David Brooks’ motto is, "The less you know about something, the louder you should say it." Today, he shouts about Tim Geithner’s “stay the course” big bank bailout plan. Here are my translations of a few of his Rovian misdescriptions:
It’s no fun being a leader in a financial crisis.
How would Mr. Brooks know?
Geithner’s plan is huge but also disciplined.
Mr. Brooks, I gather, is commenting on Mr. Geithner’s plan, not his physiognomy or habits.
Geithner has been working the financial meltdown for a while.
He’s part of the problem.
But the big uncertainty is not inside the banks; it’s in the broader economic climate.
We know big banks and private equity firms are corrupt. They fund the GOP; we don’t want to change that.
[T]he government doesn’t need to go in and nationalize the banks. “It’s very important that we don’t look like there’s any intent of taking over or managing banks. Governments are terrible managers of bad assets…”
Unlike GM, Delphi, Lehman, Merrill, Citi, Enron, Global Crossing and AIG, stellar managers all.
Nor does government need to lop off the head of every C.E.O. Geithner…clearly leans against those who want a reign of terror.
Bobo equates firing criminal or incompetent and hopelessly greedy CEO’s with beheading by guillotine thousands of French aristocrats. A Freudian slip.
To rebuild goodwill, Geithner’s program is designed to be reasonably simple and transparent.
Goodwill lost by Bobo’s King George, whose plan was simple and secretive: give Wall Street the key to the Treasury and turn the lights out. Geithner is OK leaving the lights on.
As for the eventual costs, they are postponed.
Pretty much how the government buys drugs and most other things, but not Main Street. Geithner is following Bush Management Practices 101. A NonChange we can’t believe in.
The…policy is…unfolding. [I]t is designed to fit the crisis, not a prefab agenda. Geithner…at least he seems to be running against his natural instincts. If we’re going to have a finance czar, he should at least dislike the role.
Bobo’s almost Jesuitical view, apparently, is that if there must be sex, let it be between only married but divorcing couples. The odds of it being done well or respectfully are low. That it will needlessly hurt is assured.
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David Brooks’ original comments, of course, can be found here.
I guess that if Brooks is spending so much time and energy on economic issues, something he knows less than nothing about, it indicates how important his Republican masters take it. It looks like they like Geithner’s “plan” which should be a warning to us all how really stupid it is and how ineffective and expensive it is likely to be.
Couldn’t agree more. Bobo is reverse divining rod, pointing to wherever his masters direct.
If they like Geithner’s plan, it’s because they’re already counting the dough. They’ll never have to explain where they got it or what they did with it, and never have to give it back. If taxpayer’s money brings their banks back from self-induced collapse, taxpayers won’t even get a thank you, much less the return on equity risk they’ve assumed.
Digg it!
epu’d but important enough to repeat:
Here’s the answer the congress wanted to hear today. This is where the money’s going, they (Summers, Fed, Obama?) just don’t want to tell us.
http://www.truthout.org/013009T Jeff Lieber, Village Voice article 1-27-09: Absolutely, positively must reading for any citizen of the US
“ Imagine if a ring of cashiers at a local bank made thousands of bad loans, aware that they could break the bank. They would be prosecuted for fraud and racketeering under the anti-gangster RICO Act. If their counterparties – the debtors – were in on the scam and understood that they didn’t have to pay off the loans, they could be charged, too. In fact, this scenario played out at subprime-pushing outlets of a host of banks, including Washington Mutual (acquired last year by JP Morgan Chase, which itself received a $25 billion bailout); IndyMac (which was seized by FDIC regulators); and Lehman Brothers (which went belly-up). About 150 prosecutions of this type of fraud are going forward.”
…………
As staggering as the Madoff meltdown was, it had a refreshing side – the funds were frozen. In the bailout, on the other hand, the government often seems to be completing the scam by quietly passing the proceeds to counterparties.”
