Replies to post #298873 on $Stock*Shop*Charts*News*Option$

[Tuff-Stuff]

Oh Timmie, how about a replacement~~~~>Conan O'Brien for Treasury Secretary

Posted by Leslie Savan on 01/21/2010 @ 7:39pm



As the Democrats hysterically reel away from heath care reform in the wake of Scott ("My daughters are available") Brown's win in Massachusetts, I'd like to suggest the sort of personnel change President Obama needs to make in order to recoup his populist mojo: fire Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and replace him with Conan O'Brien. Why? Because Conan clearly has a grasp of exactly what you should do when, after years of grueling effort, the Man jerks your chain just as you're on the brink of realizing a long-cherished goal.

Like a lot of people, I don't really care about these late-night shows or the celebrity "controversies" they generate (if I can stay up that late, I'm watching Colbert or the Maddow rerun anyway). But NBC's Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien saga has started to display the same structural shape--that is, high-handed corporate incompetence in which all nasty consequences are relentlessly shifted onto workers below the perpetrator in the pecking order--that has characterized our nation's financial crisis. And Conan has the cojones to be admirably, even hilariously, petty about it in public.

Jeff Zucker, the NBC/Universal chief who juggled Leno and ultimately displaced O'Brien, is--like Goldman Sachs head Lloyd Blankfein when he was holding onto those worthless liens against AIG--the sort of grasping corporate exec who will not make tough decisions and instead ties everyone around him into contractual knots while hoping it will all work out in the end. After promising Conan that if he waited five years The Tonight Show would be his, Zucker pulled the half-baked, absurd gambit of moving Leno to 10 p.m. every weeknight with a terrible show that killed local news ratings and strangled Conan's lead-in. When the network's affiliates complained, Zucker just said "nevermind," and tried at first to squeeze Leno into Conan's first half hour; when that proved to be DOA, NBC agreed to pay the younger star $45 million to just go away.

The dollar amounts are spelled with m's instead of b's or t's, but that, writ small, is Obama's conundrum with the banks. Like NBC, American bankers in the boom years could not make a tough decision about the bloated and obviously unsustainable derivatives market because they were reaping huge fees by pushing subprime mortgages. They weren't even able to entertain the notion that their magic algebra couldn't go on forever, much less that it could add up to a Ponzi scheme that would sink the entire economy. They were hoping that some slapdash patch, some absurd dodge, some last-minute fix--like giving Hank Paulson nearly a trillion dollars in TARP money and the keys to the Fed window in the last 10 minutes of George Bush's presidency--would save their butts.

It did, too. But when you look at the financial equation the bankers and their friends in the two political parties wrote out for us, you can see immediately that it was a raw deal. The moneymen raked in at least $10 trillion in taxpayer funds as aid to the banks and other financial entities like AIG. Obama assumed in return that he'd get a stimulus bill of about $.8 trillion and the long-needed overhauls of America's health insurance system, environmental policies, and fiscal regulations. He got the .8 (though he had to dedicate a third of it to pointless tax cuts rather than to actual job creation or aid to the foundering states). But when the time came to pass health reform, the political/financial complex dug in their heels. They went so far as to mount a deviously phony-populist slander campaign against reform, with much of the corporate ad money secretly laundered through the Chamber of Commerce, FreedomWorks, and other such fronts. (With today's Supreme Court's decision that corporations may spend as much as they want in ad campaigns for a politician, who needs a laundromat?)

So, what Obama needs is a little bit of Conan's anarchic elan. If the banks--who, as Sen. Dick Durbin said of the Congress, "own the place"--won't let him spend money to reform healthcare, he should use his majority to rewrite the tax laws (tax rate changes require only 50 Senate votes and the Vice President's) to take Wall Street's bonus money back. After all, as Rediscovering Values author Jim Wallis said on Jon Stewart last night, the $150 billion that just six banks paid out as bonuses in 2009 could eliminate or postpone all home foreclosures through 2012, or erase the budget gaps in all 50 states. At the least, it could help rebuild Haiti.

Yes, O'Brien could show Geithner how it's done. And to paraphrase Scott Brown, Conan is available.

[Stock Lobster]

Bam can bank on this: tax bonuses, bust NY

NEW YORK POST
Last Updated: 3:09 PM, January 19, 2010
Posted: 12:57 AM, January 19, 2010

Mayor Bloomberg is a very smart man and should have seen this coming ("Banks Blast Back," Jan. 17).

Bloomberg would do well to recognize before it's too late that New York, the banking center of the world, is a target for President Obama.

Obama sees New York as part of the corrupt and immoral private sector that is less important than his agenda.

