Barclays bank didn’t just scam other financial giants

[suffragette]

19. Barclays also received TARP money from AIG

Apparently they were in the 'too big to fail' club that needed huge amounts of tax money from the U.S. public so they could continue their financial wizardry. Though in the case of the TARP bailout, it was an indirect payment through AIG. I would venture that would have meant that not even the small regulatory measures imposed on the primary recipients of TARP, such as AIG, applied to them. And note, that AIG was not forthcoming about these TARP payouts to other banks, but only released the info after Congressional demands they do so.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20039.html
By EAMON JAVERS | 3/15/09 7:40 PM EDT
Updated: 3/16/09 6:24 PM EDT

The documents AIG released account for some of the more than $180 billion in aid that AIG has received, and they detailed for the first time which financial firms are benefitting from the federal handout.

In all, AIG disclosed payments of $105.3 billion between September and December 2008. And some of the biggest recipients were European banks. Societe Generale, based in France, was the top foreign recipient at $11.9 billion, Deutsche Bank of Germany got $11.8 billion and Barclays, based in England, was paid $8.5 billion.

Here in the U.S., Goldman Sachs received $12.9 billion. Edward Liddy, the government-installed CEO of AIG, sat on the board of directors of Goldman Sachs until he joined AIG.

He took the position while President George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson — who until joining the administration had served as Goldman's chairman and CEO — arranged the insurance company's initial government bailout.



http://www.standard.co.uk/business/barclays-got-6bn-of-insurers-bailout-cash-6830088.html

16 March 2009

Deutsche Bank and Société Société Générale were the largest recipients with $12 billion each while Barclays received $8.5 billion.
Barclays refused to comment on when it received funds from AIG, but postings from AIG indicate funds went to Barclays by the end of 2008.

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responsible for Barclays being able to refuse help from the British taxpayer.
Barclays has been furiously holding on to its independence, even tapping Middle Eastern investors and selling a third of the bank to the sheikhs rather than go the route of Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds-Halifax Bank of Scotland, which have ended up being part-nationalised.

Banking analysts said the widespread nature of the payouts indicate the main reason the US Treasury moved to save AIG: if the US had not bailed it out, a string of the world's biggest banks might have collapsed.




In an article about Varley and Diamond taking 'lower" bonuses in 2010, Varley also admitted receiving "indirect state support" so who knows how much the UK citizens also contributed to Barclay's balance sheet, salaries and bonuses.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/7252509/Barclays-bosses-John-Varley-and-Bob-Diamond-forgo-bonuses.html

John Varley, chief executive, will take only his £1.1m salary, while Bob Diamond, president and head of the investment bank, will earn just £250,000. Their last annual bonuses, in 2007, were £2m and £18m respectively. Mr Diamond has already earned $26m (£16.5m) from the sale of fund management arm Barclays Global Investors (BGI) last year.

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Barclays is at the centre of the storm over bonuses because it is aggressively growing its investment bank, Barclays Capital. Sparking union anger, it confirmed that its 23,000 investment bankers would take home £191,000 each from a total pot of £4.4bn. They have been awarded another £1.2bn, or £52,000 each, in shares deferred over three years.

"Paying huge bonuses when people are still losing their jobs and business cannot get the loans they need because of a crash made in the finance sector goes against every concept of fairness," TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said. "It is not good enough for Barclays to say they did not receive direct aid. Policies designed to help banks rebuild their balance sheets have been used to pay bonuses."

In what was a watershed moment, Mr Varley conceded for the first time that Barclays has been the beneficiary of indirect state support, but he maintained he is at the mercy of markets over pay. "I am not denying that we have all benefited," he said, referring to Government liquidity and funding schemes put in place to ease the financial crisis.



That also raises important questions to me about how reliable/manipulated the numbers for the financial institutions stability/recovery are. How much of the numbers reported are actually money that was funneled to these institutions directly or indirectly from a variety of government (citizen's taxes) money at the same time the citizens of these countries faced loss of jobs, bankruptcies, cuts to social and retirement funds, whether under the official label of austerity or not?