> A long post reviewing a summary of possible key events and behind the scenes
> moves by leading players up to the outing of Gov Spitzer of New York on 10th
> March 2008
>
> FYI
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> FROM the Asian Times by F William Engdahl
>
> Spitzer was likely the target of a White House and Wall Street dirty tricks
> operation to silence one of the most dangerous and vocal critics of their
> handling of the current financial market crisis.
>
> A useful rule of thumb in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent
> public figures is to ask who might want to eliminate that person. In the
> case of former governor Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, it is clear that the
> spectacular "leak" of the government's FBI wiretap records showing that
> Spitzer paid a high-cost prostitute US$4,300 for what amounted to about an
> hour's personal entertainment, was politically motivated.
>
> Spitzer became governor of New York following a high-profile record as a
> relentless state attorney general going after financial crimes such as the
> Enron fraud, and corruption by Wall Street investment banks during the 2002
> dotcom bubble era. Spitzer made powerful enemies by all accounts. The former
> head of the large AIG insurance group, Hank Greenburg, was among his
> detractors. He was bitterly hated on Wall Street. He had made his political
> career on being ruthless against financial corruption.
>
> Most recently, from his position as governor of the nation's second largest
> state, home to its financial industry, Spitzer had begun making high-profile
> attacks on the complicity of the Bush administration in covertly arranging
> bailouts of its Wall Street friends at the expense of ordinary homeowners
> and citizens, all paid for by taxpayer funds.
>
> Prostitution is illegal in most US states, but clients of prostitutes are
> almost never charged, nor are their names usually leaked in a case in
> process. The Spitzer case is in the hands of Washington and not state
> authorities, underscoring the clear political nature of the Spitzer
> "Watergate".
>
> The case is clearly political when compared with more egregious recent cases
> involving Republicans. Republican Mark Foley was exposed propositioning male
> interns in Congress and Rudolph Giuliani was discovered cheating on his
> wife, but no or few Republican calls for resignations were heard.
>
> Why the attack now?
> Spitzer had become increasingly public in blaming the Bush administration
> for the nation's current financial and economic disaster. He testified in
> Washington in mid-February before the US House of Representatives Financial
> Services subcommittee on the problems in New York-based specialized
> insurance companies, known as "monoline" insurers. In a national CNBC TV
> interview the same day, he laid blame for the crisis and its broader
> economic fallout on the Bush administration.
>
> Spitzer recalled that several years ago the US Office of the Comptroller of
> the Currency (OCC) went to court and blocked New York State efforts to
> investigate the mortgage activities of national banks. Spitzer argued that
> the OCC did not put a stop to questionable loan marketing practices or
> uphold higher underwriting standards.
>
> "This could have been avoided if the OCC had done its job," Spitzer said in
> the interview. "The OCC did nothing. The Bush administration let the housing
> bubble inflate and now that it's deflating we're dealing with the
> consequences. The real failure, the genesis, the germ that has spread, was
> the subprime scandal," Spitzer said.
>
> Fraudulent marketing and very low "teaser" mortgage rates that later
> ballooned higher, were practices that should have been stopped, he argued.
> "When mortgages are being marketed, there is a marketplace obligation to
> ensure the borrower can afford to pay back the debt," he said.
>
> That TV interview was only one instance of Spitzer laying blame on the Bush
> Republicans. On February 14, Spitzer published a signed article in the
> influential Washington Post titled, "Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime:
> How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help
> Consumers."
>
> That article, laying clear blame on the administration for the development
> of the subprime crisis, appeared the day after his ill-fated tryst with the
> prostitute at the Mayflower Hotel. Just a coincidence? Spitzer wrote, "In
> 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a
> clause from the 1863 National Bank Act pre-empting all state predatory
> lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated
> new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer
> protection laws against national banks."
>
> In his article, Spitzer charged, "Not only did the Bush administration do
> nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented
> campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very
> problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye."
