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When President Obama announced additional measures to deal with too-big-to-fail (TBTF) banks, yesterday, it was Paul Volcker standing behind him, not the usual economic team of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.
Volcker has been a strong champion of breaking up the TBTF banks and sharply curtailing the casino activities of traditional depository banks. So does Obama mean it?
Liz Warren on Rachel Maddow last night seemed optimistic about the President’s announcement. Felix Salmon, who was on FDL’s Sunday Book Salon gave him "Three Cheers." Yves Smith and others are unconvinced and worried about the details, so it’s wait and see time.
On the critical issue of whether the President’s proposal to impose restrictions on the ability of financial institution to become TBTF, Liz Warren, who had just met with Obama, thinks she heard a commitment that leads eventually to breaking up the TBTF banks.
But Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner appeared on PBS News Hour last night to explain the proposals, and he was emphatic that there would be no breakup of the biggest banks:
JUDY WOODRUFF: So how different would the banking sector look if everything you want is enacted?
TIM GEITHNER: Well, we want to have a more stable system that does a better job of protecting consumers and meeting the needs of companies that need to raise capital, families that need to borrow to finance their kids’ education. That’s our basic objective in this. To do that, we need to make sure that banks aren’t taking the kind of risks that will threaten the stability of the system. That requires a whole range of complicated, important reforms constraints.
We’ve made a lot of progress in the House; we’ve got a very strong bill there. But we’re now at a critical moment in the Senate and we wanted to make sure at this critical moment as we try to move this forward, we had the best set of ideas in place that offer the best prospect of a strong set of reforms.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So in essence, are you saying, big banks need to be broken up?
TIM GEITHNER: No, this does not propose that. What this does is try to make sure we limit risk-taking – the kind of risks that could threaten the stability of the system in the future.
So it’s pretty clear Geithner sees this as placing limits on the risks banks can take, but if today’s giant banks are TBTF, we just need to watch them better.
Looks to me like the Administration is trying to have it both ways and everyone gets to say and hear whatever they want. In case the White House hasn’t learned this, when your credibility is tanking, and especially on these issues, that just doesn’t cut it any more.
Oh, in case you missed the Republican response, Rep. Scott Garrett, the leading Republican on the House Financial Services Commitee, made clear the President would get zero help from Republicans. Their solution: never bail out anyone, even if, by definition, the TBTF institutions would bring down the world’s economy. And we shouldn’t try to make the TBTF banks smaller, because then we wouldn’t have the biggest banks in the world any more. Good luck, America.
Update:
Paul Krugman on What Did Geithner Say?:
As it was, Geithner might as well have had a chyron underneath as he spoke, with the words DON’T WORRY, WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE ANY REAL ACTION.
I don’t know what’s really going on here, but Obama needs to find some officials who can talk about taking on Wall Street as if they mean it.
75 Comments
Obama has to decide who runs things @ the WH. Going out there with Volcker and creating the impression a new Sheriff is in town is fine but why are they allowing Timmy to basically say the opposite a few hrs. later? No message control seems to exist is one possibility and the other is we have a few factions fighting for control of the message with Obama either clueless or powerless.
Then break up Geithner … (metaphoically speaking, of course).
I heard this on NPR last night and had a good laugh; then saw some of it on the teevee. Seriously, why does Tim Geithner have any platform to stand up on his craven hind legs and say anything at all?
Usual dumb stuff from ObamaRahma. Can’t decide if the new kid in town is more popular than the old boyfriend.
Geithner should never have been hired in the first place; now he needs to be run out of town on a rail…. the sooner the better.
Why does Geithner still have a job?
Obvama knows very well how short the attention span of the American public is and he knows that using the image of Volcker will not be joined with the reality of his thieving Treasury secretary in any meaningful way.
This is Obama’s MO. Mr. Cameleon. I think you’re right, Scarecrow. The public has his number, now, and this crap won’t cut it anymore. Furthermore, imo, nothing will satisfy the public until heads roll at the WH, and those heads need to be Geithner and Summers. They’re part of the problem; not part of the solution, and people know that, too.
