"You Can't Handle the Truth"

Tim Geithner gets to play the Jack Nicholson part here but you can be sure that he won't be getting any Academy Awards. Oddly enough, the American people would like to find out where AIG's almost $1000 per person is going, but Geithner et. al. really, really, don't want to tell us.

So what are Obama, Summers and Geithner so afraid of? There is some speculation that it's because a lot of the money is going to Goldman Sachs, but I suspect that a more likely recipients are a whole raft of European banks. Maybe, just maybe, the American people would not be too happy to know that they were investing the price of a nice LCD HDTV (for each man, woman, and child) in propping up European banks that made some unsound investments.

So why do Obama, Summers, and Geithner think it's necessary? the argument is that an AIG default would set in motion a chain reaction of bank failures that would bring the whole international economy down. There is a good chance that they are right.

Like the Colonel says, "You can't handle the truth."

If Congress really wants the answers, though, they just tell Obama "Not one cent until we get the story." I suspect, however, that the leadership is in on the scam. If the Repus wanted to fight I suspect that they would have no trouble finding enough Democrats to go along.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more