Treasury Department

WASHINGTON -- Jan. 2, 1999, was a worrisome date for 32 million Americans: the day the government was to have eliminated paper checks for federal benefit recipients.Not to worry. The check is in the mail.The Federal Debt Collection Improvement Act, passed two years ago, set tomorrow as the day when all benefit payments were to be made through direct deposit.Stung by complaints, the Treasury Department changed direction.``It's a date without real significance,'' said Don Hammond, the Treasury Department's fiscal assistant secretary.

WASHINGTON -- Trying to squelch a Republican drive for a major tax cut, the Treasury Department has estimated that a House GOP tax proposal would cost the Treasury nearly $3 trillion in the decade when retiring baby boomers begin to strain the Treasury.The department's $2.8 trillion cost estimate would be more than triple the $864 billion that the proposal is expected to cost in its first 10 years.Administration officials say the plan would almost certainly drive the federal budget back into the red, and they plan to use the new Treasury Department estimates in the battle with the GOP over what to do with the burgeoning budget surplus.

WASHINGTON -- Jan. 2, 1999, was a worrisome date for 32 million Americans: the day the government was to have eliminated paper checks for federal benefit recipients.Not to worry. The check is in the mail.The Federal Debt Collection Improvement Act, passed two years ago, set tomorrow as the day when all benefit payments were to be made through direct deposit.Stung by complaints, the Treasury Department changed direction."It's a date without real significance," said Don Hammond, the Treasury Department's fiscal assistant secretary.

WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. George W. Bush's rivals for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, already reeling from the disclosure that he has raised more than $36 million, face another money setback that can be attributed indirectly to his father, former President George Bush.The senior Bush's Treasury Department laid down a ruling in 1991 that will put an additional squeeze on all the other GOP hopefuls except self-financing multimillionaire Steve Forbes. It decided, whether by political calculation or otherwise, to adopt a payout schedule of the federal subsidy to candidates under the 1974 campaign finance law that will deny them much of the money for which they've qualified at precisely the time they will most need it.The law stipulates that the subsidy be paid starting Jan. 1 of the presidential election year on a dollar-for-dollar matching basis for funds raised in amounts of $250 or less during the previous year.

Like a repentant consumer who got a raise after surviving for years on credit cards, the federal government said yesterday that budget surpluses created by a strong economy could ease an addiction to credit and help it pay down a debt load that's reached $5.5 trillion.The Treasury Department said last year's surplus, combined with others projected for the next 16 years, would let the government slow its issuance of new debt and buy existing debt securities back from investors for the first time since 1972.

Savings bonds are in for a change and it doesn't look good for consumers, financial experts say.Long a favorite with small investors and families saving for college, reliable old savings bonds will switch to a variable interest-rate system starting May 1. Bonds issued before that date will not be affected by the changes.Gone is the system in which a floor was placed under the interest rate, recently 4 percent. Gone, too, is a formula for the first five years that was pegged to the higher-yielding five-year Treasury note.

WASHINGTON -- Jean Hanson, the Treasury Department's general counsel, who was caught up in the Whitewater scandal, resigned yesterday, becoming the second senior Treasury official in two days to resign as a result of the controversy.Separately, Clinton administration sources said the long-stalled nomination of lawyer Ricki Tigert to be chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. also seems to be in jeopardy as a result of the congressional furor over Whitewater.Ms. Tigert was first nominated to be one of the nation's top banking regulators by President Clinton in November 1993, and the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee voted to confirm her in February.

The Justice Department's flawed examination of the FBI's handling of the Waco disaster is a curious contrast with the Treasury Department's tougher evaluation last week of its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The Treasury report was devastating in its criticism of ATF's botched raid on the Branch Davidian compound. Several senior ATF officials, in Washington and at the scene, have been suspended. The FBI's more exhaustive study of the 51-day siege and its fiery climax leaves a great many central questions unanswered and lays blame on no one.Blame there was aplenty for the initial raid by a law enforcement force that had no business attempting such an operation.

WASHINGTON -- A review by the Commerce Department has found that the U.S. government missed key national security problems when it allowed a Japanese company to buy the only U.S. manufacturer of some computer components used in the Patriot and Trident missiles.The transaction, involving a unit of Applied Magnetics Corp. of Goleta, Calif., was approved by the Bush administration in January. The sale was the first foreign investment issue taken up by the Clinton administration, which theoretically could still cancel it.Foreign embassies and many U.S. and foreign corporations have followed the case as a bellwether of the new administration's attitudes toward the sale of companies with militarily strategic technologies.

