Demand One From Wall Street Occupiers: Fire Tim Geithner!
Democratic Party strategists are busily trying to figure out how they can tap into the enthusiasm and spreading popular appeal of the Occupy Wall Street movement. President Obama is recasting his own rhetoric to sound like he supports what these occupiers want, and he is even traveling around by bus as a sign that he is in tune with their Main Street populism.
But none of this amounts to a hill of beans without real changes in the policy making establishment of the Democratic Party. Democratic leaders in Congress can make a show of tax-the-rich legislation that know won’t actually pass, and the President can go around the country barefoot and riding a camel, if the people they and he actually listen to when making economic policy are from the best-and-brightest world of Wall Street — advisers who ever and always come up with policies that favor Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.
The present Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, is known to everyone with the slightest knowledge of contemporary politics as Wall Street’s man in Washington. The person selected to head this Administration’s competitive council is the CEO of a huge corporation that ships jobs abroad and pays little U.S. taxes. The person chosen to be the Democratic lead in the group that came up with ideas to change the U.S tax code had very strong ties to Wall Street.
Since the Clinton presidency, the Democratic Party has had economic policies that favored Wall Street and big businesses and the CEOs who run both. These are the top 1 percenters that Wall Street occupiers are railing against so vehemently. And unless this link is broken, unless Mr. Obama and Democrats generally get real populist economic policy advisers, the money and policy pipeline that joins Democrats and The Street at the hip, and Mr. Obama’s I-Am-A-Born- Again-Main-Street-Populist rap are just electioneering hot air.
Step One, Mr. Obama. Fire Tim Geithner. Show you really understand what the Wall Street Occupiers want. Don’t just talk the talk. Walk the walk. Or you might just find, sir, that a lot of occupiers will decide that focusing on electing a Democratic congress that really believes and fosters their ideas is more important than electing a Democratic president who just plain doesn’t get it.
More from this writer a wallstreetpoet.com
25 Responses to “Demand One From Wall Street Occupiers: Fire Tim Geithner!”
Agreed, Geithner has been part of the problem and needs to go ASAP. It’s a great pity that Warren hasn’t been doing that job since the beginning.
It’d be nice if any president stopped hiring business leaders to police their own industry, especially finance.
Take Ben while you’re at it.
“you might just find, sir, that a lot of occupiers will decide that focusing on electing a Democratic congress that really believes and fosters their ideas is more important than electing a Democratic president who just plain doesn’t get it.”
Why are you hesitating, doubting, re thinking, I thought we already had this notion “Tagged, Bagged, and Sealed”? I know for sure, I do…no more Obama or his cronies!!!!!!!!!!!
Reminds me of this James Carville column from last month:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/14/opinion/carville-white-house-advice/index.html
Carville’s first piece of advice to Obama was to fire somebody. Geithner would be a likely choice.
Obama seems to be falling into the same rut as GWB who would not get rid of staff members even when things were clearly not going well. Somebody has to be responsible for the failed predictions and poor economy. Since Obama can’t fire himself he needs to identify the staff members that have let him down.
Here’s an interesting email I received on the subject:
Franklin Raines was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregularities in Fannie Mae’s accounting activities. At the time of his departure The Wall Street Journal noted, ” Raines, who long defended the company’s accounting despite mounting evidence that it wasn’t proper, issued a statement late Tuesday conceding that “mistakes were made” and saying he would assume responsibility as he had earlier promised. News reports indicate the company was under growing pressure from regulators to shake up its management in the wake of findings that the company’s books ran afoul of generally accepted accounting principles for four years.” Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9 billion.
Raines left with a “golden parachute valued at $240 Million in benefits. The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear.http://housingdoom.com/2006/12/18/fannie-charges/ . The Government noted, “The 101 charges reveal how the individuals improperly manipulated earnings to maximize their bonuses, while knowingly neglecting accounting systems and internal controls, misapplying over twenty accounting principles and misleading the regulator and the public. The Notice explains how they submitted six years of misleading and inaccurate accounting statements and inaccurate capital reports that enabled them to grow Fannie Mae in an unsafe and unsound manner.” These charges were made in 2006. The Court ordered Raines to return $50 Million Dollars he received in bonuses based on the miss-stated Fannie Mae profits.
Net windfall . . . $190 million!
Tim Howard – Was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard “was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a “stable pattern of earnings” at Fannie. In everyday English – he was cooking the books. The Government Investigation determined that, “Chief Financial Officer, Tim Howard, failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting functions within Fannie Mae,”
On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., asked the Justice Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae executives lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied manipulating the mortgage-finance giant’s income statement to achieve management pay bonuses. Investigations by federal regulators and the company’s board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004.
Howard’s Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million!
Jim Johnson – A former executive at Lehman Brothers and who was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. A look at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s May 2006 report on mismanagement and corruption inside Fannie Mae, and you’ll see some interesting things about Johnson. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson’s 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million.” Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae.
Johnson’s Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
FRANKLIN RAINES? Raines works for the Obama Campaign as his Chief Economic Advisor.
TIM HOWARD? Howard is a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama under Franklin Raines.
JIM JOHNSON? Johnson was hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was selected to run Obama’s Vice Presidential Search Committee.
Wow, Mal, you are terrific, a Leo without the BS.
Thanks
Boy dduck did Mal suck you in… His brilliant post is nothing more than a verbatim ‘cut and paste’ of a false and misleading email from 2008.
There’s copy of what Mal posted here at Snopes.com where they disprove it!
I have to admit though that John III does have Leo’s BS… and misleading style.
