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Jon Stewart Disembowels SecTreas Geithner
Tim Geithner has been using voodoo economics to rationalize choosing the big banks over homeowners. (And his argument that it wasn't politically possible to do anything else is bunk, especially since the American people opposed bank bailouts from day one.)
Jon Stewart does a better job of challenging Geithner than any mainstream "reporter":
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While I agree, homes shouldn't be used as ATM's for frivolous purposes, you have to factor income growth relative to cost of living since 1980.
Wages are now at the same level they were in 1988.
Tell me a single staple that now costs the same as it did in 1988, hell, even a pack of ramen noodles, the cheapest food sold, has increased 300% over the last decade.
If you're having a tough time providing for your family, you'll turn to credit rather than let them go hungry....if I can get money from the equity in my home to make ends meet, in that case, I will.
The banks knew this, they played it like an economic Stratavarius and converted household debt into an asset class they could sell back to us with a fraudulent triple A rating, while shorting it in secret.
Geitner was the empty suit, a stooge for the banks who convinced him to give TARP to the banks instead of back to the people the banks screwed.
I think Stewart did a great job of crushing Geithner. I don't agree with what Stewart suggests, but he did a solid job of framing what a giant rip off this was.
Meh. I'd much prefer to see him fed to a tiger.
Look how hard Geithner laughs at every joke. It's just so funny to him. SO FUNNY!!!
well, why should Geithner care? Stewart is talking about helping the peasantry....no one cared...not a one of any one of the sociopaths involved in the bailouts. Not a one.
so Stewart's concern? Hilarious. Hilarious.....that some little comedian might think they should do a damn thing for the peasants.
I agree, seems Stewart is half way there. A few more interviews with Ron Paul and just maybe....
you are going to get junked for that and you are right, he is only halfway there. But it's about as good as it's gonna get.
Fonz - Unfortunately, you are correct it is good as it is going to get. Stewart provided awareness most people already understood which was investment banks saved people screwed.
It would have been useful to discuss how deregulating the industry in 1999 by Geithner, Rubin Summers, the Keating five and Bill Clinton was the CAUSE of the scope of the effects rather then just discuss how the effects were handled. Also how government looked the other way when fraud started to become widespread and was obvious by 2004.
No one went to jail or was even forced out of the financial system. Banking is beginning to become boring and will be for the next couple decades as it should but the disgusting thing is the damage to the rule of law and trust in society. That will take a generation to get over and mistrust, lack of confidence while difficult to measure, I wager the cost into the trillions. Never mind that the American people are responsible to pay back trillions and did not even get reform.
Point well taken!!
love how comfortable he looks. that's a nice mug
he's my favorite episcopalian mugger.
That's what I was thinking. What a freak. Why can't he look Jon in the eye like a normal human being? Why does he scrunch up like Roseanne Anna Anna when he laughs? Because deep down he knows he is full of bullshit.
...gives new meaning to that cliche "cheap shot"....
Any way of viewing in the UK, the video link only plays in the US apparently?
DavidC
Try a US based Proxy...
sacrificial figure he is with this "book tour"
meanwhile, back on the ranch, cheney, bushie, clinton, et al. run free from law and comments of capture and such.
fittingly the most uncomfortable part for timmah on this junket is the COMEDY CENTRAL stop.
help me remember -- doesn't jon "stewart" have a brother or something?
what does his brother do, exactly?
Yes; that's exactly what his brother does.
Good old Jimmy !
ah was xhooting at them ducks...
(eh, sorry, Lar..)
it's like he's actually talking to his brother in the interview
or something
a brotherly argument
then go to the vip lounge for drinks
First Geithner’s lie is total bullshit that if Goldman, Citi, and JP went bankrupt it would kill Main Street. Maybe 6 to 18 months recession and then it would be over and the shit would be gone flushed down the toilet. Maybe but I think it would have made this world a much better place.