Obama sees banks as businesses with assets to be redistributed.

Robert Sanfilippo

Roslyn Heights

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If Bloomberg actually said Obama's bank tax is "aimed squarely" at the city's lifeblood, he either doesn't understand the rationale for the tax, is misstating the notion of "aimed squarely" or is trying to justify why the city's budget hasn't been reined in.

This from someone who has no problem taxing individuals who can much less afford it.

If an industry is giving people "obscene" bonuses, it's a reasonable sign that the industry has determined it can afford it.

Or the bonus money is really not from the failing industry but from the average taxpayer.

Steven Wolosker

Manhattan

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This administration wants to tax the banks, because it views the recent bonuses as excessive.

Where were the Democrats and Obama when Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick were collecting extravagant bonuses and compensation from government-run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

Some estimate that, due to the multiplier effect, a $100 billion tax on the banking system will remove almost $1 trillion from the economy -- money that won't be available for loans and credit.

Tax and spend. This is change we can believe in?

Alan Kull

Oxford, NJ

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/letters/bam_can_bank_on_this_tax_bonuses_TN3OIFXnqB77RU327q8LzL

[Stock Lobster]

NYP: Traders floored by Obama plan

Obama plan takes aim at US banks' lifeblood: profit

By MARK DeCAMBRE and KAJA WHITEHOUSE
Last Updated: 6:57 PM, January 22, 2010
Posted: 1:51 AM, January 22, 2010

For the second week in a row, the White House gut-punched the financial services industry with a fresh set of proposals that, if enacted, could effectively end much of what has come to define Wall Street.

A week after President Obama introduced a plan to tax banks based on assets, he delivered another potentially punishing blow in the form of a plan to impose regulations that would end proprietary trading, bar commercial banks from owning, investing or sponsoring hedge funds or private-equity funds and effectively block financial institutions from getting bigger.

For commercial banks, Obama's plan, which some have dubbed "Glass-Steagall 2.0," essentially gives them a choice between continuing to serve customers or abandoning them in favor of "prop trading," or executing trades that only benefit the bank itself. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1934 separated commercial banking from investment banking until it was repealed in 1999.

Obama's latest push takes direct aim at firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America, all of which are classified as commercial banks but are active in prop trading, and to varying degrees hold federally insured consumer bank accounts.

"The fact is, these kinds of trading operations can create enormous and costly risks, endangering the entire bank if things go wrong," Obama said yesterday when introducing his proposal.

Because the president didn't offer specifics, bank executives alternated between trying to get details on the plan and downplaying the severity of the impact to their bottom lines.

Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar said prop trading accounted for 10 percent of the bank's revenue, while sources at JPMorgan said it was less than 1 percent and at Morgan Stanley that it was negligible.

A larger question for some banks was whether hedge funds currently owned by the banks could remain in place as long as the bank does not invest in the fund.

Meanwhile, big guns like Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of giant money-management firm BlackRock, told The Post that he likes aspects of Obama's plan but added that he's still waiting for a comprehensive proposal on how to manage systemic risk while not crimping lending.

"I would love to see a comprehensive proposal taking into account how to [manage systemic risk] and finance the growth of America," he said.

Richard Bove, a bank analyst at Rochdale Securities, said that on its face, the new plans may force some banks to break up.

He added that such a move might be a good thing for shareholders, but could have disastrous effects on the economy because as banks get smaller, it would hinder their ability to extend credit to the degree they have done so. What's more, they'll be at competitive disadvantage to larger, more diversified foreign banks.

The "president's bill will do more harm than good," Bove said.

Added Jeff Harte, bank analyst at Sandler O'Neill: "My bigger concern isn't so much the details [of the bill], but I'm concerned about what kind of message this statement sends to the country. This [proposal] would imply that Wall Street is back squarely in the target of politicians' agendas."



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/traders_floored_KHN0V640DjOxys9OZJC7YM#ixzz0dOzPyOl4

[Stock Lobster]

Obama Vows to Keep Fighting for Health Care Overhaul

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
January 22, 2010, 5:40 pm
Update | 6:00 p.m.

During a town hall meeting in Ohio on Friday, President Obama made an impassioned pitch for a broad overhaul of the American health care system. He acknowledged that the legislative process on Capitol Hill was ugly — “it starts looking like just this monstrosity,” he said — but also said he was resolved to finish the job.

“There are things that have to get done,” Mr. Obama said, toward the end of the town hall meeting in Elyria, Ohio. “This is our best chance to do it. We can’t keep on putting this off.”

