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By Colm Toibin
$19.99
By Bart Jones
$19.80
$22
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including what a new analysis says about your tax rates today, the Kennedy Center Honors for 2012 will be awarded and Nate Silver responds to Politico’s criticism.
Posted on Dec 2, 2012
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Robert Reich — If “pragmatic deal maker,” as The Wall Street Journal describes Geithner, means someone who believes any deal with Republicans is better than no deal, and deficit reduction is more important than job creation, we could be in for a difficult December.
Posted on Nov 27, 2012
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Dominic's pics (CC BY 2.0)
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The Federal Reserve and the U.S. government knew back in 2008 that Barclays was filing false reports about Libor, the interest rate that international banks charge one another for short-term loans, according to documents released Friday.
Posted on Jul 13, 2012
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The Occupy Wall Street protests are making more than just a splash; LGBT activists join the Occupy Wall Street protests to assert their rights; meanwhile, a secret panel places Americans on a “kill list.” These discoveries and more after the jump.
Posted on Oct 8, 2011
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AP / Evan Vucci
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President Obama rolled out a plan on Monday to reduce the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade by combining cuts to benefit rights and war savings with tax increases. (more)
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Flickr / SpeakerBoehner
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No visible progress was made during deficit talks Sunday in which President Barack Obama failed to persuade House Republicans to support $4 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. (more)
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Flickr / SS&SS
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In his first essay for New York Magazine since quitting The New York Times last spring, Frank Rich thoughtfully details Barack Obama’s failure to push back against the financial wheeler-dealers who drove the country to the brink of ruin ... (more)
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AP / Paul Sakuma
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By Robert Scheer — How do you foreclose on a home when you can’t figure out who owns it because the original mortgage is part of a derivatives package that has been sliced and diced so many ways that its legal ownership is often unrecognizable?
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AP / Susan Walsh
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By Robert Scheer — Finally! The announced departure of Lawrence Summers as the president’s top economic adviser is welcome news. Harvard’s loss in taking back its $586,996-a-year professor and “president emeritus,” who is also paid millions by Wall Street on the side, is the nation’s gain.
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AP / Susan Walsh
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President Barack Obama is reportedly going to lose another member of his economic advisory team, and a big one at that, after the midterm elections this fall. The Bloomberg news service brought word Tuesday that Larry Summers plans to leave the White House before the end of 2010. Updated
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Flickr / U.S. Treasury Department
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In the face of the stereotypical image of Americans as free-spending consumers, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has told his international finance colleagues that G20 countries should not rely on American buyers for their products as they travel the road to economy recovery.
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AP / Jose Luis Magana
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In a letter to a ranking Senate Democrat, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called for restrictions on derivatives—those financial instruments whose value is derived from other instruments—but stopped at an outright ban on the trading practices that helped lead to the current financial crisis.
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AP / Richard Drew
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By Chris Hedges — When the bailout trillions run out, Wall Street’s maladjusted gamblers will come back for more until our currency becomes junk. Not that any of these people, who exhibit the same traits as psychopaths, have thought this through.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Stanley Kutler — We have a “regulation czar,” but no new regulations. It seems we can expect little from those with a track record of enabling bad policies.
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By William Pfaff — It seems plausible that payback time has arrived for the international financial community. The principal obstacle here is, at the moment, the Obama administration.
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White House / Pete Souza
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That Timothy Geithner must love the big banks he spends all day talking to. Back when he was in charge of things, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York forced AIG to pay off Wall Street tycoons for all those toxic bets, even though the mega-insurer was busy trying to negotiate a better deal.
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infiniteunknown.com
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It’s unsurprising to say the least: A Freedom of Information Act request has discovered that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is in daily two-way communication with a small group of Wall Street CEOs—at Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs—while lawmakers like Rep. Xavier Becerra are forced to leave messages for him.
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By Ruth Marcus — Does President Obama care about passing health care reform that truly gets costs under control and getting the nation’s fiscal house in order or does he care more about getting re-elected?
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Apparently Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner wants more for his home than he paid for it—in this market. The “Daily Show’s” John Oliver asks, “How can the American people trust the policies of a man who can’t sell his house? ... Is it not like hiring a personal trainer who is morbidly obese?”
Posted on Jul 30, 2009
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Robert Scheer — On Monday, two men with considerable responsibility for enabling the banking meltdown confronted the error of their ways. Hopefully Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers’ sudden conversion to common sense indicates the seriousness of the banking regulation plan that their boss, President Obama, will present to Congress today.
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AP photo / J. David Ake
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By Robert Scheer — You probably don’t know much about Sheila Bair, but she is looking out for you, and that is why the big guys on Wall Street and their allies in the Obama administration are out to get her.
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Flickr / The TruthAbout...
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Some of the country’s major banks are prepared to pay back money they borrowed under the TARP program, but don’t get too excited. The initial repayment is expected to be a meager $50 billion, which Timothy Geithner wants to inject right back into other troubled banks.
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NASA / U.S. Treasury
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President Obama has said he doesn’t want public money going into a “black hole,” but his administration’s bank bailout looks more and more like an abyss of cosmic proportions. Not only are the bailed-out banks lending less than before, the Treasury Department appears to be engaging in creative math to obscure the gravity of the situation.
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William K. Black made a name for himself busting bad bankers and the lawmakers who loved them during the savings and loan scandal. His book, “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One,” says it all. Here he tells Bill Moyers that the treasury secretary is a failed regulator engaged in the cover-up of a massive fraud.