I think it may be that a third possibility is in play: they’re throwing every different scenario at the wall and they’ll be polling to see which one sticks. I think it’s pretty ballsy of Geithner to contradict the President on such a high profile subject. OTOH, maybe he was allowed to go out there and say what he did so the bank stocks don’t tank too badly. Hmmm…I wonder if anyone has followed the effect what the President said had on the bank stocks and whether the stock prices were adversely affected to the point that Geithner was sent out by a President who basically got the message he was being sent. If so, what was that message: we need to understand who owns who here?
In the interview, Elizabeth Warren confessed that she’s not too astute about political process. IOW, she took Obama’s comforting words at face value, and doesn’t know how to evaluate the political process between here and there.
A lot depends on public reaction. If we make enough noise in support of the apparent Glass-Steagall II, we might get something like it, and Geithner’s value will be to hold the hands of the MOTU, and help them swallow their medicine. If we don’t make so much noise, the reform will develop more and more leaks.
Bob in AZ
What Obama is saying is for the rubes (us). What Geithner is saying is for the financials.
Apparently these are all too complicated for us rubes to understand or worry our little empty heads about. But that’s OK because Timmy’s in charge, right?
The progress that Geithner is referring to in the House is actually the success of the financial industry in having their various whores like Barney Frank and Melissa Bean gut any real reform. And let’s be clear reform of the kind that was needed like Glass-Steagall was never on the table at all. In the Senate, Dodd seems intent on taking the title of the biggest whore for the banksters on Capitol Hill before he leaves and is trying to stomp out what crumbs survived the process in the House, like a vastly weakened CFPA and the audit the Fed bill. That’s what Geithner is referring to as a “critical moment” in the Senate.
The usual Obama warnings apply to all this. Don’t pay attention to what he says or whom he has standing behind him. Those are just atmospherics. Pay attention to what he does (and also how he does it).
Obama’s like a cheating spouse.
Says all the right things so the wife doesn’t leave, turns around on his heels, out the door, and off to his mistress.
Geithner is setting up his next job. Chariman of some TBTF institution. If they get broken up, where’s a poor Geithner to go?
What a surprise!!! I’m floored!
A more stable system to finance education would not require people go deep, deep into hock in order to get a degree.
Taxpayers should finance and subsidize education, because that would be less expensive for the real economy than the slow drip of repayment over decades, to satisfy the addiction of Wall Street to interest payments.
If business taxes were raised by 2% then we could finance education for all on a pay as you go basis, and save folks from having to pay back the costs of their education for most of their working lives, sometimes several times over.
Doesn’t matter what the SC decided yesterday. The fix is in anyway.
Obama runs thing at the WH. His subordinates are doing his bidding and he is neither clueless nor powerless. Read the background stories on his eight years in the Illinois senate. This is the real Obama. He knows how to tell people what they want to hear, and he’s very, very good at it. Notice how quickly he shifted to the banksters after the MA embarrassment: the populist rhetoric, the tough sounding, but vague, prescriptions. He’s used to getting over with this sort of oratorical ruse and he fully expects that he can smooth over the anger. Then business as usual.
Never mind the talk, watch the walk. Always!
so geitner,speaking for the banks, wants you to know they have “your kids education” hostage. and they’re gonna kill it too, if they dont get everything they want. and then their gonna kill your parents retirement. we need a no negotiation with bank terrorists policy. it only encourages them to more and greater depredations.
That sounds about right. The ever popular Rahm hat trick – a “Trial Balloon”
I’m with the “wait and see” crowd because we already know our President is a man of few actions but many words. The cynic in me keeps thinking the only thing He really came away with is not “we need to change our course of action” but more like “I need a fresh speechwriter”
Although one silver lining here is Elizabeth Warren. If she’s hopeful then I am hopeful. So far she has been a total straight shooter.
Axing Geithner, Summers and Bernanke (one, all or any combination) would go a long way to restoring some credibility. After all, Van Jones got kicked to the curb for being “embarrassing” so why can’t these guys get the same for being pathetically lame at what they do?
As my friends always like to joke about incompetents in the workplace:
HE MUST HAVE PICTURES!!!!
“not “we need to change our course of action” but more like “I need a fresh speechwriter””
and a new stage director. “summers and geitner – off. Volcker stand right here.”
Might be interested in hearing the take of one honest political commentator. Send this to everyone you know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI
Well, at least these are better atmospherics. I wonder if Mr. Volcker would consider taking Chairmanship of the Federal Reserve again. Aside from the creation of CDOs, was there a more damaging circumstance in the Reagan years then the removal of Volcker from that post?
