The knives are starting to come out. DeFazio claims the discontent among the progressive wing has become acute. The Democratic Congressmen who have a operating brain cell know the considerable failings of Obama’s economic policies will be visited on them unless serious corrective action is taken in pretty short order. And that won’t happen with Summers and Geithner in place.
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Geithner is a placeholder at best. The setup is to bring Dimon in but they don’t want to have to do it in the 3rd inning. There is a reason the sycophantic MSM can’t get enough of him. rinse wash repeat.
Dimon’s a possibility, along with several others. Substantive change, even with Summers and Geithner gone, is a non-starter.
Look at the twisted, warped mess that health care “reform” has become even without the use of such totems as has our economic policy. It’s guaranteed profits for the massively inefficient private health care industry that has already hiked its fees in preparation for the gravy train. I’m flummoxed that we not only didn’t reduce the portion of GDP allocate towards health care: we somehow have exacerbated the problem and entrenched a totally broken system. It’s mind-blowing.
My corporation just sent this out to all staff: “The renewal rates from the 2009 Blue Cross Blue Shield plans to 2010, both PPO and HSA, increased more than 20%.” We get this generosity in lieu of any salary increases, amidst an onslaught of firings. I’m furious.
My sister went door-to-door for Obama and is one of the true believers. When I bring up my frustration with her, she inevitably responds, “politics is the art of the possible. This is the best we could do.”
That is a bullshit answer, particularly when our actions are overtly harmful. I don’t care what’s possible in this regime anymore. I’m ready for change in the Jeffersonian sense of the word.
And firing Geithner or Summers, as richly satisfying as it would be, is not going to do a damned thing.
Dimon! Dimon, are you kidding me. Dimon is the God for saken Anti-Christ. The smooth talking Devil himself. The entire JPM Empire was not handed over to some God fearing person to do good deeds for his fellow Man. Please look outside the circle for your Savior. Where is Mother Theresa when you need her most! Kapish
My point is, who even cares anymore? It doesn’t even matter who the figureheads in our nominally elected government are. I didn’t vote in the election because I couldn’t in good conscience support either candidate or the system itself. Things will happen the way they’re going to happen, and that’s that, whether Geithner, Dimon, Summers, Roubini, or anybody short of Karl Denninger is on the outside or the inside.
I’m pinning all my hopes on China to crush our regime. It’s apparently the only way we’ll stop blowing up random countries in the Middle East, supporting the wealthy on the backs of the peasants domestic and abroad, or, hey, even spinning off state-owned industries.
Our regime just offers more make-work, drugs, and handouts to our increasingly impoverished people. “Learned helplessness” should be a meaningful phrase to any person, regardless of political leanings.
Actually, I hear China has some experience spinning off SOE’s. Maybe they know how to spin off the banking industry, the health insurance industry, the auto industry, the real estate industry…
The Chinese care. We will accomodate them.
Spoken as a true Robespierre. My feelings exactly bring in Denninger
“My corporation just sent this out to all staff: “The renewal rates from the 2009 Blue Cross Blue Shield plans to 2010, both PPO and HSA, increased more than 20%.” We get this generosity in lieu of any salary increases, amidst an onslaught of firings. I’m furious.” -NDK
Excellent summary of the economy since Y2K. I’m convinced that McCain picked Palin to guarantee failure because the Republicans didn’t want to get stuck with this shit sandwich. It’s the mother of tar babies. What’s sad is that we don’t have a real RFK or FDR to walk up and tell us the truth here; step up to the plate and risk their career to tell us the real truth – systemically and philosophically that is.
Dimon might as well be the devil. Dimon is the T-5000 of wall street snake oil salesmen. Appoint Shella Beir or Elizabeth Warren as the next TS, NEVER DIMON!
Firing Timmy and Larry? A consummation devoutly to be wished. Although I shudder to think what foul beasts might be scraped up to serve in their place.
Obama is hopeless. The US is in thrall to a group of financial interests that control it from top to bottom. How this will be resolved, God only knows.
