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Monday, August 03, 2009

Where Were These Guys a Few Months Ago?

At a recent town-hall meeting, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said he had to 'hold my nose' over bailouts. I wish he had expressed some of those misgivings when lobbying for the bailouts last year, instead of the "do it now!" testimony he actually gave.  (On a side note, here is a video of Bernanke in 2005 saying there is no housing bubble, housing prices would not decline, and in 2006 that housing would not have a drag on the economy, while car sales would climb; and in 2007 that the subprime market was not a problem.  Just point this out because a lot of intelligent folks seem to trust Bernanke's judgment more than their own).

In a similar story, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner insist that the path to economic recovery is through lower deficits. It is too bad that earlier in the year, he was advocating that the path to economic recover was through a $787 billion in a deficit-funded stimulus bill.

Thanks guys.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

NB. Let me translate for you. The Wall Street welfare queens got their trillions from Bernanke, Geithner and Paulson under Bush. Now, it is time for the average guy to pay the piper under Obama.

Anonymous said...

We must audit the Federal Reserve. The big banks are not engaged in free market activity. They are draining blood from the average taxpayer to support their international lifestyles.

Anonymous said...

Cuomo's report has not gotten a lot of attention. In 2008, the big NY investment banks paid out $54 billion in bonuses. The banks themselves only made $25 billion after the payouts. In other words, the shareholders (owners) got half of what the managers did. And it was 2008, the year that the taxpayers bailed the managers out for collossal failure. Guess what! We are the owners now. And guess what! The managers who failed want to pay themselves just as much this year.