To Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner

Dear Secretary Geithner,

Yesterday, or perhaps it was the day before yesterday, it really doesn't matter, you were under the harsh glare of some members of Congress who rather sternly, but less than ably, took you and The Obama Administration to task for your role in the nation's present economic woes. As is your wont, Mr. Geithner, you resorted to a defense that was a mixture of "we inherited this mess" and "things would be so much worse if we hadn't taken the steps we've taken to date."

Well, as Ross Perot used to say, with respect to your excuse that we inherited this mess, "That dog won't hunt". President Obama has held office for almost a year now, and in that time his administration has taken a number of actions that effectively leave you with ownership of the present situation. With that in mind, in a very real sense, with respect to banking reform, one of your biggest initiatives in the past year has been to take no new initiative at all. To wit: Your basic premise, encapsulated, Mr. Geithner, is the same as that of your predecessor, Hank Paulson. Namely, it is, had we not bailed out the banks, we would now be in far worse shape as a nation.

No. I am afraid that is a monstrous lie, and all the evidence points to a very different and inescapable truth, which is that firms such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, and JPM, are nothing but criminally disposed hoarders of capital, vampire firms that add nothing, nothing, to the general economy, but rather, as is the propensity of such malevolent creatures, suck the life from it. Goldman isn't even, upon cursory examination, a bank; it is a HEDGE FUND, bankrolled entirely by the U.S. Taxpayer. The nation not only can get along fine without this particularly vile neighborhood larcenist, it would almost certainly see its functioning vastly improve after a relatively short period of adjustment.

I could go on for hours, Mr. Giethner, providing reams of sordid evidence of such criminality that it would likely make Bernie Madoff blanche. Even better, were the regulatory framework of the government not totally compromised by these same vampire firms, I could display proof of the corruption I allude to. However, in the absence of such a condition where proof might be, with a herculean effort, attainable, let alone become available with simply a modest effort, I will end this discussion by asserting that you, personally, have done nothing but enabled a bloated, predatory, industry, one more akin to a Mafia operation than anything else, to thrive at the expense of the rest of the nation. You, sir, and such fellow travelers as Barney Frank, Mel Watt, and Christopher Dodd, to name a few, are, to my mind, nothing but the property of a coven of blood sucking, financial death merchants.