Will Byron Dorgan be able to force Helicopter Ben to disclose where our money went by holding up Bernanke’s re-confirmation as promised?

Or will ObamaRahma lean on him to get with the pogrom?

Everybody’s a crook, but being subjected to this moronic face and words on top of it. By Obama.

Listening to a bunch of Ds in the Q&A on book-tv who are pretty disgusted with O.

Get with the pogrom or get out, huh?

So which is it? Geithner was “only following orders” as a loyal Bushie? Or, Geithner was so derelict in his duties that he did not even know…

Neither of these defenses seem to offer Geithner much shelter.

Either way, I’m betting he survives this.

Does this make sense? No.

So it goes.

Well, Obama’s and Tim’s families go back a long way.

Tim’s father, Peter Geithner, directed the Ford Foundation’s Asia grant program in the early 80s and oversaw Obama’s mother as she developed microfinance programs in Indonesia. Tim’s dad was also an associate of Larry Summers and Robert Rubin.

Plus, Tim and Obama are both former employees of Kissinger Associates.

Thick as thieves.

Thanks for that. I didn’t know it.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Obama’s wiki sez his first job out of college was with Business International Corp, not Kissinger Assoc. Do you have a source on his working for Kissinger?

Hmmm . . . this is starting to sound very familiar to me.

Frank Rich has another brilliant Op Ed. The Other Plot to Wreck America

Geithner is the tip of the iceberg. After reading Rich’s column, I swear I want to bring back the guillotine and a million of those stark raven mad French peasants with machetes and pitch-forks.

While Tim and Obama are both former employees of “Kissinger Associates”, I wonder if they worked for the same company under the “Kissinger Associates” label. Kissinger does business via well over 30 companies – mainly, it appears to me, because he wants to move income to non-taxed locations, and to move expenses to where they would help most with taxes, via IRS Section 482′s accounting rules for multi-nationals and it’s game playing as to in which country “value was added” that justified a tax.

It would be useful in Tim explained the tax set-up over at Kissinger’s in a public hearing.

I suspect the doings of Tim’s father, Peter Geithner, (Ford Foundation’s Asia grant program and Obama’s mom) had little impact on much of anything beyond a feeling of “we’re buddies”, but the Tim’s dad as an associate of Larry Summers and Robert Rubin – and Tim’s rise in the Fed – is interesting as Rubin is the fellow that killed the Clinton regulation ideas in 98 and indeed the fellow that allowed CITI to become the mess it is.

Indeed the Clinton addon 401k type account via payroll deduction with Federal starter money in each account did not get much support from Rubin – despite the fact that an addon account administered by Social Security was the best defense against the kill Social Security and make it a means test program via replacement individual accounts that the GOP – and later Bush – were pushing. I bet with Tim there, Obama will bring back the replacement – NOT THE ADDON – accounts tied to the payroll tax and the Social Security administration process.

I don’t think the doctrine of ultra vires is still recognized in this age.

I am wrong about that (Obama working for Kissinger Associates). I believe I’d read that when it was revealed President-elect Obama sent Kissinger to Moscow to talk with Putin. Though they may have had another association as papau said.

However, I’m confident that BIC was, like the Ford Foundation, a great cover for spooks and assets-in-grooming.

I did a little googling and the 2 sites I found that asserted he had worked at Kissinger seemed to be conspiracy oriented. But yes, cover for spooks to be sure.

His statement about Geithner’s term under Bushco is ludicrous. Barney seems less strident these days. Maybe he drank Obama’s forgive and forget Kool-Aid?

Recall Geithner’s testimony to Congress early last year.

1.) Geithner stated that he did not view his role as that of a regulator as head of the NY Fed. The NY Fed’s website states that one of their responsibilites is to regulate depository institutions. So Tim is stating, essentially, that as he did not do his job, he should not be responsible for what happened during his tenure as head of the NY Fed.

2.) Geithner stated that he first learned of the AIG executive bonuses from his staff even though the story had been reported multiple times several months before. This is perjury.

Not to mention the tax evasion.

Geithner is liar, and continues to enable financial fraud.

Draw your own conclusions about Obama.

One of the things about boht Dorgan and Dodd retiring…. is they have plenty of tie and attetnion to do whatever they want to.

