Tim Geithner, Barack Obama: Why are the Arsonists Who Started the Wall Street Fire Being Paid Premium Dollars to "Put it Out"?

As regards those who initially and continously have decided to direct enormous sums of the public's money to financial institutions, including Geithner, Paulson and Bernanke, Eliot Spitzer's recent comments are especially relevant. I am referring to his recent columns that appear in Slate and other venues. As he relates, the degree of collusion that existed between the above mentioned, AIG and its counterparties, primarily Goldman Sachs, shows what may well be criminal conspiracy to direct billions of public money to these counterparties. As it appears, Goldman Sachs had foreknowledge that AIG was in precarious straits 2 years ago, so at that time Goldman Sachs had demanded hard collateral from AIG in order to be secure against any possible losses. In fact to now be paying these AIG counterparties at full value, 12.9 billion in the case of GS, without first checking to see whether they merited such amounts is tantamount to an unjustified enormous taxpayer gift. As Spitzer makes clear, it was Geithner and others who have made these continuing turbid and self serving decisions that have benefitted the very people with whom they are intimately associated. Again there is the clear appearance of malfeasance and even criminal fraud underlying these swindles. I feel that Spitzer is performing a great service in speaking out about this matter, with which he is intimately versed and about which he acted to rectify in a prescient way. Please allow him a platform to contiue to offer his insights on this issue and to push for a full accounting of this travesty. Thanks.

Unfortunately the arsonists who started the fire have mostly left AIG and the people who are there now agreed to a $1.00 a year salary with this bonus in March 09. Many of these people have worked 10 – 14 hour days for 6 months and are not going to earn any of the promised bonuses. I believe $1 million dollars is excessive for 6 months work, but getting paid nothing is not good. The bustards who set the fire and ran away with fistfuls of cash need to be vilified, not the poor bustards brought in to put the fire out.

Thanks Texatheist1 for the spell check, now, maybe you could focus on your own punctuation skills. I must admit I see this a lot - spelling, grammar, punctuation errors, etc. not only in blogs but also in news stories, in print media, everywhere. And we wonder why Johnny can't read.

They should be unraveling their mess under threat of indictment and not being handsomely rewarded for ripping off the American people.

Is it possible to keep quiet and give the administration some time? Often those very people who were on the "inside" are the only ones who can unravel the mess. Have you ever heard of "hackers" being hired to "hack proof" a system?

President Obama described Wall Street as standing there with a bomb strapped to itself with their fingers on the trigger threatening to blow up the whole economy. He said something to the effect that they need to be talked down and dealt with carefully because of the power they do indeed wield. He is nothing if not pragmatic. Also, the amount of change needed is going to take TIME. Treasury secretaries and economic advisers come and go. We voted Obama in for four years. Let's at least give him time and our support AND our feedback.

In the Timothy Geithner affair, President Obama has fallen into, what I call for lack of a better term, the good family, right schools, great resume fallacy.

What I mean by that is President Obama chose his economic advisors more due to "class" considerations than by any empirical test for competency. In his choice of economic advisers, the president cast his net very close to the "good family, right schools, great resume" shore where he is most comfortable, harvesting only those fish he knows best. This, in my opinion, is a mistake.

Top Obama economic advisors Geithner and Lawrence Summers meet all three criteria of the fallacy: good families, right schools and great resume. Geithner's father worked for the Ford Foundation and his mother is a piano teacher and pianist. Both Summers' parents were renowned economists in their own rights. Geithner received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, then did his graduate work at Johns Hopkins. Summers attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, before seeking a graduate degree at Harvard. Geithner worked for Kissinger and Associates before entering government service; Summers was a member of Republican god Ronald Reagan's economic advisory staff before becoming a nominal Democrat, first as Michale Dukakis' economic adviser, then as an undersecretary of the U.S. Treasury in the Clinton administration. While the president himself may not come from the requisite "good family" he more than makes up for it in attending the "right schools," from the prestigious Punahou School through Columbia University and Harvard Law, and possessing a "great resume," community organizer, Constitutional law professor, U.S. Senator.

As Mark Karlin points out: The White House and Geithner would have us believe that we need to keep the arsonists who started the conflagration to be paid premium dollar to put the fire out. And here is where the good family, right schools, great resume" fallacy comes into play, for as Bush's New York Federal Reserve president Geithner surely had business, if not person, contacts with all the major Wall Street arsonists. And I am sure as Treasury Secretary, Geithner trusts these same Wall Street arsonists to do the right thing. Why? Because they all come from good families, went to the right schools and have great resumes!

