With tax cheat Tim Geithner.
If you are for individual liberty, and the American Dream it should be chilling. Shivers went up my spine. Geithner is a character straight out of central casting.
With regard to the debt ceiling, Geithner doesn’t offer up a compromise at all. It’s the administration’s way, or the highway. This means that there is only one way — vote out the Democrats by a significant margin in the House, Senate and get rid of Obama and his very left wing administration in 2012.
He also outright lies about what will get paid and what won’t.
Listen to his words on Dodd-Frank: “Don’t listen to the bankers because their interests aren’t aligned with the American people.” It could be a phrase right out of Atlas Shrugged.
Bankers need a healthy economy to make money. Geithner and Obama want a government directed economy where government de facto owns the banks.
Listen to him talk about the new activist “Consumer Financial Protection Agency” and avowed big government/public sector ownership advocate Elizabeth Warren. Geithner has no faith in the private sector, or the individual. He wants to trample individual rights.
Also, a bonus reference to advocates of limited government and liberty as “anarchists.”
[Update a few minutes later]
Federal expansion — the real issue in the debt-limit debate.
Since deregulation banks have changed greatly. Today their profits are not from loans but from speculation on foreign currency and commodities and a good bank trader will be able to make a profit in a declining economy as easily in an expanding one if they are able to see the turn. That is one place Atlas Shrugged shows its 1950 origin, just as it uses railroads as the ultimate form of transportation.
Jim Cramer turning on the Tea Party is significant given his following in the small investor community they claim as part of their base. It will be interesting to watch this play out.
and a train from Minneapolis to Duluth, Minn., that will average 69 miles per hour — about what you could average on the parallel Interstate 35.
Unbelievable. That stretch of interstate is in far from good condition (few are in that climate). But you can average well in excess of 69 there. And a high percentage of the traffic are people towing boats and campers.
Words fail.
Cramer turning on the Tea Party? I admit I don’t follow Cramer on TV (read his books..meh) but I thought he was a Democrat and an Obama supporter. A few critical words however justified of the Obama administration does not make him a Tea Party kinda guy.
Jim Cramer lost all relevance and credibility when he caved to Jon Stewart, as though the Great Recession was somehow his fault.
Obama and his cronies are a nightmare. The media have been labeling republicans the problem in this debt limit fiasco at every turn. Obama is not just wrong, he’s blatantly wrong, yet people still hang on his lying demagoguing words.
The only interest Obama and thugs have in banks is to make sure they continue to be a reliable source of funds for their own cronies.
A healthy economy is the enemy as far as Obama and thugs are concerned.
It is just amazing to me that so many in this country can’t see how close to the abyss Obama has driven us. We may already have passed the point of no return. I thought we could survive four years of Obama. I’m not so sure anymore.
Palin/West 2012
Banks are not the enemy Thomas. You’re still tea party clueless.
Ken,
I don’t understand the need for a qualifier in your last sentence.
Now listen carefully! We are a grouup of of individuals that represent a small foreign faction . . .
“a good bank trader will be able to make a profit in a declining economy as easily in an expanding one if they are able to see the turn.”
Uh, isn’t that like sort of the point of investing. If your investments can stay out ahead of the trends then yea, you can turn a profit. That’s sort of the reward for being prescient, knowledgeable, lucky, or what have you. But your attitude seems to be that nearly anyone can throw on a top hat and a monocle and all of a sudden they are swimming in pools of gold bullion. Why, the Geico caveman should give up selling insurance and become a banker because well, it’s just so easy…
Someone once told me that the GOP is the party of the rich. I said, “Sign me up — I’m tired of being poor!” /sting
The tired old cliche about Democrats being the party of the “little guy” (a wonderfully arrogant term) and the Republicans being the party of rich fat cats is decades out of date.
From this article titled “A Most Undemocratic Recovery.”
For financial support, Obama and his Party have become increasingly close to Wall Street. Hedge fund managers have done very, very well under Obama; the top 22 managers in 2010 earned a remarkable $25 billion. Overall in 2010, Wall Street compensation hit a new record of $135 billion. And despite the fact that some hedge fund and bank executives have recoiled at the President’s occasional public chastisement, the financial community and the Republican Party, as the American Prospect recently noted, are the ones “drifting apart.” One source of division lies with the Tea Party movement that, along with its radical fringes, reflects a genuine grassroots middle class disdain for the financial hegemons and their political allies.
This does not necessarily apply to many Republicans who may play up to Tea Party populist sentiments but in practice favor policies – for example in terms of financial legislation and taxation – that favor financial hegemons and large corporations. As you speak to business groups around the country, particularly in small and mid-sized cities, one senses little more enthusiasm for corporatist Republicans than for their Democratic counterparts.
