Hello this is Mike Fritz from the American News Project. We have a new story out that focuses on those most affected by the bailout of General Motors: laid off autoworkers.

It examines one of the central tensions in the public takeover of the company: Should federal dollars be spent building a lean, mean business model that will please Wall Street and increase value for shareholders (i.e. American taxpayers)? Or, should there be some built-in conditions designed to set aside as many manufacturing jobs as possible for certain people (i.e. American taxpayers)?

Now that we all own 60% of the company, it may be a story you find worth the watch:

2008 Senator Lindsey Graham seems to disagree with 2009 Lindsey Graham.

This is Mike Fritz and David Murdock from ANP.

Senator Lindsey Graham was a passionate critic of the Bush Justice attorneys during this past summer’s Armed Services Committee hearings on interrogation.

Lately, however, Graham seems to have had second thoughts on the matter. At a recent Judiciary subcommittee hearing investigating the torture memos, Graham mounted a feisty defense of Jay Bybee, John Yoo and the lawyers who provided legal cover for detainee abuse.

This performance sent producer Mike Fritz back to the ANP archives to confirm that this was indeed the same Lindsey Graham we remembered from the summer, and sure enough, it was. As this video reveals, same guy – different message.

Click to view the whole story at Huffington Post.

The global warming debate is heating up in the House, leading to the kind of quirky moments that are a common feature of life on the Hill.

Next week, Henry Waxman (D-CA), will bring his Waxman-Markey climate-control bill before the Energy and Commerce Committee he chairs.

Just minutes after Waxman announced he was “very, very close” to agreement on the legislation, his Republican counterpart held his own press conference, using some choice words to downplay Waxman’s confidence.

Rep. Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said Waxman “doesn’t have the nuts” to pass his energy bill.

Watch:

Barton, who represents Texas’ 6th District, has received $2.5 million from the oil, gas, and utility lobbies over the course of his political career according to the Center for Responsive Politics. His proposal has no cap-and-trade provision and amends definition of “air pollutant” to exclude carbon dioxide.

A press release published by Barton’s office this week argues against the Waxman-Markey bill by warning that the CO2 caps included in the bill would impede economic growth, and put the U.S. on par with the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

“…you can test drive Waxman-Markey by sailing down to Haiti, because current CO2 emissions are where Waxman-Markey wants America’s to be in 2050. Radical environmentalists think such a CO2 level will be heaven on Earth, but the place that has actually achieved it is a nation swimming in bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A and E, typhoid fever, dengue fever and malaria, with 47 percent illiteracy and a life expectancy of 49 years. So excuse me if I remain unconvinced.”

You can see the full press release here.

ANP producer Lagan Sebert asked Rep. Barton to clarify the connection between Waxman’s proposals and the Haitian economy.

Watch:

ANP’s Sebert then asked Rep. Barton if he agreed with Pentagon-commissioned reports (see NY Times article from April, 2007 “Global Warming Called Security Threat“) citing climate change as a possible threat to national security.

Watch:

Barton and Waxman will be sure to spar over these numbers – and possibly Haiti and who has the nuts – next week as the Waxman-Markey Bill is marked up in their committee.

How much traction Barton’s economic argument gets with Waxman’s fellow Democrats is something the White House will be watching closely.

Criminal fraud may be one of the most underreported aspect of our current financial crisis.

This is Lagan at ANP.

In this “Road to Ruin” report, former subprime lenders from Ameriquest, once the country’s largest lender, describe a system rife with fraud. They describe how a “by-any-means-necessary” policy pushed employees to cut corners and falsify documents on bad mortgages and then sell the toxic assets to Wall Street banks eager to make fast profits.

You would think this year’s Mortgage Bankers Association annual meeting would be a rather solemn affair — given the criticism the industry has endured in recent months. But while filming at the meeting I found the bankers in a celebratory mood. The reason? A massive lobbying campaign against bankruptcy reform legislation known as “cram-down” was working.

Economists, politicians, and pundits refer to “toxic assets” as if they are some unspeakable stew bubbling in a barrel behind an old warehouse. But “toxic assets” are actually mortgages and, by extension, houses and the people who live in them. Sandra Berrios is one of millions facing the prospect of ballooning loan payments forcing her and her family from their home. The bank that lent her the money is getting hundreds of millions in TARP money, but the federal dollars flowing to the bank show no sign of trickling down to Sandra’s level.

