[tomder55]

Let's say you were telling the American people that you had ANOTHER $ trillion + plan to get the credit market flowing again ;and you wanted to instill confidence that your plan would work . What would you say to make a good sale ;a first impression ? What would you say after the President made a teaser comment the day before about this big plan the His math and/or ethics challenged Treasury Sec. would be announcing the next day?

What did Geithner say ?

We will have to adapt our program as conditions change. We will have to try things we've never tried before. We will make mistakes. We will go through periods in which things get worse and progress is uneven or interrupted.

Real Time Economics : Geithner Remarks on Financial Stability Plan


The markets weighed in immediately after . Dow Jones lost close to 400 pts. The S&P off 5% . Consumer Confidence fell to record lows.

What he did say is that TARP ;now called the Financial Stability Plan ,will cost us 3x what TARP originally cost . But although there is a goal to get lenders to start lending again ;and investors to purchase up those garbage "toxic assets " ,there were no details about how it would be done... just a price tag.

He did promise us that the gvt. Would "stress test" banks (whatever that means although I expect it means more gvt. Micromanaging).Best guess is that billions more $$$$$$$ will go into the life support of zombie banks including Citigroup and Bank of America.

Certainly plenty of our money to make more mistakes with.

[450donn]

I guess the real question has to be, Why would we put our trust of the Government handling this situation when they are the ones that caused it? And how can a person who CANNOT even figure out how to do his own taxes properly be the head of anything? The anointed one sure has more problems already to deal with than the economy. His judgment is radically flawed, just like people tried to explain during the campaign and now we are starting to see how flawed he is as a leader. How many more of his cabinet appointees will we discover have major character flaws before we wake up?

[excon]

Geithner the incompetent

Hello tom:

And, Paulson wasn't? Buy gold.

There's one fella out there named Alf Fields. Some people think he's a nut. Some don't. Hell, some people think I'M a nut. But, this nut has been right on with his gold projections:

Major ONE (2000 through 2008) up from $256 to $1,015 (4 times the $255 low);

Major TWO (early 2008 through the end of 2008) down from $1015 to $699, say $700 (a decline of 31%);

Major THREE (happening NOW) up from $700 to $3,500 (5 times the $500 low);

Major FOUR (2010) down from $3,500 to $2,500 (a 29% decline);

Major FIVE (2011) up from $2,500 to $10,000 (also a 4 fold increase, same as ONE).

I don't know.

excon

[George_1950]

I heard Rep. Tom Price on C-SPAN this morning. He said that members of Congress are calling Treasury and asking for money for their preferred banks. This ain't the America that I indentify with.

[tomder55]

Geithner is a student of Paulson and Robert Rubin. I have no idea why Paulson was placed at Treasury.

Gold is looking interesting to me because until recently I did not see the possibility of the government pumping so much money into the system in such a hyper-Keynsian way.Actually ,this goes so far beyond Keynes we need to find a new guru to the swift economic takeover of the economy by the government . I nominate Hugo Chavez .

[tomder55]

Administration officials were greeted with sarcasm and laughter Monday night when they briefed lawmakers and congressional staff on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's new financial-sector bailout project, according to people who were in the room.

The laughter was at its height when Obama officials explained that the White House planned to guarantee a wide swath of toxic assets -- which they referred to as "legacy assets" -- but wouldn't be asking Congress for money. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a bailout opponent in the fall, asked the officials to give Congress the total dollar figure for which they were on the hook. The officials said that they couldn't provide a number, a response met by chuckling that was bipartisan, but tilted toward the GOP side. By guaranteeing the assets, Geithner hopes he can persuade the private sector to purchase a portion of them.

Administration Officials Met With Laughter At Bailout Briefing

[speechlesstx]

I nominate Hugo Chavez .

That seems to be the model we're following.

[George_1950]

"Investment superstar Jim Rogers blasted Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's plan to overhaul the financial system bailout.

"Rogers told CNBC that the plan will push the U.S. debt higher and was created by the same people who failed to see the crisis coming.

"Geithner, formerly president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and a Treasury official in the Clinton administration 'has been dead wrong about everything for 15 years in a row,' Rogers says...

“'If I were on your show 15 weeks in a row and was wrong, you'd probably never invite me back,' he says.
Moneynews - Rogers: Geithner and Summers Clueless

[speechlesstx]

Good news, Obama's Energy Secretary is apparently unaware he's responsible for oil policy. Oil = energy?

Energy Secretary Steven Chu may be a Nobel laureate Ph.D. in physics, but his first forays into energy policy suggest he's a neophyte when it comes to the ways of Washington.

At a forum with reporters on Thursday, the head of the department that has traditionally taken the lead on global oil-market policy, was asked what message the Obama administration had for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries at its meeting next month.

"I'm not the administration," the Cabinet secretary replied. "I will be speaking and learning more about this in order to figure out what the U.S. position should be and what the president's position is."

Chu, who is still without a deputy, said he feels "like I've been dumped into the deep end of the pool" on oil policy.

The day before, reporters asked him about OPEC output levels after a speech to a group of utility regulators. He responded that the issue was "not in my domain."

Later, in a conference call to reporters, he said his answer reflected "more of my naiveté than anything else."

Add to this that The Obama Cabinet is a CEO black hole and things are looking up!

[tomder55]

A black hole ? I see Sharpton preparing a protest march over that comment by politico.

Chu was not brought in for oil he was brought in to kill the coal industry(“Coal is my worst nightmare")

But the truth is ,Chu is hostile to all traditional energy sources . You won't find one that he promotes . Instead he wants them all destroyed.

This is the answer OPEC should've expected from Chu ;the same bs he was quoted as saying by the Wall Street Journal Sept.

“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe"
Times Tough for Energy Overhaul - WSJ.com

Imagine that ! He said it even as the economy was sliding ;that he regretted the falling prices of oil at the time... after a summer when consumers were feeling the difficulties of price increases that had not even reached European levels yet.

Chu has also said that electricity prices are “anomalously low” .Yes that's right... he doesn't think we pay enough for electricity either!

Obama's whole energy team are a bunch of extremists . That includes Ken Salazar and his science adviser John Holdren ;who makes the Goracle look like a moderate about the climate . But Chu has no clue .