Friday, November 20, 2009

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.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent epistle. Too bad it can't be delivered to him in person where he could be made to read it out loud.

I'm feeling just a teeny bit more jolly over the last few days. It looks like there's finally starting to be some understanding of what's really going on here.

-Russ

Edwardo said...

That would be loads of fun. I wanted to e-mail it to Turbo Tim, but The Treasury Department isn't set up like The White House apparently. C'est la vie.

Late this afternoon, I heard some MSM stooge on PBS taking up the cause for poor little Tiny Tim against we nasty "populists." Apparently we populists have let our emotions-primarily anger- take over to such an extent that we mistakenly blame "one man" (TG and his stimulus package) for not getting the economy back on track. Ugh! Talk about straw man arguments.

How it became Geithner's stimulus package I don't know, but that is neither here nor there, as the commentator offered absolutely nothing remotely salient, let alone insightful, regarding why so many of us think Tiny Tim should be boiled in his own Christmas pudding and subsequently have a branch of holly stuck through his heart.

Anonymous said...

That's all the MSM has done since the start on this.

Populism = bad,

always. Like during the flare-up over the AIG bonuses.

I always love when idiots at PBS engage in right-wing pandering, thinking that'll take the heat off.

You PBS people just don't get it. The right does not want you to exist, PERIOD. You cannot appease them. All you accomplish is to get people like me, who in principle supported your existence, to throw up our hands and give up, saying, "who cares anymore about it? What difference does it make?"

That's how the MSM lost me.

Edwardo said...

"You PBS people just don't get it. The right does not want you to exist, PERIOD."

Too True. Fundamentalists are unfailingly rigid.