At the center of President Obama’s overhaul strategy for Wall Street are the “stress tests” which will be applied to all financial institutions. But how accurate will the test results be? That will depend on whether the treasury takes off-balance-sheet assets into account, experts say.

This is Danielle Ivory, reporting from the American News Project and Alternet.

Back in February, in the House Financial Service Committee, when asked a question about the value of Citigroup’s assets, CEO Vikram Pandit provided a less-than-clear response: “It’s an extraordinarily difficult question.”

Click the video below to WATCH the exchange between Rep. Louis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Vikram Pandit.

Rob Weissman, director of the corporate watchdog group, Essential Action, and author of a new report called Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America, said that, in addition to what Pandit said, there’s an additional factor that could fog the test results: off-the-book assets.

“If you don’t include the off-balance sheet assets in the stress test, then it’s not a legitimate stress test,” Weissman said. “It’s pretty plain that the off-balance-sheet operations are a central part of the story of why we don’t know what the banks own.” The Treasury Department declined to comment on whether they would take off-book-assets into account when running the stress tests.

Weissman says that recipients of bailout money, like Citigroup, Bank of America and JP Morgan, have been engaging in “fanciful accounting” of what they owe and what they own by relocating of their less-than-healthy assets off the books, in shadow corporations. Rep. Brad Sherman has described the process as, “apples on one balance sheet and oranges on another.”

According to RGE Monitor, off-balance-sheet operations have skyrocketed over the last 15 years. From 1992 to 2007, on-balance-sheet assets grew by 200 percent, while off-balance-sheet assets grew by 1,518 percent. In 2007, it was estimated that there was 15.9 times more money parked in off-balance-sheet operations than in on-the-book operations. Not all off-book assets are toxic. Some financial institutions might park assets off their books if they are planning, for instance, to sell them. However, in rough economic times, off-balance sheet accounting allows banks to veil their losses from investors, regulators, and even insiders.

“This turns out to be a really important benefit [for a bank] if it happens to be insolvent,” Weissman added. “And many believe that if you total Citigroup’s assets and liabilities, it is insolvent.”

As of July, Citigroup appeared to have the most off-book assets — an estimated $1.1 trillion. But they aren’t alone. As of July 2008, JP Morgan Chase & Co. had more than $400 billion off their books. Bank of America had $48.2 billion off the books before it bought Merrill Lynch. “If you start adding up all the potential exposures, it’s a huge number,” Sam Golden, former ombudsman for the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, told Bloomberg. “The banks will say that it was disclosed. Investors are saying, ‘Yeah, but it was cryptic.’”

Disclosure rules for off-balance sheet operations are notably less strict than those for assets on the books. Neri Bukspan, chief accountant for Standard & Poor’s told Bloomberg, “A lot of information tends to disappear.”

The use of the off-balance-sheet assets was a core part of the Enron scandal, where they were able to wrap debt inside of debt, using obscure corporations, so no one could track what they owed and what they owned. After the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was set in place, there were efforts to address the problems with off-book assets. But after heavy lobbying by two main trade groups, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the American Securitization Forum, banks were given special exemptions.

In September of 2008 as the financial crisis was coming into full view, the Senate Baking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee held a hearing, discussing off-balance sheet operations. Senator Jack Reed recalled Enron: “This phenomenon of moving assets off the balance sheets is eerily familiar. We recall back in the days of Enron that its schemes to manufacture false profits included special purpose entities that conducted transactions off-balance sheet. The goal was to avoid financial reporting. While no one is necessarily suggesting scandals of the Enron kind, we cannot fail to admit the irony. We are dealing with a similar problem yet again, only six years later.”

George P. Miller, Executive Director of the American Securitization Forum, said that moving assets off-book back on to the books would cause dangerous swelling of balance sheets. He added, “There are many other steps that the industry can and should undertake to promote broader and better transparency about risk exposures in these vehicles, whether they are on or off-balance sheet.”