HAHAHAHA! Thanks, that actually helped put into perspective while providing much needed levity.
“I don’t know what’s really going on here, but Obama needs to find some officials who can talk about taking on Wall Street as if they mean it.”
As if they mean it.
Boy, does that say it all. Nothing about really doing it, just making a better show of appearing to do it.
Vince Lombardi preached conditioning to his players because “fatigue makes cowards of us all”. Watching Obama I’ve now learned that “cowardice makes idiots of us all”. How else could someone of his intelligence think that he can continue to talk one game and play another? This is beyond amazing, it’s full-on astounding.
Worse, they have your house, they have your car, they have your education, they have your retirement, as it were, they even have your consumption in the gap between stagnant wages and needs.
One of the best things about being a gay man is that collectively we’ve figured out how to hook up with other men almost anywhere, despite the current fixation on same sex marriage.
Finance has, likewise, figured out how to insert itself between you and everything you need so that instead of rising wages, we are enslaved to debt and pay a significant percentage of our lifetime incomes for that financing.
Geithners stage presence is the worse Ive ever seen. Even the outlandish wannabes on the Idol shoes can’t best him for lack of it. His use of language is off the board, maybe some day if he worked hard he might get a lot better in the way Sir Allan Greenspin, the one whos every nuance is studied to death etc.
In the quote above I think this cut will show how the kid may have some talent:
” That requires a whole range of complicated, important reforms constraints.” Note the exact spelling of the word reforms… ( supposed to be reform constraints.) By using the plural of reforms it is a noun, instead of a verb. The constraints are on reform. But sneaky devil makes a switcharue from what sounded like (reform of banking constraints of banking.) So listen close when he swallows words and omits things, he’s slick.
The future in a nutshell:
Obama continues the COrporate Dem Administration
Dems get wiped out in 2010
GOP continues “Party of No”, Dems continue “Corporate Dem”
Dems get wiped out in 2012.
GOP burns the “Teabaggers”, we get more major wars, 9/11 events, economic collapse
People turn in fear to the Democrats.
And the downward spiral continues.
Am I missing something?
Weren’t we supposed to “Crash the Gates” or something? Wasn’t the operating thesis of the Progressive movement that we are “Crashing the Gates” because those currently inside weren’t our friends? It couldn’t get any more sickening.
TIM GEITHNER: “Well, we want to have a more stable system that does a better job of protecting consumers and meeting the needs of companies that need to raise capital, families that need to borrow to finance their kids’ education. That’s our basic objective in this.”
And every honest human being that hears this will be screaming, “BULLSHIT!!!”
Hugh’s comments underscored by Numerian (“insider’s view of what really is necessary” over at “Unsurprising Poll Results from Massachusetts: Voters Think Obama Sides With the Banks,” LINK who points out:
“The important aspect of this eight point program is that all of these actions can be taken here and now. The Obama administration doesn’t need to wait for regulatory reform to work its way through years of legislation and court tests. All it needs is the right leadership in the regulatory bodies, and the right prodding from the administration.”
Is Volker IN; Geithner, Summers and Bernanke OUT?
Just for you, Bluetoe
Meanwhile, “Sources at three Wall Street banks told BusinessInsider’s John Carney that “they are already finding ways to own, invest in and sponsor hedge funds and private equity funds” despite the proposed restrictions on those activities. One unnamed operative at a major bank said his firm expects the reforms to affect no more than one percent of its business.” (http://rawstory.com/2010/01/bankers-ways-around-financial-reforms)
I think you might be giving him too much credit. He’s more of the slip of the tongue kind of guy vs. subtle code semantics type (assuming of course, he is unscripted).
The body language is what speaks louder to me. The fact that a) he can’t look anyone or anything in the eye, shifty eyed I guess you call it and b) he keeps his head constantly tilted low like a puppy that just got kicked.
Truly, truly, bad stage presence indeed.
he’s always reminded me of a lying gradeschooler
Nice job Scarecrow. Bring to mind the recent Borowitz piece, Obama Rips Bankers Not Already In His Cabinet.