As long as Crony Capitalism protects bad managers from the free market Bobo is wrong.
Government protecting bad mangers for political reasons is why Government management doesn’t work.
Unfortunately Tim having a job suggests that Government management won’t work does prove that point.
Get rid of Tim get Warren Buffet, George Soros, Krugman etc and then I will trust the Government to manage companies.
That’s the important bit – the distillate – if Bobo’s masters are instructing him to pimp hard thusly for Geithnerd, the public is about to get royally screwed, blued and tattooed.
Because…? Speak, Bobo, Speak!
Bobo is wrong about everything remember how he complained that Bush was not getting credit for the Great Economy?
(As I asked you downstairs:) You’re saying… that the first TARP traunch which went to the banks… has actually being getting paid out to foreclosed homeowners?
Why does Tim think that winning Bobo over will help in anyway?
New post at FDL
No… please read the article… it will really help explain it.
Yes, the race to the bottom continues. This just the beginning, think South America in the late 60s to 80s. Another Sad day for the humans on the Little Blue Sphere hurling through space.
jo6pac
As for today’s Geithner performance, a suspicious mind is left to wonder if he is failing on purpose – on behalf of his Federal Reserve Bank overlords, who don’t want to burn through any more cash and are more than ready to pull the plug on the entire system (while appearing not to) and hit reset.
NOTHING happens by accident. Geithner steps forward to present a plan, then fails to present a plan. Leaving us to assume incompetence? Where have I heard that one before?
Didn’t catch anything too new in there, but it does have a really intense writing style.
Incompetence or, “it was only a joke,” is the new, improved Beltway hustle: a way to get away with it. The MSM is all forgiving if an actor can lay claim to one of the above.
Owning a policy and striving to implement it, but implementing it only partially, thanks to necessary political compromises, is Old European politics. Dems it seems, as well as Republics, invent their own reality and the MSM follows them down the rabbit hole.
Only those living outside the Beltway have to contend with reality. Those living inside the Beltway are actually inside the Tardis.
Brooks keeps getting worse, becoming a shrill siren for the losers, but Shields is just a terrible mountain of jello.
I just leave the room or change the channel when they start spouting and melting.
Here’s more on why Tim Geithner is right: private sector mega-companies like GM are much better stewards of their assets than governments. (At least Republican led governments.) Not.
Remember that once-ubiquitous propaganda, heard just before pink slips flowed like confetti:
Cutting domestic employment, especially union jobs and the white collar guys needed to ride herd over them, is a long term goal of Big Auto and their top suppliers, like once-bankrupt Dana Corporation and still-bankrupt Delphi Corporation. Developments like today’s announcement that GM intends to cut another 10,000 jobs is an opportunity, not a hurdle.
Restructuring a large corporation is routinely necessary. In Big Auto, it’s always delayed until it can be laid at feet other than management’s, which protects managers’ reputations [sic] and compensation. Yesterday it was needing to compete with Japan. Today it is to meet “promises” to Congress. Tomorrow it will be to meet the demands of new Chinese owners and boards. Plus ca change.
Yup. Jim Lehrer’s sticking with Brooks and Shields is inexplicable. They give his viewers a comfy corner in which to calmly reflect; that they represent distortions of what both left and right seek to do seems to be a feature, not a bug.
He keeps using those words. I do not think those words mean what he thinks they mean.
What?! Jim Lehrer with Brooke Shields?! — BRAIN BLEACH, STAT!
(h/t Suzanne, apologies earlofhuntingdon)
Careful. Your Blue Lagoon memories are showing. Even Blue Lagoon (featuring a coyly photographed fifteen-year old Ms. Shields without the Jordache) was more entertaining than David Brooks and Mark Shields. I suspect it would be too much so for Mr. Lehrer, like eating toast without first dipping it into the warm milk.
The Geithner Senate seance today was very much along the lines of a typical day of Congressional testimony from Alberto Gonzales.