look out for taxpayers who funded the bailout of these companies by holding the line on excessive pay,” said Christy Romero, the special inspector general for TARP. “Treasury cannot look out for taxpayers’ interests if it continues to rely to a great extent on the pay proposed by companies that have historically pushed back on pay limits.”

The report says Treasury bypassed rules under the 2008 bailout that limited pay. Treasury approved raises that exceeded pay limits and in some cases failed to link compensation to performance, it notes.

As infuriating as this news is on its own, I find it serves to underscore how ridiculously difficult it is just to get our states to raise the minimum wage to a living wage for all of those who aren't corporate CEOs, out here in real America.

Well, you've watched Frontline's investigative report "The Untouchables," here or at PBS's website, or on your local PBS station.

The report cast a sharp glare on the lack of even a single arrest or prosecution of any senior Wall Street banker for the systemic fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis: a crisis from which millions of people around the world are still suffering. What this program particularly demonstrated was that Eric Holder's justice department, in particular the Chief of its Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, never even tried to hold the high-level criminals accountable. It revealed Breuer to be an arrogant twit who insisted the DOJ couldn’t prosecute despite a plethora of evidence of crimes presented in the show.

From Frontline's interview with Breuer:

NARRATOR: FRONTLINE spoke to two former high-level Justice Department prosecutors who served in the Criminal Division under Lanny Breuer. In their opinion, Breuer was overly fearful of losing.

MARTIN SMITH: We spoke to a couple of sources from within the Criminal Division, and they reported that when it came to Wall Street, there were no investigations going on. There were no subpoenas, no document reviews, no wiretaps.

LANNY BREUER: Well, I don’t know who you spoke with because we have looked hard at the very types of matters that you’re talking about.

MARTIN SMITH: These sources said that at the weekly indictment approval meetings that there was no case ever mentioned that was even close to indicting Wall Street for financial crimes.

LANNY BREUER: Well, Martin, if you look at what we and the U.S. attorney community did, I think you have to take a step back. Over the last couple of years, we have convicted Raj Rajaratnam. Now, you’ll say that’s an insider trading case, but it’s clearly going after Wall Street. We—

MARTIN SMITH: But it has nothing to do with the financial crisis, the meltdown, the packaging of bad mortgages that led to the collapse, that led to the recession.

LANNY BREUER: Well, first of all, I think that the financial crisis, Martin, is multi-faceted. And what we’ve had is a multi-pronged, multi-faceted response. And it’s simply a fiction to say that where crimes were committed, we didn’t pursue the cases. And that’s why, where crimes were committed, you have more people in jail today for securities fraud, bank fraud and the like than ever before.

MARTIN SMITH: But no Wall Street executives.

LANNY BREUER: No Wall Street executives.

"More people in jail today for securities fraud, bank fraud and the like than ever before," not true, Mr. Breurer.

In the wake of the savings and loan debacle in the 1980s, special government task forces referred 1,100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail. Among the best-known: Charles H. Keating Jr., of Lincoln Savings and Loan in Arizona, and David Paul, of Centrust Bank in Florida.

Then, the DOJ threatened Frontline that they would take their cookies and go home, never to cooperate with them again, see the tweets below:

Via Twitter.

Next, this ridiculous piece appeared in the Washington Post announcing Breuer’s imminent departure that paints him as some sort of persecuted white knight:

"A former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Breuer came to the Justice Department well versed in white-collar crime. He has been a driving force behind the prosecution of banks involved in rigging the global interest rate known as Libor. His efforts helped produce a $1.5 billion settlement with UBS and led to criminal indictments against two of the bank’s former traders in December."

In all, not a bad day's work for Martin Smith. But no doubt Breuer's replacement will be another balding guy in a suit just like him.

The banking giant HSBC has escaped indictment for laundering billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels and groups linked to al-Qaeda. Despite evidence of wrongdoing, the U.S. Department of Justice has allowed the bank to avoid prosecution and pay a $1.9 billion fine. No top HSBC officials will face charges, either.

Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi, author of "Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History," joins Democracy Now! to discuss how the bankers escaped criminal prosecution for their actions.