They don’t have to worry –very much–about the future. So potetnially, with the shackels off…?

Wow, THAT was fascinaitng backstory. Thank you

What is really crazy is the notion that somehow this was not important enough to rise to Geithner’s level. This bailout cost the tax apyer about $12 BILLION more than it should have. AIG was trying to negotiate a haircut by the backs of between 30-50%, and the FEd stepped in and said the banks had to get 100 cents on the dollar.

Insane. And then AIG was not allowed to disclose, who the hell says the fed can direct a comapany to violate securites law?

Speaking of spooks… everyone owes it to themselves to read this article about the origins of AIG:
The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/22/news/mn-25118

Newly declassified U.S. intelligence files tell the remarkable story of the ultra-secret Insurance Intelligence Unit, a component of the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, and its elite counterintelligence branch X-2.

Though rarely numbering more than a half dozen agents, the unit gathered intelligence on the enemy’s insurance industry, Nazi insurance titans and suspected collaborators in the insurance business. But, more significantly, the unit mined standard insurance records for blueprints of bomb plants, timetables of tide changes and thousands of other details about targets, from a brewery in Bangkok to a candy company in Bergedorf.

“They used insurance information as a weapon of war,” said Greg Bradsher, a historian and National Archives expert on the declassified records.
…
The OSS insurance unit was launched in early 1943, long after it had become alarmingly clear that the Nazis were using their insurance industry not only to help finance the war but also to gather strategic data.
…
The men behind the insurance unit were OSS head William “Wild Bill” Donovan and California-born insurance magnate Cornelius V. Starr.
…
Starr sent insurance agents into Asia and Europe even before the bombs stopped falling and built what eventually became AIG, which today has its world headquarters in the same downtown New York building where the tiny OSS unit toiled in the deepest secrecy.

Starr died in 1968, but his empire endures. AIG is the biggest foreign insurance company in Japan. More than a third of its $40 billion in revenue last year came from the Far East theater that Starr helped carpet bomb and liberate.

Until Feb ’09, AIG’s Vice Chair was Frank Wisner, Jr.:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_G._Wisner
His father was head of Office of Strategic Services operations in southeastern Europe at the end of World War II, and the head of the Directorate of Plans of the Central Intelligence Agency during the 1950s.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wisner

Why would the CIA stop using AIG for intel gathering?

Is this why they are consiered, “too big to fail”?

Notice the difference between Bush and Obama? Yeah, neither do I.

The Fed is an awkward kind of institution, and the awkwardness can be traced back to its founding and to the Bank of England on which it was modeled. Central banks on the B of E model were originally seen as handmaidens to the banking industry; acting as referees and bailing out the system when it hit a liquidity crisis, but otherwise supporting the industry. That’s why it is in effect partly owned by the private banking system. Geithner saw his role as protecting the banks, not protecting the public. He’s young and hadn’t lived through a crisis; he also comes from a privileged background, which affects his outlook. He was a perfect tool for the industry people who used him. Let’s not forget who was running the Treasury at the time, or that Bernanke had to show his fides to the Bush administration for a year before he was allowed to replace Greenspan. This was an inside job all the way. Geithner was just a cog.

It would be good for the system if he were forced to step down. I doubt any replacement Treasury Secretry would be any better; but by the same token, it is unlikely he or she would be any worse. He’s disposable, and if this heats up, he will be asked to resign.

If Geithner were an appointee of a GOP president, Democrats would be calling for his head, or at least his resignation. The silence and timidity on Capitol Hill is shocking. Why are Democrats ceding this anti-banker populist issue to the GOP?

Can’t they see that the light at the end of the tunnel is a locomotive headed right for them?

Obama needs to do his best imitation of Captain Renault in his State of the Union (his first) this month (or next, apparently). He needs to be shocked, shocked that these Bush holdovers and Clinton returnees have led him, and America, astray with their beholdenness to Wall Street and it MOTU. Clean sweep, new broom, they all must go.

And it would be best if they found out along with the rest of us, while Obama’s at the podium in the well of the House of Representatives: Geithner, his Chief of Staff, Summers, Bernanke, Rubin. They all must go. No one with Vampire Squid on their resume should work in the United States government.

