RSSObama Wants Increased Oversight of Executive Pay at all Banks, not Just TARP Banks … Hello Socialism
Increased oversight of bank executive pay … code for socialism. We did not need 
further oversight, we needed politicians to do their job and provide some sort of oversight at all. This is just a CYA by politicians and a socialist power grab by Barack Obama. Does anyone really wonder why the stock market continues to struggle? This Monday embattled Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner aims to purchase as much as $1 trillion in troubled assets. That’s correct, tax payer dollars going to pay for toxic debt that no one wants. Hold the phone, as Geithner and Obama roll out yet another spending plan, pay close attention to these comments from The Chosen One … The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks. Not just banks that accept federal TARP money … ALL BANKS!!! Banks that did nothing wrong, were responsible and have effective business models will now be regulated by an Obama socialist government as to how much effective CEO’s and execs are paid. Ceilings on what a productive individual can be paid … Hello Socialism.
The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving U.S. government bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report about some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last month, as part of the stimulus package, Congress barred top executives at large banks getting rescue money from receiving bonuses exceeding one-third of their annual pay.
How can banks that have nothing to do with the $1 trillion toxic debt buy up be regulated by an overbearing knee-jerk political reaction that is nothing more than a socialist power grab?
The Obama administration is using a multi-pronged attack to get at the heart of the nation’s financial crisis — a mountain of toxic assets weighing on banks’ balance sheets. The plan developed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner aims to purchase as much as $1 trillion in troubled assets, utilizing the resources of the $700 billion bank bailout fund, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The initiative — details are set for release on Monday — will seek to entice private investors, including big hedge funds, to participate by offering billions of dollars in low-interest loans to finance the purchases and also sharing risks if the assets fall further in value. When Geithner unveiled the initial outlines of the administration’s overhaul of the bank rescue program on Feb. 10, the markets took a nosedive. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged by 380 points as investors expressed disappointment about a lack of details.
As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner continues to falter in his job and cannot even staff the Treasury department, Obama continues to defend him. Why shouldn’t he? The MSM continued to defend and make excuses for Barack Obama. Obama and his minions had recently played the doom and gloom card, now suddenly after saying that this is the worst economy since The Great Depression, now Christina Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, says she is “incredible confident” the U.S. economy will rebound within a year.
UPDATE I: What does Paul Krugman of NY Times think of the Obama/Geithner economic plan … CASH FOR TRASH.
Over the weekend The Times and other newspapers reported leaked details about the Obama administration’s bank rescue plan, which is to be officially released this week. If the reports are correct, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, has persuaded President Obama to recycle Bush administration policy — specifically, the “cash for trash” plan proposed, then abandoned, six months ago by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
This is more than disappointing. In fact, it fills me with a sense of despair.
After all, we’ve just been through the firestorm over the A.I.G. bonuses, during which administration officials claimed that they knew nothing, couldn’t do anything, and anyway it was someone else’s fault. Meanwhile, the administration has failed to quell the public’s doubts about what banks are doing with taxpayer money.
Posted March 22, 2009 by Scared Monkeys Barack Obama, Business, Economy, Politics, Socialism, WTF | 7 comments |
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That’s right. Socialism is here.
They wanted it. They got it.
Watched Dick Morris interviewed a couple of weeks ago and he said something that I had suspected.
That Obama is trying to move the country so far to the left and as quickly as possible, with no consideration as to what will happen, including Obama sacrificing his possibility of getting re-elected in 2012. Which I think is a forgone conclusion. And if it isn’t now, it will be by 2012.
Five Signs of a Flailing Presidency – Fred Barnes – http://www.weeklystandard.com
The White House tries its hand at damage control.
You don’t have to be an old Washington hand to spot the telltale signs of a presidency and an administration in serious trouble. There’s nothing new about these clues. The inability to get their stories straight–that’s a hardy perennial of high-level officials caught in the vise of political embarrassment. A president who skips town to avoid the White House press corps and speak directly to the American people–we’ve sure seen that before. So in a sense the AIG mess has touched off nothing more than business as usual.
What goes on in Washington usually comes across as background noise to the public, but not this time. Bonuses for AIG executives are like the infamous Bridge to Nowhere–an issue that’s broken through outside Washington. And we know it’s become a major political problem for the president because he and his administration act as if it has. Here are five signs of this:
1. His allies are moving to protect the president. In a political emergency, this is the highest obligation of everyone in the administration. The president must be distanced as far as possible from decisions that led to the problem, even if he is made to look out-of-touch or actually incompetent.
In the AIG case, Obama is like a cuckolded spouse, portrayed by administration officials as the last person to learn about the bonuses, though he signed the economic stimulus legislation with a provision assuring they’d be paid. A front-page account in the Washington Post played along, absolving the entire administration of blame. Attributed to “government and company officials,” the story said Federal Reserve officials were at fault, having failed to alert anyone in the administration, much less Obama, in a timely fashion.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said he didn’t tell the White House until March 12, two days after he learned of bonuses totaling $165 million and the day before the checks went out. What could Obama do? He was “stunned,” the president told Jay Leno last week. Obama said he takes full responsibility for the mess. Then he went on to blame others.
2. The president gets out of town. In the final stages of the Watergate scandal in 1974, President Nixon flew to Cairo, where he was greeted by one million Egyptians along the route of his motorcade. This prompted a question: Can a million Egyptians be wrong? The answer turned out to be yes. Nixon resigned a few weeks later.
