President Obama is speaking this morning in Ft. Myers, Florida, after having had an economic event in Indiana yesterday. 

Florida is in a world of hurt right now with the financial crunch.

Interrogator and Human Intelligence Specialist asks Obama to establish a truth commission to examine the United States’ use of torture

On Iraq, “you get a sense that the political system is now functioning in a meaningful way.” Uh, you do?

Geithner is appearing before Chris Dodd’s Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee.

Last night, the AP’s Jennifer Loven was given distinction of asking the first question at Obama’s first presidential press conference, and she promptly made an ass out of herself.

Maiden Lane III transaction may be a model for the Obama administration, which is considering creating so-called “bad banks” to buy rotting assets from financial institutions. (One of the architects of Maiden Lane III was Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who was president of the New York Fed when the transactions took place). If taxpayers are going to be on the hook for all those ailing bank assets, taxpayers have a right to know which banks are doing the selling and at what prices. December 29, the central bank’s Board of Governors wrote a report to Congress saying that it didn’t expect “any net loss to the Federal Reserve or taxpayers” from the Bear Stearns holdings.

After giving a speech designed to reassure markets and the banking industry, Secretary Geithner must be disappointed by the market’s initial reactions. And why didn’t Geithner answer any questions?

Neil Barofsky the Special IG for TARP (SIGTARP) has set up a hotline for whistleblowers who know of fraud waste or abuse in institutions receiving TARP funds.

If you have such information, you can report it by:

David Brooks’ column today reads like a therapy session for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. It seems there are lots the monsters lurking in Geithner’s nightmares, and the scariest for him — and for us — is that after struggling with the financial crisis for more than a year, neither Geithner nor the Masters around him are sure how to solve it.

Geithner presser upcoming on C-Span shortly, set to begin at 11 am ET. 

Duncan called it a fiasco this morning, after looking at what’s been leaked about the proposals….