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Let Me Be Clear

Says Timmy Geithner:

“Let me be clear,” Geithner told the committee. “The days when a major insurance company could bet the house on credit default swaps with no one watching and no credible backing to protect the company or taxpayers must end.”

But it is fine if a major automobile company bets the house on plug-in-cars with everyone watching andwith tons of backing for the company from the taxpayers.Gotta love the hypocrisy here. You also gotta love how they slip the hedge funds into this new regulatory framework, when arguably they have been the most stable institutions in this whole deal. In fact, they are being asked to play a big role in the toxic asset plan. Just the precursor for more plunder.

3 Responses to “Let Me Be Clear”

  1. Harry Wood says:

    Wintercow, I read that statement three times, and then decided to write on your site that I cannot parse it. Gets a big red line, and a full grade off if it were ever submitted to me by a sophomore at Trinity-Pawling. The previous was a sentence fragment, I know, and that was just a comma splice too. Tim’s fault, however, is not with grammar, but rather with making sense, and in this category he gets an A for bullshit.

    Speaking of bullshit, I’m surprised a bit how your lazy students did not raise an eyebrow during your last lecture. Are they aware I would never hire them, or if I did by accident, that I would fire them as soon as I found out they were not thinking? I’ve fired two people, and one was out of necessity, and the only other one was because he could not do the job.

    Tell your lazy students that it is only until they look fondly at the big pieces in the garbage pail that I will think of giving them any scraps, and that’s after the cats, who earn it by getting the mice.

    Tell ’em there are a lot of people out there who are the nice guys, like me. We don’t care about your time in Tiny’s Bengal Inn.

    Tell ’em that if they don’t know shit, as Dick Cheney said to Pat Leahy, “Go fuck yoursel[ves].”

    I thought to e-mail this comment because of the vulgarity, but I thought it might be accessible to your fucking lazy students, who might google it looking for other fucking lazy students of the opposite, or perhaps the same sex. Bet this generates many hits, Mike. I’m going to throw in perverted, polyamory, and Barney Frank.

  2. Harry Wood says:

    OK, I did understand what Geithner was saying, but he gets an F for being clear. He’s saying that AIG should be punished for engaging in credit swap insurance, but after being forgiven for insuring some people, in particular “homeowners” on the south side of Chicago who bought $500M baloon mortgages to buy a nice property on Lake Michigan.

    Another thought perhaps not related to this, but an interesting question: George Soros is widely regarded as a successful billionaire, having bet on curriencies, short and long. I have been amazed how he always appears to be on the right side of the trade. As I heard tonight, “Many people have profited putting their money with George Soros.”

    That was on O’Reilly, even from Bill’s lips perhaps.

    What ran through my head was: has anyone checked how much cash is in his bank accounts, or ever examined what securities are there? This would be a difficult task, given worldwide bank secrecy laws, and the only ones who could demand such statements would be investors in “him.”

    Maybe fifteen years ago I got a call from a hustler selling something: it may have been even shares in a company making batteries for electric cars, and he confidently dropped George Soros’s name, as if I would be impressed, since back then George Soros was in the news not for his political efforts, but for headlines about him being a billionaire. That was when Bill Gates was a 40 billionaire based on his ability to sell his stock at the market. I hung up, and declined to jump for the deal.

    This month we went to south Florida for R&R. One cannot pick up a local newspaper without stories about Bernie Madoff, and when I looked at his picture I wondered whether he and George Soros have the same hairdresser. I also cannot figure out how Bernie managed to waste $64 billion. I can understand $50 million for the plane, another $50 million for the real estate, and another $20 million for jet fuel, wine, greens fees and caddies, and canapes. But ExxonMobil has a tough time spending $64 billion, unless you are talking about the taxes they pay.

    I wonder whether George Soros is not another Bernie Madoff. I don’t begrudge him for any profits he has made for his own account. I do question how he has been able to make “billions” in his game, who put up the capital, and how someone apparently so ignorant of the way the world works has been too often on the right side of the trade.

    Bernie got in trouble when a few of his investors asked for a few billion of their money. If I were an investor in George Soros, even if I were Boris Yeltsin, I’d ask for an income statement and a balance sheet, and I’d call the auditor personally.

  3. Speedmaster says:

    Well-stated! Good insight, as always.

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