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FINAL RESULTS: Reappoint Ben Shalom Bernanke?
Submitted by Marla Singer on 12/01/2009 12:01 -0400
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It was a rich and useful place ... but that was years ago. Now it's just half smart kids bickering.
Until just now, I didn't know what Slashdot.com was, that makes you a super tech, and the fact that you knew Hexadecimal, wow, hey listen I wasn't trying to crowd you out, I'll use Base 8 Octal in the future, Thankx
Fucking nitpicker
LoL
I voted no, but I'm with you on this.
My only caveat for renominating him would be that one day Bernanke gets nominated for, and subsequently wins, the Darwin Award.
18 no's ...errrr.......0 yes's.straw poll not looking good.
CALL AND EMAIL YOUR SENATORS TELLING THEM TO NOT APPOINT BEN "THE BANKSTER" BERNANKE. THIS IS MORE POWERFUL THAN VOTING. VOTING JUST DECIDES WHICH STOOGE YOU NEED TO TELL HOW TO VOTE. THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS TO WASHINGTON MORE THAN MONEY IS VOTERS. IF WE GET A SWELLING OF PRESSURE THEY WILL NOT CONFIRM BECAUSE THEY KNOW GETTING RE-ELECTED IN THE NEW NORMAL IS GOING TO BE A BITCH TO PUT IT LIGHTLY!
IF THEY WANT REASONS HERE ARE A FEW FROM A PREVIOUS ZH POST.
February 28, 2007 - Dow Jones @ 12,268
March 13th, 2007 – Henry Paulson: “the fallout in subprime mortgages is "going to be painful to some lenders, but it is largely contained."
March 28th, 2007 – Ben Bernanke: "At this juncture . . . the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime markets seems likely to be contained,"
March 30, 2007 - Dow Jones @ 12,354
April 20th, 2007 – Paulson: "I don't see (subprime mortgage market troubles) imposing a serious problem. I think it's going to be largely contained." , "All the signs I look at" show "the housing market is at or near the bottom,"
April 30, 2007 - Dow Jones @ 13,063
May 17th, 2007 – Bernanke: “While rising delinquencies and foreclosures will continue to weigh heavily on the housing market this year, it will not cripple the U.S.”
May 31, 2007 - Dow Jones @ 13,627
June 20th, 2007 – Bernanke: (the subprime fallout) ``will not affect the economy overall.''
July 12th, 2007 – Paulson: "This is far and away the strongest global economy I've seen in my business lifetime."
August 1st, 2007 – Paulson: "I see the underlying economy as being very healthy,"
October 15th, 2007 – Bernanke: "It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve - nor would it be appropriate - to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions."
December 31, 2007 - Dow Jones @ 13,265
January 31, 2008 - Dow Jones @ 12,650
February 14th, 2008 – Paulson: (the economy) "is fundamentally strong, diverse and resilient."
February 28th, 2008 – Paulson: "I'm seeing a series of ideas suggested involving major government intervention in the housing market, and these things are usually presented or sold as a way of helping homeowners stay in their homes. Then when you look at them more carefully what they really amount to is a bailout for financial institutions or Wall Street."
February 29th, 2008 – Bernanke: "I expect there will be some failures. I don't anticipate any serious problems of that sort among the large internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system."
March 16th, 2008 – Paulson: "We've got strong financial institutions . . . Our markets are the envy of the world. They're resilient, they're...innovative, they're flexible. I think we move very quickly to address situations in this country, and, as I said, our financial institutions are strong."
March 18th, 2008 - Bear Stearns Bailout Announced
May 7, 2008 – Paulson: 'The worst is likely to be behind us,”
May 16th, 2008 – Paulson: "In my judgment, we are closer to the end of the market turmoil than the beginning," he said.
May 30, 2008 - Dow Jones @ 12,638
June 9th, 2008 – Bernanke: Despite a recent spike in the nation's unemployment rate, the danger that the economy has fallen into a "substantial downturn" appears to have waned,
July 16th, 2008 – Bernanke: (Freddie and Fannie) “…will make it through the storm”, "… in no danger of failing.","…adequately capitalized"
July 20th, 2008 – Paulson: "it's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation."
