In Wake Of GM Ouster, Unions Demand Obama Fire Bank Of America CEO

[babylonsister]

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/labor/in-wake-of-gm-ouster-unions-demand-obama-fire-bank-of-america-ceo/

In Wake Of GM Ouster, Unions Demand Obama Fire Bank Of America CEO

The major unions are grabbing on to the ouster of General Motors chief Rick Wagoner to launch a campaign to pressure the Obama administration to engineer a similar axing of Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis.

The game plan: To capitalize on the odd disparity in treatment of the two industries to intensify populist rage at major corporations. The idea is to make the political environment much tougher for wavering Senators who might want to side with corporations against labor on the Employee Free Choice Act — and, tacitly, to keep up public pressure on the White House to aggressively side with workers in the fight.

Later this morning, Change to Win and SEIU — headed by Andy Stern — will publicly call for Obama to fire Lewis in an email to its membership:

I have a story for you.

Two CEOs lead two large public companies that start sinking, putting thousands out of work and toppling the American economy. Both CEOs accepted billions in taxpayer dollars to sustain their companies, but both failed to stop their companies’ downward spirals.

One CEO — GM’s Rick Wagoner — got his pink slip from President Obama this morning. The other — Bank of America’s Ken Lewis — accepted bailout funds while continuing to fleece consumers and taxpayers.

It’s time for the Obama Administration to show the door to CEO Ken Lewis in order for real reform to take hold at Bank of America.

The unions think the firing of Wagoner, and the growing sense that Bank of America has been given a pass, have given them an opening to intensify efforts to shift the political environment their way and make it politically toxic for Senators to side with Wall Street corporations. Says one labor official: “The message to Senators is, `Are you with us, or are you with them?’”

[Mari333]

1. The moneyed interests that run the WH and politicians wont allow that

cant go after their own, you know.

[babylonsister]

3. The squeaky wheel occasionally gets the grease. nt

[Mari333]

8. yeah, like if we were in France

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/31/france.hostages.caterpillar.workers/

boy that would get their attention. :)

[JDPriestly]

4. So, Obama knows voters from donors. And voters count a lot more than donors.

[Hubert Flottz]

2. Great Idea!

I like it!

[Jennicut]

5. BOA's shareholders want him gone too

The Finger family, who are long-time shareholders, has called for Lewis to be replaced as chairman. The family includes Jerry Finger, who founded Charter Bancshares, which was acquired by Bank of America predecessor NationsBank in 1996.

And two of the three largest U.S. pension funds, California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers Retirement System, are plaintiffs in an investor lawsuit against the bank over its Merrill acquisition.

Lewis ousted former Merrill CEO John Thain as head of Bank of America's investment banking and wealth management on Jan. 22 in a bid to ease lingering investor concerns about the acquisition.

Yet as Bank of America's annual meeting on April 29 draws closer, investor calls for Lewis to step down may grow louder.

"The (Obama) administration has now flexed its muscles," said Darren Robbins, partner at law firm Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins in San Diego, which filed a class action against Bank of America on behalf of an institutional investor.

"Lewis is under excruciating pressure," he added.
http://www.forexyard.com/reuters/popup_reuters.php?action=2009-03-30T190423Z_01_N30357227_RTRIDST_0_BANKOFAMERICA-LEWIS-ANALYSIS

[sufrommich]

6. I'm not sure many understand the groundswell of bitterness

at the hypocritical attitude in Washington between treatment of the banking class and the working class.It's palpable here in the Detroit area, either Obama does some serious regulating of our financial system or I fear we will lose another generation of voters who will view both parties as rotten to the core.

[liberalhistorian]

12. Not only that, but it's a vicious stab in the back

to those who worked very hard for his election, union members and their families and friends, support without which he likely wouldn't be in the White House now. Digusting.

[global1]

7. I'm Beginning To Think That The Firing Of Wagoner By Obama Was A Ploy.....

to get just this sort of a debate going. Now it appears that there will be a groundswell of outcry's to treat the financial community the same way they are treating the auto industry/manufacturing/labor community. This groundswell by the people/voters will put pressure on Congress and be more effective than anything Obama can do to get Congress to move. Obama will be able to say to Congress - hey guys I feel your pain (in the pocketbook) but this is what the people want - and they are the ones that will re-elect you - OR NOT!!!!! So we're just going to have to put clamps on the financial community and re-regulate. Yeah - they'll be pissed. You might not get those large campaign contributions from them you've gotten in the past. But if you have courage to do this - maybe - just maybe - the people might re-elect you. Now get off your dead asses and do something.

[tonysam]

14. That Would Be Nice if True,

but I don't think Obama is doing that.

[kirby]

9. There is a difference here...

Bank of America did not want any TARP money. Paulson called all the bank CEOs into his Treasury office last year and told them all they would take the money. When some banks said they did not need the money, Paulson said that he did not want it to appear that only 'bad banks' were taking the TARP funds because that could cause a run on those banks.

[harun]

11. I have a really hard time believing that. I know that was what was

reported but I just can't buy it.

