Remember the fellows who shipped pallets of American tax dollars to Iraq and then promtly "lost" them? They're back...The first order of business for Mr. Obama's cabinet -- and one that really cannot wait until inauguration --must be halting the robbery-in-progress known as the "economic bailout." The authors linked to herein have spent a month examining the loopholes and conflicts of interest
embedded in the U.S. Treasury Department's plans. The results of that research can be found in a just published feature article in Rolling Stone, The New Trough as well as recent Naomi Klein Nation column, Bush's Final Pillage.
QUOTE Bankers watching bankers, regulators who don't believe in regulating — all standard fare for the Bush crew. What's most striking about Jeffery's résumé, however, is an item omitted when his new job was announced:
He served as executive director of Paul Bremer's infamous Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, during the early days of the Iraq War.
Part of his job was to hire civilian staff, which made him an integral part of the
partisan machine that filled Baghdad's Green Zone with Young Republicans,
investment bankers and Dick Cheney interns. Qualifications weren't a big
issue back then, because the staff's main function was to hand over stacks
of taxpayer money to private contractors, who were the ones actually
running the occupation. It was this nonstop cash conveyor belt that earned
the Green Zone a reputation, in the words of one CPA official, as "a free
-fraud zone."
During Senate hearings last year, when Jeffery was asked
what he had learned from his experience at the CPA, he said contracts
should be handed out with more "speed and flexibility" — the same
philosophy he cited back while in charge of regulating Wall Street traders.UNQUOTE
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