Well folks get ready for a prolonged recession-the Senate Finance Committee cleared the nomination of Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary.  Is this the best Obama can do? In fact, Geithner could have been a prime candidate for a Bush appointment due to his incompetence or corruption.

First, Geithner didn’t pay his 2001 and 2002 taxes until he was nominated-CNBC has reported the IRS waived Geithner fines, what you or I would have had to pay.  Obama, and other Geithner apologists, say this was an oversight.  Lets see, not paying your taxes for four years in a row is an oversight?  He either thinks he is above the law or he’s just incompetent.

A second reason, and a more important, Geithner should not be confirmed is due to his previous position as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  There he worked closely with Henry Paulson on several projects, bailing out AIG and TARP- is this an oversight, plain incompetence or corruption? I don’t need to talk about AIG since everyone remembers how AIG executives partied on taxpayer dollars in California. Remember the purpose of TARP was to help provide liquidity for banks so they could lend money to people who were refinancing or lending to small businesses etc. So under this guise, Paulson and gang distributed funds with no attention to ensuring that banks would use it to increase lending.  This is one of the biggest rip offs of public funds since the no bid contracts that the Cheney/Bush administration gave away to their buddies.

Geithner is one of many available bankers and/or economists available to treasury secretary—believe me there is a glut in the market, just check out any street corner in NYC.  Lets get one who can pass the character test and one who pays taxes as well as one who is competent.

Amen to that!  Thanks, Spy Buddy!

*Update* Geithner Says China Is Manipulating Its Currency – no shit, Sherlock!  Let’s see what you plan to do about it.

Banks to Continue Paying Dividends
Bailout Money Is for Lending, Critics Say

U.S. banks getting more than $163 billion from the Treasury Department for new lending are on pace to pay more than half of that sum to their shareholders, with government permission, over the next three years.

The government said it was giving banks more money so they could make more loans. Dollars paid to shareholders don’t serve that purpose, but Treasury officials say that suspending quarterly dividend payments would have deterred banks from participating in the voluntary program.

As with Iraq reconstruction and Katrina, laissez-faire ideology trumps reality. With Bremer and Brown, the principals involved had little experience in handling the emergency they faced or the foresight to marshall government power to benefit the many. Paulson has been presented as this awesome and brilliant financier, whereas what he’s demonstrating is total incompetence in handling this crisis, mixed with a singular ability to consider only the needs of his banking brethren.

In the British version of the bailout plan, the government put up taxpayer funds in return for receiving warrants (future shares in banks), suspended corporate dividends, and a requirement that the bailout money be paid out in loans. In other words, the goal was to help get the banks on their feet AND help the general economy moving again.

In the U.S. Treasury plan, the first version (“Let’s buy all their toxic assets”) was quickly discarded as unfathomably stupid. Plan B was to become part-owners in the banks (“Socialism!”), but apparently with no other safeguards to make sure the money isn’t being used for anything other than doing the public good. So the banks are using it to purchase other banks, hoarding it to pad their balance sheets, giving out executive bonuses, and paying dividends to their own shareholders.

Anything, in other words, but what the bailout is supposed to achieve. The whole thing is turning into a direct siphoning of taxpayer funds into the pockets of bankers and corporate shareholders.

Ideological blindness mixed with incompetence got us Iraq and Katrina. We shouldn’t be surprised if the bailout plan turns out the same way.

MY DEAR AMERICAN FRIEND:

I AM NEEDING TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.
I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 700 BILLION OF YOUR DOLLARS (US). IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.
I AM WORKING WITH HIGHLY REPUTABLE MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY IF MY POLITICAL PARTY WINS UPCOMING ELECTION, WHICH WE CERTAINLY WILL BECAUSE WE ARE IN CONTROLING OF THE HIGHEST SUPREME COURT. YOU MAY REMEMBER HIM AS A SENATOR AS LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S.
THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE. YOU MUST TRUST ME COMPLETELY AND NOT ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TRANSACTION. YOU HAVE MY WORD NO ONE WILL DO ANYTHING WRONG WITH THE MONEY.
THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED YOUR BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTH PERSONAGE WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED. YOU ARE THAT PERSONAGE.
PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN, GRANDCHILDREN AND THOSE YET UNBORN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THIS INFORMATION I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS WE PROMISE WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS AND PRODUCE A LONG-TERM RETURN ON INVESTMENT FOR YOU AND THOSE YOU LOVE.
YOURS FAITHFULLY
MINISTER OF TREASURY H. PAULSON

Congressional Democrats began to set their own terms on Sunday for a plan to rescue the nation’s financial institutions, including greater legislative oversight of the Treasury Department, more direct assistance for homeowners and limits on the pay of top executives whose firms seek help.

The Democrats’ demands came as Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. blanketed the Sunday talk shows to promote the Bush administration’s $700 billion bailout package, emphasizing that it was needed not just for Wall Street, but for all Americans. He urged Congress to move swiftly to approve a “clean” rescue plan without tacking on extra programs.

“I hate the fact that we have to do it, but it’s better than the alternative,” Mr. Paulson said on “Fox News Sunday.”

The Bush administration proposal could be the largest government bailout of private industry in the nation’s history, and it calls for nearly unfettered powers to the Treasury secretary. There is intense pressure to pass a rescue measure quickly because the markets remain jittery.

See, this just goes to show that what got Bonnie and Clyde into trouble wasn’t their actions, but their poor framing. Instead of accepting the common description of what they were doing as “robbing banks,” they should have just insisted that they were seeking “clean” withdrawals, without all that unnecessary oversight and intrusive red tape.