I can't see how they have any authority to actually make a bank take funds. Also nothing is stopping a bank from saying "Thanks for the funds, we will repay them the same day".

[blue_onyx]

16. Where are you getting this informatinon?

Links please.

[kirby]

20. Frontline / 60 minutes interviews

It was in both the PBS Frontline show about the financial meltdown. And I heard Ken Lewis mention it during a 60 minutes interview last year.

Here is the excerpt from the Frontline transcript.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/etc/script.html

(Sheila Bair is the head of the FDIC)

SHEILA BAIR: It was serious. It was somber. And the government did most of the talking.

JON HILSENRATH: It was made clear to these nine very powerful CEOs when they sat down at the table that this wasn't a negotiation.

NARRATOR: Paulson hoped one bold act would boost the nation's confidence in the banks and get them lending again, a direct infusion of cash.

MARK LANDLER: And then he basically came out and said it: "We want to take a stake in the largest banks in the country."

NARRATOR: Paulson and Bernanke were offering each of the banks tens of billions. The government would become a major stockholder.

MARK LANDLER: And that then set off a pretty lively discussion.

DAVID FABER: Some of them were, like, "I don't want the money." But it was, like, "You're taking the money."

SHEILA BAIR: The government was very assertive. Treasury was very assertive on why the program was there, why they needed to take it with all the conditions.

DAVID FABER: "Here's the plan. Here's what we're doing. Here's what we need you to do. You'll get the money in a few weeks."

NARRATOR: Paulson gave each man a single piece of paper spelling out the conditions.

MARK LANDLER: Before they had to leave town that night, they were told, "Return this document with your signature on it." And all nine of them did so.

NARRATOR: Paulson would spend $125 billion that day. Moral hazard was a thing of the past.

[Romulox]

10. What about the "painful concessions" from BOA workers????

[tonysam]

13. I Like the Idea, But Don't Count on Obama

to do one damned thing in this regard. Look who is advising him.

[Bluenorthwest]

15. If you are a millionaire banking failure

we must honor your contract for that is the foundation of all that is good and holy! If you are a worker, your contract is a selfish thing that must be scrapped at once!
The double standard is making people livid.

[flyarm]

17. or how about all at AIG , that is scamming you and me and the auto workers taxes!!

with a free pass by Obama and company!!

{b]Report: AIG bailout money behind banks' recent profitability

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/03/the-financial-blog-zero-hedge-has-posted-an-exclusivethat-claims-that-according-to-an-insiders-account-aig-yes-that-aig-w.html

snip:
The financial blog Zero Hedge has posted an "exclusive" that claims that according to an insider's account, AIG (yes, that AIG) "was responsible for the banks' January and February profitability."


Saying it is "rarely speechless," ZH offered "a moment of silence for the phenomenal scam that continues unabated in the financial markets, and now has the full oversight and blessing of the U.S. government, which in turns keeps on duping U.S. taxpayers into believing everything is good."


ZH says the insider perspective came in an email from "a correlation desk trader." Unless you're a finance whiz (and who is these days?!) you might get lost in the explanation of how AIG supposedly engineered this feat of profitability. But ZH tries to explain the "mumbo jumbo" in "layman's terms":


AIG, knowing it would need to ask for much more capital from the Treasury imminently, decided to throw in the towel, and gifted major bank counter-parties with trades which were egregiously profitable to the banks, and even more egregiously money losing to the U.S. taxpayers, who had to dump more and more cash into AIG, without having the U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner disclose the real extent of this, for lack of a better word, fraudulent scam.


In simple terms think of it as an auto dealer, which knows that U.S. taxpayers will provide for an infinite amount of money to fund its ongoing sales of horrendous vehicles (think Pontiac Azteks): the company decides to sell all the cars currently in contract, to lessors at far below the amortized market value, thereby generating huge profits for these lessors, as these turn around and sell the cars at a major profit, funded exclusively by U.S. taxpayers (readers should feel free to provide more gripping allegories).

....................................................................


(another words folks you were scammed..and your money ripped off by a now empty AIG..that is merely a shell now..and all the money went to the banks after you bought AIG with your tax dollars!!..getting that warm fuzzy feeling now about those raping our treasury????????..oh yu will when all those auto workers are out of work and Unions as you know them are worthless throughout this land!!..Think Reagan and PATCO..and how that effected Unions nationwide!!..and if you are too young to remember Patco..look it up and see how many concessions all unions were then forced to accept.)

we have all been bamboozeled!!..but don't say some weren't trying to warn you.

[flyarm]

18. Oh and don't miss this..this will really make you happy..i am sure!!

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=...

If Oppenheimer Gets Handout, Blame Canada: Susan Antilla


Commentary by Susan Antilla
March 30 (Bloomberg) -- With word out that the U.S. is offering generous new welfare benefits, it was only a matter of time before those opportunistic foreigners who provided Lou Dobbs with his shtick started crossing the border with their hands out.

This time, the benefits are bailout goodies for banks and other financial institutions, and the grovelers are management of a Canadian brokerage firm.

