I wonder what is contained in that massive forehead…probably a loop tape of his massive forehead wankin itself. This asshat is as deluded as John Wilkes Booth. Gadzooks can you imagine waking up so stupid every morning and realizing you have a job to go to. Does he figure the guillotine will just bounce off his thick skull. Mugab-brooks,more champaign,caviar and lobster Davey?

I think the best Geithner can hope for is an orderly consolidation of the banking sector.

Good morning and thanks for the post, Attaturk.

It does appear that Geithner will allow the continuation of the “asset, asset who’s got an asset” game. The desperate effort to keep insolvent banks afloat will suck up still more obscene amounts of money with no hope for a pay back. And stupid fucks like brooks will continue to misrepresent the issues.

just seeing brooks pic this early in the morning hurts my eyes.

the banks are bankrupt.

dean baker says that we should say it about 50,000 times, so i’m going to do my part to make sure everyone here sees this:

Dean Baker: Just so people are clear about what’s at stake right now: The banks are bankrupt. And we should probably say that about fifty thousand times. The banks are bankrupt. So, when people are talking about, when President Obama and others are talking about how we’re going to deal about their troubled assets, what they are really talking about is how can we keep them afloat when they are in fact bankrupt without making it really obvious that we’re giving them taxpayer dollars.

There was an article in the Washington Post today that was talking today about one of the problems with these plans to buy up the bad assets is that we might pay too much. That’s not the problem, that’s the point. They want to pay too much because if we paid the correct price, if we paid the market price, the banks would be bankrupt, they’d have to own up to that and they’d be out of business.

So, what they are trying to do is hand money to the banks and pretend it’s something other than handing money to the banks. And that’s why it’s so difficult, because the obvious thing to do is simply to take them over. Then you get all these people saying you want to nationalize the banks. I go no, I want the market to work, they’re bankrupt and a bankrupt company is taken over my a bankruptcy judge. Bankruptcy judges don’t work well in operating large banks, so what we would have to do is have the government step in and in effect run them, get their books back in order and sell them back to the private sector. So, that’s actually the market solution. They don’t want the market solution. They want the government welfare solution.

Well, now I’m worried

Well me too. As soon as I saw OB approach the podium wearing the ubiquitous metal lapel pin representing the american effin flag I knew we were in for a pack of lies, obfuscations and downright prevarications. Jeeze was I wrong.
OB can actually put a sentence together, he is articulate, he speaks the truth, he answers questions without putting his foot in his mouth and he is respectful of the reporters doing their job. Holy mackerel! What a delightful change from the previous occupant of the WH. And he really did lay things out so even the dumbest of the dumb (Susan Coliins) could understand that tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts were not and are not the solution.
What a breath of fresh air.

“well now I’m worried”
A little off topic,but opening my mail yesterday I see my utilitey company is reading my meters earlier than the normal date that I have come to expect.I called them to find out why and while I was on hold I opened a letter from my car insurance company,turns out they are asking for a (15%)rate increase.Not much compassion out here.

Eureka Springs mentioned a few hours ago that he wished he could ask Helen Thomas a question. I am reposting this here in the hopes that he gets it later today.

” Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com. “

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/…..ine11.html

Good morning, pups. It’s Bobo and Herbert. Bobo peeked around, didn’t see Prof. Krugman, and decided to blither about money. In “Showing Some Discipline” he drools that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s plan is huge but also disciplined. It’s designed by someone aware of government’s limitations. Mr. Herbert, in “The Chess Master,” says there is a tendency to underestimate President Obama. But he has shown that he is always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike.

Here they are.