Obama’s gentry liberalism is no less corporate and tailored to the powerful than that of the Republicans but differs in what constitutes its economic and political base. President Obama’s other key pillars of support include “new economy” centers as Silicon Valley, Hollywood and the heavily subsidized “green” industrial complex. From the beginning, “green jobs” have been one of the linchpins of the Administration’s job creation strategy and arguably one of its biggest disappointments. Heavily dependent on government mandates and subsidies, the growth trajectory of solar, wind and battery companies, at least in the near term, remains dubious, particularly against even more lavishly subsidized foreign competition.
Ever notice how Matula likes to pose as some kind of independent, yet his opinions and pronunciamentoes are invariably off-the-rack variations on the standard statist-DNC party line? He reminds me of all those O-bot trolls who used to post in the pro-freedom blogosphere after “Il Dufe’s” nomination, and they would always begin with: “I’ve always voted Republican, but this year. . . .”
Do you suppose they attended the same writing school as the people who write in to Penthouse?
Since deregulation banks have changed greatly. Today their profits are…
Who gives a damn? I don’t care what banks are doing, so long as every dollar they make is by means of a voluntary transaction.
If they can sit in their New York City offices upholstered in cat fur and persuade 50 million Granny Averages to endorse over their Social Security checks in exchange for title to real estate in Heaven, on Pluto, or for some other meaningless plodge, thereby making staggering profits that they immediately waste snorting coke off Hillary Clinton’s ass at one of those financial district parties, while Granny Average is reduced to eating cat food, that’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine in a moral (or aesthetic) sense, and I would not invite such a lowlife sickos to my next garden party, but there should be no law against it and it’s no God-damned business of the government.
Government exists to ensure economic transactions are voluntary and (to some extent) fully informed. And that’s it. It has no business deciding whether some profit is fully deserved and some other is evil, and it compounds arrogance with immorality (two wrongs not making a right) to argue “excessive” or “nasty” profits should be lifted at the point of a gun from their owner by government for allegedly more noble ends.
Govt. has “no business in business” should be written into the constitution…
Oh wait, they did… “Promote the general welfare” has nothing to do with paying for social redistribution programs.
“they are not to do anything they please” but only for enumerated powers, specifically “providing for the military”
“does not favor” one over another (ie. military spending defends the entire country.)
Ken,
I only seem a Democrat because the TP/JBS has pulled the Republican so far to the right. And thanks to the TP/JBS President Obama is sure to get four years with a Democrat majority in Congress.
Carl,
So you are on record as being in favor of con men cheating the elderly out of their savings and homes?
Thomas:
Don’t be so dramatic. It’s fairly obvious he means something more like “con men cheating old ladies out of their false teeth is horrible, but rushing out to create a law to ‘stop those bad people’ is probably a worse idea because..”
a) it likely won’t stop the con men,
b) will give those poor ladies that got swindled in the first place a false sense of security, and
c) then probably put legitimate people out of business just to top things off.
Leland, with such abundance you sometimes need to narrow the scope.
No, Thomas, you fit in very well with the elite republican that are politically astute rather than having any real values.
The only, ONLY, reason we have a debt ceiling crisis is because of waffling republicans. They have the house, they just have to do the right thing and pass a bill. BO’s veto is on his head alone.
So you are on record as being in favor of con men cheating the elderly out of their savings and homes?
I dunno, Thomas, are you on record as being in favor of lynchings? After all, if the majority just knows that
black menbankers are Bad People, why not let them be hanged by the mob on the nearest tree and their property snatched to be put to better use?Reverse mortgages certainly seem like a scam but then why didn’t the Democratically controlled house and senate do anything to regulate them?
It wasn’t the Tea Party or fat cat Republicans that stood in the way but it was the Democrats who get their money from the banking industry and Wallstreet. Time to shatter some stereotypes.
In order to analyze the current practices of banks, one must look at the most recent regulations that are having the greatest impact on their behavior. Regulations that have done and will do nothing to address the causes of the housing crisis and resulting financial mess.
It is really quite amazing how many laws honestly fall under the categorical restrictions and the single premise of the “fair trade”.
Thou shall not murder.
Thou shall not steal.
Con game -> false advertising -> unfair trade -> theft.
This was Jim Cramer’s finest hour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awY2F0vJBr8
Tim the Enchanter says default would bring us “on the edge of recession again.” AGAIN? WHAT AGAIN? WE HAVEN’T BEEN AWAY FROM RECESSION OR ITS EDGE SINCE THE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATION, YOU IVY LEAGUE MORON!
Geithner has no vision whatsoever for cutting the budget. “We’ll hire a commission” means “I don’t freakin’ know.”
