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Geithner: 'We Saved the Economy, But We Kind of Lost the Public Doing It' | Me: We Can Save the Economy, But Only If We Kind of Lose Geithner
Tim Geithner claims:
We saved the economy but kind of lost the public doing it.
Simon Johnson wrote: a more accurate essay entitled:
They Saved The Big Banks But Kind Of Lost The Economy Doing It.
My take on it is pretty straightforward:
We can save the economy, but only if we kind of lose Geithner.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, Geithner and Summers are the worst possible economic leaders for our country. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
Congressman DeFazio summed it up pretty well last November:
We think it is time, maybe, that we turn our focus to Main Street ...
Unfortunately,
the President has an adviser from Wall Street, Larry Summers, and a
Treasury Secretary from Wall Street, Timmy Geithner, who don't like
that idea. They want to keep the TARP money either to continue to bail
out Wall Street...or to pay down the deficit. That's absurd...
"[Obama] is being failed by his economic team ... We may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans.
"We saved the economy". Megalomaniac much?
Depends on how you define 'economy'. Obviously it's not the real economy that real people depend on. That wasn't saved at all. So I guess what he really is saying
I have just spend the past 2 hours on baseline writing things. there are times when I think the fed, treasury, abnks pay people to write on bolgs. the amount of misinformation there for propaganda/ public consumption is high today.
But things are getting better. a year ago much of what I wrote would be considered fringe. Now it has enetered the mainstream belief system and people are waking up.
Good work blogging community, lets keep it UP. the job has just started and the long knives are out to protect their turf. Big Pr campaign by treasury now saying what a grreat job the stooge geither is doing, they did the same crap with bernanke. these men belong in jail and tried for treason.
heres the new thing: "Main street took too many risks and now we will take appropriate measures. The days of bankers being lied too has to end. the bankers are the lifeblood of the economy and until they regain confidence they will remain frightened. There are people that would love to produce a mezzanine financing for building a new hospital but cannot due to the massive debt racked up by dumb american consumers. This cycle of Washington helping Main street HAS TO END. +14 tril and counting
In primitive agricultural societies the village witch doctor enjoyed a high social position with many perks. As long as the rain came every year it was a great job. If however the rain did not come one year the good doctor was sacrificed to appease the rain god and a replacement was found.
There's a lot to be said for old school economics...
Why n how would axing either do Anything ??
Maybe if we all whine loudly enough e'rything'll just be 'better.'
This "article" is THE literal definition of pointlessness. Ok, they're gone, now what? Who's next? Pointless bitching. Period - retail remains on its.
Oh so you think Obama is capable of appointing someone better than Geithner? Rubbish!
Geithner ..the guys a worm...look at how his agency will hunt down dimes from old ladies but he can't figure OUT how to give his cronies haircuts on billion dollar losing positions.WAMF
Defaulted Loans May Haunt Seniors
"In 2003, the U.S. began withholding $173 a month in Social Security benefits from Annie Brown, a paralyzed 75-year-old widow living in a nursing home to repay a defaulted $8,823 student loan the Education Department says she took out in 1989. The offset reduced Mrs. Brown's benefit to about $980 a month.
Mrs. Brown said a granddaughter had forged her signature on a loan application. Her daughter and a lawyer spent more than four years disputing the debt with the owner of the loan, United Student Aid Funds, a student-loan guarantor that also was acting as one of the Education Department's 21 debt collectors. USA Funds itself farms out various debt-collection activities to others, which it did in Mrs. Brown's case.
Between 2003 and 2008, Mrs. Brown's daughter and Lynn Drysdale, a legal-aid lawyer in Jacksonville, Fla., corresponded numerous times with USA Funds and two other debt-collection companies it hired. One letter from USA Funds warned that unless documents were received "within 30 days from the date this letter was generated...your case will be closed." The letter was undated. Another letter required Mrs. Brown to refer to an attached document. There was no attachment. "I don't know how a lay person could maneuver through this process," says Ms. Drysdale. "Nobody seemed to know what was needed."
http://tinyurl.com/ydsq78g
Its kind of like iraqnam has wmd`s ??????????????? It`s kind of like when cheney says the iraqnam war will pay for itself ???????????????