Okay, the AIG flap isn’t Watergate. But last week was a good time for Obama to skip town, mingle with worshipful fans, and dodge the (suddenly) unfriendly Washington media mob. The idea is to get through to the American people directly, without the press’s filtering his every word. So in California, he spoke to a town hall meeting, the preferred venue of presidents under political stress. He was interviewed by a sympathizer on talk radio, then by Jay Leno, who invariably makes his guests look good, then went to a research center for electric cars. He put off a White House press conference until the following week, when the AIG frenzy may have eased.
3. Top spokesmen dismiss the crisis as a distraction. Anything the president doesn’t want to deal with or discuss, like AIG bonuses, is automatically a distraction from the important business the American people have elected him to focus on. And Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said AIG wasn’t just a minor distraction. As furious as Obama was over the bonuses, Emanuel said last week, the president’s “main priority is getting the financial system stabilized, and he believes this is a big distraction.”
Though David Axelrod, Obama’s White House political adviser, didn’t use the word “distraction,” the Washington Post reported that he was making the same point. “People are not sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about AIG,” he said. “They are thinking about their own jobs.” And that’s what Obama is thinking about.
4. Administration figures can’t keep their stories straight. It’s easy to keep your story straight when you’re telling the truth. It gets harder when you’re not. Geithner initially said he learned of the AIG bonuses on March 10. He tried to give himself wiggle room by saying this was when he was informed about the size and scope of the bonuses. This isn’t true. It turns out he was questioned on March 3 by Democratic congressman Joe Crowley of New York in very specific terms about the bonuses. Crowley noted that AIG was “slated to pay an additional $162 million in bonuses to 393 participants in the coming weeks.” Geithner responded to Crowley that he “very much share[s] your concern” about the bonuses. But don’t try to square Geithner’s two statements. That would be a distraction.
Democrat Chris Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, tied himself in knots denying his role in crafting the provision in the stimulus that kept the bonuses alive. One day he indicated he’d had nothing to do with inserting that provision in the bill. He wasn’t even on the Senate-House conference committee that put it in. The next day, he told a different story. Yes, he’d asked senators to include the provision, but he did so only because Treasury officials urged him to. No wonder Dodd is in reelection trouble.
5. The president indulges in hyperbole. Presidents sometimes lose their rhetorical grip during a political controversy. Obama has. He went into high gear defending Geithner. With the exception of Alexander Hamilton, no Treasury secretary has “had to deal with the multiplicity of issues that Secretary Geithner has,” he said. “He is making all the right moves in terms of playing a bad hand.” Not only that, Obama likened the financial firms Geithner is dealing with to terrorists. “They’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger.”
One more thing. If Obama is showing the effects of a political crisis, how can he josh about basketball and bowling and other light subjects with Jay Leno? When in trouble, play to your strengths, such as being a likeable, regular guy. It worked with Leno. “Mr. President,” he said, “I must say this has been one of the best nights of my life.”
We are in trouble. Obama is indeed moving us so far left that any movement right will not help. Many blacks I talk to think this is great and about time. I’m not sure any one in Government has the will not to buy there votes by getting everyone dependent on government for everything.
Socialism is here and Nancy Pelosi loves it!
While I disagree with any kind of cap on executive pay, the $1 trillion to help purchase the toxic debt assets is actually the correct thing to do. It’s similar to the resolution trust corporation (rtc) during the savings and loan crisis which turned out eventually to be profitable for the taxpayer.
The only way the liquidity of lending can be restored to the banking system is to get the tremendous weight of the un-valued debts off their books. Also, don’t confuse un-valued with value-less. This isn’t the case. Right now there is too big a spread between what the banks bought the debt for and what the market is willing to pay so they are in effect ‘frozen’.
It doesn’t mean they don’t have worth. The idea is to have the gov’t take the assets off the private sectors hands and hold onto them until a healthy baseline can be re-established in free markets. Then, at a later date, those gov’t held assets can be re-sold…many at a profit.
It worked in the early 90′s and it should work now.
Franklin Raines! What about Franklin Raines???? Ninety (90)
million bucks reimbursement for failure of Fannie Mae.
Let’s get that $90 million returned to the People! We can
consider the $21 million for Jim Johnson, and Gorelick’s
$26 million returnable goods as well. Government money
and control gone bad again. Hey, not much news about
Raines’ taking the money altho it’s more than half of what
the fuss about AIG is all about. $90 million for one dude
that totally failed to do his job!
Pass the Socialist blinders if you please.
babyfacemagee: Similar? Well a bit, but #1 the RTC plan didn’t use taxpayers funds to make loans to private investors. #2 the RTC purchased entire failed savings and loans and then sold off the assets – they didn’t purchase only the toxic parts of S&Ls and then attempt to sell the garbage to private investors. #3 the RTC plan didn’t throw billions down a rat hole before jumping on this plan.
The RTC plan was not a perfect plan by any means. The waste and fraud within the RTC was rampant. I worked for the RTC for all of 2 weeks before realizing what was going on inside and quickly bailed.
But Geithner’s long awaited plan is Paulson’s rejected plan. Paulson rejected the plan because he said that there was a huge gap between what banks were willing to sell their toxic assets and what buyers would pay. What’s changed? Are we now hoping that private investors will 6 months later pay more for toxic assets?