Right thing for the wrong reasons, in my opinion. The talking points behind it sound a lot like other ideas that have been floated before, and then completely co-opted by the banking industry.
Small business lending- all they have to do is bail out GE capital again.
Political theater aside, its about time. Summers is like that really bad song that gets stuck in your head. The first time you hear it its not that bad, maybe it even sounds good. A year later its really annoying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9zpnLBtwwg
Over a decade later…
Fire Geithner and Summers? YESSIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Proud to be an Oregonian tonight. Give’em hell Peter!
The more cynical part of me says this is just more Kabuki theater.
DeFazio has been in congress since the mid 1990s and represents a fairly liberal area, being the college town of Eugene, OR. It was a veritable hippy haven when I lived there in the late 1970s. And, so I wonder if this is a headfake to mollify some natives that may be restless, what with the more done lately, the ever more prospects for “change” and “hope” diminish.
I imagine there may be some very animated and excited posts at dailykos, with members telling of their member’s “fight,” such as it is on tell-a-vision. Nevertheless having disposed of the left/right paradigm some time ago myself, I will forgo any urges to definitively confirm this.
DeFazio is my representative, and I vote for him.
However, I doubt very much, as much as I’d like to see it happen, that Geithner and Summers be canned.
Why? Because in doing so the Obama administration would be essentially conceding that if blew it, that it has been part and parcel of a scam that has benefited Wall Street and the mega banks at the expense of taxpayers, citizens, and Main Street.
Having said that, pressure from Democratic members of Congress, along with growing support from the populace, will in and of itself chip away at the credibility of the Obama administration. As deficit spending and mismanagement and gift giving to Wall Street are increasingly in the spotlight, more and more Democratic members of Congress will follow suit with DeFazio, as next year’s election draws closer. What will be especially ironic is how these Democratics may find themselves closer to the thinking of Republicans, making for an interesting development to say the least.
Hey Don, I live on the other side of the river and wish I had Peter instead of Wu as my representative.
I say it is way past time for the progressive members of Congress to start clamoring for substantive change on the economic front. If they don’t the tea baggers will assume the moral economy mantle.
I predict the chances of Summers / Geithner being fired is 0% until the statistical wind stops screaming at their back.
Face it, the market has been rallying since March. ‘Green shoots’ have been ‘amongst us’ just as long, the ‘recession has ended’, etc… All of these things can be construed as empirical evidence supporting the claim that Geithner, Summers and their associated policies are successful.
In a more general note, I’d say the Reverend Write election issue established Obama’s behavior quite clearly. That is, that Obama naturally views everyone as ‘good-intentioned’. As such, I suspect that Obama will have a hard time letting either of these men go, and not defending the two when they are ‘attacked’ — even when throwing them to the wolves is the best political strategy.
However, on the more hopeful side, it was also established if that given proper impetus Obama will eventually throw them out on the street.
So, here’s to hoping that Summers and Geithner eventually get their due. Though I doubt it’ll happen until and unless economic data turns sour.
I hope GlenBeck smells blood in the water, otherwise there’ll be no purge at Treasury or EOP at all. At this point the only hope is to induce a lot of churn among these phony reformers so that paralysis impedes further malversation and allows some uncontrolled liquidation too.
I will miss how those two executed perfectly their strategy of ‘Too big to fail, too small to bail.’
Obama will likely stick with Geithner and Summers through the election next year, but the economy will continue to worsen and he will dump them not too soon after. I don’t see their departure sparking a radical rethink of economic and financial policy. Obama and both parties are corporatist and status quo. I don’t see that changing.
2010 still looks like a year of flux. The economy could collapse before the elections but more likely it will be propped up by incumbents in both parties in a general effort to get re-elected. 2011 looks like just a terrible year to me. The chances of the economy hitting the wall are very high. As I have said often here, I do not see our elites of any ideological stripe as capable with dealing our economic problems. In 2011, there will be efforts to address the mess but they will be as misguided and co-opted as previous ones. This systemic ineptitude could spawn either a destructive populism or a genuine reform movement.
