{"id":193995,"date":"2008-11-01T22:40:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-02T03:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/11\/01\/another-lie-by-hank-paulson\/"},"modified":"2008-11-01T22:40:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-02T03:40:00","slug":"another-lie-by-hank-paulson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/11\/01\/another-lie-by-hank-paulson\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Lie By Hank Paulson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Nocera of the New York Times<\/span> had a source get him access to a a JPMorgan Chase conference call, and what he heard was disappointing, though not surprising.<\/p>\n

It appears that the bank has absolutely no intention to expand lending<\/a>, even after receiving $25 billion from the Treasury.<\/p>\n

Instead, they see their path forward as being more merger and acquisition action:<\/p>\n

In point of fact, the dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans. But this executive was the first insider who\u2019s been indiscreet enough to say it within earshot of a journalist.<\/p>\n

(He didn\u2019t mean to, of course, but I obtained the call-in number and listened to a recording.)<\/p>\n

\u201cTwenty-five billion dollars is obviously going to help the folks who are struggling more than Chase,\u201d he began. \u201cWhat we do think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling. And I would not assume that we are done on the acquisition side just because of the Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns mergers. I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way and obviously depending on whether recession turns into depression or what happens in the future, you know, we have that as a backstop.\u201d <\/p>\n

Read that answer as many times as you want \u2014 you are not going to find a single word in there about making loans to help the American economy. On the contrary: at another point in the conference call, the same executive (who I\u2019m not naming because he didn\u2019t know I would be listening in) explained that \u201cloan dollars are down significantly.\u201d He added, \u201cWe would think that loan volume will continue to go down as we continue to tighten credit to fully reflect the high cost of pricing on the loan side.\u201d In other words JPMorgan has no intention of turning on the lending spigot.<\/p>\n

It is starting to appear as if one of Treasury\u2019s key rationales for the recapitalization program \u2014 namely, that it will cause banks to start lending again \u2014 is a fig leaf, Treasury\u2019s version of the weapons of mass destruction<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n

So Paulson lied to Congress, and he’s not leaning on banks to make loans again.<\/p>\n

When Mr. Nocera says, “I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019m starting to feel as if we\u2019ve been sold a bill of goods,” doesn’t know the half of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Nocera of the New York Times had a source get him access to a a JPMorgan Chase conference call, and what he heard was disappointing, though not surprising. It appears that the bank has absolutely no intention to expand lending, even after receiving $25 billion from the Treasury. Instead, they see their path forward …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1004,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-finance","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}