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and I’ve got some lemon and poppy seed muffins that just came out of the oven. I’ve almost never watched it before, but decided I’d inflict “Morning Joe” on myself. (Yes, I’m feeling rather masochistic today. Why do you ask?) Is he always like this? Is he trying to be amusing, or is he just dumb? Have a great day.

nomolos
Almost my same reaction , without quite so much pre conference trepidation.
I am astounded every time I hear our President speak.
Seldom have I heard such clear thinking, direction and dare I say it, leadership.
Pundits and bloggers can be critical of the specifics, and well they should, but we have us a leader here.
Effectiveness to be determined later. I am still troubled about some of the team choices, Emmanuel and Summers in particular. But I am according some slack here. Politics , like diplomacy is an art of the possible.

The banks are bankrupt. There, I’ve helped in a small way.

bobpine, are they reading your meter earlier this month so that next month there will be a larger gap and you will go over the minimum usage? My water company seems to be doing that every other month or so and I end up paying an extra $5 or so that month.
And compassion? Companies are exempt. WE’RE supposed to feel compassion for the companies who are systematically pillaging the country but nope, I checked and I have none for them. Not when gas prices are rising again, the cost of food stuff has doubled, the utility companies are getting raises and the bailed out banks are screwing consumers as much as they can.

A pox on them all.

I love a President who actually talks to us like we’re grown ass men and women. Yay!

And yes Marion,Joe IS that dumb,and how. And then some.

I know. I keep having this weird reaction of realizing I don’t have to cringe when I hear “Mr. President” and that he actually speaks in whole sentences! Paragraphs even!
Yesterday was a real revelation all around. I was working at home and had on cspan to listen to the Senate talk about the stimulus bill. Turned out it was only the Repukes with an occasional correction by Baucus of their most egregious factual errors. What struck me most was the lack of even basic…make that vestiges of remnants of basic logic in their arguments. Silly to expect any logic, I guess, but if you are going to cite the CBO report and pretend that your reason for being against the stimulus bill is because it predicts “that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent on net” you would at least find out the answer to a couple of basic questions like “Compared to what?” and “What is the plus-or-minus error in the projection (because .1 to .3 sure looks pretty close zero)?” I know it was expecting too much, but I don’t often listen to the whole thing and I was really flabbergasted at the stupid. But they were consistent one to the next…there was a common thread of phrases that was passed like a baton from one to the next to tie the whole mass of stupid together.
sigh. Next time I’ll turn on music.

I’ve almost never watched it before, but decided I’d inflict “Morning Joe” on myself. (Yes, I’m feeling rather masochistic today. Why do you ask?) Is he always like this?

You, who have been reading the brain starved idiots in the NYT every day, surely were as well prepared for the teevee stupidity as anybody could be. I braved the morning teevee silliness a few weeks ago to watch something someone here at FDL had suggested and could only last a few minutes before wondering why anyone in their right mind would even dream of watching the trash.

Brooks nauseates me. His departure from the Times Op Ed page would be almost as welcome as Bill Kristol’s. Alas, he seems to be getting more airtime rather than less.

As for Geithner (and Summers), part of me thinks that they are being set up as sacrificial lambs, knowing that the first approach to recovery is likely to fail, with the second approach (nationalization, bankruptcy, recapitalization, and privatization, as described so capably by Ian Walsh and Dean Baker) to follow on the crushed husks of the chastened Blue Dogs and the few remaining “moderate” Republicans.

I would like to think that this kind of tactical sophistication might be possible in the Obama Administration.

there was a common thread of phrases that was passed like a baton from one to the next to tie the whole mass of stupid together.

They have a list of “talking points” but that is all they have. They do not have facts, they do not have interesting ideas, they do not even talk about the damn Bill. They are clinging to tired old memes that won them the Congress in the middle ’90s, no taxes, no government, free wheeling financial institutions and lets get rid of the Unions. Same tired old crap, same tired old men.

giving money and control of money to the very people who raped, pillaged and destroyed our economy is not only asinne it’s insane

even IF they would administer these funds legitimately, (they won”t) but even if they did, why the HELL would we allow them to add monetary overhead and expense on top of a bill that is already far too small and completely underfunded?

it is insane

these people need to go to jail, they do NOT need to get one more penny of my frigging money

we must have listened to different press conferences.

from bloomberg: U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailout Programs

The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.