"You can do real time in jail in America for all kinds of ridiculous offenses," Taibbi says. "Here we have a bank that laundered $800 million of drug money, and they can’t find a way to put anybody in jail for that. That sends an incredible message, not just to the financial sector but to everybody. It’s an obvious, clear double standard, where one set of people gets to break the rules as much as they want and another set of people can’t break any rules at all without going to jail."

"Now, how did Forbes put it, Matt," asks Amy Goodman. "What’s a bank got to do to get into some real trouble around here?"

"Exactly, exactly," begins Taibbi. "And what’s amazing about that is that’s Forbes saying that. I mean, universally, the reaction, even in—among the financial press, which is normally very bank-friendly and gives all these guys the benefit of the doubt, the reaction is, is "What do you have to do to get a criminal indictment?" What HSBC has now admitted to is, more or less, the worst behavior that a bank can possibly be guilty of. You know, they violated the Trading with the Enemy Act, the Bank Secrecy Act. And we’re talking about massive amounts of money. It was $9 billion that they failed to supervise properly. These crimes were so obvious that apparently the cartels in Mexico specifically designed boxes to put cash in so that they would fit through the windows of HSBC teller windows. So, it was so out in the open, these crimes, and there’s going to be no criminal prosecution whatsoever, which is incredible."

A full transcript of the discussion below the fold.

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Video via CBS Channel 13.

UPDATE: Ho no! Poor a glass of milk for the dessert foods that are no more, because it appears that Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, and the rest of Hostess Brands Inc.’s cupboard full of snack foods could really be leaving supermarket shelves for good. Mediation efforts between the company and the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco, and Grain Millers Union—which were supposed to save the company—failed Tuesday, meaning Hostess will return to bankruptcy court Wednesday to make its case of liquidating and selling off its assets. Roughly 18,000 workers at the Texas-based company will lose their jobs.

Twinkies may yet have an infinite shelf life. Hostess Brands Inc. and one of its largest unions have agreed to go into mediation, so the company will stay in business for the time being. Hostess filed for bankruptcy last Friday, claiming a union strike ruined its operations and announcing plans to lay off all 18,500 of its employees. But a bankruptcy judge on the case said the dueling parties have to go through mediation before Hostess Inc. can sell off its assets. It won’t be a cake walk, but at least you can cancel your $1,000 Ho Ho bid on eBay.

NYT:

Judge Robert D. Drain of the Federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York pushed hard for the two sides to try one last round of talks. The judge expressed worry that neither side had exhausted all efforts to avoid liquidation. He especially urged the bakery union to seek mediation, suggesting that it might face significant legal claims if Hostess is forced to liquidate.

“I’m giving the union, as well as the debtor and their lenders, a chance to work out their issues in private,” Judge Drain said. “If they don’t take it, it’s not that the issues won’t be worked out. They will, but it will be done in public and in an expensive way.”

While publicly Hostess blames the union for their financial woes, it seems the corporate executives were engaged in some "fuzzy math" behind the scenes.

CNN:

Even as it played the numbers game, Hostess had to face chaos in the corner office at the worst possible time. Driscoll, the CEO, departed suddenly and without explanation in March. It may have been that the Teamsters no longer felt it could trust him. In early February, Hostess had asked the bankruptcy judge to approve a sweet new employment deal for Driscoll. Its terms guaranteed him a base annual salary of $1.5 million, plus cash incentives and “long-term incentive” compensation of up to $2 million. If Hostess liquidated or Driscoll were fired without cause, he’d still get severance pay of $1.95 million as long as he honored a noncompete agreement.

When the Teamsters saw the court motion, Ken Hall, the union’s secretary-treasurer and No. 2 man, was irate. So much, he thought, for what he described as Driscoll’s “happy talk” about “shared sacrifice.”
...

Some unsecured creditors had informed the court that last summer — as the company was crumbling — four top Hostess executives received raises of up to 80%. (Driscoll had also received a pay raise back then.) The Teamsters saw this as more management shenanigans. “Looting” is how Hall described it in TV interviews.

In the end, Hostess could still go through bankruptcy, and shutter all the plants. However, the only real question at this point is will they actually get away with blaming the employees for their financial shenanigans while the executives sail away in their golden parachutes?

