He did NOTHING fundamentally different from Bush. He shilled for the bail out while Bush was in office. The bail out bill that included provisions like "nothing that happens through this bill can ever be the basis of criminal charges". And then Geithner acted pretty much like Paulson. Part of why I'm castigating Obama is he sold himself as the candidate of CHANGE! and that's the best he could do?
While the pitchforks, tar and feather crowd are idiots, the level of criminal behaviour going on right now is STAGGERING. I'm not saying "oh they're rich, they're vile, let's lynch them for being successful while we're not". I'm saying they're criminals who have to be prosecuted and Obama is playing King Log while it happens.
You didn't seem to read what I said though. "Money flowing" is the cycle of credit. If the bailout bill didn't or shouldn't promote that then _what was the point of spending the money_? You say it was important to prevent banks going under. But we went way way beyond the point of keeping various banks from going insolvent. Like, here's the problem.
We have banks A, B and C. they've lost 50 cents of every dollar their depositors have, this means they can't make the withdrawal requirements for operations. By law, they should be shut down. Now, we say "no no, very important to keep them open. So we'll lend them 30 cents on the dollar to get them back into being able to stay open. And they'll keep lending, and eventually they'll earn back the money they lost and they can pay us back".
Except the banks aren't showing any signs of making the money back. So in the end, the banks will lose 50 cents on the dollar, plus however much more money they lose _after_ they burn the 30 cents on the dollar the gov't "loaned" them...and after whatever point the gov't finally throws up its hands and says "ok, you're not competent to manage your depositor's money".
Maybe you're thinking "but the dominoes effect of derivatives or the stock market impacts will hurt people too much". This isn't going bankrupt by a few cents on the dollar. This is not some technical accounting rule causing undue stress. This is catastrophic malfeasance. All the money the banks have is retained profits (almost nothing) and the depositor's funds. When a bank buys a worthless investment with a depositor's money, it has essentially allowed the seller of that investment to rob the bank's own depositors. Often, (for example, with AIG as they close up operations) there are obviously kickbacks involved as the bank and the asset seller split the profits. They push the depositor's money out of the bank and replace it with a worthless or radically overvalued asset.
This isn't some weird financial mistake. It was ROBBERY. The banks all sold these wortheless/overvalued investments to each other through subsidiaries. It was understood "I'll buy your worthless paper if you'll buy mine and we'll both take the profits home one way or the other". Between that and kickbacks, it was a giant vacuum cleaner connected to the depositor's accounts. Now the system is too low to function and they get the govt to let them continue as normal. The top 8 banks who got $160 billion for their banks REFUSED to describe how they had changed operations in response to receiving gov't money!
Even if everything you say is true...
He did NOTHING fundamentally different from Bush. He shilled for the bail out while Bush was in office. The bail out bill that included provisions like "nothing that happens through this bill can ever be the basis of criminal charges". And then Geithner acted pretty much like Paulson. Part of why I'm castigating Obama is he sold himself as the candidate of CHANGE! and that's the best he could do?
While the pitchforks, tar and feather crowd are idiots, the level of criminal behaviour going on right now is STAGGERING. I'm not saying "oh they're rich, they're vile, let's lynch them for being successful while we're not". I'm saying they're criminals who have to be prosecuted and Obama is playing King Log while it happens.
You didn't seem to read what I said though. "Money flowing" is the cycle of credit. If the bailout bill didn't or shouldn't promote that then _what was the point of spending the money_? You say it was important to prevent banks going under. But we went way way beyond the point of keeping various banks from going insolvent. Like, here's the problem.
We have banks A, B and C. they've lost 50 cents of every dollar their depositors have, this means they can't make the withdrawal requirements for operations. By law, they should be shut down. Now, we say "no no, very important to keep them open. So we'll lend them 30 cents on the dollar to get them back into being able to stay open. And they'll keep lending, and eventually they'll earn back the money they lost and they can pay us back".
Except the banks aren't showing any signs of making the money back. So in the end, the banks will lose 50 cents on the dollar, plus however much more money they lose _after_ they burn the 30 cents on the dollar the gov't "loaned" them...and after whatever point the gov't finally throws up its hands and says "ok, you're not competent to manage your depositor's money".
Maybe you're thinking "but the dominoes effect of derivatives or the stock market impacts will hurt people too much". This isn't going bankrupt by a few cents on the dollar. This is not some technical accounting rule causing undue stress. This is catastrophic malfeasance. All the money the banks have is retained profits (almost nothing) and the depositor's funds. When a bank buys a worthless investment with a depositor's money, it has essentially allowed the seller of that investment to rob the bank's own depositors. Often, (for example, with AIG as they close up operations) there are obviously kickbacks involved as the bank and the asset seller split the profits. They push the depositor's money out of the bank and replace it with a worthless or radically overvalued asset.
This isn't some weird financial mistake. It was ROBBERY. The banks all sold these wortheless/overvalued investments to each other through subsidiaries. It was understood "I'll buy your worthless paper if you'll buy mine and we'll both take the profits home one way or the other". Between that and kickbacks, it was a giant vacuum cleaner connected to the depositor's accounts. Now the system is too low to function and they get the govt to let them continue as normal. The top 8 banks who got $160 billion for their banks REFUSED to describe how they had changed operations in response to receiving gov't money!