The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged up to $5.7 trillion more. The Senate is to vote this week on an economic-stimulus measure of at least $780 billion. It would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month.

Only the stimulus bill to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates enacted in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion is in lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the Fed and FDIC. Recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”

we must have listened to different press conferences.

Really, you did not think he was articulate, straightforward, respectful etc?

nyt: Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout

The Obama administration’s new plan to bail out the nation’s banks was fashioned after a spirited internal debate that pitted the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, against some of the president’s top political hands.

Mr. Geithner, who will announce the broad outlines of the plan on Tuesday, successfully fought against more severe limits on executive pay for companies receiving government aid.

He resisted those who wanted to dictate how banks would spend their rescue money. And he prevailed over top administration aides who wanted to replace bank executives and wipe out shareholders at institutions receiving aid.

telegraph: Bond market calls Fed’s bluff as global economy falls apart

The yield on 10-year US Treasury bonds – the world’s benchmark cost of capital – has jumped from 2pc to 3pc since Christmas despite efforts to talk the rate down.

This level will asphyxiate the US economy if allowed to persist, as Fed chair Ben Bernanke must know. The US is already in deflation. Core prices – stripping out energy – fell at an annual rate of 2pc in the fourth quarter. Wages are following. IBM, Chrysler, General Motors, and YRC, have all begun to cut pay.

The “real” cost of capital is rising as the slump deepens. This is textbook debt deflation. It was not supposed to happen. The Bernanke doctrine assumes that the Fed can bring down the whole structure of interest costs, first by slashing the Fed Funds rate to zero, and then by making a “credible threat” to buy Treasuries outright with printed money.

Mr Bernanke has been repeating this threat since early December. But talk is cheap. As the Fed hesitates, real yields climb ever higher. Plainly, the markets do not regard Fed rhetoric as “credible” at all.

Impressive resume, Attaturk. far more so than mine. At least you passed your pass/fail courses. So, I have an economics question for you, given your economic expertise (relative to me at least). Or anyone else.

Obama blamed Bush and the R’s for this mess. That’s fair, I think. I dunno. Just seems logical to me. But he also mentioned the tax cuts for the wealthy. Was he saying that caused or contributed to this crisis? If so, I don’t get that. How so? Or was he saying that tax cuits for the wealthy is not the answwer to this crisis?

Much thanks,

BFL.

i liked his tone. i think the appearance of respect was given.

and i think we were being lied to. by a very accomplished and professional liar. in other words, a con job.

Obama has unfortunately made some spectacularly bad appointments.
Rahmbo is one.
Wall Street Tim and Let-Me-Tell-You-What-You’re-Thinking Larry are two more.

imo, completely fair to blame the republicans. but he forgot to mention, summers, geithner and bernanke. summers is especially galling because of his role in preventing regulation of otc derivatives (including credit default swaps), instituting the enron loophole and repeal of glass stegall.

this is just one of the reasons i think we’re being lied to.

yes.

what specifically do you think are the lies we are being told?

Respectful, yeah. I thought he was verbose and some of his answers were meandering and strayed way off topic. And I think alot of people feel that way, although I haven’t read the reviews yet (nor do i particularly give a shit). Just my impression. He needs to, and I’m sure he will, do better. He was pretty articulate and obviously thoughtful. His verbosity may be explained by his desire to repeat the same basic answer over and over to make sure the point got through— we have to create jobs. we have to do it now. this shit isn’t my fault, but it’s my problem.

“Please forget all about where the prior $350 billion of TARP funds went, and don’t force us to tell you.

The truth is, a lot of it went into the “President’s Working Group On Financial Markets” (otherwise known as the “Plunge Protection Team”), where we’ve been actively engaged in buying every single share of common stock that investors are dumping, in order to avoid the market crash, which we’ve been actively engaged in preventing, using borrowed taxpayer money, buying worthless paper – for the last few months.”

