Infinite Unknown

- IRS Conservative Witchhunt Started In 2011 With High-Level Officials Involved (ZeroHedge, May 11, 2013)

Tags: Barack Obama, Global News, Government, IRS, Obama administration, Politics, Society, Taxes, Taxpayers, Timothy Geithner, U.S.

- Geithner Admits: “I Never Had A Real Job” (The Daily Bail, Feb 8, 2013):

UPDATE – Geithner Joins CFR As Distinguished Fellow (CFR Press Release)

For once, Turbo told the truth on a weekend talk show.  Sort of.  We could add that Geithner never paid taxes like a real taxpayer either.  Geithner’s ongoing attempt to distance himself from Wall Street’s decade of fraud is laughable.  As President of the New York Fed, Geithner was criminally negligent in his role as Wall Street’s chief regulator.

Timmaaayy tells the truth.

“I find that the charge that — the myth that I worked in Wall Street all my life, somewhat amusing.  But it is part of a narrative that hardened.  People came to view the judgments we were making through the prism of a myth … it’s actually very damaging.  It’s completely false, of course, and it, you know, should have been corrected a long time ago.  What I say is that I never had a real job.”

Flashback – Geithner with Fareed Zakaria - WSJ

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This is worth watching:

Max Keiser on Geithner’s AIG Crime

Tags: Banking, Barack Obama, CFR, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Government, Obama administration, Politics, Timothy Geithner, U.S.

- Tim Geithner Joins CFR As “Tireless And Creative Practitioner And Thinker” (ZeroHedge, Feb 6, 2013):

Well that didn’t take long. It appears spending time with the family is over-rated (or perhaps they couldn’t stand him either) as Turbo Timmy has landed his first post-Treasury gig (Citi next?). The Council of Foreign Relations has graciously brought this “tireless and creative” thinker on board as a Distinguished Fellow. His role… “to strengthen their capacity to produce thoughtful analysis of issues at the intersection of economic, political, and strategic developments.” We assume this is his gracious ‘giving back’ phase before six-months down the line slithering over to the big bucks at a bank when he suspects no one will be looking…The mutual adoration society continues..

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Tags: Barack Obama, CFR, Council on Foreign Relations, Economy, Global News, Government, Obama administration, Politics, Timothy Geithner, U.S.

- Geithner’s Legacy: The “0.2%” Hold $7.8 Trillion, Or 69% Of All Assets; And $212 Trillion Of Derivative Liabilities (ZeroHedge, Jan 26, 2013):

As of this morning Tim Geithner is no longer Treasury Secretary. And while Tim Geithner’s reign of clueless pandering to the banks has left the US will absolutely disastrous consequences, an outcome that will become clear in time, the most ruinous of his policies is making the banks which were too big to fail to begin with, so big they can neither fail nor be sued, as the recent fiasco surrounding the exit of Assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer showed. Just how big are these banks? Dallas Fed’s Disk Fisher explains.

It is important to have an accurate view of the landscape of banking today in order to understand the impact of this proposal.

As of third quarter 2012, there were approximately 5,600 commercial banking organizations in the U.S. The bulk of these—roughly 5,500—were community banks with assets of less than $10 billion. These community-focused organizations accounted for 98.6 percent of all banks but only 12 percent of total industry assets. Another group numbering nearly 70 banking organizations—with assets of between $10 billion and $250 billion—accounted for 1.2 percent of banks, while controlling 19 percent of industry assets. The remaining group, the megabanks—with assets of between $250 billion and $2.3 trillion—was made up of a mere 12 institutions. These dozen behemoths accounted for roughly 0.2 percent of all banks, but they held 69 percent of industry assets.

What does this mean numerically? Continue reading »

Tags: Banking, Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Derivatives, Derivatives market, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Government, Lanny Breuer, Obama administration, Politics, Society, Timothy Geithner, U.S.

- Tim Geithner’s Annotated Exit Interview: “F— The Banks” And Other Pearls (ZeroHedge, Jan 25, 2013)

Tags: Banking, Barack Obama, Global News, Government, Obama administration, Politics, Timothy Geithner, U.S.

- Did Tim Geithner Leak Every Fed Announcement To The Banks? (ZeroHedge, Jan 18, 2013):

On August 17, 2007, the Fed’s Board of Governors announced a key change to primary credit lending terms, whereby the discount rate was cut by 50 bp — to 5.75% from 6.25% — and the term of loans was extended from overnight to up to thirty days. This reduced the spread of the primary credit rate over the fed funds rate from 100 basis points to 50 basis points. News of the emergency measure was supposed to be kept secret from market participants as it was substantially market moving. It wasn’t. And just when we thought our opinion of the outgoing Treasury Secretary and former NY Fed head Tim Geithner, whose TurboTax incompetence is now legendary, couldn’t get lower, it got lower. Much lower. From the August 16, 2007 transcript (page 13 of 37) of the conference call preceding this announcement.

MR. LACKER. If I could just follow up on that, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Yes, go ahead.

MR. LACKER. Vice Chairman Geithner, did you say that [the banks] are unaware of what we’re considering or what we might be doing with the discount rate?

VICE CHAIRMAN GEITHNER. Yes.

