Obama should fire Geithner

[bad_call]

the guy is over his head and screwing up too $$$ much.

CIT goes belly up which is bad enough in itself but then Geithner shafted the taxpayers with the bailout.

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker...f,skf,gs,c,bac

[max]

I agree entirely; he's too in bed with the industry to make positive change.

[chess9]

Yes, he never should have been hired in the first place. And ditto for Larry Summers and his crew. No change there....

Btw, I see you've seen Ken Burn's latest film on the national parks. Great stuff!

-Robert

[Trainer]

Brooksley Born should take his job.

During her tenure on the CFTC, Born warned Congress and the President of the need to regulate financial instruments known as over the counter (OTC) derivatives, but her warnings were disregarded. Lack of regulation ultimately led to the crash of the derivatives market, and helped trigger the economic and financial crisis in the fall of 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born

[stormholloway]

"Lack of regulation ultimately led to the crash of the derivatives market, and helped trigger the economic and financial crisis in the fall of 2008."

Yeah right.

[Trainer]

SH, are you are freaking hilarious.

[MichaelChang]

Originally Posted by stormholloway

"Lack of regulation ultimately led to the crash of the derivatives market, and helped trigger the economic and financial crisis in the fall of 2008."

But this is not a wrong statement.

[chess9]

Originally Posted by Trainer

Brooksley Born should take his job.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born

Well Paulson and the FED (our dearly beloved Bernanke and Geithner while at the NY FED), and Bush's economic advisors jumped her like she was a socialist! She was only suggesting some mild regulatory reforms, yet they thought the markets would take care of themselves. LOL! Talk about blind. Must have been the masturbation....

A well regulated Capitalism is necessary for the preservation of Liberty. (with apologies to Jefferson)

Storm, you are so wrong.....

-Robert

[BreakPoint]

Originally Posted by chess9

Yes, he never should have been hired in the first place. And ditto for Larry Summers and his crew. No change there....

-Robert

Exactly! Geithner and Summers were part of the crew during the Clinton administration that sowed the seeds and caused the recent financial industry meltdown in the first place! I can't believe that Obama then rewarded Geithner by making him Treasury Secretary. He and Summers (along with Greenspan) were part of the problem.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/

[richw76]

I'm with Chess9. Thoughtful regulation is a requirement.

The quest for short term gains are just too seductive.

If I have a local roofing company I could screw my customers and make an extra couple thousand bucks. But then the company gets a bad name and I have to start and market a new company.

With the wall street firms you make poor business decisions and instead of making an extra few thousand you and your entire family ends up making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars...... and most likely by the time anyone figures out what's going on you're already retired on a beach somewhere.

[chess9]

Originally Posted by BreakPoint

Exactly! Geithner and Summers were part of the crew during the Clinton administration that sowed the seeds and caused the recent financial industry meltdown in the first place! I can't believe that Obama then rewarded Geithner by making him Treasury Secretary. He and Summers (along with Greenspan) were part of the problem.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/

Nice find, but we've got to quit agreeing in public or our reputations will be shot.

-Robert

[chess9]

By the way, the CFTC NEEDS someone who is irascable, stubborn, etc., because commodities traders have more testosterone than brains, and will push and bully you at every turn. Born sounds like the perfect person for the job!

Oh, and it wasn't just Clinton's people, but Bush's people as well who didn't want any talk of regulation of the derivatives markets.

My only hope for all of this is that SOME DAY we will get adults running the insane asylum called Wall Street/Banking/Hedge Funds. What happens to perfectly wonderful Harvard graduates when they hit Wall Street is MONEY. Money has corrupted all of them, and turned them into PIGS.

-Robert

[stanfordtennis alum]

i completely agree.. the man needs to go

[max]

Here's good news; I have to say, most people just aren't aware of the depths and dangers still in existence and threatening us:

Frank: Big banks must pay systemic fee in advance
Systemically risky institutions will be publicly named


WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Large financial institutions will be required to pay a fee in advance into a pool of capital that would be used to help dismantle a large insolvent super-bank, said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., on Tuesday.

Frank said he expects the committee to adopt an amendment later this week to require financial institutions with more than $10 billion in assets to pay in advance into a fund as part of larger bank regulatory reform legislation under consideration. The full House could vote on the legislation in early December.

The Massachusetts Democrat had originally sought to have taxpayers first pay to cover costs of unwinding a large financial institution, and those funds would later be recouped from large banks. But he said Tuesday that he will support the legislation, which will likely delay the initial outlay by financial institutions within six months to a year of the passage of the legislation.

Reuters
Rep. Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee

"I agree that we don't want to hamper the banks as they try to recover," Frank said in a press conference with reporters. "But for those that complain that they are paying for something they won't benefit from, consider that a financial crisis rains on everybody and every financial institution benefits from systemic stability to the markets."

