Salon: Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street's ownership of government

[Captain_Nemo]

Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street's ownership of government

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/04/summers/

Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street's ownership of government

White House officials yesterday released their personal financial disclosure forms, and included in the millions of dollars which top Obama economics adviser Larry Summers made from Wall Street in 2008 is this detail:
Lawrence H. Summers, one of President Obama's top economic advisers, collected roughly $5.2 million in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw over the past year and was paid more than $2.7 million in speaking fees by several troubled Wall Street firms and other organizations. . . .

Financial institutions including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch paid Summers for speaking appearances in 2008. Fees ranged from $45,000 for a Nov. 12 Merrill Lynch appearance to $135,000 for an April 16 visit to Goldman Sachs, according to his disclosure form.

That's $135,000 paid by Goldman Sachs to Summers -- for a one-day visit. And the payment was made at a time -- in April, 2008 -- when everyone assumed that the next President would either be Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton and that Larry Summers would therefore become exactly what he now is: the most influential financial official in the U.S. Government (and the $45,000 Merrill Lynch payment came 8 days after Obama's election). Goldman would not be able to make a one-day $135,000 payment to Summers now that he is Obama's top economics adviser, but doing so a few months beforehand was obviously something about which neither parties felt any compunction.

[mix]

1. If Obama wants to inherit the mantle of FDR

he had better ditch his Wall Street cronies.

[WhiteTara]

3. I thought Abe was his mantle?

He never talked about FDR.
:shrug:

[mix]

4. good point, Obama has not talked much about FDR

I suppose I meant that if he wants to be known as a president who confronted and prevailed against great obstacles, FDR is a much better analogue than Lincoln since Roosevelt's travails approximate those of Obama today: depression and war abroad.

[truedelphi]

26. If Obama started living by FDR's quote

"It is more dangerous to collude with organized banking than with organized crime," we would all be better off.

[mix]

30. where is that from?

great quote...and that really is the most striking difference between FDR and Obama...their approach and attitudes towards the banks and Wall Street could not be more different...it took almost a decade after the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 for the system to come undone, i fear Obama could be on the wrong side of history on this one...

[truedelphi]

36. FDR used that quote in a speech given at Madison Square Garden

Back in 1936.

[mix]

37. right, thank you

is that the one where he says he "welcomes the hatred" of his enemies?

[terisan]

2. Sad

[chimpymustgo]

5. I think people are starting to get a clue here. We are being SCAMMED.

[paulk]

6. it's no scam

a scam is an attempt to fool, to defraud

this is all very much out in the open....

[Captain_Nemo]

12. Yes, the back room dealings between Wall Street and a presidential administration. We need change.

[terisan]

7. Larry Summers:cleaning up by cleaning us out.nt

[leftofthedial]

8. Who are these Salon Obama haters? They must have wanted McCain to win!

They just perpetually criticize! Negative, negative, negative!

Why don't they go join another party?



:eyes:


The facts seem to have an anti-Summers/Geithner/Obama slant...

[Captain_Nemo]

10. You mean Glenn Greenwald?

From Wiki:

Greenwald is the author of three books: How Would a Patriot Act? (2006) and A Tragic Legacy (2007), both New York Times bestsellers; and Great American Hypocrites (2008).
In March, 2009, he was selected, along with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, as the recipient of the first annual Izzy Award by the Park Center for Independent Media, an award named after famed independent journalist I.F. "Izzy" Stone and devoted to rewarding excellence in independent journalism. The selection panel cited Greenwald's "pathbreaking journalistic courage and persistence in confronting conventional wisdom, official deception and controversial issues." <6>
His commentaries "on surveillance issues and separation of powers" have been cited in The New York Times, in The Washington Post, in United States Senate floor debates, and in House "official ... reports on executive power abuses,"<7> and he appears on various radio and television programs as a guest political pundit.<8>

[leftofthedial]

16. yeah! what does he know?