One thing that Obama’s rhetoric doesn’t address, though, is that even broken down into smaller entities, when you allow banks to buy and sell “off the books” credit default swaps in amounts where defaults can equal to the world economy, you continue to have a tbtf issue. You can’t allow a secret, non-funded, off the books liability, portion of the investment economy to become tbtf either. It wasn’t that letting the cds defaults happenw would have caused even one or two very big banks/brokerages/etc. to fail, it’s that you had a system that would, by seeming design, domino so that it wasnt “the” big bank failing that was at issue, but the ripples that would cause entity after entity that had cds to also fail.fwiw
WH doesn’t want to get rid of Summers/Geithner. They’ve already said they were in full agreement with Volker and worked with him to restrain Wall Street.
Seriously, do they think anyone actually believes this crap? Who do they think is their audience?
I agree. The talk from this guy is worthless. He’s gone back on almost every campaign promise he made from sq. 1. He’s Corporatist shill and he’ll use whatever Orwellian words necessary to hide the walk.
Need to reinstate Glass Steagall, separating commercial and investment banking. What Obummer proposes sounds vague.
Won’t happen, however.
The United Corporations of America
This administration and congress is the opposite of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, where government asserted it’s power over unbridled, predatory business interests to protect the People and common good of the country.
Yesterday’s SCOTUS decision is one more nail in the coffin for representative democracy in America, and will fossilize government as a capitve tool of business.
The more capital is diverted into globalized financialization and away from productive wealth creation in the real economy where human beings live and work, the worse life will be for the bottom 95% of the nation.
With so many more voters outside rather than inside the top 5%, it seems electorally foolhardy to govern so obviously against that majority’s interests. But D.C.’s mantra continues unabated — If it doesn’t generate huge contributions for my next re-election campaign, it doesn’t exist.
Elizabeth Warren, the only official that I trust in the entire federal system, is the Brooksley Born of this generation. Wall Street will never permit their paid independent contractors on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to act contrary to their narrow interests. Emmanuel, Geithner, Summers, Rubin, etal. know who they work for, and it isn’t the People or the Constitution of the United States.
They have been pretty consistent, I think, with who this administration is talking to. Those who are not very politically aware and who only infrequently raise their head out of the water to hear some pretty words from Obama and then sink again. Only problem is, I don’t think that’s going to be enough to get him four more years.
http://forwantofanail.com
my 2 cents: Turbo Timmy should be shown the door.
No credibility from Day 1 as either:
working for the people
regulating the banks via NY Fed
paying his own taxes (playing by the rules)
and ALL of this reflects on Obama.
ACCURATELY.
that is what Barry has wanted, and that is what Barry has gotten.
thus, unlikely to change.
(Did I mention that I was pissed about barry’s FISA vote? I was equally pissed about the Timmy nomination. insider. crooked. Krugman liked him though…)
I am going to call him Barry until his behavior improves.
Well Obama has lost the benefit of the doubt from me. I don’t believe it for a second and it will take a lot of hard evidence, in the form of dramatic action, to convince me.
What if Progressive,Tea Bag Party 2010 Democrats and Republican incumbents voted out.Future lobbist ex lawmakers without jobs.2012 WILL SEE.
Banks don’t need to be Citi or BoA or JPMorgan sized to help people pay for their kids college educations (high-priced though the may be, not going to get into how education loan programs have simply enabled education costs to continue their rise).
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Nothing will change. Obama apparently doesn’t have the stones to follow through on these “statements”.
If he was serious about financial reform, why is Geitner still there. We know that he encouraged AIG to lie to regulators during the initial stages of the financial crisis and yet is stays on at Treasury.
As a perfect example of Obama being perfectly comfortable not keeping his promises: Gitmo is still going strong after he signed an executive order one year ago to have it closed by now.
He’s trying to coast by on pretty words and rhetoric only. Then he’ll blame the Senate or House for not accomplishing anything even though he’s not put in any effort himself.
Remember when Bush used to go out on the tours to push his agenda? Why doesn’t Obama go out and do the same? If he really wanted to accomplish these lofty goals, he should be taking his case to the people not simply relying on our do-nothing legislative branch.
Way ahead of me. Great work!
It’s good to see that Murdoch has gotten his money’s worth.
This, as much as anything within government, has sealed America’s fate.
Why is Geithner not in the unemployment line?
