had a woefully understaffed Treasury Department during four of the most important months of his presidency, a time when the opportunities were greatest to use a crisis to alter banking and finance in America.

Finally a meeting was convened at the White House to discuss financial reform. Obama was not present:

The chief of staff, who was not particularly versed in these regulatory matters and, in any event, was not an elected official, took charge, acting presidential. After listening to an hour of debate on the matter of what the outlines of reform should look like . . . [,] Emanuel took control of matters. "Okay, Tim, what the f*ck do you need here?"

Geithner, a bit stunned, paused for a moment. "Well, a systemic risk regulator [someone to watch the landscape for systemic risk inside institutions], resolution authority [the statutory power to take down a problematic institution], and leverage [higher capital requirements to ensure that banks don't over-leverage themselves]. Those three things."

Emanuel nodded. "Okay, let's throw in the consumer financial agency, and everything else can be flushed."

So it was decided. Everyone kind of shrugged. One participant in the deliberations thought about whether Emanuel had, in fact, simply made this decision, or whether he was just carrying out the wishes of the president, then concluded that "the president couldn't have decided these things and told Rahm what to do. At the start of the meeting, there were too many variables to choose from. You would have needed some sort of decision-making algorithm."

And what about the "consumer financial agency"?

[T]he Treasury Department . . . , unbeknownst to [Elizabeth] Warren, embrace[d] demands from the banking industry to create a bureau under the condition that Warren would not be allowed to lead it.

Shelly Zimmerman stated she did not know how much money was donated at that time but told the court who did know the exact balance and how to contact them. The court and prosecution failed to follow up on that at the time.

The prosecution conveniently left Shelly saying the brother in law was in charge of the account out of their transcript.

"Most of the people, they know my picture but there's very few that know about my life," she said. "I'm so thankful that ... I can accept the picture as a powerful gift. Then it is my choice. Then I can work with it for peace."

Not a surprise I suppose after O named fervent anti- conspiracist Cass Sunstein to head the govt's doc release program (be sure to see the video).  But go take a look at who the admin has put at the National Archives to be the hands-on person there in charge of deciding what to release.  

Disturbing to say the least.  Another victory for the CIA in their mostly successful half-century effort to cover up Dallas.

Are females only good in the spelling competitions?  What is going on here I wonder.

Very strange competition last night.  Add in the male moderator, two male co hosts and one male roving reporter, plus two of the three judges being male , and but for the one lone (token?) female judge, this one was wall to wall guys.

"Chip," "Trip," or "Harrison Wentworth II,"

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3