Damned Obama haters. All they do is criticize. Can't they see he's smarter than we are/working hard/only been in office for 70 days/inherited a big mess/promised to act like a repuke when elected/always belonged to Wall Street?

What the hey!

[mix]

13. hey, it's only the first inning! back off!

;)

[truedelphi]

27. Yep, it is only the first inning and they are throwing

A baby off the cliff. We don't have to wait for the second inning and for the body to hit to know it won't survive.

[polichick]

15. They must be a a bunch of party poopers who hate pom poms...

:sarcasm:

[QC]

21. They are enemies of the people. n/t

[leftofthedial]

31. the people across the street?

or the people on tv?

which people?

[QC]

32. The people. n/t

[terisan]

9. Imagine what we could accomplish if Larry Summers worked for us instead of Wall Street!

[Captain_Nemo]

11. Can "The People" hire Larry Summers?

[mkultra]

14. inst this entire story based on an interview of a reagan regulator?

Last night, former Reagan-era S&L regulator and current University of Missouri Professor Bill Black was on Bill Moyers' Journal and detailed the magnitude of what he called the on-going massive fraud, the role Tim Geithner played in it before being promoted to Treasury Secretary (where he continues to abet it), and -- most amazingly of all -- the crusade led by Alan Greenspan, former Goldman CEO Robert Rubin (Geithner's mentor) and Larry Summers in the late 1990s to block the efforts of top regulators (especially Brooksley Born, head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission) to regulate the exact financial derivatives market that became the principal cause of the global financial crisis. To get a sense for how deep and massive is the on-going fraud and the key role played in it by key Obama officials, I highly recommend watching that Black interview

[slipslidingaway]

18. No, read the article and the links provided, including this....

http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2009/marapr/features/born.html

"Brooksley Born warned that unchecked trading in the credit market could lead to disaster, but power brokers in Washington ignored her. Now we're all paying the price.


....At congressional hearings that summer, Greenspan and others warned of dire consequences; Born and the CFTC were cast as a loose cannon.

...Summers, Rubin’s deputy (and now director of the National Economic Council), said the memo had “cast the shadow of regulatory uncertainty over an otherwise thriving market, raising risks for the stability and competitiveness of American derivative trading.”

...In eerily prescient testimony, she warned of potentially disastrous and widespread consequences for the public. “Losses resulting from misuse of OTC derivatives instruments or from sales practice abuses in the OTC derivatives market can affect many Americans,” she testified that July. “Many of us have interests in the corporations, mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, municipalities and other entities trading in these instruments.”

....But the tide of opinion that had risen up against Born was irreversible. Language was slipped into an agriculture appropriations bill barring the CFTC from taking action in the six months left in her term.

“I felt as though that, at least, relieved me and the commission of any public responsibility for what was happening,” she says. Clinton aides sounded her out about a second term, but she said she wasn’t interested and left the agency in June 1999. A year later, Congress enacted the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which effectively gutted the ability of the CFTC to regulate OTC derivatives. With no other agency picking up the slack, the market grew, unchecked..."

[olegramps]

33. Thank for the article on Born

[slipslidingaway]

35. You're welcome, the link was in the Greenwald piece. n/t

[mix]

17. I voted for Obama knowing he was a centrist,

and disagreeing with him on many issues, but I did not expect this level of corruption and cronyism coupled with bad policy.

I am mystified.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

23. Me, too! My biggest fear is that we've been duped. And that the reich wing was right about Obama

Is he The Manchurian Candidate? A puppet?

This Alex Jones "The Obama Deception" has been getting a lot of play lately, with even liberals calling into talk radio shows to talk about the documentary.

Today I heard the Moyers-Black interview podcast while on my long walk and was taken aback! Literally. I had to stop walking and sit down. I couldn't believe the case that Black was making; and it was quite compelling and convincing.

Either Obama doesn't know much about the people he chose to run his economy; or, (1) he's extremely naive about the greed inherent in this world, or (2) he's in on the corruption and the ultimate scheme.