The goal is to provide funds to the creditors, debt holders and counterparties of the failed super-bank so that they don't collapse as well.

Frank added if fund did not have sufficient capital to cover the costs of dismantling a financial institution, the measure would allow Treasury to lend some taxpayer money to cover the costs, with an assumption that the costs would be recouped after the fact.

However, the ability of Treasury to provide those funds would require some "congressional involvement," Frank said, but he didn't provide further details. "We are still working on the mechanism," he said.

Frank also said that the Fed would have an ability to provide liquidity to solvent financial institutions to prop them up in the event of a financial crisis. But he added that that too would be restricted, and that institutions could not borrow from a Fed liquidity facility unless they are "sufficiently capitalized."

Frank added that he expected to support a measure that would be included in the broader financial regulation legislation that would give the systemic risk council the authority to break up large financial institutions if it deems that their size is dangerous to the financial markets.
Systemically risky institutions to be publicly named

The names of large systemically significant financial institutions will be made public once a newly set up council of regulators designates an institution within the category, Frank added.

"They will be made public," he said. "When they are designated systemic institutions they will have new capital and leverage restrictions."

It was unclear previously whether regulators would make this information public or kept confidential.

[chess9]

His original idea, to levy fees after the failures, was a boneheaded one. Thankfully, good sense prevailed. Let's see if the totally bribed full House and Senate vote for good sense. I'd guess NOT.

-Robert

[Steady Eddy]

Originally Posted by stormholloway

"Lack of regulation ultimately led to the crash of the derivatives market, and helped trigger the economic and financial crisis in the fall of 2008."

Originally Posted by MichaelChang

But this is not a wrong statement.

Don't be brainwashed by the media. Regulation doesn't stabilize markets, it causes problems like the one we just had. Look for some quality analysis from someone educated in the field of economics. Don't listen to a moralizer who just shakes her head when things go wrong and talks vaguely of 'greed'. Professor Thomas Sowell is such a person, and here is the book he's written about what caused the latest recession.
http://www.amazon.com/Housing-Boom-B...7288452&sr=1-1

"The Housing Boom and Bust: Revised Edition" The government, in an effort to increase home ownership, pressured banks to give mortgages to people who otherwise would not have qualified. Please don't say in a knee-jerk way, "This shows the need for those wise government bureaucrats to have more power." Or at least don't say that until you've really investigated this. (And "no", listening to "studies" on NPR or PBS or Michael Moore don't count. Read what people with relevant credentials say about this.)

[chess9]

Originally Posted by Steady Eddy

Don't be brainwashed by the media. Regulation doesn't stabilize markets, it causes problems like the one we just had. Look for some quality analysis from someone educated in the field of economics. Don't listen to a moralizer who just shakes her head when things go wrong and talks vaguely of 'greed'. Professor Thomas Sowell is such a person, and here is the book he's written about what caused the latest recession.
http://www.amazon.com/Housing-Boom-B...7288452&sr=1-1

"The Housing Boom and Bust: Revised Edition" The government, in an effort to increase home ownership, pressured banks to give mortgages to people who otherwise would not have qualified. Please don't say in a knee-jerk way, "This shows the need for those wise government bureaucrats to have more power." Or at least don't say that until you've really investigated this. (And "no", listening to "studies" on NPR or PBS or Michael Moore don't count. Read what people with relevant credentials say about this.)

That's ok, I'll take Dr. Alan Blinder's word, rather than the word of a right wing ideologue who's forgotten his roots after bleaching them white.

-Robert

[Serve em Up]

All of the regulation in the world does no good if no one is enforceing the regulation.

Where is the SEC, and Office of Thrift Supervision, and other agencies. They all should have been fired in this mess.

[chess9]

Originally Posted by Serve em Up

All of the regulation in the world does no good if no one is enforceing the regulation.

Where is the SEC, and Office of Thrift Supervision, and other agencies. They all should have been fired in this mess.

Yes, and Dr. Alan Blinder's lecture makes exactly that point. The FED in particular had plenty of tools to handle parts of this mess and did nothing because the bloody FED, and the LIBERTARIAN WING OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (and Clinton's old econ staff) is full of Chicago School of Economics WHACKOS who never met a government regulation they liked. Chris Cox is from that school. He sat on his hands. Notice how quiet he's been about the many SEC screwups, including the tawdry Madoff affair?

-Robert

[max]

Rob: you're dead spot on re: the libertarian yappers. This is such patent nonsense--it was discredited decade ago. Our economic world is FAR more complicated than Adam Smith's simple diagram.

I screamed like crazy to my friends as Bush gutted the SEC--but of course few people know or care.

We have to be vigilant and constantly point out Alan Greenspan's vacant confession to Congress that the "invisible hand" is in reality, invisible and not there. The Grand Libertarian Sham.