Posts by Matthew Blake

The saga of former General Services Admin. head Lurita Doan returned to life yesterday when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report on the politicization of federal agencies during the Bush administration.
The report recalls that Doan violated the Hatch Act by asking GSA civil servants “how we can help our candidates” and [...]

Rep. Henry Waxman, (D-Calif.) wrote a letter this afternoon to Defense Sec. Robert Gates accusing Harry Sargeant, the head of the International Oil Trading Company of “reprehensible war profiteering” on Iraq War contracts. Sargeant’s company has reaped $210 million in profits by overcharging the Pentagon for oil fuel that is shipped from Jordan to Iraq.
The [...]

Since the Federal Reserve rescued American International Group last month, 79.9 percent of it is taxpayer-owned.
So maybe it’s the other 20.1 percent that’s energetically lobbying states to ease new federal rules governing the mortgage market. The Wall Street Journal’s Elizabeth Williamson reports:

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a bipartisan report today that concluded George W. Bush abused his claim of executive privilege when he withheld from the committee Vice President Dick Cheney’s FBI interview concerning the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity.

Former CEOs insist at congressional hearings that larger market forces, rather than decisions made by executives, caused Wall Street to unravel.

Of the nine dismissals in the U.S. attorney scandal, the firing of former New Mexico U.S. Atty. David Iglesias was probably the most blatantly partisan.
A Justice Dept. inspector general report released last week concluded that Iglesias was forced to leave because he didn’t pursue public corruption and voter fraud cases that New Mexico Republicans wanted [...]

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee just spent a five-hour hearing detailing how American International Group gave millions in compensation to executives even as the world’s largest insurance company was posting huge losses.
AIG executives even spent $443,000 for a weeklong retreat at the St. Regis Resort at Monarch Beach, Calif. after the Treasury Dept. [...]

Lehman Bros. CEO Richard Fuld, in a written statement for the House oversight committee, portrays himself as a victim of mortgage-market forces beyond his control. Fuld writes, “What happened to Lehman Bros. [which could have been one of the largest bankruptcies in U.S. history] could have happened to any firm on Wall Street and almost [...]

The House oversight committee has spent the day unloading on Lehman Bros. CEO Richard Fuld — his $480 million in compensation over the past eight years, his investment bank’s unprecedented leveraging of mortgage assets, his misleading of Lehman shareholders up to the day the company declared bankruptcy and the fate of 25,000 Lehman employees.
Fuld has [...]

The House oversight committee is holding a hearing now on the collapse of Lehman Bros. and the financial crisis generally. This hearing– and four others– will likely provide hints of how Congress, post-bailout bill, will try to revamp how the government polices Wall Street.
The committee has produced internal Lehman Bros. documents that show Lehman CEO [...]