WASHINGTON – Top bank executives can expect a grilling when they appear before a congressionally appointed panel investigating the causes of the 2008 financial collapse.
Four of Wall Street’s most powerful leaders — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chairman-CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO James Dimon, Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack and Bank of American Corp. CEO-President Brian Moynihan — were to give sworn testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which was holding its first session Wednesday.
The banking executives summoned to testify spent the days leading up to the hearings in meetings with corporate lawyers and government relations specialists.
Mack’s testimony also was to highlight regulatory failures and would include calls to improve regulators’ tools to oversee financial activity, said another person familiar with Mack’s plans.
The hearings come at a sensitive time for the banking industry. Congress is writing a full-scale overhaul of financial regulations, bankers are about to announce huge bonuses for their executives and the Obama administration is considering extracting a fee from banks to cover about $120 billion in taxpayer losses from a government Wall Street bailout fund.
The bankers’ demeanor before the commission, the tone of the commission’s questions and the continuing inquiry could affect public perceptions and influence how lawmakers and the White House deal with the industry.
A coalition of liberal activist groups is urging the commission to work aggressively and look beyond the bankers to the actions of former government regulators. In newspaper ads set to appear in Washington publications Wednesday, the group, Accountable America, singles out former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox for not detecting Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
The commission is chaired by former California Treasurer Phil Angelides, a Democrat. In an interview last week, Thomas expressed impatience with bankers who worry that some additional government scrutiny and demands for transparency will hobble the industry.
It was named after Ferdinand Pecora, the committee’s chief lawyer.
Congress instructed the new commission to explore 22 issues, ranging from the effect of monetary policy on terms of credit to bank compensation structures.

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Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: http://www.fcic.gov

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to announce a new fee Thursday on the country’s biggest financial firms to recover up to $120 billion in taxpayers’ money used to prop up corporations during the economic crisis, a senior administration official said.
In proposing a multiyear levy on big banks, Obama is targeting an industry whose political deafness has vexed his administration. The $120 billion recovery goal is the most that administration officials expect to lose from the government’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program that bailed out banks, automakers and other financial firms.
Congress would have to approve any fee plan.
The proposed levy could put Obama on the popular side of public opinion that is decidedly against Wall Street and angry over shortfalls in a $700 billion bank bailout fund.
Obama’s announcement would come one day after the nation’s top bankers testify before the congressionally created Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The hearings come at an ultra-sensitive time for the banking industry. In addition to Obama’s fee proposal, Congress is writing a full-scale overhaul of financial regulations.
The administration official said Obama’s plan has been in the works since August and would seek modifications to the law that sent billions of dollars in bailout money in 2008 and 2009 to a flailing Wall Street that was approaching collapse.
The 2008 law that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program requires the president to seek a way to recoup unrecovered TARP money from financial institutions, but five years after the law was enacted. The administration’s plan raises a series of questions.
Administration officials already have ruled out a fee on financial transactions. An industry official said consideration of a levy now would be premature.
“Current law doesn’t trigger this tax proposal for another four years,” said Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, an industry group for some of the largest financial firms.

Banks have been repaying their infusions, in part to get out from under compensation limits imposed on the bailout recipients. Banks have also paid dividends from the government help.

With public anger over the bailout still strong, Obama has embraced populist rhetoric in an effort to shame bank executives into paying back the government more quickly and their executives less lavishly.

Funds collected from such a levy would go to pay down the $1.4 trillion deficit amid the Obama-backed stimulus package and aid to Detroit’s automakers.

Washington spent about $245 billion to help banks in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, much less than President George W. Bush’s Treasury Department secured to keep financial firms afloat.

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WASHINGTON – Foreign countries including Norway and Oman contributed to former President Bill Clinton’s charity, and donors including Donald Trump, multinational soft drink company Coca-Cola and singer Elton John’s foundation also pitched in as Hillary Rodham Clinton served her first year as secretary of state.
The foundation provided The Associated Press with a donor list Friday morning under the heading “William J. Clinton Foundation Publishes Names of 2009 Contributors on Foundation Website” but later said the disclosure, which included many more foreign governments, covered donors dating back to the charity’s inception, and that it wouldn’t identify who gave in 2009. The foundation changed course Friday afternoon and updated the list to specify 2009 donors.
The Clintons agreed to annually disclose the names of donors to the foundation to address concerns about potential conflicts of interest between the former president’s fundraising abroad and his wife’s role in helping direct Obama administration foreign policy.
The William J. Clinton Foundation works in the United States and around the world on such issues as health care, particularly HIV/AIDS; climate change, and economic development. It also runs the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Ark., which includes Clinton’s presidential library.
In releasing the list Friday, the foundation didn’t identify individual contributors’ employers, nationalities or any other details. The 2009 donors included three who ranked as the foundation’s all-time biggest givers, topping $25 million each since Bill Clinton founded the charity: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Canadian mining tycoon and Radcliffe Foundation chief executive Frank Giustra, and UNITAID.
Bill Clinton joined Giustra on a 2005 trip to Kazakhstan; within days after the pair met with Kazakhstan’s president, Giustra’s business lined up preliminary deals giving it rights to buy into uranium projects controlled by a Kazakhstan state-owned enterprise. In UNITAID’s case, almost all of the money simply passed through the foundation to buy commodities, the foundation said.
Those donating last year whose cumulative contributions total $5 million to $10 million include COPRESIDA, a Dominican Republic government agency formed to fight AIDS, whose donation of $5 million to $10 million passed through the foundation for commodity procurement; the Elton John AIDS Foundation; the Netherlands’ Nationale Postcode Loterij, and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative – Canada.
The Clinton Family Foundation and Bill Clinton also gave in 2009; the donations total $1 million to $5 million over the years.