July 31, 2008 - Dow Jones @ 11,378
August 10th, 2008 – Paulson: ``We have no plans to insert money into either of those two institutions.” (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac)
September 8th, 2008 - Fannie and Freddie nationalized. The taxpayer is on the hook for an estimated 1 - 1.5 trillion dollars. Over 5 trillion is added to the nation’s balance sheet.
September 16th, 2008 - $85 Billion AIG Bailout “Loan”
September 19th, 2008 - $700 Billion Bailout Plan Announced
September 19th, 2008 – Paulson: "We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars - this needs to be big enough to make a real difference and get at the heart of the problem," he said. "This is the way we stabilize the system."
September 19th, 2008 - Bernanke: "most severe financial crisis" in the post-World War II era. Investment banks are seeing "tremendous runs on their cash," Bernanke said. "Without action, they will fail soon."
September 21st, 2008 – Paulson: "The credit markets are still very fragile right now and frozen", "We need to deal with this and deal with it quickly.", "The financial security of all Americans ... depends on our ability to restore our financial institutions to a sound footing."
September 23rd, 2008 – Paulson: "We must [enact a program quickly] in order to avoid a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets that threaten American families' financial well-being, the viability of businesses, both small and large, and the very health of our economy,"
September 23rd, 2008 – Bernanke: "My interest is solely for the strength and recovery of the U.S. economy,"
October 31, 2008 - Dow Jones @ 9,337
March 31, 2009 - Dow Jones @ 7,609
Austrian Filter conlcudes correctly: "If Bernanke and Paulson were doctors, and our economy was the patient, they would be in jail for malpractice."
Just change "In God we tust"
to "Every man for himself"
At this point, why change Dicks in the middle of a screw? Like Nixon with gold in '72. ;-()
it rhymes heh :)
Every spiro agnew has a dick to answer to.
Spiro Agnew yet another extremeley powerful vice precident. The cycle of cheney.
Larry Summers?
He's the front runner alternative at the moment.
Not cut and dried.
For those who vote Nay, please understand that Jamie is waiting in the wings.
A Nay vote is a vote for Jamie Dimon
I voted against him, but it doesn't matter. There is a tidbit of info no one is mentioning....
"Ben S. Bernanke was sworn in on February 1, 2006, as Chairman and a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Dr. Bernanke also serves as Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the System's principal monetary policymaking body. He was appointed as a member of the Board to a full 14-year term, which expires January 31, 2020, and to a four-year term as Chairman, which expires January 31, 2010."
http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/bios/board/bernanke.htm
Note the 14 year term as Chair of the FOMC that doesn't end till Jan 2020.... LOL
The Idiot Jew GS Bitches don't know that we've got .308 cal automated Pitchforks...The CrackSmokeRepublican
---
Arming Goldman With Pistols Against Public: Alice Schroeder
Commentary by Alice Schroeder
Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- “I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.
I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.
While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image -- and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.”
Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.
Pistol Ready
Common sense tells you a handgun is probably not even all that useful. Suppose an intruder sneaks past the doorman or jumps the security fence at night. By the time you pull the pistol out of your wife’s jewelry safe, find the ammunition, and load your weapon, Fifi the Pomeranian has already been taken hostage and the gun won’t do you any good. As for carrying a loaded pistol when you venture outside, dream on. Concealed gun permits are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to obtain in New York or nearby states.
In other words, a little humility and contrition are probably the better route.
Until a couple of weeks ago, that was obvious to everyone but Goldman, a firm famous for both prescience and arrogance. In a display of both, Blankfein began to raise his personal- security threat level early in the financial crisis. He keeps a summer home near the Hamptons, where unrestricted public access would put him at risk if the angry mobs rose up and marched to the East End of Long Island.
To the Barricades
He tried to buy a house elsewhere without attracting attention as the financial crisis unfolded in 2007, a move that was foiled by the New York Post. Then, Blankfein got permission from the local authorities to install a security gate at his house two months before Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.
This is the kind of foresight that Goldman Sachs is justly famous for. Blankfein somehow anticipated the persecution complex his fellow bankers would soon suffer. Surely, though, this man who can afford to surround himself with a private army of security guards isn’t sleeping with the key to a gun safe under his pillow. The thought is just too bizarre to be true.
So maybe other senior people at Goldman Sachs have gone out and bought guns, and they know something. But what?
Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and -- oh yes -- the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”
Torn Curtain
There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.