The current economic crisis is not merely a monetary or financial failure. It is a systemic failure, the causes of which stem from an increasingly calcified social class structure and a rigidified academic system. That the same names and faces keep turning up in the highest halls and offices of academe, industry and finance, and government with disquieting regularity should serve as a warning that something, more than just failed banks and corrupt insurance companies, is terribly wrong in the United States.

As much as the far-left may wish otherwise, President Obama is not a radical, he is in fact quite pragmatic. The root cause of the meltdown is not that the "Masters of the Universe" are ignorant, quite the contrary, but is in fact the deregulation of the markets coupled with a lack of oversight. Over the last thirty years, sufficient numbers of Americans were convinced to vote against their own economic interests and elected, or allowed to be selected, or even allowed to steal, elections that installed politicians whose laissez-faire philosophy coupled with massive amounts of corporate cash either removed, or through lack of enforcement effectively neutered, most of the legal barriers that had been put in place, primarily by FDR, to prevent this very crisis from happening in the first place. What Mr. Karlin fails to understand is that stabilizing the banking system actually helps Main Street. The country needs our financial system to be in a position to extend credit more easily, it is just that simple. As the stabilization process begins to occur, which in my humble opinion has already started,the economy will be poised to recover. Although I have immense respect for Dr. Krugman, the idea that the Government can nationalize the banking system, tear it down into smaller pieces, and then auction those pieces back to the private sector may seem like a great idea in the halls of academia, but in fact more closely resembles the act of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Americans have seen up close just how effective Government meddling is in the private sector, bonuses of AIG execs, Bill of Attainder tax law (the Populist Rage Tax) by Congress are just two examples. The good news for the far-left is that once President Obama and his team right our economic ship, regulations and oversight will be introduced once again to remedy what the voters forgot the last time the country faced a challenge such as this. Could we please stop the boo-hoo-hooing and the woe is me and the victimization schtick and get with the program. And next time voters, educate yourself on who you are voting for. The American people get the government that they deserve and either all of the problems or all of the improvements that come with their collective decision-making.

Where are the regulations we need to get us out of this mess? I keep hearing that DEregulation is the main culprit (thanks to Alan Greenspan) in the economic meltdown we're experiencing - but WHERE is the legislation to put regulation of these finantial houses in place? Congress talks about rulating but I'm not aware of any action. Throwing more money at the banks and insurance groups is only going to serve in giving them more money. What they need is a set of ground rules that say "This is how you conduct business and if you don't follow along, then these are the consiquences." If Obama, Geithner and Congress would just quit playing nicey-nice with BIG BUISNESS and get to the job at hand we'd all be better off that much sooner.

Right at the outset I did not take the presence of Geithner, Summers and Rubin in this administration as a good sign, and this latest "plan" announced by Geithner has confirmed my worst fears. Regarding a revival of regulations that would control the excesses and redistribution of wealth we've seen in the last few decades, I don't think we'll see much substantive change from this administration.

The predicted upcoming battle over the Employee Free Choice Act will be interesting. Will the Dems fight for a piece of effective legislation, or will we see something labeled EFCA in a neutered form? If they won't fight for cleaning up the mess on Wall Street, it's hard to image that they will defy their big money big business masters on unionization.

Renard

Mark Karlin, who cant spell, writes: Why are the very people who crashed the economy to the tune of a couple trillion dollars or more being championed as the only people who can fix it? My comment: because we the people allow them to do it and americans should fire up their weapons and turn them on the bankers.maybe the bankers in the bubbles will get the message then !! also, in another instance of Karlin's rantings here he says: If I were a high school principle in Obama's and BuzzFlash's hometown of Chicago ...... Karlin misspelled here..the "principal" is the one who oversees the schools--not the "principle"..principle is "something one stands for"..principle is not "a person" per se.and for one who claims to be such a prolific writer and editor here, surely Karlin should go see the Secretary of Education he says he knows and let her give him his school lesson.So,Karlin, go back to school !! learn the difference in words and their meaning.i was always good in school, in reading,writing, and spelling..even after i took some foreign language classes here on the computer.i dont drink and drive a Lamborghini either into restaurants nor do i fight windmills.Karlin,be a man of principle then go speak to your principal in school.go fishing with him.he's your "pal".But Karlin insists on going to see his "principle in the office" !! Straighten him out, Ms.Sec of Education !

TREASON