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What’s with all these fancy economic algorithms that supposedly explain what goes down (or up) on Wall Street but are unintelligible to the average American? Why not make a new model that everyone can understand—and that’s always on the up-and-up?
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hoinews.com
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When word got out that Sen. Chris Dodd was responsible for loosening the restrictions on executive bonuses while drafting the stimulus bill, his constituents were apparently listening, as the Democrat’s approval rating in his home state of Connecticut has hit an all-time low. Now he could be in danger of losing his Senate seat in 2010.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The president’s plan to bail out the banks reveals a deference to the existing financial system that puts him at odds with Nobel Prize-winning economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz.
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AP photo / Mary Altaffer
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By Robert Scheer — The good news on the government’s “No Banker Left Behind” program is that, according to the special inspector general’s report on Tuesday, the total handout to date is still less than 3 trillion dollars. It’s only $2.98 trillion, to be precise, an amount six times greater than will be spent by federal, state and local governments this year on educating the 50 million American children in elementary and secondary schools.
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The clock is ticking for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to come up with a plan to deal with the banks that actually works. Meanwhile, some of the United States’ current struggles seem beside the point to European countries that already have a strong social safety net. And finally on this week’s list of “Left, Right & Center” hot topics is President Obama and Afghanistan: Is this a disaster waiting to happen?
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By Joe Conason — Listening to the president’s critics, it would be easy to believe that Obama is responsible for the deficits, bailouts, bonuses, nationalized institutions and careening markets. It would be easy to believe but it’s entirely false.
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By Eugene Robinson — Timothy Geithner has not been a good performer, but he does have a vision. He sees an improved Wall Street, though one not fundamentally different from what we have now.
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President Obama personally conducted a tour of the White House for “60 Minutes” and in the Sunday broadcast defended his embattled treasury secretary, said sending more troops to Afghanistan was his toughest decision yet, and refused to grant a look at his wife’s vegetable garden. The president also took the opportunity to unload on Dick Cheney, who recently suggested we are less safe without torture.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Critics who argue that he is asking Congress to do too much are finding it far easier to talk about an overloaded system than to tell those without health insurance that they will have to wait a few more years.
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Flickr / epicharmus
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The Toxic Asset Relief Program was originally designed to save the banks from their bad bets by purchasing toxic assets, but has since evolved into something of a multipurpose slush fund. Now the Obama administration is getting back to the business of buying junk, elaborating on a plan that sent the Dow tumbling when it was first announced. Update
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By Eugene Robinson — The treasury secretary may indeed be the hardest-working man in Washington. But in order to survive, let alone succeed, he’s going to have to make a more convincing case that he’s part of the solution and not part of the problem.
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AP photo / Evan Vucci
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After the top brass at AIG couldn’t be stopped from dishing out $165 million in bonuses to executives who didn’t exactly deserve gold-star treatment, Congress is attempting to recoup most of the money by slapping a 90 percent tax on such executive windfalls.
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By Joe Conason — Having long flattered themselves as “masters of the universe,” the creative financiers of Wall Street and London are today exposed as grifters rather than geniuses, yet their arrogance remains intact.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has developed a bad reputation in his short time on the job. He appears to have the fortitude of porridge and a love of banks and the bankers who bankrupt them. Despite calls for Geithner’s ouster over the AIG bonus blunder, the president says he has “complete confidence” in his top economist.
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Geithner image from Presidencia de la Nación Argentina
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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has sent Congress an explanation of his plan to deal with the AIG bonus fiasco. Essentially, Treasury will dock the $165 million in bonuses from AIG’s next bailout payment. Here’s a question: If AIG can do without that $165 million, why were we giving it to the company in the first place?
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Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner —
Posted on Mar 16, 2009
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AP photo / Ron Edmonds
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AIG’s dishing out $165 million in bonuses to executives who played a part in bringing their company to near ruin is an “outrage,” according to President Barack Obama, who pledged to do whatever he can to stop the payouts at the bailed-out insurance giant. Updated
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listphile.com
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The tug of war continues between corporate financial giants and the federal government, and certain members of the former seem to have some trouble adjusting to their post-bailout status. AIG, for example, is still planning to reward its top 400 executives with a whopping $165 million in bonuses this weekend, even after the company was given more than $170 billion from taxpayers to stay afloat. Updated
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Once again, the economy is front and center on “Left, Right & Center”—and with good reason.
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White House / Chuck Kennedy
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The Dow is up another 240 points, gaining 9.5 percent over the last three days, but the president doesn’t want you getting too excited about it—or too distraught when things inevitably swing the other way.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — While conservatives cry socialism, the president is trying to steer a moderate course. Moderation, however, may be the wrong recipe. There is something deeply disturbing about the drip, drip, drip of billions into the banking system with no apparent impact.
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By Eugene Robinson — It’s reaching the point where desperate measures—brutal honesty and complete transparency—may be the only way to bring the economy out of its kamikaze dive. If so, this won’t be pretty.
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By Eugene Robinson — Obama must deal with a new presidential role that he did not seek but cannot avoid: managing big chunks of the private-sector economy.
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fordnewsblog.wordpress.com
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What’s to be done about the floundering American automotive industry? Appoint a “car czar,” you say? No, this is a job for a whole team of people, such as the newly formed Presidential Task Force on Autos. One small hitch: It’ll be headed up by Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Obama senses that fate has handed him opportunities few presidents ever get, and that his test will be whether he makes good use of his chance to bend history at one of its “inflection points.”
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