MR. LACKER. Vice Chairman Geithner, I spoke with Ken Lewis, President and CEO of Bank of America, this afternoon, and he said that he appreciated what Tim Geithner was arranging by way of changes in the discount facility. So my information is different from that.

CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead, Vice Chairman Geithner.

VICE CHAIRMAN GEITHNER. Well, I cannot speak for Ken Lewis, but I think they have sought to see whether they could understand a little more clearly the scope of their rights and our current policy with respect to the window. The only thing I’ve done is to try to help them understand—and I’m sure that’s been true across the System—what the scope of that is because these people generally don’t use the window and they don’t really understand in some sense what it’s about.

At least we now know who the bankers’ mole on the FOMC was before, as gratitude for his services, he was promoted to Treasury Secretary of the US. Because if he leaked one, he leaked them all.

Tags: Bank of America, Banking, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Government, Ken Lewis, Politics, Timothy Geithner, U.S.

Watch Taibbi and Black discuss Geithner’s legacy and the issues behind the government’s Wall Street bailout, originally aired on January 11, 2013:

- Taibbi: Geithner is ‘the architect of too big to fail’ (The Raw Story, Jan 12, 2013):

The legacy of outgoing U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will be simple, said Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi on Friday — and unflattering.

“He’s the architect of “too big to fail,” Taibbi told Democracy Now hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. ” When this all blows up — and it’s going to blow up, for sure, because things can’t continue the way they are right now — people are going to look back in history, and they’re going to say, “Who was to blame for this?” And Timothy Geithner is going to be the guy who designed this entire system.”

Continue reading »

Tags: Banking, Barack Obama, Collapse, Economy, Global News, Government, Jack Lew, Matt Taibbi, Obama administration, Timothy Geithner, U.S., Wall Street, William Black

- Secrets and Lies of the Bailout (Rolling Stone, Jan 4, 2013):

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you’d think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we’ve been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.

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Tags: AIG, Bailout, Bank of America, Banking, Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Bush administration, Citigroup, Economy, FDIC, Fed, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, General Motors, George Bush, Global News, GM, Goldman Sachs, Government, Great Depression, Henry Paulson, Jamie Dimon, Larry Summers, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Neil Barofsky, Nomi Prins, Obama administration, Politics, Ponzi schemes, Sheila Bair, Society, TARP, Taxpayers, Timothy Geithner, U.S., Wachovia, Wall Street, Wells Fargo

- Santelli Channels Cramer: “The Fed Doesn’t Have A Clue” (ZeroHedge, Dec 27, 2012):

Comparisons of the failure of the TARP vote and the fiscal cliff were summarily dismissed early in this clip – though CNBC’s Rick Santelli does note, as we have vociferously stated that a market correction is the only impetus to get something done in Washington. Having abandoned his channel’s “Rise Above” meme in the face of this “childish nonsense”, Santelli agrees that politicians “can show incompetence at very critical moments.” Then, sparked by the anchor’s comment that “the markets would know if [the cliff] was going be a horrific thing”, Santelli goes ‘off-script’ with an epic take-down of all things CNBC: “the stock market is an immediate gratification for investors to make money;” and asks the key question “Why do we look to the Dow Jones Industrial Average to handicap if this country is going to go down the sewer in a couple of years? It doesn’t give us a glimpse into the future.” He adds that the market is not discounting $100 trillion of unfunded liabilities in our future and then slams the door shut with what will likely become the new meme: “The Fed doesn’t have a clue, neither does the President, neither does Congress.”

Forward to 4:30 for the epic rant (or enjoy the whole thing as Rick summarily dismisses the much hoped for “Rise Above” theme)

Tags: Barack Obama, Debt, Global News, Government, Obama administration, Politics, Rick Santelli, Timothy Geithner, U.S.

- Geithner – US To Hit Debt Ceiling On December 31 (ZeroHedge, Dec 27, 2012):

Just because the Fiscal Cliff was not enough…

• GEITHNER SAYS U.S. WILL REACH STATUTORY DEBT LIMIT ON DEC. 31
  
• GEITHNER: WILL USE `EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES’ TO AVOID DEBT LIMIT
  
• TREASURY: SPECIAL MEASURES TO MAKE $200 BLN  ROOM UNDER LIMIT
  
• GEITHNER: $200 BLN TO LAST TWO MONTHS IN `NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES’
  
• GEITHNER: TAX, SPENDING `UNCERTAINTY’ MAKES DURATION NOT CLEAR
• GEITHNER SAYS ALL MEASURES HAVE BEEN USED IN PRIOR IMPASSES
  
• GEITHNER OUTLINES PLANS IN LETTER TO SENATE MAJORITY LEADER

So since America’s dysfunctional congress failed to “rise above” the Fiscal Cliff, it at least succeeded to “rise above” the debt ceiling. One out of two is not too bad…

To summarize: debt ceiling hit December 31, just in time for the no deal on the Fiscal Cliff, and then the Treasury will proceed to defund various Government retirement accounts for the next two and a half months, when sometime in March the true deadline to getting a joint solution on both the Cliff and the Debt Ceiling will becoming unextendable as the alternative is truly unthinkable: living within its means!
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Tags: Barack Obama, Debt, Global News, Government, Obama administration, Politics, Timothy Geithner, U.S.