>
> Bush, said Spitzer right in the headline, was the "predator lenders' partner
> in crime". The president, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And
> Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime
> and the biggest financial powers on the planet. Spitzer wrote, "When history
> tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating
> effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration
> will not be judged favorably."
>
> With that article, Spitzer may well have signed his own political death
> warrant.
>
> fromhttp://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JC20Dj04.html
> [ note no one has published this in the USA so far ]
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> F William Engdahl is author of the book Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden
> Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, about to be released by Global Research
> Publishing, and of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New
> World Order, Pluto Press. He may be reached via his website,www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> So what?
>
> Not another conspriacy theory is it?
>
> You decide, and do your own research in publicly available documents and
> news reports, if you wish.
>
> Any cursory review of the timeline leading up to Spitzer's outing in the NYT
> about the call girl, including the instigation of the investigation, and who
> was controlling it, and who was appointed as the lead US Attorney as the
> Prosecutor for it, would tend to support the views outlined in the above
> article.
>
> eg Emperor's Club was setup in December 2004.
>
> In 2006 an EC working prostitute had already informed the NY State Law
> Enforcement about EC's activities [ and may even have noted Spitizer
> specifically as a client then ]..... but nothing at all happened untill
> October 2007.
>
> The business had been operating for almost 3 years by then and had over 50
> girls on it;s books in the USA and around the world.
>
> So, the actual FBI investigation began in Oct 2007, and yet was very quickly
> concluded after only a months or so worth of wiretapps, and other
> investigations in as little as 4 months.
>
> Client 9's details extend over 4.5 pages of an affidavit including all sorts
> of irrelevent details, whereas the other 9 out of 10 reported clients
> details cover only about another 4 pages, some as little as a paragraph or
> two.
>
> Newspaper reports had quoted that Spitzer was supposedly flagged by his Bank
> reporting his unusual patterns of accounts to the IRS, and that it was thru
> that the Emperor's Club operations were discovered.
>
> Mind you, the Emperor's Club had a public website since 2004, and had been
> operating extensively, prior protitutes had already informed NY law
> enforcement officers about its operations in 2006, and yet nothing at all
> happened for years untill one way or another, Spitzter was involved.
>
> After the Spitzers last tryst in Washington DC on Feb 13th, the wiretapps
> were concluded abrubtly, and the whole thing was wrapped up with Affidavits
> for arrest warrants sorted out and presented to a US Judge on 5th March.
>
> Spitzer himself has not been charged with any offence whatsoever.
>
> Besides getting pumped up about the Call Girl on the 13th February, Spitzer
> was reported widely in the news about being very pumped up about this issue
> on the 14th February 2008 in Washington DC.
>
> -----------------------------------------------
>
> Spitzer Warns Bond Insurers
> Says Firms Have 3 to 5 Days to Raise Capital
> By KAREN RICHARDSON and DAMIAN PALETTA [ the WSJ ]
> February 15, 2008; Page A1
>
> The clock is running out for bond insurers to save their triple-A credit
> ratings. [Eliot Spitzer]
>
> In congressional testimony yesterday, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer gave a
> three-to-five-day time frame for the bond insurers to raise much-needed
> capital or find other ways to resolve their problems.
>
> Mr. Spitzer urged banks, private-equity funds and investors that are working
> with bond insurers on various rescue and capitalization plans to "act with
> some increasing rapidity, because time is short," adding that a
> congressional move to resolve the issue would likely be too slow.
>
> Bond insurers - relatively obscure companies that insure the principal and
> interest payments in the event of default - have emerged as the linchpins of
> large swaths of the financial markets, ranging from municipal bonds to
> short-term securities backed by student loans. With investors worried that
> potential downgrades will lead to massive write-downs in their holdings of
> securities guaranteed by the insurers, regulators have been trying to rally
> banks to help rescue the insurers.
>
> But the efforts so far haven't yielded results, as the banks each have
> different exposures to the bond insurers and differing degrees of interest
> in seeing them succeed or fail.
>
> Speaking before a House Financial Services ...
>
> read more >>