The Clintons were under no legal obligation to identify foundation donors. Presidents typically do not disclose the names of those who give to their foundations, even when the givers include foreign governments. In addition to providing a foundation donor list, the Clintons agreed that new donations from foreign governments would be examined by government ethics officers. William J. Clinton Foundation: http://www.clintonfoundation.org/

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WASHINGTON – The bank account is thin, but the future looks pretty good.
A whopping 82 percent are optimistic about what the new year will bring for their families, according to the latest AP-GfK poll. Nearly two-thirds think their family finances will worsen or stay about the same next year. And fewer than half think the nation’s economy will improve in 2010, even though Americans rated 2009 as a huge downer.
Flanigan, 36, is unemployed after selling a family business that faced increasing competition.
The poll found that nearly three-fourths of Americans think 2009 was a bad year for the country, which was rocked by job losses, home foreclosures and economic sickness. Forty-two percent rated it “very bad.”
The survey that year found that 58 percent of Americans felt the nation had suffered a bad year, and 39 percent considered it a good year.
Behind the gloominess, however, are more hopeful views that seem to reflect Americans’ traditional optimism or, perhaps, wishful thinking.
Some 72 percent of Americans said they’re optimistic about what 2010 will bring for the country. Millions of Americans saw their savings or retirement accounts shrink, and many are rethinking how long they will have to work, and where they might find income.
Marcia Andrews of Blairsville, Pa., was a high school nurse until budget cuts eliminated her job.
Preliminary FBI figures for the first half of 2009 showed crime falling across the nation, with robberies down by 6.5 percent.

Americans are not optimistic, however, about the nation’s two wars. Thirty-one percent think the situation in Afghanistan will get better, while 67 percent think it will stay the same or get worse. Only 10 percent of Republicans said 2009 was a good year, compared with about one-third of Democrats and independents. A robust 87 percent of Democrats are optimistic about what 2010 will bring for the country, compared with 53 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of independents.

People’s views of their personal circumstances divide along partisan lines, too.

Only one in five Republicans think their family’s finances will improve in 2010. Nearly half of Democrats and 40 percent of independents hold that view.

Steve Bishop, 59, of Middletown, Calif., said he’s pleased the government is trying to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

H. June Clark, a Republican retiree in Fort Wayne, Ind., is not as cheery. Some family members are still out of work, she said.

Clark thinks the nation is headed toward socialism, and she wants a wholesale change in elected officials, no matter their party affiliation.

“I don’t care if we get independents, populists, whatever. The AP-GfK Poll was conducted Dec. 10-14 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media and involved landline and cell phone interviews of 1,001 adults nationwide. AP-GfK poll: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

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Associated Press writers Dennis Junius, Natasha Metzler, Ann Sanner and Trevor Tompson contributed to this report.

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Nearly three-fourths of Americans think 2009 was a bad year for the country, which was rocked by job losses, home foreclosures and economic sickness. Forty-two percent rated it “very bad,” according to the latest AP-GfK poll.
The survey that year found that 58 percent of Americans felt the nation had suffered a bad year, and 39 percent considered it a good year.
Some 72 percent of Americans said they’re optimistic about what 2010 will bring for the country. Curiously, however, nearly two-thirds think their family finances will worsen or stay about the same next year.
Flanigan, 36, is unemployed after selling a family business that faced increasing competition. Rather than seek new work, however, she is thinking of returning to school to become a social worker. “I’d rather make less money and do something I love,” Flanigan said, noting that happiness and optimism are not strictly tied to finances.
Every corner of the country saw steep job losses this year, and the national unemployment rate stands at 10 percent. Marcia Andrews of Blairsville, Pa., was a high school nurse until budget cuts eliminated her job.
Despite signs that the nation is edging away from the worst aspects of a severe recession, people remain largely downbeat about the economy. James Lewis, who just retired in Alton, Ill., called 2009 a “financial disaster” for America, and he fears 2010 won’t be much better.
Everybody losing their 401(k). Some people losing their house, their retirement.”

He is pessimistic about 2010, pointing blame at financial institutions and government officials.

“They’ve made a mess and they’re going to have a hard time cleaning it up,” said Lewis, who calls himself a political independent. Government regulators, he said, “dropped the ball.”

Lewis said 2009 wasn’t too bad for him personally, but some members of his family “can’t find a job that pays enough to live.” Americans are not optimistic about the nation’s two wars. Thirty-one percent think the situation in Afghanistan will get better, while 67 percent think it stay the same or get worse. Only 10 percent of Republicans said 2009 was a good year, compared to about one-third of Democrats and independents. A whopping 87 percent of Democrats are optimistic about what 2010 will bring for the country, compared with 53 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of independents.

People’s views of their personal circumstances divide along partisan lines, too.

Only one in five Republicans think their family’s finances will improve in 2010. Nearly half of Democrats and 40 percent of independents hold that view.

Steve Bishop, 59, of Middletown, Calif., said he’s pleased the government is trying to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

H. June Clark, a Republican retiree in Fort Wayne, Ind., had similar family experiences but is more downbeat than Bishop. Some family members are still out of work, she said.

She and her husband lost several thousand dollars in the stock market, Clark said. Clark thinks the nation is headed toward socialism, and she wants a wholesale change in elected officials, no matter their party affiliation.

The AP-GfK Poll was conducted Dec. 10-14 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media and involved landline and cell phone interviews of 1,001 adults nationwide. On the Net: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

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Associated Press writers Dennis Junius, Natasha Metzler, Ann Sanner and Trevor Tompson contributed to this report.

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