Oppenheimer Holdings Inc., based in Toronto, said in several regulatory filings this month that it wants to reincorporate in Delaware and perhaps seek federal rescue money.

Oppenheimer “is exploring becoming a U.S. corporation and a U.S. bank holding company in order to help resolve the ARS problem for our clients,” the company said in its annual letter to shareholders released last week. (Toronto’s Oppenheimer & Co. isn’t related to OppenheimerFunds Inc., a unit of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.)

The “ARS problem,” of course, is the nasty pickle Oppenheimer has gotten itself into with customers who hold $929.6 million in auction-rate securities, the ill-fated investments that flat-lined in February 2008. The auction-rate meltdown left investors at Oppenheimer and many of its Wall Street brethren unable to liquidate positions that had been marketed as, well, pretty darned liquid, to customers who often had no clue about the product’s risks.

Foul Call

Regulators and the public cried foul, and firms including Citigroup, Merrill Lynch & Co. and UBS AG ponied up the money to make customers whole after getting strong-armed by state regulators and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

[acmavm]

23. Most of the original bailout money went outside the country anyway.

We've become the welfare agency for the world's wealthiest criminal class.

[acmavm]

21. I was against the bailout from day one. I wasn't scammed. But I

sure am amongst the ripped off. And so are my kids. And so are their kids. And their kids kids, etc.

[babylonsister]

24. You are a laugh.

I'm so sad you're so angry though. Let this ease into your meager thought process: President McCain.

So are you determined to be miserable for 8 years?

[flyarm]

25. McCain?..I am discussing President Obama..I know another deflection , if I was you I wouldn't want

to discuss President Obama either..that's right throw McCain out there as a straw man..that always seems to be the tactic ..a similar tactic to the past 8 years..I recognise it well.

A perfect example of how you have become what you once despised..

How do your neighbors, who have their homes in forclosure feel about the .. 5.. billion bucks of their tax dollars going to ACORN, which they got from President Obama!

How do they feel about the Auto industry being brought down to its knees...the same Auto Industry Obama was laughing at on 60 Minutes.. helped along by the Son of the Man who worked with the Ford Foundation??????? With direct ties to Obama's mother????????
Pretty sick brand of "GALLOWS HUMOR" for those union workers with GM..wouldn't you say? Something tells me those people in Detriot don't find any of this amusing!

It might behoove you to tear yourself away from your computer screen, that you have obviously been assigned to and step out into the fresh air and see how the people on the outside really feel...I assure you, they are not talking about John Mccain..he is the least of their worries.


Now that Obama is fucking the Unions and hasn't hardly kept one promise..I have de' ja' vue of Jimmy Carter!

TIMOTHY GEITHNER

Biography

Early life and education
Geithner was born in Brooklyn, New York.<2> He spent most of his childhood living outside the United States, including present-day Zimbabwe, Zambia, India and Thailand, where he completed high school at International School Bangkok.<3> He then attended Dartmouth College, graduating with a B.A. in government and Asian studies in 1983.<4> He earned an M.A. in international economics and East Asian studies from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in 1985.<4><5> He has studied Chinese<4> and Japanese.<6>

Geithner's paternal grandfather, Paul Herman Geithner (1902–1972), emigrated with his parents from the German town of Zeulenroda to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1908.<7> His father, Peter F. Geithner, is the director of the Asia program at the Ford Foundation in New York. During the early 1980s, Peter Geithner oversaw the Ford Foundation's microfinance programs in Indonesia being developed by S. Ann Dunham-Soetoro, President Barack Obama's mother, and they met in person at least once.<8> Timothy Geithner's mother, Deborah Moore Geithner, is a pianist and piano teacher in Larchmont, New York where his parents currently reside. Geithner's maternal grandfather, Charles F. Moore, was an adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and served as a vice president of Ford Motor Company.

Early career

After completing his studies, Geithner worked for Kissinger and Associates in Washington, D.C., for three years and then joined the International Affairs division of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1988. He went on to serve as an attaché at the US Embassy in Tokyo. He was deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy (1995–1996), senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs (1996-1997), assistant secretary for international affairs (1997–1998).<5>

He was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998–2001) under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.<5> Summers was his mentor,<10><11> but other sources call him a Rubin protégé.<11><12><13>

In 2002 he left the Treasury to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics department.<14> He was director of the Policy Development and Review Department (2001-2003) at the International Monetary Fund.<5>
In October 2003, he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.<15> His salary in 2007 was $398,200.<16> Once at the New York Fed, he became Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee component. In 2006, he also became a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty.<17

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John McCain is not the current Occupant of our White House. Obama is.

Oh and P.S. ..last night one of the UAW leaders, said the UAW members were out in the parking lot scraping their Obama stickers off their cars..

[babylonsister]

26. Whaaa! Feel better?

Yea, everyone hates Obama, just like you. :eyes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5363238

The number of Americans who believe that the nation is headed in the right direction has roughly tripled since Barack Obama's election...

[newtothegame]

19. Interested to see what...

the Obama apologists that also claim to be union-sympathizers will say about this one.

:popcorn:

[amborin]

22. the car czars are investment bankers...what does that say?