But Donald Young, former member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board countered, “We just had an investment bank [Lehman Brothers] go bankrupt with a fair value balance sheet that showed it had plenty of assets and liabilities. And it almost seems like financial reporting is out of control and not trusted and not believed in. And I think what we do here has got to establish transparency. If the transparency is such that we’re going to bring out some bad news that wasn’t there before, that’s a risk. But I think the benefits of reestablishing confidence in the markets will overwhelm that.”

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) are revising the rules so some off-book assets will have to be reported on the books. However, the changes won’t be effective until January 2010 at the earliest. In March at a House Financial Services Subcommittee hearing, Rep. Sherman complained about this lag. He told the chairman of the FASB, Bob Herz, “If you guys can’t act quickly and logically, perhaps the regulatory accountants need to act and depart from what is a somewhat illogical and certainly slow process that you’ve got.”

In the meantime, in a recent letter to his employees, Pandit has said Citigroup is having its best quarter since 2007 and the bank had conducted its own internal stress tests with positive results. But Weissman says something doesn’t add up. “Either they’ve done a lot of due diligence in a short amount of time that they hadn’t done before, or the stories are incompatible.”

Crossposted at Alternet.

This is Lagan from ANP…

Senator Reid says he will “move forward” on nomination of Gary Gensler despite hold by Senator Sanders.

Barack Obama’s plan to name yet another Goldman Sachs alum to his economic team is proving too much for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Sanders put a hold on the nomination of Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, effectively stopping the nomination process in its tracks. Sanders says Gensler, who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs and then joined the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton, played too big a role in deregulating derivatives in the 90s’ to be trusted to reregulate the market now.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), however, has told ANP that he plans “move forward” with Gensler’s nomination despite Sanders’ hold. To Christopher Hayes, Washington editor of The Nation Magazine, the Majority Leader’s defense of Gensler and Goldman is a disturbing indication that it may be business as usual on the Hill when it comes to meaningful regulation on Wall Street.

Tax cheats are coming under a new pressure from Congress.

This is Lagan from ANP,

Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, has long been a generous donor to American lawmakers. Last year alone, the bank spread over three million dollars across hundreds of U.S. election campaigns. That kind of money wins lots of friends on Capitol Hill, but with the economy now in a tailspin, the money banks like UBS squirrel away in tax havens is getting unprecedented attention and the once cozy relationship between UBS and U.S. politicians has soured. When a top UBS executive was hauled in front of a Senate subcommittee recently to explain his company’s actions, remarkably few lawmakers showed up to grill – or defend – their erstwhile friend.

Citi is getting a third bailout, but some in congress still have questions about the last two.

This is Lagan from ANP,

The once almighty Citigroup is now getting a third lifeline from the U.S. Treasury. This new bailout follows on the heels of a Congressional Oversight Panel report revealing that Citigroup underpaid Treasury by about $19 billion in the first two bailouts. Congressman Brad Sherman is asking a couple of basic questions: When will it stop? Can we get some of that money back?

Somewhere… in a high school cafeteria… a student is putting mayonnaise on their pizza.

While back in Washington, DC, a powerful group will fight to ensure that pizza goes down with a Pepsi.

Meet the food lobby…

This is Steven Greenstreet with ANP.

Congress and the Department of Agriculture approve what foods can (and can’t) be served to over 30 million American school children who get daily meals from the National School Lunch Program. The government gets a ton of pressure from a food and beverage industry frantic to keep kids hooked on a diet of sodas, snacks and hot dogs. The competition, for a piece of this $10 billion market, is particularly fierce right now because this year, the School Lunch Program is being reviewed and revised.

Despite the enormous nutritional and financial stakes at play, ANP was the only media to cover a recent panel set up to discuss the school menu. While nutritionists outnumbered the press, corporate lobbyists outnumbered everyone.

Some further details on this can be read here.

Taxpayers on the hook for $250 billion if Citigroup tanks.

This is Lagan from ANP,

CEOs of the biggest bailed-out banks finally appeared before Congress. Over the course of a seven-hour hearing, there were remarkably few revealing moments. One, though, stood out. Rep. Alan Grayson, a feisty former prosecutor, dug his claws into Citigroup’s CEO over a deal that could end up costing the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

If you thought $700 billion was a lot of money, well..

