110 Lawmakers and Mr. Geithner: A Session on Derivatives

[undeterred]

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: July 10, 2009

WASHINGTON — The issues were arcane and technical, but the hearing drew an extraordinary turnout: 110 members of Congress, many of whom waited three hours in order to ask questions for five minutes.

All eyes were on Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, who testified about the Obama administration’s proposal to regulate the free-wheeling market for financial derivatives, the hedging instruments that bankrupted the American International Group in September. But after three hours, many of the hardest questions remained unanswered.

Mr. Geithner vowed that the administration would impose tougher regulation on the largely unregulated market for financial derivatives — like credit-default swaps, which insure investors from losses on bond defaults. He told lawmakers that the plan would require all “standardized” instruments be traded on a regulated exchange or through a clearinghouse, and that participants would have to disclose more information about their transactions and meet new capital requirements.

While the Treasury secretary shed no new light on how the government would define “standardized” instruments — a big question, given that a significant share of the trillion-dollar derivatives market is devoted to customized hedging deals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/us/politics/11treasury.html

[Demeter]

1. Lots of Luck, Congress

Step One: Shut down and liquidate Goldman, Citi, Morgan-Chase, AIG and BofA.

Step two: Prosecute any and all officers of same.

Step Three: Ban all derivatives bought for speculation (naked).

Step Four: Implement universal government payer health care

Step Five: Put tariffs on anything that can be made in this country by American workers.


Step Six: Strictly public financing of elections.

[OhioChick]

2. Sounds like a plan.... n/t

[bertman]

3. Geithner • \geith' ner\ Noun: 1. first Secretary of the Treasury under the Obama Administration;

2. a ruse or obfuscation. As in, "The con man pulled a "geithner" on the unsuspecting marks; Verb tr: to use arcane financial terms and convoluted sentences with no meaning or substance to baffle, confuse, and deceive Congressional representatives and mollify the citizenry at large (see also geithner, Noun).