Geithner Operating On A Wing And Prayer
Allen L Roland
Robert Scheer, Truthdig, sums up my feelings precisely when he wrote yesterday " What an insipid anticlimax! Rising to 'a challenge more complex than our financial system has ever faced,' Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner promised on Tuesday to give trillions more to the very folks who profited from that malignant complexity. For all the brave talk about transparency and accountability in the banking bailout, he gave the swindlers who got us into this mess yet another blank check to buy up the 'toxic assets' they gleefully created." http://www.truthout.org/021109S
The one reality the Obama administration does not want to face or share with the American people is that the major banks are insolvent so Treasury Secretary Geithner, operating on a wing and prayer, throws more money at the burning wreckage and stalls for time instead of telling the truth: Allen L Roland 
As Robert Borosage pointed out yesterday ~ " the major banks in the US are insolvent. They aren't addled by a temporary fever. They are broke. If they actually marked their toxic paper to the market price ~ where there is one ~ their losses would wipe out their capital, even including the billions kicked in by the government in the first round. Clearly, the Obama administration ~ like the Bush administration before it ~ hasn't accepted that reality." http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009020711/cant-get-there-here
And to add more fuel to this fire ~ Nearly 700 Merrill Lynch executives ( which was purchased by Bank of America last year ) had cash bonuses of more than $1million each for last year, New York’s top law enforcement official disclosed. Andrew Cuomo, New York’s attorney-general, called the bank’s decision to bring forward nearly $4billion of pay-outs a “surprising fit of corporate irresponsibility” that raised “serious and disturbing questions”. http://www.ourfuture.org/news-headline/2009020712/700-merill-executives
As Maureen Dowd writes ~ " the Obama crowd is hung up on the same issues that the Bush crew was hung up on last September. Which of the potentially $2 trillion or $3 trillion dollars in toxic debt will the taxpayers buy and what will we pay? "
One economist has had it right all along ~ Nouriel Roubini who not only predicted this economic chaos but now adds ~ " The U.S. banking system is effectively insolvent in the aggregate; most of the U.K. banking system looks insolvent too; and many other banks in continental Europe are also insolvent .... Only nationalization can break the cycle that is fostering gargantuan taxpayer rip-offs for the benefit of "financial supermarket monstrosities." http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/255507/it_is_time_to_nationalize_insolvent_banking_systemsObama, be forewarned ~ Only truth and transparency can restore faith and trust in our financial markets as well as the executive branch .
Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/02/12.html
Cartoon courtesy of Tom Toles / Washington Post
Author's Website: http://www.allenroland.com
Author's Bio: Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net
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