BTW: Dylan Ratigan "won the Gerald Loeb Award for 2004 coverage of the
Enron scandal." - "He currently hosts Morning Meeting with Dylan
Ratigan, an MSNBC program airing weekday mornings in the United
States" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Ratigan

MSNBC la` bo^` te`o cu?a O ddo' nhen.

http://www.businessinsider.com/dylan-ratigan-its-time-to-fire-tim-gei...

A year ago it was revealed to the American people that our banking
system is a legalized Ponzi scheme in which bank and insurance CEOs
pay themselves billions of dollars in personal compensation to lend
and insure assets with money they don't have to customers who can't
pay back the loans.

In those dark days between the fall of Lehman Brothers and before the
presidential election, we were often carried through that time by the
small glimmer of hope that at least we would soon have a new leader
who would hopefully fix this mess and punish those responsible

Yet in the past 9 months, not only has the administration failed to
fix anything, they have actually made things much worse for anyone who
isn't a Wall Street banker. Therefore, we are past the point where
anyone in power still gets the benefit of the doubt -- the process of
taking back our country for all citizens must begin now.

This is why I think we must ask if U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner is still the right person for the job. It has become clear
recently that, back in his previous role as New York Federal Reserve
Governor, he unnecessarily gave billions of dollars of US tax money to
banks and insurance companies with few strings attached. And it is now
becoming clear that his lack of meaningful action is helping many of
these same banks steal more by legalizing their most economically
dangerous, socially destructive and self-enriching practices.

Yesterday on NBC's Meet the Press, Secretary Geithner again endorsed
House bank reform legislation that would allow, by my calculations, as
much as 80%, or $475 trillion, of the bank's $600 trillion in crooked
insurance schemes to still be held in secret. It was and is the secret
risks held in this very market that led to our collapse in the first
place, and that continue to pose massive future risk to the global
economy.

Geithner also continued to employ the bankers' favorite and most
ludicrous lie : that the taxpayer must somehow continue to pay
executives at companies like AIG ungodly sums of money under the
threat that, if we don't, somehow the taxpayer will never make their
money back. Well let me tell you something, the taxpayer and our
nation will never get back the lost wealth taken under these false
circumstances and this colossal breach of fiduciary duty. The idea
that we must somehow perpetuate this system with our tax money and the
future wealth of our children goes against the very American ideal of
failure, adaptation and innovation, not to mention of our democracy.

Also last week, the Treasury Secretary endorsed a piece of legislation
that, instead of stopping a select few companies from profiting from
the implicit taxpayer-guarantee of Too Big Too Fail, seeks to
officially condone it. If the most prized skill in our society,
economically, is the ability to lend and insure the most money without
consequences, then our nation's people are doomed to lose everything
in the world's largest ever betting parlor; and that is precisely the
system this Treasury Secretary -- Tim Geithner -- is seeking to
legalize and institutionalize in America today.

However, the smoking gun for Secretary Geithner comes from a recent
Bloomberg FOIA disclosure regarding events from last November. It was
then that New York Federal Reserve Governor Tim Geithner decided to
deliver 100 cents on the dollar, in secret no less, to pay off the
counter parties to the world's largest (and still un-investigated)
insurance fraud -- AIG. This full payoff with taxpayer dollars was
carried out by Geithner after AIG's bank customers, such as Goldman
Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale, had already previously
agreed to taking as little as 40 cents on the dollar. Even after the
GM autoworkers, bondholders and vendors all received a government-
enforced haircut on their contracts, he still had the audacity to
claim the "sanctity of contracts" in the dealings with these companies
like AIG.

None of us were in the rooms when these decisions were made, so I
don't pretend to know if Mr. Geithner was the one lone, sane voice of
reason fighting against mysterious forces or the primary proponent.
However, I fail to see the reasoning for why we continue to rely on
those who were in the room when these horrendous decisions took place
to be the same people that we choose to deal with their aftermath.
There are just certain situations that are not suited for continuity.
The best analogy I can think of is that it would be like asking Al
Cowlings to spearhead the Nicole Brown Simpson murder investigation
under the premise that he knows the layout and the "players" best.

The fact is that there are people who understand all of the
intricacies of finance and policy as well as Secretary Geithner, but
whose allegiances to the taxpayer are much clearer. People like
Elizabeth Warren, Neil Barofsky, Rob Johnson, and Senator Maria
Cantwell just to name a few.

To stop the theft from continuing, the most basic rules of capitalism
need to be applied to our banks. And the future of our national wealth
needs to be safeguarded by the US Government. The current custodian of
America's wealth, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is not doing a good
job of either. The time for corrective action is now.