Good catch, JS. You beat me to it. Perhaps disgruntled malcontent IS Leo—WITH his BS.
I did state that I was posting an email I had received. I should have confirmed veracity. I did not. My apologies.
I will state, after digging into the issue, that all three people named were found to be culpable in the demise of Fannie Mae and they also received the obscene golden parachutes as posted. They were not ever chief financial advisors to Obama, althought Raines and Johnson had ties to him.
I take it (partly) back. Leo would have never apologized, he would have just piled the BS on….
Windy…I take it Leo used to post here and is no longer welcome. Sorry I missed him.
I deserved the call out, but I find it odd that you want to poo-poo the entire piece. There was more fact in there than fiction. The guys did a piss poor job, probably should have gone to jail, walked off with millions and the top two had a “business” relationship with Obama. Just call them 2nd tier instead of 1st.
Going to find fault with this statement? Have at it. Is this the BS you were looking for?
The entire piece and your faux apology both deserve to be “poo-poo’ed” as both were written to try to at best mislead / at worst sell a lie.
Did your “digging into the issue” find:
In your favor, your comments consistent.
Thanks, Steve. I have been consistent since I started posting here and have pounded on everyone…including Phil Gramm. He and his buddy, Tom DeLay, are two of the biggest reasons I moved to center ground.
Not sure under who’s watch they came in has to do with whether or not the three men named were gulity of gross misconduct and stupid decision making.
Washington, D.C. is disease ridden and all but a tiny few are infected with it. Which team you are on does not matter. All of them can be bought, and are being bought on a daily basis.
The problem with firing Geitner or any any other cabinet level officer is that they have to be replaced.
Good luck getting any candidate through the Senate where a super majority of 60 is required for any thing more controversial than declaring Apple Pie America’s favorite pie.
In passing…
The point of my piece was NOT that Tim Geithner is the cause of all bad economic policy. Is was that Wall Street-friendly advisers dominate economic policy making in this country — in both parties — and surprise! produce policies that favor The Street, quite often to the detriment of everyone else.
Mr. Silverstein…amen to that.
Mal, you ruffled my feathers, but $160 billion of our money and FNMA is still living it up by sending 87 people to Chicago for the Mortgage convention.
This is on Obama’s watch. Are they going to say we need more regulation to fix FNMA/FDMC.
(Occupy Washington (OW) a little guys.)
Leo, was a prodigious researcher (too much) who was exiled to Siberia.
Please be careful, the left here can cut you up if you are not 100% correct. Of course they do a good job of ignoring the basic facts sometimes (“partisan fairness”).
Duck, sounds like your feathers are still ruffled.
Yup, Leo could provide some useful data, but he was “exiled” because he couldn’t control his behavior. My beef with the Leo’s of the world have more to do with intellectual dishonesty though. Mal, don’t worry about the left, worry about whether or not what you post is reality based. If it isn’t someone will probably remind you. 
Thank’s for the tip. Just one question though…if a post is 75% right is any credit extended? Everything stated was true expect they were not “senior financial advisors” to Obama.
Malc, even if part of the post was true the part that is germane to the original post is not. Raines and the others were and are not Obama’s advisers, therefore in a discussion about firing Geithner (and other Wall Street toadies) your point is interesting but not that relevant.
mal, 2 things come to mind when seeing the email you posted:
1) The entire intent of that email was to tie Obama more closely to those people than he actually was solely to make him look worse than he is (i.e. these guys are corrupt, Obama is close to these guys, ergo Obama is corrupt) which is false. The malicious intent of the email is more likely to turn folks off to any factual information it may contain.
2) In my opinion, the heads of Fannie/Freddie are really no different than the heads of the other banks/financial institutions (Goldman Sachs, Countrywide, etc.) that caused the economic crash. They were all rewarded for the mess they caused, not punished. This has been the fact that upsets me the most. It seems the only thing these CEO’s can understand is the possibility of jail time for themselves as punishment for what they’ve done (See Sarbanes/Oxley). Just like children, now that they’ve gotten away with this, they’ll only push the boundaries further until they are actually punished.
Your credit card is maxed out for now, Mal.
I have taken everything that has transpired in relation to this thread and my postings to it, and have come to the conclusion, with not one iota of joy, that I have been put in my place. You are all right. I am all wrong. It happens sometimes. As I’ve grown older, I am now able to admit it on occasion.
That admission gets you a few points, and a unique position around here. We usually squirm, obfuscate, punt or deny.
It probably WOULD be a good idea to fire Turbo-tax-Tim. It’s bad when your opponents dredge up dirt on your cabinet officers, it’s significantly worse when your own FRIENDS tell you the guy has to go. Going with the ‘flow’ on the Occupy movement for a moment, that being the meme that ’tis a Liberal group, and not “the other center”, the LAST thing one would expect is for their demands to include firing BHO’s handpicked man for Treasury.
Means the guy’s not doing the job well enough, when even the STATISTS want him gone.
as for getting it through a senate 60? ‘Tis the bloody SENATE, you can’t tell me there aren’t squishy republicans trying to look more ‘moderate’ in the pre-election, esp. not from otherwise ‘blue’ regions. It is not an even divide on Crapitol Hill, the Democrats don’t need more than a couple crossovers on an otherwise party-line vote, and favour-trading is as old as the chamber. (Older if you take into account pre-Revolutionary Parlaiments).
President Obama would lose little in the action, and it would gain him a lot of fence-sitters while affirming his cred as an executive capable of making tough decisions.