Bush Redux

Nominating Austan Goolsbee is like G. W. Bush nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
Keeping Geithner is like G. W. Bush keeping Rumsfeld.

You told America that the Economy is your number one priority. Everything was put on hold for two months while you worked out an Afghanistan policy. This was followed up with a team effort combining your Office, Defense and State. There has been no equivalent approach for the Economy and a dissolution of the economic team.

You never listened to me but time has borne me out – I told you so.

Two Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank (Greenspan and Bernake) have said that “too big to fail” has to be stopped. Your government has done nothing.

January 8, 2010
From the outside, your economic structure is worse than the
anti-terrorist security structure. What is the benefit of the Economic
Recovery Advisory Board and the Council of Economic Advisors?

How about getting actionable advice out of the National Economic
Council? You are spending more money on advice than helping the
guy/gal on the street! With so many councils with so many opinions,
there is no accountability for the actual economic policy. It looks
like a no fault economic policy where you are left holding the bag.

December 13, 2009
The failure of teamwork by your economic sector has created a dismal
economy with dim prospects. I never fail to remind you how Geithner
fails you. In March 2009, I patiently waited for Geithner's solution
to the securitized mortgage crisis. I felt it was inadequate but
rather than pan it, I made an effort to provide an alternative. The
Congressional Oversight Panel’s year-end report concludes that “the
foreclosure crisis continues to grow,” and finds that “TARP’s
foreclosure mitigation programs have not yet achieved the scope,
scale, and permanence necessary to address the crisis.” Geithner
failed.

There is a real need for team wok in your Economic sector- amongst
themselves, with Congress and the electorate. They have failed at
teamwork. You have failed as coach, manager and owner. You need a game
plan, a set of plays to execute the plan and the bodies to execute the
plays.

November 9, 2009
If you want to salvage your Presidency I would create a true economic
recovery team. Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan and James Baker. Each man
brings a great talent, Clinton the vision, Greenspan the specifics and
Baker the implementation). Sadly you bring nothing.

Monday, November 2, 2009
Empathy
Rahm Emnual, the noble statesman, picks his spots and fights the truly
worthy battles, the stimulus package and healthcare. His next
assignment should be to battle the national debt. Let him make
government more efficient, cut the waste and reign in uncontrolled
treasury excesses.

Your sense of government is troubling. There are 38 czars! You
required empathy in the Supreme Court nomination yet created a void of
empathy in the economic branch. Your economic teams operate with the
impunity of George Bush’s Defense Department invading Iraq. PBS makes
them out to be the Robert Rubin’s cabal.

I never fail to remind you how poorly Geithner is doing. He operates
like a czar, yet his sole supporter is you! He has no support in
Congress, among White House staff or the public. His plan to address
the credit crisis at the banks has not worked (I offered a timely
constructive alternative). The investment market place is not headed
to the sound foundations that you promised. A wage czar over the
private sector is an absurd sense of government. Turn your wage czar
on the government especially the military and the empire of czars.
You should be privately vetting candidates to replace Geithner

I think an empathetic White House would not ignore the plight, for
human dignity, of a person who is unemployed but is willing to work.
You are ignoring human suffering, the rising cost of the necessities
of life is not an arcane economic term “the cost of living” but the
cost of surviving! Like many successful people, you deny your past
when your mother was on food stamps. America is more than surviving,
it can afford to embrace human dignity.

You need an economic plan for main street.
Let’s do something to get American kids to exercise. In-line skating
and bicycling are great activities that can even save gas. So public
works for bike and skate lanes would be good. Ice skating is a great
activity and the rinks can be used as in-line skate rinks in summer so
build some ice rinks. This idea is so good even your daughters can get
excited about it.Basketball is also great, church and school gyms
should be modified to allow public access after school hours.

How do you finance the rinks and gyms? Partner them with Starbucks,
McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy’s. Rinks and gyms could be operated
by chains. You have to work on laws to address litigation for personal
injury because unfortunately these activities can break bones. A
screwed up society has made skating, biking and pick-up basketball
legally unappealing.

