Obama to allow the theft and incompetence to continue: he's keeping Geithner

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/despair-over-financial-policy/">Krugman: "In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/03/private-public-partnership-details.html">Yves Smith: "And notice the utter dishonesty: a competitive bidding process will protect taxpayers. Huh? A competitive bidding process will elicit a higher price which is BAD for taxpayers!

Dear God, the Administration really thinks the public is full of idiots..."

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And sometimes that really does work.

If he believes remotely that it could work, maybe he's wrong in declaring that it will not?

Almost any plan has a "remote" chance to work. You give an analysis based on what you think will probably happen.

He could be wrong. Obama's plan could work, then what?

Should everyone have been silent then? Particular when Geithner is now Treasury Secretary and he was NY Fed Chief under Bush and signed on to everything Bush did?

Who said anything about being silent?

Krugman can say Obama's plan isn't going to work from now until forever, he can't be 100 percent sure they aren't going to work.

Obama seems to believe they will.

I'm glad you are not a newspaper editor. It would be out of business in a day.

Disagreeing with someone is not censorship.

"maybe he's wrong in declaring that it will not?" Those are your words.

You're playing a game, right?

And I'm out. You have the wrong screen name.

In the article you linked to you stopped reading too early.


Now, you highlighted the last sentence but we are inside an if here. If it's just a panic, it sometimes really does work.



So Krugman is saying that believing it is only based on a panic, when the "magic trick" could work, is indefensible.

So, what to do?

I suggest that we as citizens and a Nation, first of all, decide what rules we will apply and abide by as a nation. I suggest that this egregious corporate behavior stretches one's thoughts about what is an appropriate response. On the other hand, we have found ourselves enmeshed in Iraq and Afghanistan in response to atrocities committed (by whomever) on 9-11. I propose that if we had first decided what and who we are as a Nation, we would not have the carryover of Guantanamo, torture and all of the other over-reacting we engaged in.

So, what for AIG? Perhaps, assume them innocent of all charges (as we did the Third Reich warriors) until our totally committed and dedicated hunt for all these financial malefactors yields them prosecuted to the fullest in our docks of justice.

Meantime, we should look at all that we all see and dislike and make it stop now !! And Obama and others could be helpful in defining this necessary degree of clear moral vision and judgment. What we should stop doing is hoping that Obama (like Truman) could snap his fingers and solve our problems. It is tougher than that, and we will need to help Obama and our allies rather than simply demanding some "satisfaction guaranteed" responses from his supporters.

A good first start would be the immediate of a law which would, in effect, re-institute some form of Glass-Steagall Act, prohibiting banking and insurance commingling entities. When one wishes to stop all the illegitimate gambling going on, shutting down the casinos is a good start. Let's start by taking AIG and all the others, split insuring from banking, and close down the derivative arms of the betting business.

banks down clean house and reopen them under new management, I would be happier. Instead he is overseeing a ridiculous cash giveaway to them.

Insane.

one of our country's greatest crises and people want talk about it and find solutions...how plebeian.

...ignorant talk. Obama and Geithner need the benefit of the doubt and allegiance from essentially all Dems. Their time for a say was the election. Now it is time for the elected leaders to do the talking. I except experts like Krugman, obviously.

Of course everyone has a Constitutional right to shoot their mouth off on things they don't understand and fill the air with hysterical monkey-shrieking. But it should not be considered an obligation. Too many at DU seem to think it is.

History if full of such examples, from the betrayal of William Wallace of Scotland to the assassination of Chief Crazy Horse on the Great Plains of America.

Wallace was given over to the English to suffer disembowelment and dismemberment. Crazy Horse was bayoneted in the back by Private William Gentles as his hands were held behind him by his life long friend Little Big Man. Crazy Horse's last words were, "Tell the people it is no use to depend upon me any longer."

In the end it was the betrayal of Crazy Horse and William Wallace by elements from within their own ranks that led to their murders. So it will be with President Obama if he fails. It will be the splintering of his own base, the dissatisfaction of those that clamor for faster more pervasive change, of those that seek to protect their own selfish interests. If President Obama falls, History has written,it will likely be his own people that bring him and his policy of pragmatic reform to an end.

As Hiawatha demonstrated, a bundle of seven arrows could not be broken. But one by one each arrow could be snapped with little effort. If we lose this battle, this is how it will be lost.

In the Spirit of Brotherhood,



International Brotherhood Days
http://www.brotherhooddays.com
mike kohr

He is a disloyal traitor. Off with their heads!

Joseph P.Kennedy was widely considered to be one of the biggest speculators in the late 1920's in the run up to the Great Depression. As an "insider," Kennedy was regarded as part of the problem and therefore not qualified to be one of the primary reformers of the practices that helped deliver the economic collapse.

FDR replied to the criticism that he wanted Kennedy involved in the reform efforts precisely because Kennedy knew were all the holes in the system were at. The reforms Kennedy helped draft lasted for 70 years, until they began to fall to the deregulation movement issued in by Ronald Reagan and brought to final fruition by Phil Graham (R)TX and Jim Leach (R)IA when their bill to repeal Glasss/Steegal was passed and signed into law in 1998.

In the end Obama will prove to be at least as successful as FDR in reforming the markets. But this reform will not happen overnight, it will not happen without a misstep or two along the way, and it will not happen without howls of protest from the right and sniping from those within Obama's own camp. But it will happen. Unless we bring him down first.

mike kohr

why is anyone surprised?

based on an 'incomplete', 'leaked', economic plan? I wonder what the consequences would be if Krugman's plans (whatever they might be), were implemented. Does anyone know or care? Notice I did not call him, or anyone that values his opinion names.