When they start all the happy-talk on CNBS and proclaim that the worst is behind us, and stocks start moving higher, just know that it is all entirely manipulated, following a script, using your money – which they will never admit, but is self-evident to every professional trader. Their goal at present is to cause a short squeeze, and make it look like actual buying. It’s entirely fake. There is no “market.” Geithner approved of Paulson turning over a significant portion of the TARP funds to the offshore black box operators of the PPT. Understand that when these funds are deployed to acquire paper, a counterparty gets rescued with your cash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P…..ction_Team

hey Selise.

yeah. I think that’s fair. And yeah, he left out the banker dudes and lack of regulation. My opinion. But the context for the tax cuts is what I’m wondering. was he saying that caused this problem or that it just isn’t the solution? both?

liked the swipe at McCain who is one of the people out there screeching “This isn’t a stimulus bill, it’s a spending bill.” Obama: Spending bill? No shit, Sherlock.

a very accomplished and professional liar. in other words, a con job.

Gracious, you do not believe that the country is in a freakin’ mess? You do not think we need a jobs Bill, now? You do not believe that we will need a heck of a lot more than the meager $800Billion?

OB threw in the usual “we will get to it later” crap for sure but I do think that overall he was pretty straightforward with his assessment of the situation.

Hello pups

Geithner presser at 11 am CSPAN

WJ this morning:
7:30-8:00 STEPHEN GANDEL Uplink TIME
Senior Economic Writer

Obama Admin. Plan on Financial Markets Topic: Treasury Secretary Geithner later today will announce the Obama administration’s strategy for the so-called Troubled Relief Asset Program or TARP funding.

8:00-8:30 Question/Newspaper Articles/Phones

8:00 TERRY EBERLE
Content Executive Editor
The News Press http://www.news-press.com

Topic: President Obama will hold a town hall meeting in Fort Myers, Florida later today to push is economic recovery plan.

8:30-9:00 SEN. TOM COBURN
R-Oklahoma http://coburn.senate.gov/public

Topic: The Senate votes today on its version of the economic stimulus legislation. Sen. Coburn will discuss why he opposes the legislation.

9:00-9:30 SEN. TOM UDALL
D-New Mexico tomudall.senate.gov

Topic: The Senate votes today on its version of the economic stimulus legislation. Sen. Udall will talk about why he supports the Obama administration’s plan to stimulate the economy.

9:30-10:00 EMILY PIERCE
Roll Call
Reporter http://www.rollcall.com

Topic: The conference committee process for the stimulus bill, if the Senate passes the bill. How the conference works, what to watch for, what’s next.

as i described about, that the problems are all the fault of the Rs and not also the very people obama has put in charge of the propping up bankrupt banks.

also that he continues to talk up a stimulus bill that appears to be a massive failure, as a matter of policy, before it’s even out of congress. in other words, obama seems to think its more important to convince us the bill is good than to actually work to make it good.

but he forgot to mention, summers, geithner and bernanke. summers is especially galling because of his role in preventing regulation of otc derivatives (including credit default swaps), instituting the enron loophole and repeal of glass stegall.

Aha, you are not really meaning lies you are meaning omissions. Things that you would like to have been mentioned but were not. I agree, a lot of omissions and as for surrounding himself with all the crooks he could find from the Clinton era well that is a whole ‘nother subject.

I signed on to Council For A Liveable World. This morning’s e-mail had an alert from them that the House bill contained no $$$ for NUKE infrastructure but the Senate bill added $1 Billion for that. Here ’tis.

A Bailout for the Nuke Labs?
Help prevent $1 billion in funding for nuclear weapons infrastructure programs

When the House of Representatives created its version of the economic stimulus bill, no funding for the nuclear weapons complex was included.

However, upon the Senate’s work, $1 billion was added for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the part of the government responsible for our nuclear weapons programs, (though not, as far as we know, to actually build new nuclear weapons).

