How long until stench of corruption & incompetence of economic team rubs off on Obama?

[yurbud]

Poll question: How long until stench of corruption & incompetence of economic team rubs off on Obama?

I still think Obama is great, in spite of being disturbed by who he picked for his economic team, and the corporate compliant folks he picked for ed and HHS, but as Geithner, Summers, Rubin et al kowtow to Wall Street and continue to write check after to check to them with only ''requests'' that they behave better, I'm beginning to wonder how long it will be before Obama is stained by their incompetence and more critically profound corruption since their primary loyalty is with their cronies on Wall Street and not with the American people.

I want Obama to succeed, but you have to wonder how long he can lie down with dogs and not get fleas.

[EFerrari]

1. Obama walked into a Washington that was more corrupt than it's been in my lifetime.

How can he avoid getting his hands dirty? Basically, he has to tent the whole government. :shrug:

[msongs]

2. only wonks care, 98% of people don't pay any attention to who it is :-)

btw that % statistic is just made up, if the government can do it so can I.

Msongs

[yurbud]

4. I wouldn't care either if I thought they were acting in our interests or at least harming us

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. I don't know.

How long are you going to be working that angle?

[yurbud]

5. Do you think that Geithner, Rubin, and Summers are looking out for us or their cronies?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. Us.

Can you name anything specifically that Geithner did wrong?

[yurbud]

12. besides working with Hank Paulson on original no strings attached bailout?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. Yes, besides that.

[yurbud]

26. that's like saying besides eating people what did Jeffrey Dahmer ever do that's so bad?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

32. Have you got anything... say.. since he became treasury secretary?

Or are you still bitter over stuff that happened before Obama was inaugurated?

[yurbud]

34. so you don't think stuff he did ON THE BAILOUT before Obama was inaugurated is relevant?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

37. Uh, no.

We already knew about the bailout before any of this.

Obama voted for it. Obama knew about it when he picked Geithner. Congress knew about it when they confirmed Geithner.

[yurbud]

40. If you read the Spitzer piece, it's clear that there's a lot about the first bailout we DIDN'T know

and if Obama and Congress knew those details and picked and confirmed Geithner anyway, that doesn't exonerate Geithner but reflects poorly on their judgment.

[yurbud]

35. Eliot Spitzer disagrees with you, and he was on this while GOP & DLC were still kissing Wall St. ass

Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

For the answer to this question, we need to go back to the very first decision to bail out AIG, made, we are told, by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last fall. Post-Lehman's collapse, they feared a systemic failure could be triggered by AIG's inability to pay the counterparties to all the sophisticated instruments AIG had sold. And who were AIG's trading partners? No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes. So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.

It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure. The payments to AIG's counterparties are justified with an appeal to the sanctity of contract. If AIG's contracts turned out to be shaky, the theory goes, then the whole edifice of the financial system would collapse.

But wait a moment, aren't we in the midst of reopening contracts all over the place to share the burden of this crisis? From raising taxes—income taxes to sales taxes—to properly reopening labor contracts, we are all being asked to pitch in and carry our share of the burden. Workers around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter work weeks so that colleagues won't be laid off. Why can't Wall Street royalty shoulder some of the burden? Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didn't we already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and aren't they sitting on more than $100 billion in cash? Haven't we been told recently that they are beginning to come back to fiscal stability? If that is so, couldn't they have accepted a discount, and couldn't they have agreed to certain conditions before the AIG dollars—that is, our dollars—flowed?

http://www.slate.com/id/2213942/

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

36. Eliot Spitzer? The disgraced john?

Fuck Eliot Spitzer.

He's irrelevant.

[yurbud]

39. well, that shows how seriously you take the issues and evidence

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

41. And it says the same about you.

[zalinda]

6. You forgot one

He was put in office to do exactly what he is doing, not giving a fuck about the little people. He will do just enough to keep the masses from rioting, but not enough to really change things around. He was a ringer from the beginning.

How many more things can this administration do before people start opening their eyes. AIG bonuses? If they didn't know that was happening then they are incompetent at best. But, I think that they knew and thought that it would pass under the people's radar. They didn't think they would get caught.

zalinda

[Teaser]

8. BORING

damn people, stop boring me.

