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Ear to the Ground

Geithner Calls for More Authority After AIG Mess

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Posted on Mar 24, 2009
Geithner and Bernanke
AP photo / Susan Walsh

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, left, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke prepare to testify on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Behind them are CodePink demonstrators, led by Medea Benjamin, with sign at center.

In testifying before Congress on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asked for what he called “new resolution authority” to grant the federal government the ability to more successfully take on financial institutions like AIG (i.e., non-banks) in the future.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke supported Geithner’s request and said he’d also tried to halt the AIG bonus bonanza; he’d even considered the lawsuit route but claims that wouldn’t have produced the desired effect and could actually have backfired.

The Washington Post:

Geithner said such authority would have allowed the government to bail out AIG last year at a far lower cost to taxpayers, a position backed by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. The government currently has the authority to seize only banks.

Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, Geithner also said Treasury is working with the Justice Department to explore legal avenues to recover AIG retention bonuses that have infuriated taxpayers and raised hackles on Capitol Hill. He said his department will impose on AIG a contractual commitment to pay the Treasury the amount of the retention awards from company operations and will deduct an amount equal to those payments from $30 billion in recently committed capital assistance.

In testimony at the same hearing, Bernanke defended the decision last year to bail out AIG but weighed in against the retention bonuses, saying he had sought to halt them.

The three-hour hearing was marked by several contentious exchanges between lawmakers and the witnesses. Both Republicans and Democrats sharply questioned Geithner and Bernanke about the retention bonuses and the overall bailout. Acknowledging the furor, Geithner said it would be “extraordinarily difficult” for the Obama administration to obtain any more bailout money from Congress.

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By KDelphi, April 5, 2009 at 3:47 pm #

DWIGHT—oh, never mind…sigh

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By DWIGHTBAKER, April 5, 2009 at 10:01 am #

PLEASE ALL RESPOND accordingly if you see the need to our President Obama

Response to her show
RACHEL MADDOW you are doing a very good job at reporting the real news not views hats off to a good start at a long career.

Response to her radio show
AMY GOODMAN your Inspiration is Contagious in every sense to every man, woman and child today.  Your sane, strong, sanguine and strident voice along with your know UN tireless works of like kind are worthy of you being awarded the NOBEL peace prize. 


April 3, 2009
To the Honorable President Barack Obama
Of the Untied States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

OPEN LETTER—- To whom it must concern

Mr. President,

I am but one voice in America today that has your interest at heart. My words are fashioned best as I can. So what I propose or say is never meant to bring any one or any thing into being called intent to deride or chide. 

Thanks for all the good work you are doing, and in keeping with your status as our President.  We have prayed that you would not back down or cower to anyone.
Many of WE THE PEOPLE are proud to be Americans and we are NOT inane of political science and the actions needed to protect and insure our equity in justice. And because of that we respect your work and for those high and lofty goals to be the centerpiece of your Administration. With you as our solicitous vanguard we do have HOPE once more. In you taking the lead with your strong and strident voice and will in words and deeds to overcome all the many things, people and matters facing our solvency and sovereignty in our rich and abundant America.

One of the most vocal matters that is discussed daily in the televised media and printed News has been –—- when and where is the real CHANGE going to come from as promised.  Many good a moral folks and I too have been your devoted staunch and strong allies for each step you have taken. And seems now a new chilly wind from a bad direction has begun to blow.  In my perception that is because many of your very close cabinet appointees and confidants have a proven track record that is not very good and that comes from their affiliations with groups and societies that have un-sound and un-reasonable long-term goals that have severe lacks of care and concern for our rights to life in our rich and abundant America that we have clung to in our communities and Constitution.

The following list was furnished by WIKI about those active today in your administration that has been apart of the Bilderberg Group.

Mr. President we elected you to set the stage for change and with those listed on your staff now—- how can you do that? Obviously you have your work cut out for you to reform our government to integrity… and genuinely caring and working with the highest good of all in mind. You have a tall task you have taken on and we salute you and back you anyway we can.

