<nettime> strange days: P2P US Treasury bailout conference call

[t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

A recording of a conference call about the bailout bill held this 
evening (Mon 29 Sept) by the US Treasury Department with members 
of SIFMA, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Ass't, is 
floating around as a torrent file:

     <http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4418763>

Note that the uploader is asking for reliable seeding of the file
-- a natural for nettime if ever there was one. :)

Yves Smith at the "naked capitalism" blog comments:

     Various readers wrote us, and it was confirmed by a detailed
     report on the call at DealBreaker, that the Treasury Department
     held a conference call this evening for analysts on the bailout
     bill. A memo was evidently sent to SIFMA members; others may
     have been contacted by other means. But the report I got from
     one person who was on the call was the the questions came from
     financial services industry members. In other words, this was
     most assuredly not intended to be a call open to the public at
     large. If anyone from the media or other member of the great
     unwashed was listening in, it was by accident.
     
     This is simply scandalous. To have a group of interested
     parties get a privileged briefing by government officials on a
     matter of keen public interest flies in the face of what a
     democracy is supposed to be about. The proper method would
     either be a published FAQ on the Treasury website or a briefing
     with the media included. But why should I be surprised?
     Favoritism has been a staple of the Bush Administration.

His comments, culled from listeners' notes:

     1. The tranching is a mere formality, and the Treasury boys as
     much as said so. They could take the $700 billion max as soon
     as the bill has passed,
     
     2. However, they do not plan any action immediately, will wait
     a couple of weeks. They want to focus their efforts on stronger
     companies but also made noise about protecting the financial
     system. This, by the way, is the Japanese convoy system all
     over.
     
     3. There seemed to be a lot of tap dancing about what price
     they will pay for assets and no straight answer about their
     policy on warrants. They did say that if the amount sold was
     greater than $100 million, they would take warrants. FYI, the
     current draft allows them to pay up to the price at which the
     assets were initially booked (yikes) . I wonder if this is
     obfuscation, if they have an idea of what the plan to do but
     will not admit it in any public forum.
     
     4. As the person who listened to the call stressed, DealBreaker
     wasn't clear on the bifurcated process. If you come to the
     Treasury and you are in trouble, you get reamed. Bear/AIG style
     treatment, execs probably fired. But if you participate on a
     voluntary basis, the intent is to make it very user friendly.
     That is consistent with Paulson's position during the
     negotiations.
     
     5. The exec comp provisions sound like a joke, They DO NOT
     affect existing contracts, they affect only contracts entered
     into during the two years of the authority of this program and
     then affect only golden parachutes. More detail on that point,
     but I don't need more detail to get the drift of the gist.

There's much more:

<http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/09/mussolini-style-corporatism-in-action.html>

Cheers,
T
-- 
http://b1ff.org!!! 


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