As possibly the most conservative reader of FDL, I must say that I for once agree with you and the President. It is preposterous that FDIC insured banks are allowed to gamble with their deposits. If the president goes about this right, he will have many conservatives on board. If he is arrogant and partisain, like in everything else he has done, then the conservatives will say WTF and vote against it anyway just to spite him.
Let’s see if he can deliver on “bring people together”, if not then this no brainer will fail and we’ll have the presidents sorry leadership to blame.
It’s too good not to highlight, thank you.
There are no unemployment lines behind the wizard’s curtain, only golden parachutes.
Lawrence’s failed prescriptions for Lithuania and Yeltsyn’s Russia, and Geithners failure in Indonesia should have disqualified both from their current positions.
Thus far Obama has shown himself as a Corporate tool for Wall Street and Big Insurance. Obama’s Siren song to the electorate is just that. Unless both Lawrence and Geithner are shown the door quickly, the public can remain assured that Obama is staying his Corporate / Wall Street course.
For the last 30(=/-)years the old grey beards of wisdom have been replaced with the dan Quayle types.
The move of making him a vice president was genius. Not only to take the bar low, but thereby at a steady pace get rid of the old fusbudgets that knew better, in general. Pave the way for uncle W.
Now for show only, they trot out the venerable musium piece Paul Volker, and then, put him back in the display case until next time. So it is a rare occocasion that the public is treated to glimpses of what used to be a staple of government: Experience, and proven character. Replaced by the “me generation” boomers, and a awful lot of foreign born, ( too smart to not… make a US official of.) Just saying…
Now all we hear and I too believe it some, of how huge the mind of Obama is. So cerebral they say… He is good on the mike, quick with the rhetoric, and that always impresses. Where has he exactly shown anything that is cerebral in deed? Only words. He has people telling him what to do, he probably has a little device like W had to give him the moment by moment plays, like Gregory Peck in the “Most Dangerous Man.” 1969
You don’t get the real deal in leadership anymore, so you will have to make do…??
Frankly, I think it’s too late. America, as it once existed (at least in its own collective mythology — better than nothing) is dead. It has, thanks in no small part to the SCOTUS decision yesterday, now been formally rendered, made parcel to, the classic Fascist philosophy that melds the corporate world with the state, a setup wherein the individual counts for nothing at all. We differ from Italy-Nazi Germany only in the regard that here, the corporations own the state, not the more classic other way around. Our dictator is not some random political asshole such as Hitler or Mussolini, it is, instead, that long term undercurrent, the one that Churchill called the High Cabal, that FDR referred to as “the old enemies of peace – business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering – [those who] consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs…”
Gone, banished forever, is the one — the individual — unwilling to succumb to the reality that he no longer counts for shit, that only two things count (as shit): Money, and the people who have money. All else is either a resource, or if not, is dismissible.
America died this week. It’s been a long time in the process — the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 probably sounded the hail of the first trumpet, the selection of George W Bush heralded the final dirge — but finally, we as a nation have ‘crossed the bar.’
There’s a new god out there, folks. Fail to bow, worship, praise, and kiss its royal ass at your own risk. Me, I’m working strenuously to retract my middle finger in order to form a fist, but so far no luck.
The current big banks are creatures of decades of accumulation, led by Sandy Weil at Citi/Travelers. They are behemoths so big that mating requires artificial support. They desperately need culling.
Obama knows the difference between speeches that are popcorn for the masses and actions that indicate he means business. If he means to rein in big bank practices and their bloated structures and perverse operations, the first thing he would do is fire up his anti-trust division at the DoJ with a few more big guns and a bigger budget, then tell them to go hunt on safari in the financial sector looking for the most likely candidates to examine, who exhibit monopolistic and abusive practices. They won’t be hard to find.
He would impose a surtax on total comp. above a reasonable limit and send emissaries to Europe to spread the gospel, which they are preaching already. He would send emissaries to the places Goldman Scratch is most likely to want to move its execs in order to avoid tax and doing business restrictions. That would include Spain, Switzerland, the Caribbean and the Gulf.
He would set up a task force to evaluate abusive tax “planning” schemes that allow banks and other large corporations to shield billions from the tax man. And he would immediately ask Congress to end the preferential tax rate for hedge funds and capital gains taxes.