Members from both houses of Congress will meet this week to iron out a final version of the bill, and YOUR VOICE COULD MAKE A CRITICAL DIFFERENCE!

Please write to your Senators and Representative to oppose any funding for nuclear weapons infrastructure programs as part of the economic stimulus bill!

http:capwiz.com/clw/issues/alert/?alertid=12634566&type=CO

you’re right Attaturk, it isn’t bragging if it’s sad — not that you’re sad.

Morning. I thought O’s speech was a huge downer. I’m not blaming him or accusing him of anything but reading between the lines, where he once planned to create 5 million jobs, he now hopes to ‘keep or create’ 4 million. That’s a huge difference in what they hope to accomplish. And a year from now when we’re still at high unemployment he can say that he stopped 4million more layoffs. But we’ll still be in a world of hurt.

I’ll get link and be back.

Nice to see you this morning.

Check out #30 above if you missed it (as I appear to be on tape-delay in the event I say something worthy of censorship).

also that he continues to talk up a stimulus bill that appears to be a massive failure, as a matter of policy, before it’s even out of congress. in other words, obama seems to think its more important to convince us the bill is good than to actually work to make it good.

Exactly, the Bill has not yet been given to him by Congress, it is a work in progress. He did spend some time last night indicating that he would like some of the shit that collins and co. cut to be restored. As for the stimulus not working, a massive failure, how can that be?

personally, at this moment, i wouldn’t care if he gave a big wet sloppy kisses to all the Rs. the country is on the brink, most of the rest of the world is even worse off – i want sane policy. i want a jobs bill that, you know, creates jobs and invests in the future. i want coordinated action with the rest of the world – and that doesn’t mean just the elites.

yeah. any review of the press conference isn’t complete with an observation of how he dodged any question having to do with banking. “I don’t want to ruin Geithner’s day in the sun tomorrow.” Bullshit. Look, BAM, you’re the fucking president. You want cabinet people to make presentations? That’as fine. No problem. But at press conference you’re s’posed to answer the qusetions. As far as not stepping on Geithner’s big day, well, I guess taht’s understandable, BAM, you’re such a modest guy who doesn’t like attention.

Link to my # 36

i want a jobs bill that, you know, creates jobs and invests in the future.

you (I think it was you) madea good observbation last nigjht about something that really jumped out at me, too. He talked about “retaining and creating” jobs. Sure, we want/need to retain jobs, but when jobs “retained” is included in his jobs numbers the question becomes: how many jobs are actually going to be created?

Gracious, you do not believe that the country is in a freakin’ mess? You do not think we need a jobs Bill, now? You do not believe that we will need a heck of a lot more than the meager $800Billion?

yes. yes. and yes.

that is why nice words don’t cut if for me.

…. it occurs to me to wonder how many here are familiar with george bush from early days in texas? does everyone know that he didn’t sound so much like a moron then? that he could speak coherently, remember on point data to interject into an interview, stuff like that?

i lived in tx during the part of the time bush was gov. and i wonder if that’s part of why i’m not sufficiently impressed by someone who can speak in complete sentences.

personally, at this moment, i wouldn’t care if he gave a big wet sloppy kisses to all the Rs.

I understand you were making a point, but still…. my mind recoils at the thought.

Want some insider perspective and proof of the PPT in action?

Who Controls Account 990N?

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/…..ount-990n/

No $1 Billion for Nuke Infrastructure

If this fails, well I give up!

does everyone know that he didn’t sound so much like a moron then? that he could speak coherently, remember on point data to interject into an interview, stuff like that?

An honest question. Not being a wise-ass:

What happened? were the issues as Prez just over his head or too complex for him to be able to articulate? did he lie more as prez and just isn’t good at it?

Damn, have to go and meet with a new client….a new website…..work….money but I hate to leave FDL and the fun discussions this AM.