Mass transit is important for main street. Have a plan where companies
gain when they subsidize or pay for bus lines that service their
street so their employees use the bus to get to work. Encourage
companies to work with public transit to make it worthwhile to involve
public transit to transport employees.

Public works, that help Americans change the way they eat, would be
healthy. Greenhouses built on the roofs of government buildings. Grow
tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and strawberries. Use pubic lands for
urban farms. This was done in the thirties.

There is a real loss of sense of government. The big financial
companies can bully the government because government isn’t strong
enough to enforce laws like anti-trust. Government has spent the
people’s money bailing out failed companies not hard working people
who may become unemployed or lose their house. Government, at 30,000
feet, says there is no inflation but when you live on the ground, the
cost of surviving has increased while income has declined. The future
is bleak because of the national debt and unemployment. You talk as if
unemployment is some kind of economic term, ever think that in three
years you could be unemployed?

September 16, 2009
How’s my driving?
The “too big to fail problem” is common to the banking system, Freddy
and Fannie Mae and the single payer health care discussion. I think
those who wrote the anti-trust laws tried to address this issue. The
Federal Reserve has regional banks. Canada has six major banks. ATT's breakup
was less successful but don’t know why. Maybe some wisdom can be
gleaned from the principles of anti-trust so their wouldn’t be a
single payer but a group of regional not for profit health care
payers. The whole world knows Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and AIG
are too big. Doesn’t anti-trust apply?

July 18, 2009
President Obama has repeatedly said that we will get out of Iraq with
more care than we got into Iraq. I suggest he must speak to Geithner
about showing more care in spending the people's credit than his
public contempt when he admits he has no exit strategy for the bailout
commitments.

March 1, 2009
I see the banking crisis as a repeat of the Enron affair.
G. W. Bush K. Lay
B. Obama J. Skilling
T. Geithner A. Fastow
Geithner, the Wall St wiz kid, has been asked to build a house of
cards to cover up the banks' collapsed house of cards.
This doesn't work. Japans' banks' books were cooked, they never
addressed it and after ten years they still haven't dug themselves out
because their house of cards cancels the effectiveness of fiscal or
monetary policy. There is no exit strategy to recover the government's
infusion.
Geithner has pressed on the gas pedal (gas = people’s money) with a
heavy foot, oblivious of the amount of gas in the tank (the national
debt). He has not fixed the engine (securitized mortgages in the
banks) so we use more gas than we need to and we risk to have another
breakdown. The cars’ owners took out insurance from AIG for engine
troubles, and Geithner paid AIG to payoff the insurance policies
without an engine change. Geithner will use the people’s money to pay
the owners to fix the engine.

Geithner, who facilitated cash advances to Goldman Sachs when bailing
out AIG before the Credit Default Swaps were even settled under TARP.
He never questioned that the CDS should be settled at full value
rather than at a discount. It is suspicious since Goldman Sachs was
your leading campaign contributor. Only you and Geithner know.

The underlying instruments were mortgages on homes of human beings.
The people in expensive suits are all doing fine, the economy is going
in the “right direction”. Hey the blue jean folk think housing is
going in the “WRONG DIRECTION” and your man Geithner helps the bad
guys more than the deserving.

Some consider housing as the backbone of the American economy. The
mortgage modification program has provided 17 revised mortgages. Reset
mortgages will continue to trigger for a year. The number of homes
whose mortgage exceeds market value is unsustainably high.
Unemployment contributes to more foreclosures. The administration has
only provided band-aid fixes. They have never defined the problem and
this makes it difficult to arrive at a solution.

Let me remind you of the greatest one-liner on the failure of
management “Heck of a job, Brownie.”

PS

You promised Guantanamo would be closed in one year, it wasn’t.
You promised to cut waste in Government, you haven’t.
You promised to introduce immigration reform by your first year in
Office, you didn’t.
In February 2009, you announced that Geithner had a plan to resolve
the financial crisis. He never addressed the securitized mortgages and
resolution of housing valuation is not in sight nor a priority of your
administration.
A clearly legal failure is providing KSM a fair trial. I don’t
understand news reports suggesting that the White House is deciding
the forum for KSM’s trial. The mere suggesting of meddling and delay
is justice denied.