When Timmy said "saved" he meant that he "saved" Loyd Blankfein's semen in his mouth after their AIG tryst.
Kinda lost the public??? Is that like 'kinda pregnant?'
Let's make one point very very clear....
What incentive is there for one to utilize a bank other than to pay bills ?
That is right....NONE !!!!!!!!
They pay nothing....
And in fact ....could hold what money is in your account against your will....
Is this attractive...????
The bank holds your money....pays you nothing....while playing 2 to 3% games with the fed ....or in some other levered endeaver....
I can tell you this....
I have pulled my 8 figure account....and put it in my own safe....
I have had it with US politicians and their bank nonsense....
From here on out....I WILL only keep just enough in a bank to pay bills....nothing more....
And I suspect I am not the only one doing this....
Just who in their right mind wants to wake up and hear the news that some big bank is limiting withdrawals.....as in Argentina ?
NO THANKS
CASH AND GOLD....TRADING.....AND I HOLD ....
F The banks and US Govt. zero interest rate policies...
From Carrol Quigley's 1966 opus "Tragedy and Hope"
“The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds’ central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups.”
The money changers have taken over the temple, and we are now living in a time of great evil.
The people have to throw off this mantle of debt slavery and usury before all is lost forever. A world ruled by these awful Rhodes-Fabianist bankers will be a terrible nightmare, and it is hurtling at us at break neck speed.
This crisis is no accident, it is all part of a great design that is playing out exactly as they want it to. By taking all our money they are sucking away both our freedom and our power. I hope that we the people will wake up and overthrow them before it is to late.
It won't happen - it's too late! There will be grand "protest and revolution" of any real meaning after the fact (the big kaboom where the whole world credit system goes kaput), sometime probably inside of a few years.
Geithner:
You were part of the "best and brightest" team who failed and messed up the economy on firts place. Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan and Tim Geithner, you guys did not listen what Brooksley Born told you about regulating the derivatives and ignored the warnings. You were part of the mess-up team and then you have the nerve to say that you saved the economy.
Don't be so hard on yourself Timmy. I always thought you were a jagoff even before you fucked all the taxpayers
We may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans.
Golly...I can think of a third.
Geez, Timmy must have been reading a bunch of Andy Mellon quotes from the 30s. I'm sure that wily old dude's playbooks are all over the UST somewhere...... getting dusted off no doubt. Andy ALSO lost the public because they didn't like where he and Hoover were taking them. And the people were right and Andy was found to be dead wrong....his idea of recovery was focused on banking and Wall St. ( surprise !! ) and a wait out while they looted even more.
Mellon at least left taxpayers the National Gallery of Art and a priceless art collection to assuage his guilt.....paid for with a small fraction of the loot he accumulated. Unluckily, Andy died shortly before the grand opening.
Timmy and Barry will leave just two things .....a mountain of bad decisions and no leadership.
Every day the comparisons to GD ONE become more vivid.
Mellon wanted an RTC type resolution, liquidate the foolish, build back with strong hands.
What he got was his pink slip and IRS investigation into his personal finances, after several years he was exonerated.
I think he means they saved the Obama administration by inflating the equities market. He's still pushing the obsolete theory that the markets reflect the economy.
This team has said from the beginning they were treating this as a liquidity crisis. One thing I will grant them is consistency. They are sticking very consistently to a "solution" to completely the wrong problem. In their playbook, now that a portion of the population is believing the propaganda, if they can just bring that proportion of the population high enough, the economy will start moving again. It is the pure confidence game. Too bad people's and business's debts don't care about how confident people feel... --Boris
"Saved" it, did he?
From where I sit, if this is his definition of "saved" I would hate like hell to see what the outcome would have been if he had pooched it.
I have been watching "The Tudors" on Showtime. Interesting because it was a pivatol pint in history.
