Sunday, February 21, 2010

Geithner's Gotta Go

"Geithner's Gotta Go" has more than just a ring to it. It's necessary. Guy was a bad hire from the gittgo. Never mind that he mangled his own taxes, he's been an ineffective advocate his entire career. Hell, the McCain campaign let Sarah Palin go on CBS about as much as the Fed put Geithner in front of cameras. Why do you think that was?

The only thing the guy can sell is free money to Goldman Sachs.

Fatally, he was the Fed's Man on Wall Street while the Mortgages for Everyone bubble inflated. He fiddled while Rome gorged itself on highly flammable instruments. Money-center institutions - colloquially known as Too-Big-To-Fail - borrowed forty (40!) times their assets to wager on tiny market changes on his watch. Not enough markets? They invented more, some called SIVs, from which the money has since sieved out.

Perhaps Geithner was doing Washington's bidding by not at least flagging such lunacy. Congress wanted lots and lots of mortgages to go out, codifying them in the '92 Legislative Changes to the Community Reinvestment Act. This in turn inflated the government sponsored gut of all bad mortgage policy, those rocking and rolling Government Sponsored Entities themselves - Fannie and Freddie!!!!! Wheewwwwweeee!

Fan and Fred wanted anyone who could fog a mirror into a mortgage. "Into": a preposition normally, a verb when used by mortgage brokers and certain salesmen.

So what'd Wall Street do when the GSEs needed to unload trillions in mortgage credit? Securitize, a fancy word for aggregate, slice and sell. Notice the absence of moral conscience. Aggregate, Slice, Sell.

Coin operated dicks: that's how to think of bond salesmen.

Ignoring the stinking pile of flammable leverage trillions deep behind him (reading a balance sheet being among his deficits), Geithner was positioned as a White Knight to our shiny new President, whose previous executive experience consisted of editing the Harvard Law Review. (As if smarts are all it takes to lead. Track record - a.k.a. successful experience - turns out to be the only solid predictor. Ethnicity turns out to be largely irrelevant. Imagine that.)

So Rahm whispered in the President's ear that Geithner's not simply the best man, he's The Only Man to run Treasury. The. Only. Man. To Run. Our Treasury.

Geithner couldn't adequately explain the situation then, can't adequately explain it now, so ipso facto doesn't know what he's doing.

"Geithner's Gotta Go" Go, go, go.

Our Treasury holds Our Future, for goodness sakes.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Brown America

Politicians who lose sight of jobs and defense deserve to lose. Plain and simple.

Though I made a couple dozen Scott Brown for Senate calls Monday and yesterday, I'd not heard him speak till his acceptance party last night. What a party. Mass done itself proud.  Ayla put on a hot singing performance before her Dad came out. Doug F-ing Flutie on stage. Man. Hot.

The Brown family certainly upholds the great looks tradition of the Kennedy family.

Gotta love the truck too.

Brown even out-manned the President on the truck after our first hoops playing Prez came in with some weak s**t.  Downtown Scotty Brown challenged the Prez and a teammate of his choosing to a game of 2 on 2 vs. the new Republican Senator from Tax-a-chusetts and his BC forward daughter Ayla.

The scouting report on Ayla: 'Brown was scouted by the staff at Boston College beginning at the age of 15. She made a commitment to the school, and went on to attend BC on a full athletic scholarship. Currently in her senior year, she plays the forward position for the Boston College Eagles, wearing jersey #1. Brown's nickname given to her by her teammates is "Downtown Ayla Brown" because of her ability to sink 3-pointers and lengthy shots and in reference to her father's college basketball nickname "Downtown Scotty Brown".'
    Good luck Mr. President. You're going Downtown.

    You kidding me? This is the biggest political debut since William Jennings Palin herself introduced the country to lipstick conservatism, topping even young Senator Obama's One America speech at the Kerrey convention. Or was it the Gore convention? There's been so many failed Presidential Democrats.

    Unions are the problem that I and so many other independents have with the Democrats. The unions, of course, are the biggest of all losers from Scott Brown's Goliath slaying. That $80 billion payoff on health insurance they just got promised, the one that we non-union members were expected to fund. That would appear to now be out the window.

    The other loser is, of course, the Obama Administration, which badly needs to clean house.

    Rahm and Axelrod gotta go for political health. Geithner and Summers gotta go for fiscal health. The latter's what they were sent there to fix.

    So now we got us a whole new Bay State Senator.

    I like him. A lot. Like his truck, like his ladies, like his "no tax money so terrorists can lawyer up" trope. Like the Lt. Col. JAG Corp thing. Like it all. A lot.

    So as a Californian let me just say to my Bay State friends and family: thank you, thank you very much.