Yesterday’s big speech:
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Source:
Secretary Geithner Introduces Financial Stability Plan
Treasury, February 10, 2009
http://www.treasury.gov/press/releases/tg18.htm
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
"Overall household indebtedness is up from $7 trillion to almost $10 trillion since 2000. On this sum, we estimate, the American consumer has an annual interest bill of more than $500 billion; a sum, by the way, that vastly exceeds his current income growth." —Kurt Richebacher
Knowing that the vote over the weekend in Greece was really a referendum on Euro membership, a majority of the Greek Parliament said yes to staying. European Finance Ministers meet again on Wednesday to solidify the 2nd bailout package for Greece at the same time hopefully a deal is consummated between Greece and its creditors this week. The Greek 14.5b euro bond that matures on March 20th is up by 2 pts. The optimism that all will be completed and contained AGAIN to Greece has yields lower in Portugal, Spain and Italy. The iTraxx Financial Index is also narrower by...
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February 11th, 2009 at 9:48 am
I don’t see the word ‘bailout’ in there anywhere. Thieves probably consider that to be equivalent of a ‘lack of clarity’. Nothing in that amalgamation hints at corporate welfare. Maybe the market drop yesterday was a withdrawal reaction to going cold turkey from crack credit?
February 11th, 2009 at 10:09 am
A couple of comments.
Sorry to hear about your book, the criminality of the ratings agencies is one of the MOST important stories in this debacle and I am sure that someone will allow you to tell it, including the use of the word f*ck. You will prevail.
About Geithner, think about it this way: if I was about to take a really important job taking over from a complete tool, and the job necessarily came with a nightmare first year mess to clean up, I would make absolutely sure that I had retained some little suck-up from the previous boss on board ship, so that I can let him take all the flak and then I can throw him overboard right around the time that things start to turn around. The Big O is much smarter than people give him credit for. Watch the body language next time they are together….
February 11th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Oh wow is this Freudian…
Top Words:
New Government Financial System
February 11th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Leftback, but is not Buffett tied to the rating agencies? We can’t have uncle Warren’s image tarnished…
February 11th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Geithner needs to grow a beard, or sideburns…something. Crazy how everything is so superficial even at those levels…
February 11th, 2009 at 10:47 am
“Lagacy assets”…thats our new buzz word, bye bye toxic assets and certainly loan defaults.
February 11th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Buried in Tiny Tim’s word cloud was comment that the bank (not) bailout would require a LOT more that 350B, so here we have 3 parties, the banks, most of which NEED a huge bailout, the Gov which feels they NEED to bailout functionally bankrupt banks and the private investor (vultures) who get a better deal every day, week and month they wait.
February 11th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Glad I had to zoom in to find “taxpayer.”
February 11th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Whatever happened to Dutch auction, suspend mark-to-market and lets go for it! If it’s ggod enough for tulip bulbs it’s good enough for legacy assets.
Dutch auction, also known as descending price auction, uses a bidding process to find an optimal market price for the stock, the lowest price at which an issuing company can sell all the available shares. An alternative to the traditional negotiated pricing process used by underwriters to set IPO prices, it was most recently employed by Google and is used for US Treasury auctions. Named after the famous auctions of Dutch tulip bulbs in the 17th century, it is based on a pricing system devised by Nobel prize winning reconomist William Vickrey.
February 11th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Poor guy, he’s been on the job for two weeks and everyone expects him to save the world. Unless critics have better ideas, everyone needs to back off a bit.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
where’s
“Nationalize ” ?????
February 11th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Any chance you could contact Michael Moore about his latest movie? He needs some inside stuff on Wall Street – or probably at the very least, some good advice about where to start his research.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=245
February 11th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Here is a better Wordle:
“Well, we all are. we’re all Britons and I am your king.
I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous
collective.
You’re fooling yourself. We’re living in a dictatorship.
A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes–
Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.”
February 11th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I’m tired of the Geithner apologists saying that he only had 3 weeks. Bull$hit!
He presided over the NY Fed Bank which was supposed to be regulating these criminals at the time. He did nothing and let them bonus themselves while buidling the largest house of cards the world has ever seen. When the cards began falling, he worked hand in hand with the criminal Paulson to create the largest ever fabulous unaccountable bank giveaway that stole from generations of our children (I intend to make sure tha my kid gets out of this banana republic and never pays for a dime of this theft).
He’s been on the front lines of this problem and has failed to do anything about it for years and he continued his track record yesterday. Geithner is just another bank lackey looking to take from the people and give to the criminals.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Remarkably, the phrase “Holy Shit” doesn’t seem to have been used………
February 11th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
“To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.” – Teddy Roosevelt, American Badass, in delivering the 1912 Progressive Party Platform.
Tim should just bring a history book to the next speech and read it verbatim–would probably do a better job even if all the context doesn’t apply.
http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=607
February 11th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Thanks for the montage. I understand the financial crises (plural) a lot better than I did yesterday. On a more serious note, I have a different and more favorable impression of Geithner after his Senate hearing today.
It’s entirely possible that Geithner’s real strength is not so much in ‘knowing it all’, as many economists claim, but rather in an ability to forge a consensus among experts in complex situations. As such, he may just be a consummate ‘facilitator’, which is not such a bad characteristic for these times.
February 11th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Ya know how people always say “the book was better than the movie”. Here’s a new one.
The word cloud was better than the speech.
February 11th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
It was strategically stupid to schedule what was billed as a major speech unless he had something to say. Alternatively, maybe he thought he did have something to say, which is just stupid.