Their connectivity to others around the world that have a different strategy about the way we should go——I think it is NOT as a sovereign solvent nation with our own self interest at the core of all we do——if their plans are implemented that will simply lead us to change not but for more of the same.  And to bypass that end game some things that you could do in the way things go for us——- would be:

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By DWIGHTBAKER, April 5, 2009 at 9:59 am #

PLEASE ALL RESPOND #2


Richard N. Haass (1991, 2003, 2004[11]), president, Council on Foreign Relations
Christian Herter[12] (1961, 1963, 1964, 1966), former Secretary of State
Sam Nunn (1996, 1997[4]), former US Senator
Kathleen Sebelius[15], Kansas governor and nominee for the the Health and Human Services secretary post
Timothy Geithner[16], Treasury Secretary
Lawrence Summers[17], Director of the National Economic Council
Paul Volcker[18], Chair of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board

1.  The best measure as our President Commander and Chief to do now so that you would have many more ideas put on the table to think about would be——To hold one if not more Strategic Planning and Development Stimulus Summits—- with or without any of your staff and cabinet members or close confidants in the loop now——then arrange for many other good Americans that are noteworthy with credentials in scholarship and proven track records in name honor and recognition to attend and allow them to have your ear for at least three consecutive days.  That you might hear many others opinions and suggestion why and how to move forward then that might bring another perspective of what needs to be done now.

2.  Each passing day in America is filled with insidious, hideous and tenuous stuff as was the days when the BUSH BUNCH GANG was in power doing their THANGS.  And because of that—- things must change now you know that wholeheartedly, so please don’t wait——to make the Strategic Planning and Development Stimulus Summit one of the matters most important on your agenda.

3.  Now my suspicions are like many—- if a Strategic Planning and Development Stimulus Summit or one of like kind——- is not done soon by you——then your men might with their faulted and failed plans prevail.

4.  The Bilderberg Group agendas are very clear they are out to protect the accumulation of wealth held by the old line and some new Barons [or benefactors of the spoils of war] to do what is best for them in exclusionary measures no matter what is best for the people affected. Because in their grand scheme of doing things all their goals are about exclusion for all reasons.

One thing for sure all of us agree you have guts to want the job of being our President to lead us out of the espionage and sabotage done by some corrupting our Nation that has been going on for a long time.  And one thing you can count on us for doing——is watching your back day and night, best as we can. 

What ever you need us to do just tell us.  Give us BIG JOBS to do——there is a lot of folks that will work for free to help us get back on our feet——WHY—- They like me love this our home America——- think about holding a SUMMIT with the many others that have a good heartbeat from the grass roots of the American folks right now.

As in all good things——change comes little by little and we should not rush any longer to put out fires that might be needed to burn down the old failed ways of doing business as usual——- that has us in the fix we are in.

Best regards

Dwight Baker
Co –Founder of the Bondservants of Christ Jesus Ministries
Chairman of the Voices of We the Peoples Lobby now [Advocacy or WTPA] grass roots actions
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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samosamo's avatar

By samosamo, March 26, 2009 at 8:28 pm #

as i expect, there is no concern in the faces of either of these 2 crooks, geithner or bernanke.

they are in control and the people in this country are about to be treated to some very harsh new rules.
everything points to the rich making a concerted effort to dispose of what is left of an unwanted middle class.

the laws are all contrived for their benefit by the ‘disappearing’ of the luckless.

our whole government is infected with those few that want the rest people eliminated.

wonderful little contraption the pentagon has developed, a miniture robot armed tank that can ‘decide’ who to kill or be controlled by those idiots with the joy stick like with the drones to be just like playing a video game, not just for purposes of the imperial wars we are involved in now and not upcoming ones on the agenda but but to patrol the united states for those that think that they can rise up and take the country back while they inventors and owners kick back with comfort and fun, hell, raise a glass and toast to the ‘no so brave new world’.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/25-11

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By KDelphi, March 26, 2009 at 6:07 pm #

Wilberforce—I am prety sure they are calling that a dot.com bubble now…I agree, people were ridiculous about Clinton’s sex life. I didnt give a rat’s ass. i was too busy watching his crimes against the avg working person and, trying to decide what to do now, that I could never be a Dem again…

