What’s the “conflict of interest?”
Several of these Fed reserve directors were connected to the companies and banks that received large sums of government money.
Joel Gehrke of Examiner reports:
The office of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who caucuses with the Democrats, noted that the [GAO] report did not name any names, “but unambiguously described several individual cases involving Fed directors that created the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
The group of 18 people connected to both the Federal Reserve and a bailed out company included: the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt (who is now Obama’s jobs czar); Stephen Friedman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.; and Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase.
It gets worse.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York consulted with GE about creating an “emergency program to assist with the commercial paper market” while Jeffery Immelt served as a New York Fed director, according to the Examiner report.
“The Fed later provided $16 billion in financing for GE under the emergency lending program,” even while Immelt held his position with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and GE, according to the Sanders report.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Jamie Dimon was the director for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York when JP Morgan received $29 billion through the Federal Reserve to purchase Bear Stearns, according to the report.
“Dimon also convinced the Fed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired this troubled investment bank,” writes the Sanders report.
Cf. http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/report-fed-directors-benefited-bailouts
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