Does Anyone Think That Obama Appointed Geithner And Other Banksters On Purpose...

[Libertas1776]

in the same way that FDR appointed Kennedy Sr. to be the first head of the SEC. FDR appointed Kennedy because he knew that Kennedy was essentially a Wall Street "crook." And Kennedy was quite a success because he knew every crooked practice and underhanded business tricks of the trade and knew how to catch the perpetrators.

However, and let me stress however, i am a cynic and I honestly don't believe that was Obama's intention considering Geithner and the other banksters he appointed have done jack diddly squat to reverse the tide of Wall Street bullshit. It would have been nice if it had been his intention and Geithner and the other crooks did a little Wall Street entrapment thing like FDR and Kennedy pulled off. But alas, we live in the real world, sadly, so that is not going to happen.

Anyone else think similar? Different?

[NightWatcher]

1. no Obama wasnt tricked. He picked Timmy and Rahm and knew what they stood for

I know Rahm is not a bankster, but people still seemed shocked that he picked him.

[Libertas1776]

6. I agree n/t

[katandmoon]

2. Obama picked Geithner because they're soulmates

[gateley]

3. I don't think it was part of a strategy like FDR/Kennedy. I think, for whatever

his reasons, Obama felt he was hiring the best person for the job.

[Canuckistanian]

4. So.... when does the Geitner plan snap into action?

Geitner was put into place to preserve the status quo, NOT to end it.

[sandnsea]

5. Yes, to save the economy

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/03/15/100315fa_fact_cassidy

"Economists are still debating what it was that ended the financial crisis and turned the economy around. It is inarguable, though, that Geithner’s stabilization plan has proved more effective than many observers expected, this one included. “The policy worked,” Brad Hintz, a top-rated financial analyst at the research firm Sanford C. Bernstein, said. “Now, did it raise the mob to come after the bankers and politicians and try and drag them off to the guillotine? Certainly it did. That’s part of the political price that is being paid for the policy having worked.”

[laughingliberal]

7. If that was the case, it was a miscalculation

But I don't think that's why he picked them.

[slipslidingaway]

8. Wonder if Kissinger had any input? n/t

[depakid]

9. Nope- he's bought into their failed ideology hook, line and sinker

probably though years of interactions with folks at the University of Chicago.

[Libertas1776]

10. yeah

that's true.

[ChicagoSuz219]

11. What's that expression?

"To catch a wolf you need to think like a wolf?"

[Double T]

12. Everything BO has done is on purpose. The wall street / corporate status quo........

remains intact; if there is any financial reform it will be so meaningless and irrelevant that it will not matter. Geithner has done nothing well.

[Jim Sagle]

13. Yes, he picked them on purpose - but not with the intention of reforming anything.

His plan should be clear to all by now:

1) Rob the treasury and hand over the nation lock stock and barrel to his bankster friends;

2) Destroy the Democratic party in the process; and

3) Land a big fat job in the banking sector after a single term as President.

[Libertas1776]

14. BINGO n/t

[WCGreen]

15. I think the only reason Obama picked Geithner is to mollify the financial people...

[ipaint]

16. Wall street (goldman sachs) picks them.

The president goes along.

"...Leading the search for the president's new economic team was his close friend and Harvard Law classmate Michael Froman, a high-ranking executive at Citigroup. During the campaign, Froman had emerged as one of Obama's biggest fundraisers, bundling $200,000 in contributions and introducing the candidate to a host of heavy hitters — chief among them his mentor Bob Rubin, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs who served as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. Froman had served as chief of staff to Rubin at Treasury, and had followed his boss when Rubin left the Clinton administration to serve as a senior counselor to Citigroup (a massive new financial conglomerate created by deregulatory moves pushed through by Rubin himself).

Incredibly, Froman did not resign from the bank when he went to work for Obama: He remained in the employ of Citigroup for two more months, even as he helped appoint the very people who would shape the future of his own firm. And to help him pick Obama's economic team, Froman brought in none other than Jamie Rubin, who happens to be Bob Rubin's son. At the time, Jamie's dad was still earning roughly $15 million a year working for Citigroup, which was in the midst of a collapse brought on in part because Rubin had pushed the bank to invest heavily in mortgage-backed CDOs and other risky instruments.

Now here's where it gets really interesting. It's three weeks after the election. You have a lame-duck president in George W. Bush — still nominally in charge, but in reality already halfway to the golf-and-O'Doul's portion of his career and more than happy to vacate the scene. Left to deal with the still-reeling economy are lame-duck Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former head of Goldman Sachs, and New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner, who served under Bob Rubin in the Clinton White House. Running Obama's economic team are a still-employed Citigroup executive and the son of another Citigroup executive, who himself joined Obama's transition team that same month.

So on November 23rd, 2008, a deal is announced in which the government will bail out Rubin's messes at Citigroup with a massive buffet of taxpayer-funded cash and guarantees. It is a terrible deal for the government, almost universally panned by all serious economists, an outrage to anyone who pays taxes. Under the deal, the bank gets $20 billion in cash, on top of the $25 billion it had already received just weeks before as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But that's just the appetizer. The government also agrees to charge taxpayers for up to $277 billion in losses on troubled Citi assets, many of them those toxic CDOs that Rubin had pushed Citi to invest in. No Citi executives are replaced, and few restrictions are placed on their compensation. It's the sweetheart deal of the century, putting generations of working-stiff taxpayers on the hook to pay off Bob Rubin's fuck-up-rich tenure at Citi. "If you had any doubts at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street," former labor secretary Robert Reich declares when the bailout is announced, "your doubts should be laid to rest."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout/print


It can't get much more obvious.

[Coyote_Bandit]

17. There's nothing about the selection of the banksters

that reflects positively on Obama's judgment. Color me unimpressed. And more than willing to vote for someone else .....

[justinaforjustice]

18. Picked Them To Save the Bankster Class: It Worked -- For the Banksters.

Obama put Geither and Summers in power, at the command of his corporate funders, so that they could use taxpayers money to bail out the bankster class. It worked. The bankster class is now able to keep on gambling - and paying themselves billions in bonuses -- thanks to American taxpayer money.

Meanwhile, in the real world of unemployment, mortgage foreclosures and outsourced jobs, the average American has been screwed royally.

The only solution for America's underclass (the 99% of Americans who are not millionaires) is to get rid of the capitalist economic system and replace it with an economic system that puts the real needs of human beings ahead of the incessant drive for corporate profits.

[me b zola]

19. Honest to God I don't know what to think any more

My gut continues to tell me that Obama came into the presidency with the best of intentions, but his choices are leading to incremental changes...to the right.