How is the economy going to “hit a wall”? Lets see, Bush’s anti-growth tax cuts phased out. That in itself was a HUGE reason for the investment drought of the 00’s which means we have some catchup to do. Yet, nobody mentions it. The production side of the housing bust is over and will probably begin to recover by 2012. Americans have savings to burn and will spend it once enough time for healing begins, adding more fuel to the recovery.
You better believe there will be a expansion. The problem is the real economy thanks to the capitalist’s internationalism, has led to such a decay in the real economy, no longer will consumption be able to trigger a full recovery. The recovery will be half-way and then the cycle will end and we will be back in recession by mid-10’s.
There is only one answer for this mess and we all know REALLY what it is. Even people like Puerco know what it is, but they are scared to death what it means for them. But for Americans, it would be a chance at a 2nd life. A complete top to bottom rebuilding of the nations infrastructure,business and social condition. A chance to leave the suburbs and return to the newly rebuilt cities which will have been cleansed and rebuilt, work for a newly built manufacturing company having pride what they built not worrying about their own personal consumption, satified by their family and faith.
The US deserves a new start,the capitalists have run the country into the ground and threaten to destroy it with tyranny or liquidation(which will turn into tyranny) whether they can overcome the feminization of the Enlightment to bring in that day, remains to be seen.
There is no FDR to save finance capitailsm now.
I wish I could say I followed all the zigs and zags in that comment. I favor sustainable re-industrialization. I just don’t cast it in such eschatological terms.
“However, on the more hopeful side, it was also established if that given proper impetus Obama will eventually throw them out on the street.”
How so, and when exactly was this established? Even assuming it is (or may become) the case, will they just have played their part, and then the next group brought in to play their own? We will be in no better position going forward with nevertheless the same play.
“In a more general note, I’d say the Reverend Write election issue established Obama’s behavior quite clearly. That is, that Obama naturally views everyone as ‘good-intentioned’. As such, I suspect that Obama will have a hard time letting either of these men go, and not defending the two when they are ‘attacked’ — even when throwing them to the wolves is the best political strategy.”
Thank you for that dailykos dispatch.
His behavior can and has been clearly established by simply observing it, as opposed to what is said, and furthermore the two have, more often than not, been diametrically opposed to one another.
Nobody in The Peoples Republic of Oregon is going to do anything about the Obama admin. They are all statist, brainwashed, entitled, idiots involved in bumper sticker politics. That includes DeFazio. Ask him how that pension is going.
LOL. Better than Free Market Totalitarianism and the Gold Merchants lust to deflate and destroy the US economy. Then comes the plutocratic tyranny and genocide all who stand in your…….uh, their way.
Puerco, committing treason isn’t necessary. But you can’t resist your nature.
Completely agree with ‘notsofastfriend’ regarding Dimon.Best of the worst shouldn’t be the criteria for picking a new Treasury Secretary.
GS has amply illustrated what happens when you have a revolving door from Wall Street to Treasuty. Didn’t Hank P. already show us what happens when you put a IB CEO in charge?
Elizabeth Warren for Treasury Secretary! It is time to break the hold of Wall Street on that job.
Agree with Peter T, Elizabeth Warren for TS!
I remember back in the old days the Obama cultists, as part of their 11-dimensional chess/master plan delusion, used to claim that O had only appointed Geithner to let him twist in the wind for a while, become the face of the failed bailout (this was when G was dithering over what eventually becamse the PPIP notion), and then O could fire him, take charge and appoint the “real” Tresury sec, and be the big hero.
Those were the days….
Wizeup, DeFazio is for real. He isn’t just mollifying his district, he absolutely is a progressive and has always voted that way. And on top of that, he’s honest and a good guy. In keeping with my general proclivities, he also has a tendency to get angry and give some rip-roaring speeches on the floor. I would be proud to be represented by him, and I don’t say that about a lot of them. He actually proposes and champions legislation, and he works very hard for his district.
