Geithner Passes the Buck - 5 / 20 /2009

Chris Dodd, asked an excellent question today of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. And Geithner's response frankly scared us very badly. He asked the same question we have written about in this blog quite a few times. "Why the US government continues to use tax payer money to pay 100% of claims to financial institutions that were insured by AIG." Geithner's response was long winded, and shocking. The Treasury Secretary said "We, as a government, have no authority to make those decisions."

Does anyone feel weak in the knees hearing this? This is a government that continues to say one thing and do another. They are bailing out all the folks that voted them in and, by coincidence, all the folks that caused this systemic crisis to begin with. The list is long and wide but includes Goldman Sachs executives and union laborers building crappy cars. This government has convinced itself that the solution to the financial crisis is to give all the reins to its friends...and no one is raising this issue publicly because our elected officials are too frightened to speak out against the Obama administration.

I voted Obama in because in my mind the Bush administration had passed huge amounts of tax payer money into a war that seemed to benefit the businesses of his cronies while at the same time keeping the US economy churning through a series of Federal Reserve interest rate maneuvers. These moves were amplified by a reduction in oversight and regulation which, over 10 years, created the greatest credit and asset recession in world history. But that was 6 months ago. Since then huge amounts of the remaining economic value and influence have transferred to the Obama supporters.

To a certain extent, these scenarios are part of every political state. Friends of those in power always get the sweet heart deals. But in this financial crisis, with the future role of American global economic influence in question, the answer to our economic recovery can not be to give the keys to our financial system to our friends and let those who are not our friends fail.

And now under pointed questioning by the senate finance committee, the Secretary of the Treasury says, "We (the government) have no way of making decisions that effect these businesses." Except this government is the majority or the largest shareholder in the very businesses that Geithner claims the government can influence only minimally.

When will this Government take responsibility for its actions and decisions. Who votes the government's shares? They do not want you to know.

This subject will require further discussion - I wait for the review of the Blackrock Mortgage Asset Deal. A sad sad statement made by this administration.

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Brad van Siclen