Liddy's Goldman Sachs Holdings Gets Some Attention

A week ago, I broke the news in my Examiner column that AIG's CEO Ed Liddy owns more than $3 million in Goldman Sachs stock. Yesterday, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) responded to this story with a press release, calling on Liddy to step down.

Since Cummings' press release, Bloomberg, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and others have all followed up, citing Cummings and the Examiner. The N.Y. Post and another NYC daily have also followed up on my column and Cummings' release, but they don't cite the original scoop.

Specter versus Toomey is Wall Street versus Main Street

Sen. Arlen Specter is the top GOP recipient of Wall Street cash. Former Rep. Pat Toomey has twice started up his own business. The GOP primary battle between them could shape the future of the party. My column this week explains:

Next year’s Senate Republican primary in Pennsylvania—Sen. Arlen Specter versus former Rep. Pat Toomey—could be a battle for the soul of the GOP. But it’s not a liberal-versus-conservative battle as much as a Goldman Sachs-versus-Mom n Pop fight.

Campaign finance records show that Specter is Wall Street’s favorite Republican, and voting records show why. While Specter attacks Toomey as a banker, and tries to paint his donors as Wall Street fat cats, Toomey is actually a small businessman—having run a community bank that didn’t take bailout cash, and before that starting a neighborhood bar in Allentown, Pa.

Read the whole thing here.

Rep. Cummings, Citing my Examiner Piece, Calls on AIG's Liddy to Resign

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., has renewed his call for AIG CEO Edward Liddy to resign. In a press release today, Cummings specifically refers to my column that revealed that Liddy still owned $3 million in Goldman Sachs stock.

I am extremely concerned by recent media reports that AIG CEO Edward Liddy owns more than $3 million of stock in Goldman Sachs, which topped the list of companies that received billions of dollars in counterparty payments from AIG. Regardless of whether or not Mr. Liddy is acting in the best interest of AIG or of his stock in Goldman, even the appearance of conflict of interest is a reason for alarm.

Barney Frank’s Wall Street confidence game

Everytime Americans suffer, government needs a bad guy to blame. This week, it's the short seller's turn to be the villain. My Examiner column today explores just who is lobbying for restrictions on short selling--the investment tactic that enables one to profit when stocks go down.

Charles R. Schwab, founder of the firm, advocated regulation in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, “for the sake of our children and grandchildren,” but there’s a less lofty interpretation of Schwab’s motives. Schwab gets more customers when the stock market is rising, and so anything that can drag the market down is harmful.

Read the whole thing here.

AIG head’s $3M in Goldman stock raises apparent conflict of interest

My Examiner column today is the first to report a fact that highlights the conflict-of-interest problems raised by the new government-business partnership:

Edward Liddy, CEO of government-run AIG, still owns more than $3 million of stock in Goldman Sachs, which has pocketed $13 billion or more of the $170 billion federal officials have spent bailing out the ailing Wall Street insurance giant.

Liddy is managing a company that receives taxpayer dollars to pay other financial firms, with Goldman Sachs the top recipient. While there is no reason to believe Liddy is influencing AIG actions to unfairly benefit Goldman, the situation represents a potential conflict of interest that would never be allowed in a government agency, but is permitted in the strange public-private chimeras, like AIG, spawned in this age of bailouts.

Read the whole thing here.

Graham’s bill is accidental tax cut for wealthy

DC Councilman Jim Graham wanted to boost DC revenues and raise taxes on the wealthy, and so he introduced the "Equitable Income Tax Act of 2009." There's a problem, though: the bill would actually provide a massive tax CUT to those earning just over $500,000, and some tax cut to everyone between $500,000 and $9.6 million. I tell the tale in an Examiner piece today.

Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at Americans for Tax Reform, which opposes all tax increases, says the bill would reduce taxes. “The bill as written is a massive tax cut for D.C. households making over $500,000 per year.” Ellis added, “According to this bill, someone with taxable income of $499,999 would pay $41,300 in D.C. income tax. Someone making $500,001 would pay $5,000 in D.C. income tax.”

Read the whole piece here, and read Graham's bill here.

How Philip Morris Benefits From Tobacco Regulation

My latest K Street column at the Examiner:

As Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., push bills this spring to heighten federal regulation of tobacco, expect newspapers to present “both sides” of the story by quoting cigarette giant RJ Reynolds opposite a group like Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids — painting the kind of industry-versus-do-gooder picture that characterizes coverage of most regulatory battles.

But, as usual, that picture is false. The most important ally of the “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act” is Philip Morris, the largest cigarette maker in the world. The anti-smoking groups, which have only a fraction of Philip Morris’ lobbying clout and no generous political action committees, are sideshows in this debate.

Read it here.

New Chamber Index Shows Conservatives Aren't Corporate Pawns

My latest Examiner column looks at the latest voting scorecard from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and weeds out some interesting trends.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., had the most conservative voting record in 2008 according to the American Conservative Union (ACU), and was a “taxpayer hero” according to the National Taxpayer’s Union (NTU), but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says his 2008 record was less pro-business than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton.

Similarly, Texas libertarian GOPer Rep. Ron Paul—the most steadfast congressional opponent of regulation, taxation, and any sort of government intervention in business—scored lower than 90% of Democrats last year on the Chamber’s scorecard.

Read the whole thing here.

Crisis and Opportunity: How the Bailouts and the New New Deal Pierce the Big Myth and Put Tradition and Free Markets Back on the Same Side

I gave this talk at the Heritage Foundation on the opportunity the bailouts provide: restoking "fusionism," or the kinship between small-town, agrarian conservatism steeped in tradition on the one hand, and free markets on the other hand.

In short, big government, not free markets, yield Britney Spears and Wal-Mart. Please watch my talk. I begin at about 12 minutes.
The event was sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute through its Culture of Enterprise initiative.

Alternatively, you can save the mp3 by clicking here, and then put it on your iPhone or whatever.

The business of Detroit is producing lobbyists

My Examiner column looks at what's coming off the assembly line in Detroit:

GM spent about $8 million to $8.5 million on federal lobbying each year from 2003 to 2006, lobbying records show. Then, as things turned dramatically southward for the company, lobbying spending exploded, jumping 64 percent in 2007 to $14.6 million. Last year saw another big jump. Chrysler ramped up its lobbying at a steadier pace. From $3.1 million in 2001, it progressively rose to $7.1 million in 2007. Private equity firm Cerberus Capital bought Chrysler in 2007 and spent $7.9 million on lobbying in 2008.

The details of these lobbying surges are telling.

Ten days after Barack Obama was elected president, GM added lobbying giant Covington & Burling to its lobbying platoon. Specifically, GM hired the firm’s heavy hitter, Stuart Eizenstat.

Eizenstat has worked in every Democratic administration since Lyndon Johnson....

Read the whole thing here.