Dow futures were down 75 points at the beginning of the interview, and down 85 at the end. Hmm…
I think that they’re more likely to get twenty to twenty-five, with time off for good behavior.
Wow. Holy cats. Matula is seeing BIRCHERS under his bed now!!!???
…with time off for good behavior.
“Good behavior”? That would be something new.
Actually, the problem is that since the ’60s radicals have pulled the whole country so far to the left, today’s’ Republicans resemble yesterday’s Democrats. It’s long past time for the pendulum to swing back towards the center.
And Freemasons in the closet. 😉
Gays out of the closet, Freemasons in…that closet must be a timeshare or something.
I’d like to see the Dept of Homeland Security, Education, HUD, HHS dismantled for starters. (I have no idea what the JBS’s opinion is on that matter, nor do I care). What matters to me is my view. I don’t know why Mr. Matula keeps bringing them up unless he thinks I’m secretly on the JBS’s payroll or something.
Damn tom!
You really need to put down the crack pipe before you burn your lips!
Carl,
Carl,
Your focus on the term “voluntary” illustrates well the problem with discussing anything with TP/JBS followers. As Ayn Rand pointed out, we always have choices, so you may argue its still a ‘voluntary” decision to comply when someone is pointing a gun to your head. But its not is it?
But in terms of the successful operation of markets, one key is information and what information, or misinformation, the banks provided at the time of the mortgage or in the derivative investments they were selling. Another is in terms of bargaining equity when an individual is deal with a big bank and a third are options, choices, they may have. The robo signing scandal and the many fines the major banks have received under existing laws are a good indication, and how ineffective they are because of the size of the banks, are a good indication of the need for more regulation for banks. The fact that Savings and Loans and Credit Unions, which were no deregulated, played only a minor role and came through the meltdown with minimum impact is another indication of the root of the problem and how to fix it.
Hal,
You certainty sound like a fellow traveler with your views.
Thomas, there’s no point in arguing what Ayn Rand says to me. I am much more likely to think any disagreement between my conclusions and hers is evidence for her mental disorganization than mine. That’s one of the odd effects of acknowledging no master — of a life based on liberty as the highest value.
But in any event your argument about “choice” in the context of a gun to a head is what we here on the Internet call a straw man. You are assuming a definition of “voluntary” that has been pushed to an absurd limit — and then use the accidental similarilty of your word “voluntary” to my word “voluntary” to criticize my conclusions. These are the actions of a Borg, not an honest debater.
You should attempt to confound my reasoning using my own definitions, because if you can’t, the suspicion will naturally be that you can’t — that you can find no flaw in my logic, and are reduced to sneakily substituting your axioms and definitions for mine in order to “prove” my conclusions erroneous.
I certainly agree with you, Thomas, that a key function of government in maintaining a free society based on free markets is to harshly punish fraud and strongly encourage full disclosure in transactions. It does this, generally, by declaring fraudulent contracts void, and by allowing for damages when cons are committed.
So are you saying mortgages were a swindle? Borrowers weren’t told they’d have to pay the money back? WIth interest, too? Or that if the price of their house plummeted and they couldn’t flip it, that would not let them out of the mortgage note?
Those would be interesting assertions, and I trust you’d have some evidence for them.
By the by, what would you suggest when government itself is the operator of a swindle? For example, I was told 20 years ago that the excess SS taxes I would be paying after the Social Security/Medicare “fix” of the 80s were put away in a “lock box” so that they would be available to pay the foreseen costs of the Boomer Generation retiring..oh, right about now. That way we wouldn’t have to raise taxes in the future (i.e. now) brutally when that big bulge of retirees occurred. We would be planning ahead, saving up!
And yet now I’m told by the President that that money I was told was so carefully squirreled away isn’t there at all, so that if taxes aren’t sharply raised immediately, or the government can’t go out and sell $2 trillion worth of IOUs to the Chinese, to be redeemed by my grandsons, then SS checks won’t go out.
If this were executed in the private sector, it would unquestionately earn the perpetrators jail time. What do you propose for its public sector perpetrators? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Carl, they’re too busy watching Jon Stewart.
Thomas, If I am fellow traveler with the JBS (and I’m not saying that I am, as I haven’t researched their views at all, merely stated what mine are), but if those are their views then they must NOT be an extremest organization as my views are not extremist in the least.
I am unaware of the existence of any Savings and Loans as they were all moved to Savings Bank, and re-regulated as Banks after the (wait for it) Savings and Loan crisis which was caused by unsound lending practices. As to Credit Unions they are already much less regulated than the banks and the banking lobby is always complaining about that, calling it unfair competition.