Rant: The Utter Hypocrisy of this morning's hearing with Geithner.

Did any of you notice how a number of the individuals on the committee attacked Geithner because small banks (i.e., the healthy community banks) were not lending as much as they used to, when in prior hearings they attacked him because credit was too lax??

Do any of these politicians understand why we got into this mess in the first place?

Why should responsible, smaller, generally-healthier community banks be goaded into making the same irresponsible, reckless loans that the larger (in some instances deceased) banks and other financial institutions made in the first place?

This is the point:

First these assholes attacked the Fed and Treasury for permitting lenient credit that got us into this fucking mess in the first place.

1. They initially approve of and encourage reckless lending.
2. They chastise the Fed and the Treasury for allowing it.
3. Paulson (now Geithner) and the Fed urge regulators to crack down on reckless lending.
4. Now these morons on the finance committees are urging more reckless lending, and chastising the Fed and the Treasury for trying to discourage it.

Does anybody else here perceive the irony??

Do *you* perceive the irony?

Lending you loads of cash with nothing down so you can buy a house because the value is skyrocketing is pretty weak; the difference between the rise in population and house prices gives an idea of how leveraged the economy is. If the multiple is too high, you have to question why a house is risin in value when it isn't being enhanced significantly (by adding a third story or a pool or something).

On the other hand, it's become very hard for some small businesses to access capital even though the Small Business Administration is offering very generous backing for these kinds of loans. I am not agreeing with the finance committees, but it's not as simple as you've painted it.

issue of why (especially large) banks have not used the taxpayer bailout to lend money, as they were supposed to. Instead, they used it to pay bonuses and cover their own problems.