Stewart’s lie if we bail out the people it will all be good. Just as much of a lie as Geithner. We bail out homeowners who cannot afford a house so they can default on the house they cannot afford again? Fucking unreal bullshit
So there you have it the tribe working together to cover up the real fucking problem, the Federal Reserve, Alan “fucking” Greenspan lowering the Fed Funds rate to 1% in 2003-04 after the boom was already occurring. That is the problem not this bullshit.
I hope ZH readers see through this smoke screen and hang these mother fuckers when the fiat dies.
usury, as a system of money creation, does not
last or comport to the mentation of economic
or/and other ecologic perceived realities;
i agree.
end the fed
The problem goes far deeper than homeowners taking loans they couldn't afford....mortgage brokers were being encouraged to push sub-primes by the banks, who were only concerned with selling CDO's, the loans were irrelevant.
Removing Glass Steagall allowed banks to sell those loans right back to the public, negating them of all risk.
Banks can now originate garbage loans they know will default, lie about their value by hiding them in CDO's with fraudulent ratings, then dump those loans onto the market with a triple A rating.
Glass-Steagall aside, The CFMA takes it a step further, by enabling banks to trade futures & derivatives in secrecy.
Banks were able to short the same loans they were selling without disclosing it to the buyers of those loans via derivatives under the CFMA.
The icing on the cake, CFTC records from 2008 were leaked, proving that GS, JPM, MS, Barclays and other TBTF's had cornered oil in 2008 to $145/barrel...right in time to crush disposable incomes and start the sub-prime defaults....the banks then collect on those CDO's, partially via our tax dollars through AIG.
While I understand your concept that natural market forces should have been allowed to let the housing market heal itself - the cause of the crash was anything but natural, it was mindboggling massive & would have taken up to decades to recover from, not 6 to 18 months
Most disturbing, the same banks still have the power to do it again, Dodd-Frank is too watered down, CFTC position limits have been stalled by the bank lobby.
Frilton, spoken like a true bankster.".the cause of the crash was anything but natural, it was mindboggling massive & would have taken up to decades to recover from, not 6 to 18 months"
it is what you would like and most certainly the .gov, fed, wall street crowd, would want the general public to hold as true. you took the words out of timmy g's mouth.
the most unfortunate option is you (like some say timmy does ) think this is true. an alternate solution was stated on this thread, but perhaps you missed it.
BK of multinational banks would be a blessing to the majority of the world.
"Overmedicated" -
Uh, help me here....berating the banks for investment fraud via fraudulent CDO ratings is "spoken like a true bankster"?
frilton, you can read?, the quote I responded to was your asinine, it would have been far worse if we had not done the bailouts, your decades of turmoil comment...highlighted in my response to you..the TBTF would have the common man hold this lie as truth and YOU repeated it here on ZH ..you then tried using another quote as cover for the BIG LIE. remember timmy's only hope is to have the public hold this view of 08: it would have been so much worse if we had done our job and regulated the BK of the banksters. but I think you know that and you are just taking positions to hide your intent of pushing the BIG LIE.
Frilton
Glass-Stegall was nothing more than a payback from Rockefeller (Democrat) to JP (Republican) for the Sherman Anti-Trust law. If the law was in place there still would have been a housing boom and bust. The law affected maybe 4% of the market.
Get off the “it was Glass-Stegall” bullshit wagon. The banks want you to play that game all day long because they will win that game over and over again.
Regulation is a waste of time if there is no jail time. No jail time, no one gives a shit over at Goldman.
Fraud must result in jail time or you end up with Goldman paying $15 million for fines and going back and dong the same thing again. Goldman will pay the $15 million fine again and again, it means nothing to them. $15 million to Goldman is like me paying a $5 fine for spitting.
The problem is the Federal Reserve and cheap money.
This is getting pretty predictable and stupid, S&L, NASDAQ, housing, and now the money bubble and coming bust. Really how predictable can this get before we all look at the problem, the Federal Reserve, and not get lost in regulations that may or may not make the situation better or worse.