The reason I bring it up is that back in the day Geithner would have been rushed through a a trial and beheaded (or burned at the stake) by now.
I think this is an example of preaching to the choir :)
I think by economy they mean the economy of those that matter to them. When they say "we're in a recovery" they mean the only "we" that matters to them.
But geithner is right. They saved the system. They know what could have happened. They know damn well a global bank run would have destroyed the government's ability to operate. They also know under a failed fiat currency is a failed state. And there's no way to regain the trust when you wipe out everyone's wealth denominated in that currency. They're not ready for the global currency yet, they need this dollar ponzi to keep going for a few more years.
It's a very interesting position to be in. Geithner and bernanke saved a system that is inherently flawed. There really were no good answers. Given that 40% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, a distruption for even 6 months (a quick depression and quick recovery a la 1920-1921) would still have been a major social distruption and major loss of quality of life for 120 million people.
Nothing that has gone on the past 3 years has given a solution that will last 40-50 years. Anyone under the age of 30 should be demanding a real alternative to this monetary regime. But not many people really understand what money even is. Or what banking is. They have no way of seeing what beyond the immidiate non-issue of the day.
Sorry, but suggestion for canning Geithner would
accomplish nothing because he would be hired by the banksters and free to do more damage. Better to indict
the hole crew including Greenspan, Bernanke, Paulson,Summers and bank CEO's and charge them all with
financial racketeering. As a minimum sentence bar them
from the financial industry---and running for Congress
They couldn't get elected.
Why, Mr. Washington, are you avoiding naming where on Wall Street the allegiance (if not former and past employment)
of Summers, Geithner lies?
I'll do it for you: Goldman Sucks.
We dropped the ball on that small window of opportunity to let all the bad business models go under and start from scratch. We could have handled a depression knowing
America in the future would be a better place. I dont think so now. I think we are on a slave boat run by the banks that we gave all our money to .
Yessa Massah you wants us to keep rowing so you money keeps flowing? Yessa masser.
Is anyone on the Administration's economic team being listened to or has the economics team simply gone mute?
> Geithner has for several years been a big proponent of regulating the $300 trillion derivatives market - nothing has been done nor does it look like anything will.
> Summers has always been an advocate of corporate and capital gains tax cuts to stimulate the economy - no progress by the Administration in this area to date.
> Romer in 2007 before joining the Obama team produced a research piece showing that economic stimulus is not an effective means of stimulating the economy - obviously she isn't being listened to.
> Orszag in 2004 with Sinai and Rubin produced a research paper on the dangers of deficit spending saying it possibly could lead to "financial disarray" - now the Administration has quadrupled what Orszag at the time felt was unsustainable deficit levels.
The Administration is repeatedly pursuing policies that are totally counter to the stated economic policy beliefs of its top economic advisors. Obviously with this Administration we don't need economic advisors so no harm done if a couple are cut loose.
> Orszag in 2004 with Sinai and Rubin produced a research paper on the dangers of deficit spending saying it possibly could lead to "financial disarray" - now the Administration has quadrupled what Orszag at the time felt was unsustainable deficit levels.
It ain't over yet either (the debt thing), but it will be soon (total disarray and chaos).
DeFazio; I shook his hand outside of a resturuant just several weekends ago.
Add in Bernanke, and we might get a real economy sometime.
Add in every moron that voted for these morons instead of writing in Mickey Mouse.
Gulag bitchez!
I think he meant "we saved the banks but fucked the taxpayers".
"I think he meant 'we saved the banks but fucked the taxpayers'."
And on that score I give Obama an A++ on his presidency.
He has fucked the taxpayer supremely at every turn... and his little Wall Street TBTF patsy Timmay G., too.
A++, but junk status on his treasuries.
Did he have that stupid wide eyed, high browed look on his face? Or was he smiling? or was it both? UGH! Vampires! All of them!
Oh my Lord I hate that thing Geithner does with his forehead. What is it? Surprise? Confusion? Incredulousness?
kinda looks like a Kling-on when he does that. Gives me the hee-bee-jeebies.