Bring in some prairie populists like Woodrow Wilson brought in Jennings Bryan at State: Byron Dorgan and others. People who understand how Wall Street works as a predator, not an enrichment scheme for their friends.

Frank Rich had a good column today on “The Other Plot to Destroy America,” i.e., the financial debacle.

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/opinion/10rich.html?sort=oldest&offset=8

I was lucky enough to catch it while the window was still open for making comments, and just saw that my letter had been “highlighted.” [Damn, I should have snuck a mention of FDL in there!!!]

181. Frank, you raise all sorts of interesting questions and list a fair number of contributors to the debacle.

You fail, however, to ask the questions central to solving this mess:

** why did Obama choose this pack of crooks and liars as his “financial team”?

** even if one could argue that Obama was insufficiently informed as to their character in December 2008, has he not followed their actions and their arguments since that time?

** where is Obama’s outrage over what’s been done to America by these financial terrorists?

** when will the American people be treated to a prime time address calling for ouster of this “team” and their pals at Goldman Sachs, a claw-back of immoral bonuses, sharply increased taxes on excessive compensation, regulation or outlawing of the chicanery that created “too big to fail” and “too complicated to understand”?

There are lots more questions like this, and each has Obama at its center. I hope that your next column will ask them.

Book Salon a couple of flights upstairs with Gordon Goldstein’s Lessons In Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path To War in Vietnam hosted by Jeremi Suri

“This was a previous administration and he was acting not independently but as part of the Bush administration approach,”

The NY Fed is a private institution, owned by the banks. Frank’s statement cannot be true. There is some case law that states the reqionla federal reserve banks are private.

More on the AIG, CIA, Kissenger Associates, Goldman Sachs nexus (with a great illustration):
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11657

*sigh*
if only

@Teddy Partridge (26)

Re: “If Geithner were an appointee of a GOP president, Democrats would be calling for his head, or at least his resignation.”

I wish that were true, but recall that Paulson sold fraudulent securities on a massive scale, greatly enriching himself and his partners in crime. Simply put, Geithner’s predecessor was a criminal.

I do not recall any Democrats calling for his ouster.

Call your Democratic senator(s) and ask if they voted “yea” on the Geithner confirmation. I will bet you that they did.

Among the elite movers and shakers in NY that are at issue here, Geithner is a gofer. He would not have taken this step alone, without informing his aides (ie, Goldman Sachs staff) and superiors. If he did this, which Congress should confirm via hearings, he did it on orders. Whose orders, to what end, and who benefited.

If it was illegal or bad practice, it shouldn’t matter that he was a good German and followed orders. He should still be censured and dismissed. Having a good heart is not an adequate justification for all of the sins of comission and omission we make through life. If it was illegal, he should also be prosecuted. I assume, however, that Obama will add this to the “don’t look back” rule.

Among other things, this is another lost chance to lay the troubles and crimes of the Bush administration at its feet, rather than to take them to Obama’s bosom and onto the heads of the Democratic Party. A better example of us-them, Beltway Villager-everyone else is hard to imagine. Because of course, any tarring and feathering of Timmeh will drip onto Summers and Rubin, too, not to mention the Goldman Scratch aides always perched on their shoulders.

Welcome to the party – been rooting for Bastille Day for ten years now.

I got a preview of things to come when airline management abused the bankruptcy code to break union and vendor contract, while drawing retention bonuses to do so.

Blackstone Group – SourceWatchJun 25, 2009 … The Blackstone Group has ties to American International Group, Inc. (AIG) and Kissinger Associates, Inc./Henry Kissinger. …
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Blackstone_Group – Cached – Similar

[PDF] AIG to Invest $1.35 Billion in The Blackstone Group and It’s FundsFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
In addition to its investment in The Blackstone Group, AIG has agreed to invest over a number of years an estimated $1.2 billion as a limited partner in …
http://www.blackstone.com/…/press_releases%5CAIG_Invest_in_Blackstone_July1998.pdf – Similar

They can’t lean on him now. He’s retiring. What’s he got to lose?

This fast talking little turd will survive the banking committee hearing. Hell, most of the people on it – along with other Congressionals – have too many of their own skeletons in the corporate subsidy closet to out precious little Timmy for his dastardly deeds.