This slip-up let the other bailed-out banks happily hand off public blame to Goldman, which is unpopular among its peers because it always seems to win at everyone’s expense.
Plenty of Wall Streeters worry about the big discrepancies in wealth, and think the rise of a financial industry-led plutocracy is unjust. That doesn’t mean any of them plan to move into a double-wide mobile home as a show of solidarity with the little people, though.
Cool Hand Lloyd
No, talk of Goldman and guns plays right into the way Wall- Streeters like to think of themselves. Even those who were bailed out believe they are tough, macho Clint Eastwoods of the financial frontier, protecting the fistful of dollars in one hand with the Glock in the other. The last thing they want is to be so reasonably paid that the peasants have no interest in lynching them.
And if the proles really do appear brandishing pitchforks at the doors of Park Avenue and the gates of Round Hill Road, you can be sure that the Goldman guys and their families will be holed up in their safe rooms with their firearms. If nothing else, that pistol permit might go part way toward explaining why they won’t be standing outside with the rest of the crowd, broke and humiliated, saying, “Damn, I was on the wrong side of a trade with Goldman again.”
(Alice Schroeder, author of “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life” and a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
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Shalom probably not racist in light of the above.
The Glock will do little to help when confronted with a 30-06 at 400 meters or even a 30-30 at 100 meters. Any idea how many deer-hunters there are?
and then another round of sweetheart kickback bailouts now towards JPMorgan....all those counties they swindling with the courts stepping in to cancel?? no more - bail out the counties with fed taxes!!! JP gets paid!!
I was hoping for 3 options.
1)Yea
2)Nay
3)Fuck Nay
I'm all about the Fuck Nay on this one.
Write to the Senators on the committee and state your case for not re-appointing Bernake.
I did so 3x today. Asked all friends and relatives to do the same.
Yes they will appoint another criminal tool. But a statement needs to be made by the electorate wherever possible.
Do it today!
Looks like criticizm may have had some impact. We will see as the day plays out.
Save our civilization from FR slavery, instead, by sending them copies of End The Fed.
Statements from the electorate? Ya gotta have more $$$ than the lobbyists - or better looking hookers with hidden cameras.
Well I voted for the BB (bloody bastard or ben bernanke take your pick) BB as without him there would be no fodder for TD and others!
Good point. If not Ben then who?
Mickey Mouse! Or Bozo the Clown! :)
I voted for Ben because several of his obvious replacements are terrifying (Summers in particular.)
Your just looking at the obvious.
The Fed needs to run a new game now because the spotlight is on them.
We could see Ron Paul fill the void. Expect the unexpected.
#1484545 said "The Fed needs to run a new game now" "we could see Ron Paul fill the void"
and the lamb will lie with the lion; the streets will be paved with gold and the land will be flowing with milk and honey
YES
RON PAUL!
Milk and honey, amber waves of grain. Purple mountain majesty. Animals cohabitating. Streets of Gold.
Vault checks every night. Assaying of every bar. No poverty.
Honest politicians, lawyers and investment bankers. Heaven on earth. Diseases cured.
Free AMEX cards paid by Treasury.
May God make it so. Or wahtever.
Beware Larry Summers!
Just to be real clear `anynonmous` is not part of the Anonymous collective conscious. He left us a long time ago.
He misses the freedom because he is now constrained by the constructs of The Dictator, the one. I suspect that is why he taunts us with religious nonsense.
Come join us. There is NO equity in your brand. Abandon it. It is as foolish and pointless as a high school clique.
Clear your cookies and join us. Graduate.
You spirits are a bunch of Robert Paulsons: dead.
But great post!
YES for Ron Paul's plan: No Fed, at all. Turn it into a museum for our children (to the nth degree) to remember to never trust a fiat banker. Ever.
And now NO for keeping up this useless survey - it's turning into the little brother of the Tiger Woods story that won't die. Who the **** cares - End the Fed.
Chess pieces at this point mean nothing. This is watching the shell instead of the pea. The Pea is our freedom and the death of the productive American.
http://www.pvsaddleshop.com/ALL%20PICS/Shell%20&%20Pea.jpg
The US economy has been compared to a patient on a table.
It is not a patient, it's a Frankenstein.
But Frankenstein is too pretty. The UK has been hollowed out from within. The welfare state is a pure monster. Look at the zombie movies to understand what the UK democracy has achieved.