Have a great day all

BFL and nomolos, see hugh’s diaries:

Stimulus Scenarios: Size, Composition, and Jobs

More on Jobs and Stimulus Scenarios

as for the banking bailout, see my quote from baker above, and see the first bit of transcription from galbraith in my diary on the swedish banking law.

okay so the first is a sin of omission (as they used to say in catechism class) and the second, well, I don’t know if I would call it a lie per se. I thought his point was doing nothing is not an option and, while he didn’t say it last night, I read somewhere that he said “don’t let perfect be the enemy of the necessary” or something like that.

I agree with you that the bill is not great and if we were going to have one that is the most effective as a stimulus, we would toss out a lot of stuff that was added to get Rs to vote for it and add back in a lot the Rs took out, but I don’t think it means Obama’s lying. However, I do think he is playing chess as Bob Herbert opines, and I hope he’s good at it.

oh, man. a reading assignment?

yeah, i was wrong to write that so early in the morning. it’s not your fault that attaturk made me look at brooks before i was mentally prepared by sufficient doses of coffee.

i better get back to putting together this week’s hearing list or there won’t be one. spent too much time reading bad news already this am.

later pups.

thanks for the links, though. i’ll let nomolos read them and tell me what they say.

take it easy.

I’m with ya. Pollyannish perhaps? It may be, but there’s enough of this chess playing history in Obama’s background that gives me Hope still.

I still believe the O-man is a fairly Liberal guy given his background and work history, and yes, he does do a lot of dealing with people of a conservative stripe, which is also consistent throughout his career.

But in most of these cases I’ve seen, he significantly moves the ball to the Liberal side of the playing field, and brings many people with him.

So it’s easy to sit in the peanut gallery (the non-salmonell-ed one, that’s the Repub peanut gallery) and say this is what needs to happen. It’s another thing to actually get laws enacted that disrupt the corrupt system that controls Warshington, which also includes lots of life and death decisions, literally.

I’m on the Board of Directors of a couple of very small nonprofits. It’s a total pain in the keester to get the simplest thing changed in the organization since there’s always one or two people who disagree and won’t budge. For one, a simple tweak to the slogan lead to them quitting. It was completely meaningless compared to the overall cause we work on, but this person’s ego was more important than societal good apparently.

I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of crap Obama’s dealing with in this regard. This is why I tend to favor your theory. If he just showed up and said we’re going to do what Nuriel Robini says and that’s that, well, that would never see the light day with the cancerous rots like Chuck Schumer and Ben Nelson in his own Party scuttling it.

There’s massive House and Senate cleaning still needed before we can get sensible policy. If your suggestion is accurate, that Obama is giving them the opportunity to fail on their own in order to eventually pass actual sustainable, and Liberal economic policy later this year, then it’s brilliant. It may be the only way to do it.

Good Morning…one day you will have to post the lemon/p.seed recipe. My favorite. Thanks. These are delicious. ;)

Oh, man, I’d give anything to be Pollyannaish.

my R governor will be introducing The President today and share the stage. He want money. People have been camped ouyt since Sunday night for tkts. I’m very impressed that they’re opening the doors to evrybody who can get atkts and not hand-picking the crowd.

Mornin’ plunger. I went to your wiki link and what I read there cleared up some puzzles for me. Answers how Paulson used that 1987 Reagan order to essentially gamble on the futures market??? I’m not much of an economist, but I know better than to bet the grocery money on the horse races.

In 1987 Reagan was exhibiting symptoms of Alzheimers….does that tell us that his VP, Poppy Bush, was the author of this order?

I’ll go back and study the links in the refs to the Wiki article.

Thanks, plunger

The huge sink hole created by the wizards of wall street is taking everything with it. The banks are insolvent and the investors that remain and the counter parties to some of the bank’s deals are demanding payment or they will take their marbles home and stop buy US paper. The US is a junkie and we need those counter parties to buy our paper. We simply do not have the money to be self sufficient. We, as a nation are no different than the person who lives on huge CCard debt and keeps taking on a higher credit limit. That is insane and the US policy is insane.