He doesn’t have to do all those things, just some of them to get TBTF players to the table. He then has to demand very specific changes from them – and get them – or implement more of those suggested changes.
All that is hardball, the only sport Wall Street knows how to play. I can’t imagine this establishmentarian, conflict averse president doing any of them. I can imagine him giving more speeches, quitting the field and calling it victory.
Obama has proven the pun in the old saying, you don’t have to be a farmer to be outstanding in your field.
He’s out standing in his field, alright.
Because Obama wants Geithner where he is. Of course.
Dragging Volcker to the front where the cameras could see him is nothing more than a publicity stunt, intended to distract us for a while. Geithner and Summers are still in charge and will remain so. I will only believe otherwise when they have left DC and their replacements have been named.
With that in mind, it’s not hard to guess what the real plan for the banks is: TBTF will be made a permanent feature of the financial landscape through unlimited government bailouts for all of the riskiest behavior, which is just the way it is today. Geithner and Summers will still be giving away money to their pals right up until November 2012 when Obama will lose the election to Jeb Bush and Liz Cheney.
I can’t stand it.
Peripherally related – WTF? Sheila Bair gets 2 mortgages from BoA? This is very poor optics.
Like… WTH, hech! what the heck… “Tax the health care of the mid class and union members who have moved the whole process of medical coverage for decades. That is a case book, and (callous…) object lesson.
To deliver an easily comprehended slap in the face to union members and the base. So… deductively. what is the real agenda of these chamelions? “No them by their deeds.” “Sorry Charlie we got enough rhetoric” inventory.
Trying hard but not very good at it? I agree, he’s always struck me as full of it and full of himself, but many people see him otherwise, so he must be very good at appealing to whatever longings people have.
Geithner is another of Obama’s numerous mistakes. Geither is one of the weasels left over from the Wall Street disaster which her helped create. I wonder if Obama will have the balls to get rid of Geithner or leave him in office to save face. Obama I’m afraid is a spineless empty suit, lacks leadership abilities, but I hope he has sense enough to see what bad choices he has made and doesn’t keep screwing things up.
After 2010′s mid-term debacle, Obama will have his bipartisan wet dream fulfilled — blue dog + republican majorities in both houses of congress.
Gingrich will emerge from this 1994 deja vu smoking wreckage with a Renewed Contract on America. Petraeus will retire by late 2010, early 2011, which will form the Gingrich/Petraeus nomination in 2012.
For anything other than corporatist DLC interests, Tuesday’s MA special election result pulled back the curtain to show Obama as the earliest lame duck in U.S. presidential history.
Well done, Rahm.
ha ha…yes, he lies repeatedly and the dog ate his tax returns.
You know, if Barry doesn’t fire this Geithner asshole quick (and divest himself of Bernanke voluntarily rather than simply having the Congress embarrass his bony ass by not reappointing him) then Obama is going to REALLY tank the Democraps AND tank any possibility of getting re-elected in 2012.
On Barry’s present course, he will be challenged by a primary opponent or simply not re-elected in 2012 because he is so fucking inept and STILL so far up banker ass that no one can understand his mumbles.
Volcker yes, Bernanke NO and Geithner FUCK NO.
Yup. Obama lame ducked himself before his first year was up.
BRILLIANT!
Besides dumping Bernanke and Geithner, Obamarahma needs to fire (NOT “accept his resignation”) Rahm. Rahm’s political career is a bigger smoking crater than Obama’s.
All Obamarahma needs to do is stall through the 2010 electoral defeat of the Dims. At that point the SCOTUS-freed corporations (which include Goldman-Sachs) will have outright purchased the government (with SCOTUS blessing) and TBTF will become policy.
The only REAL alternative at this point (unless Grayson does manage to get his 6 bills passed AND SIGNED INTO LAW) is states starting to secede from the disunion. I become more and more sympathetic to that idea every day. Balkanization is looking to be necessary before there is any chance of a reboot from scratch.
The old union started dying just after WWII when the government refused to reduce the military and opted for a National Security State instead of a free nation as originally intended. Empire building and maintenance has just as clearly destroyed the USA as it destroyed the Roman Republic-then-Empire.
It already is public policy. Wall Street can’t even pretend to put on a politically correct game face. Why should they?
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/bankers-brag-theyve-already-found-way
Constitutional representative democracy in America has been checkmated.
