So, now that the economy has turned down, and there is a real possibility that legislation limiting abusive credit card practices might pass Congress, the White House economic team is finally meeting with credit card issuers in order to address the issue:

A Capital One spokeswoman confirmed the meeting.

“We have been invited to the White House and look forward to a constructive dialogue,” she said.

On the eve of the White House meeting, the House Financial Services Committee is planning to consider credit card legislation aimed at reforming the industry, which is facing massive pressure to lessen debt burdens on cardholders, one source said.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers and other officials are planning to attend the meeting, but U.S. President Barack Obama is not, the sources said.

(emphasis mine)

Color me skeptical. Between Tim “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, who has been the big bank’s bitch since birth, and Larry Summers, who has taken millions just last year from hedge funds, I can’t see this as anything but an attempt to minimize reforms in the credit card industry.

Obama isn’t there because he wants plausible deniability when they come out with an “agreement” that is far weaker than anything going around Congress.

If it were otherwise, then they would be talking with Congress, not the credit card industry.

Goldman Sach’s CFO, David Viniar, says that he is mystified at why people care about the dealings between AIG and Goldman, “They’re one of thousands and thousands and thousands of counterparties and the results of any trading with AIG are completely immaterial to what we do…I am mystified by this fascination with AIG.”

People are interested because you bought phony insurance contracts (CDS’s) from them, and when they imploded, you got the taxpayer to pay out at 100¢ on the dollar, creating yet another subsidy for you corrupt bastards.

Even people who don’t understand the whole picture, they know that this is corrupt, and that they are being stuck with the check for this.

Your claim that profits on AIG deals, “rounded to zero”, in 2008 is bullsh%$. In a fair system, your firm should have lost millions, if not billions, were it not for yet another subsidy of you corrupt losers.

This is getting way out of hand, and someone needs to go postal on everyone involved in this process:

There’s a major problem and a minor problem. The minor problem is documentation. I’ve spent four weeks now looking for someone who can give me the details of the stress test so that we can do an independent evaluation of whether the stress test is any good.

We get: “someone will call [you] right back.” Only the call doesn’t come.

Hopefully, this will improve with Kashkari’s replacement, but my guess is that this comes from Geithner, not Kashkari.

Goldman Sachs, as I mentioned yesterday, is looking to sell shares to pay off the TARP, which is made easier by their recent profit numbers.

How did they make those numbers, it turns out that they put their losses into December, and then dropped the month from their quarterly results

Goldman’s 2008 fiscal year ended Nov. 30. This year the company is switching to a calendar year. The leaves December as an orphan month, one that will be largely ignored. In Goldman’s earnings statement, and in most of the news reports, the quarter ended March 31 is compared to the quarter last year that ended in February.

The orphan month featured — surprise — lots of write-offs. The pretax loss was $1.3 billion, and the after-tax loss was $780 million.

How remarkably convenient.

Then we have Wells Fargo, which also announced good quarterly results, and now analysts are saying that losses uncovered in the stress test will uncover $120 billion in losses, and require that $50 billion in capital be raised.

But wait, there’s more, as other analysts are saying that Bank of America is likely seriously short on capital, and will need to dilute its shareholders stocks.

Finally, because they haven’t boned the taxpayer enough, Citigroup is looking to cut its conversion ratio, the rate at which it is planning to convert its preferred stock to common stock, and the largest preferred shareholders is, you guessed it, the American taxpayer, because the share price for the common stock has gone from about 98¢ to $3.97/share when I checked the number today.

Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner should go tell Citi CEO Vikram Pandit to go Cheney himself, but he won’t because, he’s is the big bankers’ bitch.

Zero Hedge is reporting that there are strong indications that Wall Street firms are going back to their Dotbomb era practice of swapping favorable ratings for analysts in exchange for business underwriting their IPOs:

1) First Merrill Lynch/BofA gets clients to subscribe to a massively diluting equity offering (105 million new shares out of 271 million pre-offering shares, or 39% dilution). The offering prices at $7.10/share, a 6% discount to the previous day closing price of $7.49. In the process Merrill pockets an underwriting fee likely equal to 3% of the offering or around $20 million.

2) Minutes after the offering Merrill REIT analyst Schmidt comes out with a report, changing the recommendation on the stock from a Sell to a Buy, thereby getting the vanilla money which makes critical fiduciary decisions merely based on what some sell-side analyst will recommend. As a result Kimco stock rises throughout the day and closes at $9.40, a 25% premium to the closing price, and a 30% premium to offering price of $7.10, which closed that very same day.

…

Go read the rest. It’s pretty damning, and yet another indication that at least 1 in 10 of the brokers, executives, and analysts on Wall Street should be under criminal investigation.