How long with Indispensable Man last? Timmie, Timmie Geithner that is.

He can outlast the economic collapse as long as he presents no plan...if a plan appears elsewhere he becomes the fall guy.

Probably 2010 when the Dems are replaced...not much chance of the present congress organizing something realistic.

At least he paid his taxes to get the job.

why the outrage about paying them

look what they do with it

He can last a while considering how low expectations are.


I got a big kick out of Barney Frank whining about bonuses for AIG execs today. How has our Congress done a better job of watching our money than AIG did watching theirs?

When dems are replaced? Why would anyone vote you pigs back in?

but little piglets are so damn cute

After the bread runs out a few months of circus oughta do it...

gonna jump through hoops of fire?

Its time for Timmy Geitner resign.

When it coes to the AIG bonuses.

GEITNER KNEW.

RESIGN.

GEITNER KNEW.

RESIGN.

Everybody knew. What better opportunity to run around with your hair on fire over 1% bonuses while ignoring a doubling national debt.

I am going to continue insisting that you explain to me how deficit spending during a MAJOR contraction/recession is a bad thing. Please enlighten me as to the preferred alternative.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaySt...e=features_box1

Sound and fury over AIG
Mar 17th 2009
From Economist.com

Anger grows over bonuses for AIG staff in America, but little can be done about them

AFP
THE revelation that $165m in bonuses have been paid by AIG, a giant insurance company bailed out with roughly $170 billion of taxpayers' money after it came close to collapse last year, has turned into a political drama for Barack Obama. The latest payments are in addition to $55m paid out in bonuses in December. It is one that may constrain his ability to obtain future funds from Congress should money be needed for more bail-outs.

Mr Obama has been forced into the embarrassing position of instructing his treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, to see if there are any legal ways to claw back the money. Since it seems unlikely that there is (contracts being contracts), this protest will merely serve to highlight his impotence. Gordon Brown, Britain's prime minister, knows all about that; a similar eruption of fury followed news that the man who presided over the collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, was walking away with a pension worth over £700,000 ($986,000) a year. Mr Brown and various of his ministers threatened all sorts of retribution, but there has been none. They even had to resort to hoping that Sir Fred would feel honour-bound to return the money. He has not.

Various options remain open to Mr Obama, none of them good. He could try to invoke some form of executive power to break the contracts; but that would tie him in impossible legal knots, and it would not make sense in political terms as Republicans would be sure to attack this even more loudly than they denounced the original bonuses. And if such a thing did turn out to be possible, it raises the obvious question of why it was not done earlier, while vast sums of public money were being pushed in AIG's direction.

Instead, Mr Obama may seek to recoup the money, on behalf of taxpayers, by withholding an equivalent amount from the next tranche of bail-out money, some $30 billion, due to be paid to AIG. “White House aides” have told the Washington Post that this is being considered.

A moment's thought, though, should show how foolish that would be. The bonuses would still remain in the pockets of the employees whose failures, so the public believes, deserve censure, not reward. AIG itself would get less; but that would send the rather odd signal that the government had been prepared to give the company more than it really needed; the point of bailing out private companies with public money, surely, is that it is in the vital public interest to do it, not that it is a matter of discretion.

Alternatively, Mr Obama can simply ventilate a bit, as he has done; but actually do nothing. The danger here is that by seeming to have been taken for a ride by AIG's spendthrifts, he will weaken his position with Congress. Getting money from Congress has not been easy, either for Mr Obama or for George Bush. Mr Obama's stimulus package only went through with a wafer-thin majority; both rounds of TARP funding for the banks have been extremely difficult to procure (the first tranche of TARP was turned down by Congress, initially).

Mr Obama may have to go back either for a second stimulus package, as is constantly being rumoured, though the whispers are firmly denied by the White House, or for a third round of the TARP. If so, he could face not just angry Republicans, who are opposed to bail-outs, but Democratic ones infuriated by the thought of Wall Streeters being paid bonuses while ordinary Americans are losing their jobs and homes. Christopher Dodd, a senior Democratic senator and the chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee, for example, has already spoken to the administration of an "unprecedented level of outrage".

The intricacies of restructuring assets and saving banks can be hard even for the experts to understand. But everyone can grasp that using taxpayers' money to pay a large bonus, or a fat pension, to bankers who have crashed their banks is a hard sell during a recession

There's always the matter of degree. Should Obama insist on bigger bonuses since all stimulus is good stimulus?

Have you taken a look at how much our economy contracted even WITH the TARP and the beginning of the stimulus? Are you aware of how many billions of dollars of credit-money have vanished?

What "degree" of deficit spending would you propose?

Are you unhappy, by the way and for example, with Obama's proposed $15B indirect help for SBA loans?

All things considered it seems like a good idea. I'd be willing to say double that and cut some program that won't be spent until 2010.

Looks like most folks on these here forums agree that Timmie is indispensable.

Like the dog you blame when you let a SBD rip.......

He's no prize as a confidence builder, but there is no magic bullet.