Rove’s plan to dump eight years of accumulated kleptocratic and anti-Constitutional catastrophes on any democratic president with nominal majorities in both houses of congress, brand this administration as the cause of their disasters, then run against the conditions they created, is a done deal.
Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize? Ridiculous. He won because the Nobel committee thought that his 2008 election extinquished any chance of a third Cheney/Bush term. They’re probably thinking what we’re thinking — Don’t piss on my shoe, and tell me it’s raining, President Who?
Exactly. Geithner has always rubbed elbows with the really big money guys but he has never been one himself. But he knows his time is coming if he does as the TBTF guys want.
He will be rewarded in the end.
Oh, and the country will suffer.
Courtesy of Sean Paul at The Agonist….
TIM GEITHNER: Well, we want to have a more stable system that does a better job of protecting consumers and meeting the needs of companies that need to raise capital, families that need to borrow to finance their kids’ education. That’s our basic objective in this.
A more stable system to finance education would not require people go deep, deep into hock in order to get a degree.
Umm, we already have an independent Federal Reserve, we don’t need an independent Treasury Secretary. The President has already come out in favor of direct government funding of student loans.
Under the system proposed by Obama, the government would cut private lenders out of the picture entirely, setting the interest rates and collecting payments directly for all student lending.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/60074
This is misleading and should be corrected. While Volcker was standing next to Obama as he made his announcement, Geithner was standing there, too, on Obama’s right side, one removed. http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/135087/thumbs/s-OBAMA-large.jpg
The rest of what you’ve written? Spot on. Cognitive dissonance.
Corporate ownership of national monetary systems is the most significant threat to human right in the world today.
The current crises in economic conditions are the natural consequence of the fractional reserve monetary system that the US employs to create its money supply.
With the exception of coins, America’s money is created as loans that must be repaid with interest. The banking system creates only the principal of the loans and no institution creates money to pay the interest. To give the appearance of solvency, banks must continually create new and larger loans, creating new money to service older loans. This action results in an ever expanding pyramid of debt. The pattern of using new money to service older debt is so common in investment schemes as to be given its own name: a Ponzi Scheme.
This banking Ponzi Scheme has reached its mathematical limits: it is unstable: it cannot be regulated into stability: it is collapsing as we watch.
As Abraham Lincoln did in the Civil War, we must reestablish our nation’s sovereign authority to issue money. Only by the government’s ordering the US treasury to issue the economy’s entire money supply can we hope to ending the economic crisis and avoid an economic catastrophe.
So far, this admin has never really been unified in any of the public statements.
For now, I’ll wait and see… Geithner may be grasping at straws.
Geithner’s remarks are even more sinister than they first appear, because there is no way that they stem from ignorance, or failure to understand the complexities of the monetary and financial systems. The U.S. already has one of the most complex, yet ineffective, financial regulatory systems in the world. When I teach Financial Markets and Institutions at the undergraduate level, I don’t even touch the subject; it is literally unteachable. He reaches the pinnacle of deceit in this sentence:
The only thing complex about the basic Regulatory Reforms that would increase the financial system’s stability would be untangling the overlapping regulations and regulatory authorities so that the payments system could be separated from the trading system. A failure of an investment bank could wipe out a lot of wealth, but the rationale behind “TBTF” is that many such banks now also serve as the foundation of the monetary system. Or to put it more correctly, deregulation has enabled many depository institutions to become heavily vested in trading and speculation using their deposits to leverage their trading positions.
Their collapse because of trading problems would therefore also drastically reduce the money supply, which would have a severely contractionary effect on spending, output and income. Just reinstate Glass Steagall, for starters, or something, as Paul Volcker just said, that’s “in the spirit of Glass-Steagall.” Which would involve repealing or drastically modifying Gramm-Leach-Bliley. How complicated is that?
What is needed is significant regulatory simplification, not more complexities. Tim Geithner is making a pitch for decreasing the transparency of financial regulation and dispersing regulatory responsibility still further because that’s exactly what big banks want: regulations that are too complicated to enforce, and regulatory authority that is so decentralized and incoherent that nobody really knows who’s responsibility it is to regulate what. Fire the guy, for God’s sake.
families that need to borrow to finance their kids’ education
Jumped off the page at me too. This is a new given.