But whatever happens, just remember that this is all the fault of the E-vil unions and their minions, got it?

Aerial footage from May of 2010 by John Wathen shows the extent of the devastation created by the BP oil spill. H/T Treehugger.

The Department of Justice presented examples of “gross negligence and willful misconduct” on the part of BP leading up to the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The case is set to go to trial in a New Orleans court in early 2013, and the government is trying to demonstrate that most of the blame for the spill—the largest American spill ever—rests with the British company. “The behavior, words, and actions of these BP executives would not be tolerated in a middling size company manufacturing dry goods for sale in a suburban mall,” government lawyers fumed in an August court filing in New Orleans.

In the wake of Hurricane Isaac, the Coast Guard reported on Sunday that teams surveying for pollution found new oil and oiled animals in the vicinity of two inactive oil production facilities near Myrtle Grove. The crews found three juvenile pelicans with oil exposure, one of which was dead. Ten dead nutria were also recovered in the area. The source of the oil has not yet been identified.

Officials have expressed concerns that the hurricane could stir up remnant oil in the bottom of the ocean from the BP oil spill. Up to 1 million barrels of oil are estimated to remain in the Gulf of Mexico. That oil remains because BP has failed to clean it all up in the more than two years since the tragedy.

A Greenpeace research team took samples of tarballs that were discovered on Alabama beaches on September 2nd, including from an area with hundreds of tar balls in the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge.

As JPMorgan announced a $2 billion trading loss, members of Congress called for federal regulators to scrutinize and tighten banking rules and trades. New rules are being drafted as part of the Dodd-Frank bill that prevent federal banks from making investments that might put taxpayers at risk.

“The argument that financial institutions do not need the new rules to help them avoid the irresponsible actions that led to the crisis of 2008 is at least $2 billion harder to make today,” said Democratic Rep. Barney Frank.

After the creation of the Volcker Rule, a regulatory law meant to prevent overly risky trading, JPMorgan Chase sent lobbyists to Washington to argue for loopholes that would allow for trades much like those that led to a $2 billion loss announced by the bank on Friday. Bank chief executive Jamie Dimon and other members of upper management paid regular visits to lawmakers to argue that, while they thought some parts of the rule were useful, others would hurt the bank’s ability to hedge against risk. The result, said Senator Carl Levin, was a “big enough loophole that a Mack truck could drive right through it.”

ACCE, Occupy Bernal and Occupy SF took a bus tour of the homes of two executives of Wells Fargo Bank. The bank has taken $43 billion in taxpayer bailout money. A tax dodger and predatory lender, Wells Fargo Bank has corrupted democracy by quadrupling spending on lobbying since they helped cause the financial crisis. Join us on April 23-24, 2012 as we takeover the Wells Fargo Shareholders meeting.

New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg has come to the defense of publicly shamed Goldman Sachs, and calls the attention given to the scathing resignation letter in the New York Times by a Goldman executive "ridiculous."

On his weekly appearance on WOR Radio Friday, Bloomberg said that he had visited the company to express his support for the Wall Street giant.

Bloomberg says people should keep in mind that most of the company's clients are sophisticated corporations and financial institutions.

That's right, keep in mind that they are the sophisticated and elite 1 percenters, and not 99 percenters like the muppets of New York City.

The mayor, who got his start on Wall Street, says Goldman is "a company that's here to make money. That's what they do."

He says it's his job to support companies that provide a tax base for the city and employ its residents.

I doubt the muppets are shocked to hear Bloomberg publicly admit that his job is to support the 1 percent. I just hope he doesn't sick his "personal army" on them if they happen to ridicule the Wall Street giant. Especially after Goldman lost over $2 billion of its market value since the NYTs hit the news stands yesterday.

A revolution is coming to America.. Not Just America but the World, people are waking up and finally realising how the world works and that their rights as free human beings are slowly being taken away from them..

The 99% are rising up!

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose
sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and
those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the
people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the
Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic
power.

We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest
over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled
here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system
through monopolization. They have profited off of the torture, confinement,and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay andsafer working conditions. They have held students hostage with tens
of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers'healthcare and pay. They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

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