What's so amazing about this is that everything is so out in the open. They aren't even trying to hide who these people are or anything.

The Moyers interview really opened my eyes to some things. And I am getting sick to my stomach.

I voted for Obama and worked very hard--along with many of my friends, family and colleagues here in MD--for his campaign in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Day and night. I knew very well that he is a corporatist and a moderate. But I didn't think he was just as corrupt as some of the clowns in the Clinton administration. From Day 1, I was floored when he chose Geithner and Summers, proteges of Rubin.

[mix]

25. no, i do not think we see it the same way, at all n/t

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

28. What do you mean? Please elaborate...

Thanks.

[slipslidingaway]

19. Two important paragraphs...

"....Rubin, Summers and Greenspan succeeded in inducing Congress -- funded, of course, by these same financial firms -- to enact legislation blocking the CFTC from regulating these derivative markets. More amazingly still, the CFTC, headed back then by Born, is now headed by Obama appointee Gary Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs executive (naturally) who was as instrumental as anyone in blocking any regulations of those derivative markets (and then enriched himself by feeding on those unregulated markets).

Just think about how this works. People like Rubin, Summers and Gensler shuffle back and forth from the public to the private sector and back again, repeatedly switching places with their GOP counterparts in this endless public/private sector looting. When in government, they ensure that the laws and regulations are written to redound directly to the benefit of a handful of Wall St. firms, literally abolishing all safeguards and allowing them to pillage and steal. Then, when out of government, they return to those very firms and collect millions upon millions of dollars, profits made possible by the laws and regulations they implemented when in government. Then, when their party returns to power, they return back to government, where they continue to use their influence to ensure that the oligarchical circle that rewards them so massively is protected and advanced. This corruption is so tawdry and transparent -- and it has fueled and continues to fuel a fraud so enormous and destructive as to be unprecedented in both size and audacity -- that it is mystifying that it is not provoking more mass public rage..."

Thanks for posting!

[slipslidingaway]

20. I believe there is still a hold on Gensler's nominination...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gensler

"Gary Gensler is the nominee of President Barack Obama to be the chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.<1>

Gensler was Undersecretary of the Treasury (1999-2001) and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (1997-1999) in the United States. Barack Obama has selected him to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has jurisdiction over $5 trillion in trades.<2>


Senator Sanders Blocking Key Obama Nomination
March 23, 8:15 AM, 2009

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004606


"I reported back in February on the case of Gary Gensler, the former Goldman Sachs employee and derivatives cheerleader who President Obama nominated to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Gensler’s nomination sailed through the Senate Agricultural Committee but Senator Bernie Sanders has placed a hold on the nomination (as has a second senator who is as yet unnamed). A statement from Sanders’s office said:

While Mr. Gensler is clearly an intelligent and knowledgeable person, I cannot support his nomination. Mr. Gensler worked with Sen. Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of A.I.G. and has resulted in the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history. He supported Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which allowed banks like Citigroup to become “too big to fail.” He worked to deregulate electronic energy trading, which led to the downfall of Enron and the spike in energy prices. At this moment in our history, we need an independent leader who will help create a new culture in the financial marketplace and move us away from the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior which has caused so much harm to our economy."

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

24. This breaks my heart.

While I understand that Obama is obsessed with proving that he's not a liberal or a socialist, I think he's going way above and beyond. These appointments continue to frighten me.

[slipslidingaway]

34. IMO these appointments should frighten us n/t

[Dinger]

22. K & R

W T F?

[Political Heretic]

29. Its sad that this doesn't universially worry people here.

You can support the President and still admit to big concern about having his staff and administration so hugely financially connected to Wall Street.

Anywhere else that would be clearly identified as a concerning conflict of interest.

[slipslidingaway]

38. Rachel Maddow Vs. Obama's Lawrence Summers

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=293204&mesg_id=293204

Direct youtube link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1TMlauwSgg