[Name removed]

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[greguganus]

9. People usually don't care about things when they don't affect them.

Now that almost everyone is being affected, people are starting to pay attention.

[stillcool]

10. well..he better get out of D.C.

I don't know what country people have been living in, or what government they've been under the illusion they have. They want novices in global policy positions..not only no one who is in the top of their field, but no one who has ever brushed soldiers with anyone who has garnered a modicum of success. They want Obama, the government, and the country to fail. I certainly understand the sentiment, and more times than I like to admit, hope they get exactly what they want.

[yurbud]

24. do want someone with experience when the experience is screwing us?

Which they are you talking about? If you mean Wall Street, you could be right. The last frontier of disaster capitalism is here. If they reduce us to ashes, they can do what they have done to Third World countries and dictate the terms of our recovery, and profit handsomely from rebuilding what they are currently breaking.

[stillcool]

33. How far away from success...

in the global finance world does one have to be?

[yurbud]

25. also, if the economic team is well-intentioned, then they are profoundly naive and getting played

by Wall Street.

After eight years of the Bush administration, I doubt that these insiders are really shocked that when they give their cronies a check with no strings attached they roll it up, snort coke with it, and then party with some hookers.

They know what they are doing, and it's taking care of their country club cousins, not us.

[rvablue]

11. Q: can lurkers vote in polls on DU, or do you need to be registered?

Because the results here are pretty nasty and frankly unbelievable!

[countingbluecars]

15. The poll itself is pretty nasty. n/t

[namahage]

18. Need to be registered.

Pretty sure you can come up with at least 27 registered people who will jump at the opportunity to participate in an Obama-bashing push poll.

[yurbud]

23. don't be a nitwit. This isn't Obama-bashing, it's a serious question about some appointees

many of us were worried about when he picked them but we hoped we were wrong, but instead they have actually turned out to be exactly what we feared.

[Danger Mouse]

14. Fleas? Are you kidding me? That's a bit uncalled for.

[Name removed]

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[yurbud]

17. so we should shut up and cheer until next election?

That's usually the argument of the DLC apologists who don't like the corporate toadying being called out.

[Bold Sea Captain]

27. until 2016, actually...

Obama will have no problems in 2012.

and please, please never insinuate that I have anything to do with the DLC.
It is really insulting.

[amandabeech]

31. If the economy has recovered or is clearly recovering, then he'll have not problems,

health care or no health care.

If the economy isn't doing well, he will face very tough competition in the primary and may lose the general.

The Republicans are gambling that Obama will spend lots of money on the bailouts and other things, but that Obama's plan will not work. Then, if it doesn't work, the Republicans will scream for fiscal discipline and tax cuts in 2010 and they will make headway. They'll have Sanford or some other odious individual run in 2012 and if the economy is still struggling, Obama will have a tough run.

Carville was right. It is the economy, stupid.

[QC]

38. Argh, ye be talkin to the dead. The captain's gone down to Davy Jones Locker. n/t

[Name removed]

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[InAbLuEsTaTe]

21. GMAFB!

[yurbud]

22. translation for the acronym impaired?

[Jackeens]

28. Give me a **rude word** break.

[yurbud]

29. I want to apologize for OP. I left out option for expressing faith in good intentions of econ team

It could well be that many people think Summers, Rubin, Geithner, and Bernanke all have the best interest of the American people at heart, and are not motivated by their ties to various Wall Street firms and banks, and have repented of their past advocacy of deregulation that enriched those firms and led to the current crisis.

Again, I apologize for not giving that option.

[anonymous171]

30. Get rid of Geithner for sure. That man has been incompetent as well corrupt.

But seriously, we need to start coming down hard on wall street. I hate seeing government employees, no matter how corrupt, take the fall for corporate greed.

[yurbud]

42. to come down hard on Wall St, you need to get rid of the cops on the take

[quiller4]

44. God no. Geithner has a tough job. He isn't great on

public relations but I'm more than happy with the job he is doing. Get rid of him now and watch a financial collapse. NO WAY

[stillcool]

43. and the band plays on