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By Wilberforce, March 25, 2009 at 10:23 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Jackpine,
Bill and Hillary gave away plenty, as all politicians do. And it’s easy to cherry pick the record to make anyone look like trash. The left have been doing it nonstop for decades.
Under savage attack and character assasination for eight years, and with no support from the left, Bill surrendered on the derivatives bill. But the system didn’t collapse under his watch. It took another eight years of sleazoid republicans looking the other way for the system to crash. Had Gore been in office, which he wasn’t thanks to the far left, he would have seen the problem coming from a mile away and put in regulation to stop it.
Regardless, neo liberlism was finely crafted for the mixed economy when Bill was a leading intellectual in the DLC, was refined in office, and has had the most spectacularly successful record of the last thirty five years. Nothing else even comes close.
Let’s not bother to research it, though. Better to go with character attacks. That’s always the way to avoid the hard work of understanding policy.

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By AT, March 25, 2009 at 4:26 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Why need more laws and power when people like the agust senator from Utah, URINN Hatch, kept calling federal regulators to leave the targets alone (according to a series of articles on Hatch, the king of vitamin supplement, on the Salt Lake tribune in the eraly 1990) who also employed his son .

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By KDelphi, March 25, 2009 at 2:51 pm #

Amen. Eric Prentis

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By Eric L. Prentis, March 25, 2009 at 2:22 pm #

Geithner’s modified Paulson plan to use taxpayer money to purchase bank toxic assets at above market prices, which the Democrats and especially President Obama should be deeply ashamed and mortified for supporting, does zero to help the US economy and just transfers federal money to politically favored recipients. Obama/Geithner’s bailout plan is a money grab, pure and simple. The banks have not and will not lend into a severe recession, it isn’t profitable. Nothing will change after the financial elite loots taxpayer’s money except Wall Street bankers will unfairly have the money that they rightfully lost leading up to the world recession that they caused. Geithner/Summers/Bernanke couldn’t be bigger toadies working for the money changers and against the common good.

The Obama administration’s solution of piling more and more debt on the problem will eventually make the recession much worse, instead, we need debt forgiveness paid for the directors, executives, stockholders and bondholders of insolvent institutions which should go into receivership and then be reorganized. Any other course condemns those who are politically out of favor to a decade, or more, of misery.

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By KDelphi, March 25, 2009 at 10:33 am #

Geithner has a knowledge of economics the way a fox has knowledge of hens…

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By jackpine savage, March 25, 2009 at 8:18 am #

Wilberforce,

You must be joking, right?  A good percentage of these people established the system that collapsed under the watchful eye of Bill and Hillary.

It was Bill who sold the Democratic Party to Wall Street, yet you’re suggesting that he would do something other than help out his old buddies that made him rich, rich, rich?

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By M. Currey, March 25, 2009 at 2:03 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

If something is not done then this country looks done for.

Hiring this man was not the best how can he change things when he cannot even do his taxes right.

I would hate to lose my social security because then I would have to buy a tent and sleep in some park, just like in Calif. people were sleeping in special parking lots.

Then again like in Ireland there is allways the poor house you go there to slowly starve and die.

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By Wilberforce, March 24, 2009 at 9:24 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

We’re feeling the loss of Bill and Hillary. The left put forward the less knowledgeable Obama. And for many of us, having an African American in the Presidency was worth the risk.
Now he doesn’t use neo liberal policy to get us out of this mess, as he should after having swiping the Clinton agenda during the campaign. Instead, he puts forward a hog fest, keynesian stimulus that won’t fix a thing. He refuses to nationalize banks we already own, refuses to put in competent managers, doesn’t bother with new regulation, and wants another few trillion with no strings just like the Bush administration. But we don’t have time for outdated measures.
The democrats, meanwhile, are sitting on their hands. It’s too much bother to force Obama to adopt Clinton economic policy, or do more than make excuses for his fumbling. It’s much easier to be distracted by the nonsense of dingbat, liberal pundits.
If the democrats, and the left in particular, allow the first African American President to fail, they will have disgraced themselves beyond forgiveness.
Please see Stimulus Redux at http://a-civilife.blogspot.com

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By frank1569, March 24, 2009 at 7:48 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

TG also said he was “heavily involved” in all things AIG from the beginning, yet didn’t know about the “compensation” situation until March 10 of this year. So what the f@#k does heavily involved mean, exactly? Of course, this is the same SOB who claimed his failure to pay his taxes was because of Turbo Tax, or because he didn’t understand his obligations while working at the IMF, or because his dog ate his homework.