Are you still holding Treasury certificates? If so, Uncle Sam wants them back.In exchange for your paper, you would get a computerized account to keep track of your Treasury investments, and that could mean fewer headaches for you. The system is part of a new federal program called Smart Exchange.For years, the government has been trying to computerize its system for handling Treasury notes, bills and bonds. Since 1986, all new Treasuries have been issued in computerized book-entry only.And, although the Treasury Department no longer will issue paper securities, that still leaves a lot of certificates in circulation.

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner issued new guidelines yesterday aimed at eliminating the influence of lobbyists on the $700 billion financial bailout program by restricting their contact with officials who are reviewing applications for money and deciding how to disburse it. Treasury officials will also seek to limit political influence over the funds, saying they will use similar restrictions that forbid such influence in tax matters...

WASHINGTON -- The Treasury Department said yesterday that China's currency is "undervalued," but it found no evidence the Asian giant is manipulating the yuan to gain an unfair trade advantage. Senators reacted to the finding in the department's semiannual currency review by introducing a bill providing new ways for the United States to pressure nations suspected of currency manipulation. "For too long, our currency policy has left American workers and businesses unprotected from foreign governments seeking an unfair financial advantage," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat,, said at a news conference.

SINGAPORE --The United States pressed the top finance officials of the world's leading industrial nations yesterday to crack down on what Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said was the exploitation of their banking systems by at least 30 Iranian front companies involved in illicit activities. Paulson said he told the finance and economic ministers that the front companies had been identified by American intelligence agencies as conducting international financial transactions using banks in Europe and elsewhere, many of them "blue chip banks."

WASHINGTON -- President Bush protests a bit too much about The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal's exposure of his administration's secret money-tracking program. The president called it "disgraceful" that the newspapers reported that Treasury Department officials acquired access to the world's largest international financial database, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, commonly known as SWIFT, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush criticized newspapers yesterday for disclosing a secret U.S. government program monitoring international banking transactions, calling the disclosures a "disgraceful" act that could assist terrorists. Bush, speaking during a White House meeting with organizations that support the war in Iraq, echoed comments Friday by Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative commentators, who condemned the reports last week in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets.

The federal panel that signed off on the Dubai port deal is charged with ensuring that foreign takeovers of U.S. companies don't jeopardize national security, but it's hardly spoiling for a fight. Of the roughly 1,600 cases it has reviewed in the past generation, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has considered 25 in need of a full investigation. A dozen were forwarded to the president to decide their fate. Of those, one deal - 16 years ago - was quashed. Now that a United Arab Emirates company is poised to assume some operations at six U.S. ports, including Baltimore's, the resulting surge of criticism has cast a glaring light on a process so enigmatic that it gives the tight-lipped National Security Agency a run for its money.

Orioles third baseman Melvin Mora can't name anyone on Cuba's national team, but that doesn't mean he's unfamiliar with the country's baseball legacy. "I know their reputation and they are all good," Mora said yesterday when told that Cuba has received a license from the U.S. Treasury Department and will be able to play in March's inaugural World Baseball Classic. "They always play good baseball in Cuba, and I'd love to play against them." Mora, who will represent Venezuela in the 16-country tournament, can't face Cuba until the second round of the 17-day Classic, which starts March 3 in Tokyo and continues at various locations until wrapping up with the final March 20 in San Diego.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration warned China yesterday that its currency policies are having a "highly distortionary" impact on global trade, and hinted that they could lead to economic sanctions. But the Treasury Department stopped short of declaring China to be a manipulative trading partner. In its required semiannual report to Congress on currency practices, the Treasury Department warned that "if current trends continue without substantial alteration, China's policies will likely meet the ... technical requirements for designation" as a manipulator under a 1988 law. That move would trigger negotiations with Chinese leaders.

BOSTON - Ever wonder what happened to the State Department's chief of propaganda? The head of public diplomacy was supposed to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim street. After all that fanfare, the PR seat has been empty lo these many months. Is it possible that no one wants to be chief flack for the gang that couldn't shoot straight? Let's take the bungled case of Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize. This Iranian dissident is being prevented from publishing her memoirs in the United States because of regulations that prohibit "trading with the enemy."

WASHINGTON -- The Washington Post had a story Monday that contained possibly the greatest hint to a sitting Cabinet secretary to start looking for another job that has ever been printed. The article reported, "One senior administration official said Treasury Secretary John W. Snow can stay as long as he wants, provided it is not very long." Provided it is not very long! Yo, Mr. Secretary, I'd say someone in the White House wants you gone! If I were you, I wouldn't renew any leases for more than a month at a time -- or buy any really green bananas for the office.