It is.

But $2 trillion is.. ridiculous.

This is Danielle Ivory from ANP.

Congress and the new administration have been focusing their attention on strengthening oversight for the Treasury’s TARP program, but meanwhile few are paying any attention to the Federal Reserve.

Since September, the Fed has lent out about $2 trillion (Bloomberg reported 1.2 trillion in November), but it’s keeping the names of its recipients a big secret.

And while the Treasury’s bailout package has a $700 billion cap, there’s no limit to how much money the Fed can lend.

The American News Project sat down with Washington newcomer, Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL), who actually used his five minutes of valuable Q & A time in a Financial Services hearing to do some serious Fed fact-finding.

You can see the story or get the embed code here.

Or follow Danielle’s reporting on twitter here.

And visit Acorn Project for more music like this.

Sen. Voinovitch said the burden of raising money had become so great that it was keeping him from doing his job. What about the other 99?

This is Lagan from ANP

Political fundraising has often been viewed as a corrupting influence in politics. Now it’s increasingly being seen by politicians as a roadblock to doing their jobs well. Republican Senator George Voinovich has had enough. Will stories like his breathe new life into the reform movement?

WATCH:

http://americannewsproject.com/videos/campaign-financing-new-twist-old-problem

You’d think that Ron Paul, CEO of Eagle Bank, would be thrilled to receive $38 million dollars in TARP funds. But, it turns out, he’s pretty frustrated.

This is Danielle Ivory from the American News Project.

As another $350 billion goes out the door, ANP looks at one small bailed-out bank. Eagle Bank is having trouble making loans. Its CEO, Ron Paul, says that the government has not taken fleeing depositors into account and, as a result, small banks and their surrounding communities will suffer.

Follow Danielle’s reporting on twitter.

http://americannewsproject.com/node/190

WATCH:

Does new evidence incriminate the Mormon Church’s involvement with Proposition 8?

This is Steven Greenstreet with American News Project.

Activists claim that money from the Mormon Church was the deciding factor in passing Proposition 8 in California – banning gay marriage. The church claims to have only spent a few thousand dollars on the campaign, but ANP has uncovered evidence that may expose a gaping hole in that claim. Also, the IRS forbids religious organizations from “substantially” lobbying for political legislation. But, since the IRS does not define what “substantial” means, how is anyone to know just how much was too much?

Did tax havens help enable the financial mess?

This is Lagan from ANP

The financial crisis seems as if it emerged from nowhere and struck as hard and fast as lightning. How did so many financial institutions crumble with so little warning? There are many reasons, but one that has not been given much attention is how tax havens helped enable the mess – and how several of the big companies that have received billions of bailout dollars were also the most active in the shady world of offshore finance.

Hi, this is Danielle Ivory from the American News Project. My colleague, Lagan Sebert, and I just published a new video on the bailout and a lack of serious oversight.

Today, Henry Paulson urged Congress to release the second half of the $700 billion of the bailout money. But no one seems know what banks have done with the first $350 billion. Despite the fact that Congress wrote more than one hundred pages about oversight in the bailout bill, they left a gaping hole.

All of the content on ANP is available for free! If you like the piece, please feel free to post it on your blog, or replay on the radio or tv.

http://americannewsproject.com/videos/186

Hi, this is Danielle Ivory from ANP. My colleague, Lagan Sebert, and I have recently been covering the economic crisis and found ourselves thoroughly intrigued by the bank mergers happening all over the country. We looked into it, connected the dots, and this is what we discovered..

With newfound bailout money in their wallets, big banks have been rushing to gobble up smaller ones. At the center of these mergers is the Treasury Department, led by Goldman Sachs alums Henry Paulson and Neel Kashkari (you might remember his Ferrari, recently profiled on Gawker.) While neglecting struggling homeowners, they have created major incentives for widespread bank consolidation, which could lead to a host of new problems. And, as members of Congress recently noted, Treasury officials seem to be making the rules up as they go.

http://www.americannewsproject.com/videos/181

Follow Danielle’s reporting on twitter.

Follow Lagan’s reporting on twitter.