TG is nothing more than a conman slash frontman for the big money mafia - but us, being good soldiers, will continue to thank him and ask for another…

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By Kaelieh, March 24, 2009 at 7:14 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

“I pledge allegiance to Timothy Geithner
of the united Wall St bankers,
and to Goldman Sachs for which he works:
one Nation under the Federal Reserve, unequal,
with a sixpence and crumbs for all.”

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By Chris, March 24, 2009 at 7:08 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

The Bush admin wanted sweeping powers in regards to nat’l security and now the Obama admin wants sweeping powers in regards to financial security. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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By KDelphi, March 24, 2009 at 4:54 pm #

Geithner needs to STEP DOWN!

Democrats need to tell Pres. Obama. (who “will not let him step down”) that. We are in a dire mess here.

Get fricking Wall St OUT of here!!

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By G.Anderson, March 24, 2009 at 4:50 pm #

No, because your a disgrace, and your making matters worse..

Sure Madoff Street likes you, because they think their going to make lots more money on your plan, making money with no risk, just the way they like it…

But who is going to service that debt, who is going to have to go to work at a job from 9 to 5 to pay a mortage down for 30 years? Whose going to do it, and who is going to pay for trillions of dollars in Derivative’s? Who?

No one can, that’s why were in this mess you fool.

And how are we going to guarantee that debt gets paid, more laws, more restrictions on debt relief, debtors prison’s not just for the hapless dead beat dad but for everyone?

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By KDelphi, March 24, 2009 at 4:36 pm #

Can we get over the relatively microscopic bon-us(es) for awhile? Cheesh@! It is NOTHING compared to what we will give them when we buy up all the crappy assets they cant sell!

I’d go aolng with the taxing of the bone-us(es)—not because i think that it was the right way to go about it. its just that any penny we can recover (including the entire bailout!) we should do!

Geithner answered NO pointed questions, and just covered his ass.i watched it (nausetingly) from start to finish. He doestn even seem to like the job—I wish he would just quit (If Pres. Obama would let him!)

Frank need to BACK OFF of Code Pink! I am REALLY sick of these self-righteous assholes.

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samosamo's avatar

By samosamo, March 24, 2009 at 4:13 pm #

There is so much broken and misused about our country now all due to the the conversion of congress’ turn to just being elected and re-elected by the people to do the corporate world’s bidding, damn the people. A huge key factor are the lobbyists. ONCE AGAIN, I tell you that lobbyism is plain out right bribery which is illegal. Controlling lobbyists with regulations, tranparency, oversight and accountability will be the ONLY way to get a handle on the ineptness of our government, the economy, the conservative MSM that controls the information they and their handlers decide that they want the people to have to make all those erroneous decisions they make everyday, the out of control military/industrial/congressional complex, the inequity of laws. Corporations are the reasons that legitimate legislation is not passed and nothing but protectionist legislation for corporations are passed.
That is why the tax on the bonuses for aig and others is so easily rejected by those that don’t want it and it gets the attention of those poor souls that will believe this is so. And what else we don’t hear much of is the very little these businesses pay in taxes while sucking up all the taxpayer’s bailout money. Until this is brought to light and people’s attention I would say ain’t nothing going to work and things will keep getting worse until somehow our government is once again controlled by the people.

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By skulz fontaine, March 24, 2009 at 3:48 pm #

Turbo Timmy am going to save us. On the down side, it’ll only cost ‘we the people’ 175 trillion dollars and that is U.S.D.. Hmmm, one could always sell the children or, put them to work in the coal mines. Back to the Dark Ages… here we come!

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By George M Wqeinert V, March 24, 2009 at 3:48 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

This is simply MARXISM in the name of popular outrage.

THESE VICIOUS COMMIE BASTARDS MUST BE STOPPED NOW!

CLEAN AND LOAD YOUG GUNS BOYS!!!

George M Weinert V
http://paralegalprofs.blogspot.com/

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By Jason!!, March 24, 2009 at 3:01 pm #

I have no idea what I am doing but please give me more power so I can really screw this up. Trust me(T.G.)

Epic failure!

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