If Glass-Stegall was a good law fine pass it again. It means nothing in the big picture. The big picture is fractional reserve banking and central banking have been screwing people over for 100 years. The bankers want you to play the regulation game, they write the regulations, and the same thing will happen again and again and again. We will blame a new set of regulations and more new ones and nothing will change.
Alan Greenspan and his cheap money caused the housing boom and bust. The rest were the players making money. Whores taking advantage of the banker convention in town.
End the Fed.
Full reserve banking.
Private money backed by gold.
You're correct, there'd have been a boom/bust regardless of Glass-Steagall.
However, Pre-Glass Steagall, that real estate bust would have primarily effected bank balance sheets, far less effect on the regular market.
The size of this bust was enhanced, massively by banks securitzing their own loans and the artificially bloated values of "triple A" CDO's that were mostly comprised of liar loans.
If I were to sell you a bar of gold, rated "pure" by a jeweler beforehand, then you learned it was gold plated lead afterwards, it would be the exact same thing.
If it were traded publicly as dozens of tons, the effects that would have on the publicly traded gold market would be catastrophic.
Fraud = Jail time.
economics9698, that I COMPLETELY agree with.
Bank executives knowingly fucked entire economies out of trillions worldwide.
While Americans were being foreclosed and fired in 2009 -2010, they were collecting all time record bonuses off the short side of MBS that they'd blown up to begin with.
The CFMA's allowance for complete anonymity & unlimited postions in futures / derivatives allows this scam to continue in smaller, more frequent scale, there's a reason TBTF prop desks are profitable almost 100% of the time.
The recent spate of legal actions are only the ones that can be proven because employee's boasted in Emails or blew whistles, it's only the tip of the oiceberg for what constantly goes on.
Bart Chilton of the CFTC has been fighting a losing battle to get position limits imposed, the banking lobby is winning that war - ensuring more and more of the same market manipulation, using futures to control input costs & positioning themselves in regular equities, knowing before anyone what earnings will be in a given sector.
Timmy, I didn't get a fucking penny and Wall Street got Trillions.
You, Hank Paluson, the Wall Street Warlocks, Jon Corzine, and your ilk - deserve a hempen neck tie, nice and tight and high.
Period.
For those unfamiliar with what Stewart and Geithner are doing here is a refresher.
The Overton window is a political theory that describes as a narrow "window" the range of ideas the public will accept. On this theory, an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within that window rather than on politicians' individual preferences.[1] It is named for its originator, Joseph P. Overton (1960-2003),[2] a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.[3] At any given moment, the “window” includes a range of policies considered politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too extreme to gain or keep public office.
That was quite a lesson in Weaselspeak.
@safelygraze
Stewart's brother is Larry Leibowitz who was until late last year the head/CEO of the New York Stock Exchange.
Stewart has always known what's been going on with these fucking bankster gangsters. It's too bad his lib-tardedness all these years as a sell-out to gain fame kept him from talking about this shit long ago. Instead he chose to defend obama for the last 6 years and talk shit about the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party who have been railing against big government bail-outs of the banks while taxing the American people and driving the country into massive trillions of debt and destroying the value of what was left of the dollar even further.
Stewart would rather perpetuate the lies of the left that if we're against higher taxes, social spending, fascist, crony, statist government/corporate raiding of America, DHS, TSA, obamacare communist non-healthcare, then we're all just a bunch of racists and haters, blah blah blah.
Now all of a sudded Stewart steps up and acts like he's had the answers all along? Well fuck him...too little too late. He didn't have the balls to kick some ass and inform his sheeple followers of the massive crimes that were being perpetrated by the government and the banks all this time and I doubt he's saying anything now due to gaining some kind of consceince.
Soon enough, probabaly as we get closer to the November elections he'll be back to towing the leftist agenda and calling Libertarians and the TEA party a bunch of racists again.
The tribe is scared, they can smell hell.