Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout

[girl gone mad]

Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/business/economy/10bailout.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

WASHINGTON— The Obama administration’s new plan to bail out the nation’s banks was fashioned after a spirited internal debate that pitted the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, against some of the president’s top political hands.

In the end, Mr. Geithner largely prevailed in opposing tougher conditions on financial institutions that were sought by presidential aides, including David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, according to administration and Congressional officials.

Mr. Geithner, who will announce the broad outlines of the plan on Tuesday, successfully fought against more severe limits on executive pay for companies receiving government aid.

He resisted those who wanted to dictate how banks would spend their rescue money. And he prevailed over top administration aides who wanted to replace bank executives and wipe out shareholders at institutions receiving aid.

Because of the internal debate, some of the most contentious issues remain unresolved.

[westerebus]

1. As the band played on.

Last Friday, the market's reacted to the worst jobless report in the past thirty years by going up. Why? More TARP is about to come their way with the best wishes from the new Minister of Wealth.

They are going to use the Fed's make believe balance sheet to paper over the losses at the insolvent banks under the new recovery plan. Looks a lot like the " Hi, we're from the government and we're here to help" plan. $350 billion latter and they're still at it.

Volker was at the Presidential press commercial last Friday to give the signal inflation is on the way. Just what the market wanted to see. You can pretty much write off 2009 as the year of recovery for the economy.

[fasttense]

2. Seems that now the gubermint is in the business of deciding who gets to be wealthy and who

gets to be poor. Oh sure, there were always crooks in the system and the gubermint picked their favorites to bestow billions upon. But it was usually done undercover to hide the invisible hand of the gubermint. Now they are doing it openly. The new rule is - If you are currently wealthy, you will be coddled and babied, your hand held while Geithner hands you a cool billion. If you are poor or middle class, you get poorer.

See the middle class and poor bought houses they thought were valuable just like them Wall Street firms bought derivatives and CDO they thought were valuable. Geithner is going to buy their worthless crap from them so they will stay rich. Who's going to buy our worthless homes? Seems to me it would be more efficient if the gubermint, in the form of Free Market Geithner, were to buy up the homes because all the Wall Street ninnies told us it was the bad homes that caused their woes.

Maybe the Chinese need to move to a more hospitable climate. I've got a deal for them.