NY Fed's $40 Billion Iraqi Money Trail

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/26-0

It has been called the largest airborne transfer of currency in the history of the world. But finding out what happened to all the money involved has become one of the biggest financial mysteries of all time.

Beginning in the very earliest days of the war in Iraq, the New York Federal Reserve shipped billions of dollars in physical cash to Baghdad to pay for the reopening of the government and restoration of basic services.

The money was packed onto pallets inside a heavily guarded New York Federal Reserve compound in East Rutherford, New Jersey, trucked to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, and flown by military aircraft to Baghdad International Airport.

By one account, the New York Fed shipped about $40 billion in cash between 2003 and 2008. In just the first two years, the shipments included more than 281 million individual bills weighing a total of 363 tons. But soon after the money arrived in the chaos of war-torn Baghdad, the paper trail documenting who controlled it all began to go cold.

MORE at the link --

[rubberducky]

1. I`m having a real hard time even giving any credence to this story.

[KoKo]

2. This is a CNBC special report, it seems. Also more today...

I remember the WaPo and NYT's reporting on "pallets of cash" that went into Iraq.

K&R

[KoKo]

4. Yves over at Naked Capitalism has some skepticism of the CNBC report:

Helicopter Geithner’s NY Fed $40 Billion Iraq Money Drop

Reader 1SK sent me a story which I felt I had to call to the attention of Naked Capitalism readers. It strikes me as devious public relations ploy, in which an episode that sounds at best poorly executed and at worst a scandal is reframed by focusing on an account of alleged exceptional individual performance that also provides an unverifiable answer to a key question in an ongoing investigation.

The incident in question is the air shipping of a claimed $40 billion in cold hard cash airlifted from the New York Fed to Iraq from 2003 to 2008. This operation took place largely if not entirely on Tim Geithner’s watch, since he was president of the New York Fed from October 2003 to November 2008. So while the US has never had a Helicopter Ben, Iraq had a Helicopter Geithner.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/helicopter-geithners-ny-fed-40-billion-iraq-money-drop.html

[indepat]

3. A microcosm of the rampant fraud prevalent in junior's administration

and almost nobody gives a diddle-dy-damn. But social security and Medicare must be gutted to pay for it. :patriot: