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"Stress Test" Reviewed: Tim Geithner Is "A Grifter, A Petty Con Artist"

Tyler Durden's picture




 

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Geithner is at heart a grifter, a petty con artist with the right manners and breeding to lie at the top echelons of American finance at a moment when the government and financial services industry needed someone to be the face of their multi-trillion dollar three card monte. He’s going to make his money, now that he’s done living his life of fantastic power after his upbringing of remarkable mysterious privilege. After reading this book and documenting lie after lie after lie, I’m convinced that there’s more here than just a self-serving corrupt official. There’s an entire culture, of figures at Treasury, the Federal Reserve, in the entire Democratic Party elite structure, and in the world of journalism, a culture in which Geithner is seen as some sort of role model.

 

- From Matt Stoller’s fantastic article published yesterday, The Con-Artist Wing of the Democratic Party

Timothy Geithner is likely to go down in American history as one of the most dangerous, destructive cronies to have ever wielded government power. The man is so completely and totally full of shit it’s almost impossible not to notice.

The last thing I’d ever want to do in my free time is read a lengthy book filled with Geithner lies and propaganda, so I owe a large debt of gratitude to former Congressional staffer Matt Stoller for doing it for me. Stoller simply tears Geither apart limb from limb, detailing obvious lies about the financial crisis, and even more interestingly, Geithner’s bizarre bio, replete with mysterious and inexplicable promotions into positions of power.

So without further ado, here are some excerpts from this excellent article. From Vice:

The most consequential event of this young century has been the financial crisis. This is a catchall term that means three different things: an economic housing boom and bust, a financial meltdown, and a political response in which bailouts were showered upon the very institutions that were responsible for the chaos.

 

More than anyone else, it was then US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner who shaped this response, and who bears praise, blame, and responsibility for the outcome. And finally, with the release of his book, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, Geithner is getting to tell his side of the bailout story.

 

I’ll address both of these, since they are intertwined. For as I read the book, and compared the book with what was written at the time and what was written afterwards, I noticed something odd, and perhaps too bold to say in polite company. As much as I really wanted to hear what Geithner had to say, I quickly realized that I wasn’t getting his actual side of the story. The book is full of narratives, facts, and statements that are, well, untrue, or at the very least, highly misleading. Despite its length, there are also serious omissions that suggest an intention to mislead, as well as misrepresentations of his critics’ arguments. As I went further into Geithner’s narrative, even back into his college days, I got the sense that I was seeing only a brilliantly scrubbed surface, that there were nooks and crannies hidden away. It struck me that I was reading the memoirs of an incredibly savvy and well-bred grifter, the kind that the American WASP establishment of financiers, foundation officials, and spies produces in such rich abundance. I realize this is a bold claim, because it’s an indictment not just of Geithner but also of those who worked for him at Treasury and at the Federal Reserve, as well as indictment of the Clinton-era finance team of Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, Michael Barr, Jason Furman, and other accomplices. That’s why this review is somewhat long, as it’s an attempt to back up such a broad and sweeping claim. I will also connect it to what Geithner is doing now: working in the same kind of financial business that made Mitt Romney a near billionaire.

 

There are a few glaring problems with how Geithner portrays this debate. First of all, his main foil during the crisis was a fellow technocrat, former International Monetary Fund (IMF) official Simon Johnson, who actually had significant crisis-management experience parachuting into panicked countries and imposing structural reform on their bankers. Johnson became increasingly irate as he saw Geithner diverge from what Geithner himself at the US Treasury and the IMF forced on other countries: conditions. Geithner was hard on oligarchs when they were foreign, but when it was US bankers, well, then the wall of money argument triumphed. In fact, in a paper released in 2013, it was revealed that financial firms with a personal relationship with Geithner himself saw an abnormal 15% bump in share prices when Geithner’s name was floated for Treasury Secretary, and a corresponding though smaller, abnormal decline when his nomination was on the rocks due to his being caught not paying taxes by Senate investigators.

 

The third problem is housing. Economists Amir Sufi and Atif Mian lead the charge in arguing that the Geithner strategy failed to restart the economy because it focused on leverage at the large banks rather than leverage among households, i.e., foreclosures. The shape of the Geithner policy architecture is two-tiered: The financiers recovered; everyone else did not. And the economy, even today, sputters along at just above stall speed because of this.

 

But the book is more than just a set of arguments; it’s also an autobiography of a man. And while I was reading it, I kept getting the feeling I wasn’t learning the full story. I noticed oddities, a kind of set of shimmering ephemera which suggest that there was something the author was holding just out of view of the reader. 

 

Geithner talks about his childhood growing up abroad, with high-powered family members who had advised presidents, and a father who was a senior executive at the Ford Foundation in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 70s. At that time, the Ford Foundation was a pivotal instrument of US foreign policy, an important vehicle for anti-Communist efforts and heavily integrated into the financial and foreign policy establishment (the head of the foundation even set up an internal committee to organize incoming requests from the CIA). Yet Geithner portrays himself as a largely apolitical and directionless kid, a sort of ordinary person in unusual circumstances, with loving parents. It was an odd way to describe growing up cocooned in the foreign-policy elite. Geithner is far too smart to not have been able to observe what was going on around him, yet he is silent in the book on how he saw power up close at a young age.

Ok, this is really important and something I touched on in my piece: Tim Geithner Admits “Too Big To Fail” Hasn’t Gone Anywhere (and that’s the way he likes it). As I note in that post, I find it beyond coincidental that Tim Geithner’s father and Barack Obama’s mother both worked at the Ford Foundation in Indonesia at the same time. 

At Dartmouth, Geithner portrayed himself an “unexceptional and uninspired student,” finding economics dreary and political consulting boring. He didn’t even remember voting in 1980. Yet over Christmas break during his freshman year of college, he notes, he did a short stint as a war photojournalist along the Thai-Cambodian border for the Associated Press. It’s a short piece in the book, meant to describe one Christmas break. But I had to reread it several times, to make sure it was actually in there. I kept thinking, What the hell? Who does that? It’s not that it’s not true; it sounds like it is. But there’s more to this story than “Oh, I was a freshman in college and didn’t like studying, and then I did a stint as a war photographer over Christmas break and decided I didn’t want to be a photographer.” There’s something he’s not saying. He was not just a boring apolitical kid who didn’t notice very much about the world. Such people do not become photojournalists for a week over Christmas in war zones when they are 18.

 

And then there’s the mystery of how he managed to climb up the career ladder so quickly. He never really explains how this happens. He wasn’t a good student. He notes, as a grad student, that he mostly played pool. “During my orals, when one professor asked which economics journals I read, I replied that I had never read any. Seriously? Yes, seriously. But not long after we returned from our honeymoon in France, Henry Kissinger’s international consulting firm hired me as an Asia analyst; my dean at SAIS had recommended me to Brent Scowcroft, one of Kissinger’s partners.”

 

I’m sorry, but what? How does this just happen? And it goes on. One day, when Geithner was a junior Treasury civil servant, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen just called him out of the blue to ask his advice on a matter about which he knew nothing. Why? He doesn’t say—he’s just puzzled. Later on, he advances in Treasury without any real credentials in a department where a law degree or economics PhD is essential. Even Alan Greenspan eventually expressed surprise; he had just assumed Geithner had a doctorate. Power just always seemed to flow to Geithner, and he never says why. He knows why, of course—he’s an exceptional political climber. He just doesn’t say who was grooming him, why he ended up where he ended up, and what he paid to get there. It’s clear he had ideas about how the world should work, but he pretends otherwise.

 

As the book moved into the guts of his career, the Mexican crisis in the early 1990s, I began to come into contact with events that could actually be fact-checked. In 1994, just after NAFTA was signed, Mexico experienced a massive currency collapse. The roots of the crisis were excessive lending by American banks to Mexico, so the US Treasury–funded bailout helped ensure that Mexico could pay its debts and that US banks had their money returned. Geithner participated in the rescue designed by then Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin. The bailout was deeply unpopular at the time, and Congress refused to fund it. But Rubin found the financing for the wall of money in an old account called the Exchange Stabilization Fund, and the American banks who had lent to Mexico were ultimately paid back. Geithner presents this as a triumph of wisdom over the stupidity and cravenness of a short-sighted Congress and impatient public. Yet as Dean Baker notes, “Mexico had the worst per capita growth of any major country in Latin America in the two decades following” the bailout. It was bad for Mexico, but great for Citigroup.

 

He also reorganized the New York Fed Board to include prominent financiers, “including Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld; JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon; former Goldman Sachs Chairman Steve Friedman, who was still on the firm’s board of directors; and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt.” As he put it, “I basically restored the New York Fed board to its historic roots as an elite roster of the local financial establishment.” His former colleague on the Obama economic team Paul Volcker even mocked him for being so close to the big banks. These are not the actions of someone who has a distant relationship with Wall Street power players. 

 

An additional lie is that Geithner was never a Wall Street banker. Technically speaking, the New York Federal Reserve, which Geithner headed up for years, is actually a bank on Wall Street. It is in fact a bank of banks—the bank of banks. It’s why Chuck Prince wanted him for the Citigroup job. And Geithner lived like a power player. He entertained Wall Street bigwigs as part of his work and could get anyone in the world on the phone. The New York Fed isn’t subject to federal-government pay caps, so Geithner was paid $411,200 a year, with a $434,668 severance when he went to Treasury. While this is a low salary for a Wall Street banker, it is a lot of money, especially for a public servant. And it’s an especially large amount of money considering the remarkable perk package, which included, as he notes in his book, coffee served by staff on a silver tray and a car with a chauffeur and sirens to get to work every day. In other words, the reason people thought Geithner came from a bank on Wall Street is because, both in a technical and a cultural sense, he did. Geithner knows the New York Federal Reserve Bank is a bank on Wall Street—a special public-private bank, of course, not an investment bank, but a bank nonetheless. Yet he denies this because it sounds better that way.

Of course the Fed isn’t subject to federal-governent pay caps. It isn’t part of the government. 

And while he says he was concerned about insufficient capital levels at Citigroup, Sheila Bair says in her book, and more recently told Gretchen Morgenson, that the New York Fed under Geithner was undermining her push for higher capital levels at the Basel Accords. Only a hearing and threat from Barney Frank to Geithner and the Fed allowed Bair to go ahead. The crisis was creeping up on regulators, but Geithner was fighting against the most basic measures to do anything about it.

 

Geithner offers shifting and inconsistent statements about these bonuses. At Treasury, Geithner says he didn’t want the government to interfere with bonus payments, for fear of scaring the markets. The right time to have imposed executive pay restrictions was when the bailouts themselves happened, but unfortunately, “I had been too consumed with trying to contain the post-Lehman panic to even consider whether we could do anything about executive compensation.” Yet this plainly wasn’t true. Earlier in the book Geithner recalls fighting against Senator Max Baucus during the TARP negotiations. “I didn’t think Congress should mess around with TARP as a way to reform executive compensation,” he said, “not because I approved of the industry’s lavish salaries and bonuses, but because reducing them seemed like a secondary objective in a crisis.” In other words, Geithner first says he sought to preserve bonuses for bailout recipients, and then he says he didn’t.

 

Aside from all the lies and misleading statements, there are many claims that are difficult to verify. Geithner writes that he tried to get haircuts from banks that were counterparties to AIG, but seven out of eight AIG counterparties refused to take anything less than 100 cents on the dollar. Yet Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said in press reports that he had never even been asked to take haircuts. If you look at the bailout watchdog reports released at the time, it’s clear efforts to get haircuts cannot even fairly be considered halfhearted. Later on, Geithner says his no-haircut strategy was a “no-brainer.” He wasn’t trying to save taxpayer money; he was trying to appear like he was trying to save taxpayer money while funneling money to banks.

 

Recognizing this tsunami of deceit is actually central to recognizing what happened during the bailouts. The bailouts were, simply put, done in bad faith. Geithner was hired to lie, steal, and cheat on behalf of bankers, and he did so.

So what is Tiny Timmy up to now? 

Geithner told Ezra Klein at Vox that he chose private equity because of ethical concerns: He did not want to go through the revolving door to the banks, he said, and did not want to be involved in companies he had been regulating. Of course, private equity as an industry was actually placed under regulation by none other than Tim Geithner through Dodd-Frank. The industry is heavily dependent on large banks for syndicate financing, so Geithner’s contacts and credibility should come in handy.

 

Beyond that, one of Warburg’s very first investments with Geithner at the helm was a $100 million infusion of cash into a company called Source, which is a large European asset manager that handles a shadow banking instrument called an exchange-traded fund (ETF). The government recently warned that ETFs may help contribute to the next financial crisis. And amusingly enough, there is a bitter fight between the regulators as to how and whether to regulate these companies, one that Geithner could be swaying behind the scenes (as he did so often with policies he did not like during the crisis). And this is just one example—Warburg owns many companies in the heavily regulated finance space, and I’m sure Geithner can add value to many of them. Already, SEC Chairman Mary Jo White is aggressively fighting to prevent any regulation of these asset managers. White was nominated to be SEC Chairman on January 24, 2013, the day before Geithner left Treasury. Her nomination might have been the last substantive decision he made in government, and it could be profitable for his new employer.

I exposed Mary Jo White for the crony she is the minute she was appointed in the piece: Meet Mary Jo White: The Next SEC Chief and a Guaranteed Wall Street Patsy. 

Moreover, the idea that private equity is an ethical industry is a remarkable claim. It is an industry dedicated to financial engineering over creating real value. The government recently came out with its very first analysis of this industry, which is known to most Americans as the place where Mitt Romney somehow got wealthy by laying people off. It turns out that more than half of the private equity funds the SEC examined were engaged in outright violations of laws in their financial dealings (or, more politely, were said to have “material weaknesses of controls”). Private equity funds routinely overstate returns, mislead investors, loot companies they buy, and break the law. Geithner found an industry even scummier than working as an executive at a Too Big to Fail bank and jumped right into it.

I recently noted I believe the private equity industry will turn out to be the primary villain in the next financial crisis in the post: SEC Official Claims Over 50% of Private Equity Audits Reveal Criminal Behavior. 

Ultimately, Geithner was a hit man for American democracy—and the middle class that sustained it. Geithner has acknowledged substantial fraud in the crisis, but he won’t even deign to answer why the administration did nothing about the individuals who perpetrated it. He doesn’t discuss distributional questions from the bailout. He sneers at the notion of justice. He argues for “anti-democratic” measures in a financial crisis, including emergency powers for the president similar to those the president has for national security.

 

Geithner is at heart a grifter, a petty con artist with the right manners and breeding to lie at the top echelons of American finance at a moment when the government and financial services industry needed someone to be the face of their multi-trillion dollar three card monte. He’s going to make his money, now that he’s done living his life of fantastic power after his upbringing of remarkable mysterious privilege. After reading this book and documenting lie after lie after lie, I’m convinced that there’s more here than just a self-serving corrupt official. There’s an entire culture, of figures at Treasury, the Federal Reserve, in the entire Democratic Party elite structure, and in the world of journalism, a culture in which Geithner is seen as some sort of role model.

 

As a result, the liberal faction in the Democratic Party is beginning to grapple with what it means to have grifters setting the course for economic strategy. There is now a debate about whether and how to purge this toxic culture. Geithner probably wishes there weren’t, which is one reason he wrote the book. He actually has to try and justify the horror show he put on. Believe it or not, that’s progress. Next time there’s a crisis, if reformers learn anything from this book, it’s to make sure that there are no Geithner types anywhere near the levers of power.

I mean what can I say. I salute you for this, Matt Stoller.

Full article here.

That explains this...

 

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Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:27 | 4829003 Goldilocks
Goldilocks's picture

Muppets Most Wanted - Outrage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXfLrt90CHM (1:01)

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:27 | 4829004 JuliaS
JuliaS's picture

Someone's hell bent on doing PR cleanup. I've noticed dozens of documentaries coming our recently about Cheney, Paulson, Bernanke and other turds in the shit bowl. Someone's rewriting history probably so that in another 100 years when there's a bubble in... I don't know, nanobots and teleporters, when the economy grinds to a hault because every human had already reverse mortgaged every cybernetic cell in their body to buy themselves a clone printer or whatever, the economists could go back in history, point to the "great visionaries" of our present and use their conclusions to justify another expansion of SatoShitCoins, or whatver the money is then, and blow yet another bubble.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 00:13 | 4829087 Wait What
Wait What's picture

the bubble in body parts is next. "sorry, your insurance doesn't cover that"

"The Repossession Mambo" by Eric Garcia.

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:30 | 4829011 NaN
NaN's picture

Coincidentally, Adam Curtis is warming up for a documentary on the politics of zero trust: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis (plus other observations about Syria and Snowden).

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:32 | 4829016 dizzyfingers
dizzyfingers's picture

Yep, this seems to fit all politicians, both sides of the aisle: ...at heart a grifter, a petty con artist with the right manners and breeding to lie at the top echelons of American finance at a moment when the government and financial services industry needed someone to be the face of their multi-trillion dollar three card monte. ... going to make his money (once elected). After...documenting lie after lie after lie, I’m convinced ...there’s an entire culture, of figures at Treasury, the Federal Reserve, in the entire Democratic (and Republican) Party elite structure, and in the world of journalism, a culture in which (slick rich crooks are) seen as some sort of role model."

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:48 | 4829048 Cacete de Ouro
Cacete de Ouro's picture

Sounds like a lot of Wall Street assholes too, and especially immigrant Arab-Pakistani Wall Street impostors who have zero integrity

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:32 | 4829018 DrData02
DrData02's picture

They would have to PAY me a hell of a lot more than $12.79 to even hold this book in my hand.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 00:02 | 4829071 palmereldritch
palmereldritch's picture

Wait until next week when Geithner's book hits the remainder bin and then pick up a copy for the cottage outhouse.  At least then it will serve a purpose.

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:40 | 4829032 Duc888
Duc888's picture

How did Timmy "get the job"

 

See why Ayyyyyy

 

http://www.luckinlove.com/obamaciaties.htm

THE Real Scoop on Tim Geithner's dad working with Barack Obama's mom both for the CIA back when AGENCY WAS ALL OVER INDONESIA although both ostensibly worked for the FORD FOUNDATION ---

 

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 16:29 | 4831190 gdpetti
gdpetti's picture

Yes, membership has its priviledges. A bird of a certain color knows its own and when to flock together. Should young master Timmy be given a Medal of Freedom for all his good work?

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:41 | 4829034 Yes_Questions
Yes_Questions's picture

 

 

Timmah!

 

thanks for the memories, mr. secret-ary

 

the truth is a much better place without you in it

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:41 | 4829035 Atomizer
Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:44 | 4829040 wisefool
wisefool's picture

I call the IRS and ask for the Timmah treatment on a regular basis.

They laugh. I am not sure if it is funny "haha" or funny "like a clown."

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:46 | 4829044 Typing Typer
Typing Typer's picture

He is a cheap grifter, in my opinion. That's why those Chinese students busted out laughing at him. They expected more finesse and ability at the level he was presented at, not just a cheap liar. Geithner has always made my skin crawl when I heard him talking, I never knew whether to laugh or cry.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 08:46 | 4829551 gcjohns1971
gcjohns1971's picture

The privileged do not understand that corrupt behavior is corrosive to the quality of their humanity.

The quality of each generation declines, until the corrupt oligarch and corrupt street thief differ only in clothing, and the size of their wallet.

Thus the descendants of brilliant illuminati become cheap grifters of sub-normal intelligence and capability.

But the egos remain when the substance is generations gone.

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:50 | 4829052 earleflorida
earleflorida's picture

Wow !!!

excellent :-))

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:55 | 4829059 3rd Pig
3rd Pig's picture

Tim Geithner Is "A Grifter, a Petty Con Artist"

From Matt Stoller’s fantastic article published yesterday...

 

The Elite’s safe houses are testing steel doors & warming up their electric fences for the upcoming Bank Holiday’s.

The whole financial fraud gang is ready to do a runner... “the PURGE” is on like donkey Kong.

 

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:56 | 4829063 22winmag
22winmag's picture

Who would look better chained to Obama and Holder in handcuffs and orange jumpsuits than Timmy himself?

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 23:59 | 4829069 Atomizer
Atomizer's picture

Don't forgot the bag of oranges Obama. You can bruise your way into illegal medical treatment programs.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 00:21 | 4829103 tekmike13
tekmike13's picture

This author should have spent more time following the boys that installed him. Geitty is just mousy punk, in the prison sense, put in place to do the bidding of his masters. Who they are is the important part.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 00:59 | 4829148 bunnyswanson
bunnyswanson's picture

Was he made an offer he could not refuse?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRSDTvqbmRg  Feud Vlast

 

For all who like a song but don't understand the lyrics:
"Power"
(If I had power)
I would change the whole society
(If I had power)
The metropolis  would be a village
(If I had power)
There would be no junkies... 
(If I had power)
Oh I would enjoy it so much
(If I had power)
...and even less faggots
(If I had power)
I would  execute for rape
(If I had power)
and would you lie to me
(If I had power)
If I was cuting off fingers for dishonesty!!!
TAKE MY PICTURE!!!
PUT IT ON THE WALL!
From insurgency I became
Simbol of the cult
YOUR GOD!!!!
MASTER AND GOD!!!
If I had power
I wouldn't give a dick about you!!!
If I had power
Only a dick I would promise you!!!
 (If I had power)
And what is tolerance?
(If I had power)
You don't care about the truth
(If I had power)
Hypocrites and thieves
(If I had power)
I would lock up
(If I had power)
There would be no  devices
(If I had power)
Neather brother nor sister
(If I had power)
And would it be fair if I was
(If I had power)
A main role and  director
TAKE MY PICTURE!!!
PUT IT ON THE WALL!
From insurgency I became
Simbol of the cult
YOUR GOD!!!!
MASTER AND GOD!!!
If I had power
I wouldn't give a dick about you!!!
If I had power
Only a dick I would promise you!!!
TAKE MY PICTURE!!!
PUT IT ON THE WALL!
From insurgency I became
Simbol of the cult
YOUR GOD!!!!
MASTER AND GOD!!!

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 00:31 | 4829115 I Write Code
I Write Code's picture

This is a terrible book review, because it does not even BEGIN to get to the real Timmy G.  He's not even a grifter, he's a grifter's wooden dummy, a stooge.  I saw this in 2009 when he first surfaced, one look at his Wikipedia biography showed he's had someone's hand up his ass - well, probably his whole life.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 00:36 | 4829120 Acidtest Dummy
Acidtest Dummy's picture

Turbo Timmah is a wretchedly entitled lapdog. The reason he doesn't hobnob with the Wall St. elete more is probably because they despise him. He was obviously chosen as SecTres to be the fall guy and is probably as surprised as anyone that there is NO ACOUNTABILITY for .gov or their pets. 

 PROSECUTE THE WAR CRIMINALS!

 

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 01:14 | 4829160 JailBanksters
JailBanksters's picture

Listen don't mention the War!, I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 08:53 | 4829575 SofaPapa
Fri, 06/06/2014 - 01:26 | 4829168 Sorry_about_Dresden
Sorry_about_Dresden's picture

What a pos is Timmy. I would like to see his hands removed so he can wave stumps around while the bullshit lies roll from his tounge. 

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 01:33 | 4829170 damicol
damicol's picture

"Listen son", my father would say to me when asking me about certain events that may have taken place and to which my answers didn't seem entirely appropriate or correct, "Do you you see anything on my forehead", as he raised his hairline with his right hand.

No, I would reply, and he would say "Neither did I when I looked in the mirror this morning, You are quite sure it doesn't look to you as if the work CUNT is tattooed there  in capital letters".

No I would respond.

"Well then, when you do see that, then that's the time you can treat me like a cunt, and until such time as you do, treating me like a cunt is something you do at your own extreme peril"

He always got the clear unvarnished truth.

The problem is that there are so many American Morons that do have the word CUNT tattooed so clearly on their foreheads, that wherever they look these grifters spivs lying sacks of shit and corrupt thieving scum make the mistake that everyone has a tattoo.

These American Morons are oblivious to the fact that CUNT is tattooed on their foreheads and are so besotted, so sycophantic and so gullible that like lemmings they would all happily leap off a cliff if the fucking Kenyan monkey or scum like this Geithner shit hole did so, or even gave them the  illusion they were going to jump off a cliff.

Which of course is something they would never do voluntarily

But I do check the mirror every morning, and so far I see no signs ot that tattoo appearing, and when these fucking evil bastards  come out of their little holes pontificating to the American Morons, it offends me greatly that these assholes mistake the shadow from my cap as a tattoo that says CUNT.

I get angry, I get pissed off, and I get irritated, just like my father used to do.

Now I couldn't care a flying fuck, if every American Moron actually did jump off a cliff if they were told to, that is Darwin working his magic,  I might feel pity, but that is only in the sense of feeling pity watching a slavering rabid dog get both barrels on a hot day on a desert street.

But if you treat me like I have cunt tattooed on my forehead, then there are consequences.

And just about now I sense that enough Real Americans are feeling  just about the same as my father did back in my younger days, and they too are starting to feel their irritation, or a rising anger just about beginning to boil, and very soon not only will they be looking at the ass-wipes parading around smug in their complacent view that everyone does indeed have cunt tattooed on their forehead, they are about to disabuse them of that notion in a way that even my father would be proud of.

In the meanwhile, I am going to bait my breath, but one thing you can be sure of, is that when the right moment arrives, I shall be there in full and furious anger wrecking vengeance on those who would dare to treat ME like a cunt.

 

 

 

 

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 04:37 | 4829266 Pinche Caballero
Pinche Caballero's picture

Let the disabusing of false notions begin.

John Bernard Books: I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 08:40 | 4829522 gcjohns1971
gcjohns1971's picture

In defense of small town America I would offer that since WWII, the US has been ground zero for the attempts of every moneyed, privileged grifter in the world to influence the levers of power.

And, essentially, when US elections happen everyone in the world can vote. All they need is a fictitious address and a fraudulent post office mark going to that address to vote.

They are easy to make on your printer.

My wife, who is an immigrant from Europe and not a US citizen was shocked when she discovered she could vote, and that her family members overseas could easily vote. Party members ACTIVELY SOLICITED her to do so, though she technically was not entitled, and though they had full knowledge of that fact.

With the departure of small-town America, where people knew the guy in the next voting booth, elections became nothing more than an episode of American Idol, but with a less transparent and credible voting scheme.

Sat, 06/07/2014 - 08:58 | 4832220 Proofreder
Proofreder's picture

"bait my breath ..."

perhaps with a worm ???   You do seem to be fishing for something.

 

... and he paused, with bated breath, lest someone dare treat him like a cunt.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 05:58 | 4829223 intric8
intric8's picture

Tiny tim the toxic avenger is nothing but a malfeasant sociopath who loves to rub his opulance and privileged lifestyle into the noses of those dumb enough to buy his book. He blames the entire debacle on the economy, and little else, and that should suffice for us.

I've got rope. Anyone have a nice tree picked out yet?

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 04:23 | 4829261 young turk
young turk's picture

wealthy ivy leaque grifter know their kind all too well

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 04:25 | 4829262 eucalyptus
eucalyptus's picture

I went to the same grad school as geithner - i'm sorry but there is no way any of us would ever become treas sec or ny fed prez. For the last 7 years I have always marveled and asked everyone about his career track and no one has ever given me a good answer.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 04:50 | 4829273 SmittyinLA
SmittyinLA's picture

NEEL Kashkari  "the architect" of the bailout won the CA primary this week, its between him and Jerry Brown.

Senile corrupt incompetent Socialist versus Crony Socialist mega-criminal, that's the mob rule choice for CA governor.

Not kidding.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 08:29 | 4829488 gcjohns1971
gcjohns1971's picture

Just curious,

Why do you think the field of candidates was reduced to two socialists, both corrupt?

I ask because I believe that expecting a political party to reform or 'purge' itself of 'toxic culture' is naively foolhardy.

It seems to me that the FOUNDATIONAL PURPOSE of the parties is to narrow the field of candidates to include only interchangeable toady's.

But I am curious how others see it.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 05:05 | 4829281 Peter Pan
Peter Pan's picture

The man is "full of shit?"

I had a sneeking suspicion all along that he is a colostomy bag.

The scary thing is he has named his son BEN.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 05:10 | 4829284 Shylockracy
Shylockracy's picture

Since Venice of old, the technical term for tools like Geithner is "Parade Goyim".

Grooming these types, placing them in the right positions of visibility and then replacing them by a clone at the right time is just a cryptocratic technique among many.

To cause widespread excitement and even rage about types like Geithner is a fundamental part of the trick in that it diverts attention from real power.

Inverted psychology, projection, catharsis and the show goes on, same as it ever was in the Age of Money.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 06:46 | 4829340 overmedicatedun...
overmedicatedundersexed's picture

ZH dead pool, Timmy G moves up the list, Chris cox smiles as he is forgotten, much like the state murder of what's her name (Miriam Carey) look it up if you forgot congress giving the SS a standing ovation for her killers that's amerika today, home land is secure for the likes of timmy g.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 06:56 | 4829355 AdvancingTime
AdvancingTime's picture

Geithner the tax cheat was perfectly at home in the system and is a perfect example of crony capitalism. I recently found myself thinking about the decline or collapse of great empires and realized that it is often hard to predict when or how their demise will occur. One sign of the end is a massive growth in crony capitalism and corruption. Many analogies can be taken from this idea, the empire need not be great and timing is always hard to correctly gauge.

The signs of decline may be everywhere but that does not guarantee the end is near. As the foundation crumbles away it is not uncommon for those in power to extend their rule by many tricks and changing the rules in order to gain a new lease on life. More on the subject of how empires collapse in the article below.

http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/05/how-empires-collapse.html

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 11:56 | 4830224 DoChenRollingBearing
DoChenRollingBearing's picture

Nice article, bravo.  History does seem to show that corruption in its various forms does indeed coincide with collapse of an empire.  

But, like you wrote, timing is the tricky part.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 07:12 | 4829372 ImYourHuckleberry
ImYourHuckleberry's picture

Could he be Obama's twin brother from a different mother?

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 08:49 | 4829378 headhunt
headhunt's picture

Shocking - a democrat that is a liar and a thief.

 

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 11:56 | 4830227 DoChenRollingBearing
DoChenRollingBearing's picture

I hear ya, I can barely believe it myself.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 08:23 | 4829437 gcjohns1971
gcjohns1971's picture

Our society is so degraded that it cannot tell the difference between PAY and LOOT, nor LIES and TRUTH.

Normal people not only can't pick them out in a line up, but they also can't conceive of the difference.

The low-hanging fruit are always those your neighbor has gathered.

With these standards of conduct, does the word 'Grifter' retain any meaning at all?

Your slings and arrows for Geithner and Co, while accurate, will find no purchase with them.

They are not capable of understanding more than the simple fact that an insult was offered due to some policy you didn't care for.

In this way, to them murder and execution are just a matter of opinion. Theft and production have only a theoretical distinction.

And the only cogent object in interpersonal relations is the hierarchy of power, the privilege of position, and their personal place in it.

Their mentality is most accurately and clinically described as sub-human.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 08:24 | 4829463 shovelhead
shovelhead's picture

Criminal Forensics is a fascinating study of the anatomy of a crime. The 5 W's of Who, What, Where, When and Why. Essential to build a case that will bear up to minute scrutiny under cross examination.

It's only half the battle. You need a dedicated advocate for justice to bring the case forward to seek redress for the victim and bring the guilty forward to answer for the crime.

So. Here we are.

Now what?

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 08:45 | 4829549 d edwards
d edwards's picture

...grifter, petty con artist-don't forget tax cheat.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 11:58 | 4830231 DoChenRollingBearing
DoChenRollingBearing's picture

Ground Zero?

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 09:00 | 4829607 Uncle Remus
Uncle Remus's picture

Cocksuckers of the first order - the whole lot.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 09:13 | 4829663 esum
esum's picture

the entire administration consists of the same sort of people....

cut from the same cloth... douchebags, slugs, non-productive, incompetent, ineffective, and deep selected for their like-minded politics...willingness to lie and eat shit for advancement, the question is by whom??? it cant just be soros...  obama is the biggest piece of shit who is as corrupt as they come...and he has surrounded himself with birds of a feather.. holder, dempsey, hagel, clapper, kerry, brennan.... all rather sub-ordinary, incompetent but highly willing to be yesmen... 

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 10:08 | 4829846 HEHEHE
HEHEHE's picture

He is a mystery wrapped in an enigma if there ever was one.  Almost like he's from some type of Oligarch "clone" project.  A Manchurian Candidate put in place to do the billionaires bidding at just the right time in history. 

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 10:12 | 4829863 kchrisc
kchrisc's picture

Geithner is a sociopath like the rest of them.

The good thing about what is coming is that we will know who and where they are.

Now try imagining sociopath Geithner taking a real job in a restored civil and

Constitutional society.

Sat, 06/07/2014 - 07:49 | 4832185 Herodotus
Herodotus's picture

If I were a Jew in America, I would keep a packed suitcase next to my back door.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 11:51 | 4830216 TrustWho
TrustWho's picture

Thank you Matt Stoller for demonstrating courage. Timmy Boy is an evil snake and this financial criss is NOT over. I hope journalist join you but I am afraid Timmy and his Obama boys may destroy you to cower your peers. Main street journalist today have small balls, if any! Stay strong my man!

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 21:28 | 4831738 world_debt_slave
world_debt_slave's picture

if'n you can't b'dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshitz.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 21:33 | 4831745 Hubbs
Hubbs's picture

I ordinarily don't like to post personal attacks, but the first time I saw that phony wrinkling of his forehead brows, trying to act seriously  deep in thought  and "truthful", I knew Timmy was yet another one of those bullshit preppie  types...you know, ran for student council, and all those other useless activities in high school to buff up his resume for college admission. But let's face it, he is a lightweight in every sense of the word.

If you watch "Dubya's"  speeches, he gives almost the same phony facial expression, although not as much, as our boy  Timmy., 

Disclosure: I applied for, and was rejected by Dartmouth.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 21:35 | 4831748 Hubbs
Hubbs's picture

oops, I misspoke.  What I meant was twerp.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 22:05 | 4831794 hangemhigh77
hangemhigh77's picture

I don't understand why he doesn't dress as a Leprecaun.  I mean he is one isn't he?  I think his father is on the Lucky Charms box.  That's how he got ahead, his dad gave gold to all the banksters. Fucking little prick.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 22:06 | 4831797 hangemhigh77
hangemhigh77's picture

Can you hang a Leprecaun?  

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 22:08 | 4831799 Dewey Cheatum Howe
Dewey Cheatum Howe's picture

Speaking of scumbags courtesy of wikileaks here is Mullah Mohammad Fazl's Guantanamo memoradum. He is one of the guy's released in the prisoner exchange. There are also pictures out on the internet with him posing with severed heads.

http://wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/7.html

The Guantanamo Files

On Sunday April 24, 2011 WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files from the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The details for every detainee will be released daily over the coming month.

Mullah Mohammad Fazl Country Afghanistan Place of birth Charchno, AF Birth date 01/01/67 ISN 7   [US9AF-000007DP]

How to Read WikiLeaks' Guantánamo Files ?

The nearly 800 documents in WikiLeaks' latest release of classified US documents are memoranda from Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO), the combined force in charge of the US "War on Terror" prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to US Southern Command, in Miami, Florida, regarding the disposition of the prisoners.

Written between 2002 and 2008, the memoranda were all marked as "secret," and their subject was whether to continue holding a prisoner, or whether to recommend his release (described as his "transfer" -- to the custody of his own government, or that of some other government). They were obviously not conclusive in and of themselves, as final decisions about the disposition of prisoners were taken at a higher level, but they are very significant, as they represent not only the opinions of JTF-GTMO, but also the Criminal Investigation Task Force, created by the Department of Defense to conduct interrogations in the "War on Terror," and the BSCTs, the behavioral science teams consisting of psychologists who had a major say in the "exploitation" of prisoners in interrogation.

...

Here is a direct link to the full memorandum

http://wikileaks.org/gitmo/pdf/af/us9af-000007dp.pdf

 

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 22:14 | 4831812 Dewey Cheatum Howe
Dewey Cheatum Howe's picture

So everyone can breath a sigh of relief he has to spend a year in 'custody' in Qatar before he is allowed to return to Afghanistan as part of the deal concerning the prisoner release.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 22:30 | 4831836 Dewey Cheatum Howe
Dewey Cheatum Howe's picture

Looks like they are going all in. They wouldn't be doing this unless they were confident O'Muslim has control of a certain agency that begins with a C. Wonder were Pappy Bush stands in all this since it was his hard work that setup the 'NWO" and now it looks like it has been hijacked by these assclowns. Looks like Pappy and the neoclownz been double crossed. We shall see.....

http://www.libertynews.com/2014/06/shock-for-first-time-ever-pope-to-all...

The Muslim world is finding much to rejoice about in a confusing and quite shocking decision made by the Pope. The Pope will allow Muslims to read from the Quran and chant Islamic prayers from the Vatican in a move said to promote peace.

...

For the first time in history, Islamic prayers and readings from the Quran will be heard at the Vatican on Sunday, in a move by Pope Francis to usher in peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

...

Bullshit if that was the case they'd read the Quran at a Jewish Temple.....

You assholes reap what you sow, karma is a real bitch.

 

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 22:20 | 4831826 luna_man
luna_man's picture

 

 

 

NOT WORTH THE PAPER AND INK...RAT CRIMINAL

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 23:26 | 4831904 Atomizer
Atomizer's picture

When does your book come out Timmah? Forget the date...

Sat, 06/07/2014 - 04:29 | 4832100 kurt
kurt's picture

Timmy is a shitty shitball scum sucking piece of sub human calculating shit who captures enough of the truth to understand it but only functions at full load and capacity when it is actively trying to manufacture a subterfuge to serve a constituency, to which it believes it belongs, without being interpreted  by that same group as being even near human, but rather, he is a distracting amusement, in observation, as one of the most singularly unusual and peculiar twisted savants ever to have drawn breath.

Sat, 06/07/2014 - 05:33 | 4832105 NuYawkFrankie
NuYawkFrankie's picture

re Geithner... a petty con artist..

 

Thing is, they're ALL con-artists - from Obama on up, down, backwards, forwards & sideways.

Every single one of them.

 

Sat, 06/07/2014 - 09:53 | 4832265 2discern
2discern's picture

Exactly. Why did they install an illegal impostor as putative prez? Why is CONgress complicit? You mean the NSA, CIA, FBI knows your every email, phone call, and financial transaction but has no idea of who barry soetero (similar lifestyle of non-achievement as Gietner) really is?

Sat, 06/07/2014 - 09:09 | 4832231 Ban KKiller
Ban KKiller's picture

Are the Hamptons flood proof? Is Greenwich fireproof?  

Sleep sheep was the name of a painting I did 13 years ago. 

TG is just a tool as is our, I mean THEIR, Congress.

Sat, 06/07/2014 - 10:01 | 4832269 MATA HAIRY
MATA HAIRY's picture

he is definitely a grifter and a con man, but he operates together with the rest of the elite, led by the ivy league upper crust, all con men, operating together as a parasitic/predatory sub-society, a sub-species, one that preys upon, parasitizes the american citizen working class

Sat, 06/07/2014 - 10:16 | 4832288 Sambo
Sambo's picture

Obama & Geithner....made for each other since Indonesia.

Mon, 06/09/2014 - 05:29 | 4836379 GardenWeasel
GardenWeasel's picture

you are fucking kidding me.  the only republican you can drag into this is Romney?!?!?  the Mormon who gives 30% of his income to charity?!?!? Oh, fuck me runnin', that's the best you can do?  This whole fucking article is trollishness. 

 

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