The ‘Fredo’ Obama must Kiss Goodbye.
These economic Gurus aren’t just shitting in the litter box- their burying shit in our kids sand boxes.
Geitner (and Summers) have Betrayed this Admin and the American people. They had no desire to rectify their long running fuck ups and crimes- only to conceal and proliferate them under the guise of Redemption.
Buried those AIG (et al) Bonus’ to Explode once Obama Took office ah? What other landmines have Geitner, Summers & Berenke concealed?
Step Down? No they should be rounded up and prosecuted with the rest of the Organized Crime sysdicate which Betrayed our Country (Treason) and caused World wide death and mayhem (Crimes against Humanity). ‘Want to play Ball, Scarecrow?’ We’ve got a Game for You All, It’s Called hide needle on the lethal injection!!

Re Eltiante

Wholeheartedly agree it was a waste of time for Obama to try to appease Republicans.  I suspect Obama’s bipartisan efforts were due to the economic crisis.  He mistakenly thought the Republicans would put aside the rhetoric for a moment and come to the aid of their country. Silly, huh?

As for the “oversight” measures, it has become clear to me there was only a handful of people in Washington who wanted “oversight measures” on these bonuses. If a majority had insisted on oversight measures, we would have had them, and they wouldn’t have disappeared later in conference. Washington’s current show of “outrage” is obviously for our eyes and ears only.

As for THE man, you’re forgetting he also received a considerable amount of campaign contributions and support from regular folks – a lot more than he received from Wall Street employees. To date, most of his regular folk supporters are pleased with his overall performance. This may or may not change.

If you take a long term approach to the economic crisis, yes, in the short term it’s a bracing dose of reality and will require redesigning the global banking system and many other economic facts of life and it will require us all to live by our wits for a while. But on the plus side, it got the neo cons out of government and halted their plans to take over the world. I think that’s as much to be celebrated as Hitler losing world war II. It also proves that what happens in cyberspace eventually has to be dealt with in the real world. I don’t think the neo cons had faced this unpleasant fact during the entire term of the Bush presidency. And whatever Obama or for that matter Geithner do in their respective roles, they won’t be blowing up any American buildings any time soon or starting wars of conquest in the Middle East. In spite of the economic problems it’s a better day now that the neo-fascists have been thrown out of office. It’s not helpful to try to hang the political blame for this mess on the people who are trying to clean it up. This is why progressives never make much political progress in America. Misled by the mainstream media into disloyalty and self-destructive attacks on their own side. If one ounce of this vigilance and outrage had been directed at Dick Cheney and George Bush it might all never have happened in the first place. But the power elite only ever unleash the media on the Democrats.

He doesn’t look “concerned yet purposeful” he looks obviously guilty and so does Summers despite the fact that they keep spewing the same platitudes and patroning drivel when they aren’t trying to frame the perception that they are the talented, smart, capable specialists. Everyone knows they were the architects of the disaster—manufacturing, like Bush, their own reality which is now crashing down around us—and the only one who seems to buy into it and prop it up is Obama.

Re Tolstoy: “Geithner should resign or be fired. He’s not straightforward and clear”

If we’re firing people in Washington who are not straightforward and clear, I would like to add the names of Republican Minority Leader Mitch Mconnell, Senator Jim Demint, and his “right-wing compatriot” Jim Inhofe to the list. 

This month they’ve been ranting about the AIG bonuses, but last month they were calling Obama a socialist for trying to set limits on executive pay:

“I really don’t want the government to take over these businesses and start telling them everything about what they can do.” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told ABC News in February, when asked about Obama’s proposed limits on executive compensation.

Senator Jim DeMint, who attacked the original bailout bill as “pure socialism,” characterized executive pay caps as a dangerous government intervention. “I think it’s a sad day in America when the government starts setting pay, no matter how outlandish they [sic] are,” DeMint told the Huffington Post. “This is just a symptom of what happens when the government intervenes and we start controlling all aspects of the economy.”

DeMint’s right-wing compatriot, James Inhofe, also equated limits on compensation with the demise of the American way. “As I was listening to [Obama] make those statements I thought, is this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay, and how much to pay?”

[See Susy Khimm in New Republic’s “The Plank” for more]
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/03/18/they-were-against-it-before-they-were-for-it.aspx

Yes, Geithner should resign or be fired. He’s not straightforward and clear. Who influenced Dodd to include a bonus scheme? Never answered. Why? He says because possibly it was illegal not to. Later his language indicates the question was whether including the bonus provision itself was illegal. This man is sneaky and confusing. Somebody strong should have this job, somebody like Paul Krugman.

Mr Geithner really doesn’t get it apparently - he knew of the AIG retention payments months back, apparently didn’t think they are utterly immoral, which they are.  Mr. Geithner needs to resign, apologizing for putting the interests of rich Wall Street insiders ahead of the interests of the American people as a whole.