Wall St. Firm Draws Scrutiny as U.S. Adviser

[IDemo]

Source: New York Times

By ERIC LIPTON and MICHAEL J. de la MERCED
Published: May 18, 2009

The financial crisis has ravaged many a Wall Street giant, but it has also produced a handful of winners. BlackRock, a money manager that is much admired but little known outside financial circles, is fast emerging as one of the nation’s financial powerhouses.

BlackRock, which started in a one-room office 21 years ago, now manages $1.3 trillion in assets for big private clients, including hedge funds and foreign governments.

But it is the company’s highly prized role as a government adviser and contractor that is now drawing attention.

By dint of its expertise and track record, it has won contracts to help the government manage the complex rescues of Bear Stearns, the American International Group and Citigroup.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/business/19blackrock.html?_r=1&hp

[xchrom]

1. all i can think of is 'it's a bad day at Blackrock', nt

[madrchsod]

2. watched more times in the whitehouse than any other film

a must see movie

[McCamy Taylor]

3. I wrote about B of A and Blackrock. Here is a link

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/377

All of this leads me to believe that Bank of America expects BlackRock to be a money making division for the banking giant. Now consider. The nation’s largest generator of toxic mortgages, a bank which claims that all its bad loans came from Merrill Lynch but which actually generated 25% of them itself

http://www.innercitypress.org/bofa.html

is also in the business of buying up properties which are about to be foreclosed for a fraction of their value. There is something wrong with this picture. Can you figure out what it is?

A bank which knows that one of its partners can snatch up foreclosed properties no longer has anything to fear if a home buyer defaults. It can write as many subprime loans as it likes, take all the risks that the market will allow, rake in profit, watch people lose their homes and then turn the property over to its resale division, which will sell it again through the bank’s mortgage division. And, if the taxpayers are paying the difference between what the mortgages used to be worth and what the property can fetch now (or a few years from now) on the real estate market, it is a win-win scenario for B of A. There is no way that they can lose.

Indeed, the only ones who will lose are the American tax payers who will end up owning nothing for their billions of dollars thrown down the banking drain, since B of A will almost certainly write off any property sold to its partner, BlackRock as a “loss”.

In this way Bank of America turns into one great big Worm Oroborous, swallowing the country’s home buying dollars in its greed. Since any American who owns a home outright is an outrage to the hungry beast, it desires an economic climate in which people will be forced to take out a mortgage in order to pay their medical expenses or send their kids to college or pay their credit card debt.

[pjt7]

4. Blackrock was given $1 Billion

of equity by FEMA in 2002. This money was managed & invested by them & was used to set up the 9.11 Captive Insurance Fund. Thru this over $200 million has been spent FIGHTING 9.11 rescue workers who have died & had multiple health problems from the toxic dust.

What a bunch of leeches taking the taxpayers money & it is ultimately being used to fight against our Nations real hero's.

BTW.. NO major media outlet has ever reported this.

Consider them the Blackwater of the Financial World.

[WriteDown]

5. Link please? nt