What Summers and Geithner have wrought will not be easily undone; however, firing them is a necessary first step. We’ve lost the momentum — and the moment — when this could have been handled properly. And I got a horrible knot in the pit of my stomach when it was announced that Summers was getting the ear of the President again. I wasn’t as worried about Timmy – I saw that as a necessary expedient. And I devoutly hoped that appointing Volker to at least some spot might help the whole mix. But I think Larry Summers is the most dangerous kind of wrong – the really smart and condescending kind.
As for who to appoint, jeez, we need a hero. Where, exactly, do you find someone who will do what has to be done and take the heat for it? When it turns out that we elected a distant clockmaker God instead of the populist we thought we were getting, what will we do as the two halves of the nation continue to cleave apart, with the half in which I find myself sinking into the sea? I am afraid that Volker is too old to do what has to be done, but he’s proven that he has the industrial-strength set required. I wonder if anyone has asked Volker who HE thinks should be in charge. . . . .
But getting rid of these two malefactors won’t be enough. Treasury and Fed have to be reformed and brought back in line. The power of the purse is supposed to be with people that we elect – and can kick out – every two years.
It’s easy. Chris Whalen is the man! The banksters would be aghast if he was installed.
Obama doesn’t respond to progressive entreaties. Even before he was president (but had been elected, therefore safe to unleash the dogs) he proposed a smaller stimulus than required. A huge chunk was devoted to anti-growth tax cuts. His initial press conference announcing the health care reform push didn’t include any single-payer advocates or any entity that might drive cost containment. It is laughable that he used Paul Volcker in the photo up that presented his new economic team as anything but window dressing. Volcker is pushing for the end of “too big to fail”. He is totally marginalized. If Obama fires Geithner, he will replace him with Larry Summers.
I voted for Obama; my level of unhappiness with him is beyond description, primarily because of Geithner and Summers. There’s a good chance Obama will be a one-termer because of the gigantic mistake of Geithner and Summers. Whether he keeps them or fires them, I wouldn’t vote for Obama again if he were the last person on the planet. I have never felt lied to, to such a degree, as by Obama. By comparison, there wasn’t a single Bush policy I agreed with, but at least you knew what he stood for (very conservative); he didn’t pursue numerous liberal policies after election. Obama, by contrast, ran as the Second Coming of Roosevelt, and instead is governing as a Republican pretending to be a Democrat. NOT what I thought I was voting for; he will feel my wrath at the next election.
The reason I voted for Obama was that I realized early on that our government has been taken over by a financial mafia. I realized my mistake when he said: “lets not act in anger against the bankers”. So my question to Obama is if you can’t act in anger when these organize capos rape an loot the people by billions of dollars do tell me what will it get you angry? It is not his team, it is not congress it is not the bankers: lets face it we pick a wall-street poppet as commander in chief
And give Volcker Summers’ job.
Get rid of Geithner, Summers and Bair. In fact remove all incumbents that do not represent the people but instead, represent the financial cartel that is GS, JPM and The Fed. By allowing these individuals to do as they wish – (is) a nepotistic course that creates a network of insiders (creating obvious conflicts of interest), with favoritism and what some would say is outright collusion between the organizations/cartel to ensure that selected bankers remained in business.
Do not replace Geithner with Bair or Dimon – we need some new blood. Bair doesn’t have a clue how Holding Companies operate and Dimon is a crook pure and simple.
Volker is no hero. He had no problem putting thousands out of work by raising interest rates, guaranteeing Reagan’s election as prez. We all know the result; deregulation and the yellow brick road to the present financial crises (gold for the bankers).
I think Kathi is right, Geithner will be replaced by Summers. In fact, the first TV appearance he made as TS the interviewer made some comment to the effect that his appointment was contentious and that some people want him replaced. His answer, ” Not yet, but they may get their chance.” It was a setup. He may simply be the sacrificial lamb until he is removed and moves into a cush job at Golden Sacks.
bob,
nice blast from the past with The Cardigans.
I kind of favored this one for Tim and Larry,
the mind meld children of Rob Rubin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aINmJ5ieM6Y
DeFazio donates his salary to charity & lives in a modest Apt in DC..His wife supports them….He drives a mid sixties vintage Plymouth Valiant….Or is it a Dodge Dart?