The stim package will do little to nothing in the long mid or probably the short term. This economy is based on credit, consumerism and bubbles. It knows nothing but and there is nothing to pull it out but more of the same. How insane.

The myth is that we need to save our banks. We don’t. They screwed up and their good assets should be siezed and protected and the investors and management left to their own resources. A new banking system as a regulated utility without usury and the ability to get into “financial instruments” must be created. Right now banks and their investors are being helped. Wrong.

Unemployment will rise to 25% within this year. It’s fascism or socialism – take your pick.

One thing BAM said last night I was very happy to hear. Paraphrasing: The New Deal worked, so spare me the bullshit.

For me it is like theater, with Obama trying to lead in a positive way. With Brooks….he makes sense if you put a negative in front of each of his statements, for instance ‘we are not, not subsidizing the banks’ and the banks are not, not bankrupt! This is first order denial. This is all delay. With Geithner,..his machinations are more creative, ‘we are isolating the toxic assets’ and ‘asking private investors to buy in’ and making the Treasury swallow the poison.

plunger, I’d really appreciate your going to the link below and responding to my #29. Comments there are still open.

Thanks.

you do know that summers et al.’s economic policies probably killed 3 million people when their shock therapy was forced on russia?

I agree with this. At the same time, I think Obama is trying remedy this in possibly the only possible way to do it legislatively, as was spelled out above.

Of course, violent revolution is the other which I’d like to avoid personally, and if Obama doesn’t succeed in the political approach to the problem, that’ll happen eventually. I’d vote for trying Obama’s way first.

Watched most of the Press conference last night.

I was reminded by a very good friend (who is a regular ‘Daily Show’ viewer) that many of the R’s currently complaining about this bill were the very same ones a few years ago who were all for tremendous spending packages.

Apparently TDS played current video tape of R’s complaining about this bill and then rebroadcast tape from a few years back in a 180, pushing huge spending.

Last night, Obama picked up that drumbeat and I think he needs to pound that drum a bit harder so that Rush and company don’t control the conversation.

I found him to be thoughtful and, yes, a bit pessimistic. If anything, from his two years in the Senate, he knows what he has to work with and I’m sure it’s not good.

Paraphrasing: The New Deal worked, so spare me the bullshit.

Could you live-blog the next press conference? Thanks.

Yes. It is really scarey and I am frightened.

I’ve had that argument with the rightwingers I know.

Unfortunately, history and economics points more to the Great Depression being solved by WWII – that the New Deal helped but wasn’t the solution.

Of course, people went back to work in droves when we needed military equipment.

I’m really fighting forgetfulness this morning! Here’s the link (I hope)

Link to # 29 FDL Geitner

Yeah, selise, and Goldman Sachs also in that big-time. Summers was also the Loud Voice in getting Joseph Stiglitz fired from his job as Chief Economist at the World Bank late 1990’s. (I’m thinking Summers replaced him, but need to check that out.)

I’d like to believe in Obama’s good intentions, but his economic team really confuses me.

(((TomThumb)))

summers was treasury secretary then. there have been denials about summers’ role is stiglitz leaving WB, but i think it’s more likely than not.

there is, however, a ton of direct evidence about summers’ role in the deregulation mania.

hell, i want BFL to give the next press conference!!!

selise, can you (or anyone) suggest an explanation as to WHY Obama picked that sorry economic team? What am I missing?

7-11 and gas station robbers go to jail. The creators of bundled mortgages and those who rated them do not go to jail. They keep their limosines and jobs and bonuses.
Do you remember a telecom “analyst” and douchebag by the name of Jack Grubman? The last I heard, his fines were covered by a non-repayable “loan” of $15,000,000 by Citibank and he still has a limosine and something like $70,000,000 personal wealth. He is just damn lucky he didn’t stick up a grocery store for $83.75…only in America can such dreams come true.