After discussing his health care efforts in his opening remarks, Mr. Obama returned to the issue following the question-and-answer session.

Here’s what he said:

Now, I’m out of time, but I want to say one last thing. First of all, because there’s been so much attention focused on this health care issue this week, I just want to emphasize not the myths but the reality of what is trying to — that both the House and the Senate bill were trying to accomplish, because it’s actually very simple. There are a bunch of provisions in it, but it’s pretty simple.

Number one, for those of you who have health insurance, we are trying to get in place reforms that make sure you are getting your money’s worth for the insurance that you pay for. That means, for example, that they can’t impose a lifetime cap where if you really get sick and suddenly there’s some fine print in there that says you’re not completely covered. We’re trying to make sure that there is a cap on out-of-pocket expenses, so that you don’t find out, when you read the fine print, that you’ve got to pay a huge amount that you thought you were covered for. We’re trying to make sure that if you’ve got a pre-existing condition, you can actually still get health insurance, because a lot of people have been banned from getting health insurance because of a pre-existing condition. One of the provisions — one of the reforms we want is to make sure that your 26- or 27-year-old could, up until that age, could stay on your insurance, so that once they get out of high school and college, they can stay on their parents’ insurance for a few years until they’ve got a more stable job.

The line about pre-existing medical conditions drew applause from the crowd, which is not surprising given that denial of coverage for that reason is one of the most unpopular insurance industry practices. But Mr. Obama also went on to explain why the health care bill cannot easily be pared back into component parts, with Congress only adopting the most popular provisions

So you’ve got all these insurance reforms that we’re trying to get passed. Now, some people ask, well, why don’t you just pass that and forget everything else? Here’s the problem. Let’s just take the example of pre-existing conditions. We can’t prohibit insurance companies from preventing people with pre-existing conditions getting insurance unless everybody essentially has insurance. And the reason for that is otherwise what would happen is people would just — just wouldn’t get insurance until they were sick, and then they’d go and buy insurance and they couldn’t be prohibited. And that would drive everybody else’s premiums up. So a lot of these insurance reforms are connected to some other things we have to do to make sure that everybody has some access to coverage. All right?

But Mr. Obama did not stop there. He went on to make a pitch for the sweeping overhaul that Democrats have championed on Capitol Hill, including a new government-regulated insurance exchange and subsidies to help millions of moderate-income Americans afford private coverage.

So the second thing we’ve been trying to do is to make sure that we’re setting up an exchange, which is just a big pool so that people who are individuals, who are self-employed, who are small business owners, they can essentially join a big pool of millions of people all across the country, which means that when you go to negotiate with your insurance company, you’ve got the purchasing power of a Ford or a GM or Wal-Mart or a Xerox or the federal employees. That’s why federal employees have good insurance, and county employees and state employees have good insurance, in part is because they’re part of this big pool. And our attitude is, can we make sure that everybody is part of a big pool to drive down costs? That’s the second thing we’re trying to do.

Third thing we’re trying to do is to try to reduce costs overall because the system — how many of you, you go into the doctor’s office, you fill out a form, you get a checkup, you go fill out another form, somebody else asks you for the form you just filled out. Then the doctor fills out a form, you got to take it to the pharmacist. The pharmacist can’t read the doctor’s — this is the only industry in the country that still does that, that still operates on paper systems, that still orders all kinds of unnecessary tests.

In one of the more personal aspects of his pitch, Mr. Obama described himself as patient-in-chief, relying on the advice of his doctors just like everybody else, not quite sure if or when medical tests are necessary or if and how treatment might be obtained at a cheaper cost. That personal approach drew more applause — as did his acknowledgment that the legislative process in Congress has been especially ugly and possibly offputting for many Americans.

Because a lot of times, I walk in the doctor, I just do what I’m told — I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t know whether this test was necessary, or whether we could have had the test that I took six months ago e-mailed to the doctor so I wouldn’t have to take another test and pay for another test. Right? So there are all these methods of trying to reduce costs. And that’s what we’ve been trying to institute.

Now, I just want to say, as I said in my opening remarks, the process has been less than pretty. When you deal with 535 members of Congress, it’s going to be a somewhat ugly process — not necessarily because any individual member of Congress is trying to do something wrong, it’s just they may have different ideas, they have different interests, they’ve got a particular issue of a hospital in their district that they want to see if they can kind of get dealt with and this may be the best vehicle for doing it. They’re looking out for their constituents a lot of times.

But when you put it all together, it starts looking like just this monstrosity. And it makes people fearful. And it makes people afraid. And they start thinking, you know what, this looks like something that is going to cost me tax dollars and I already have insurance, so why should I support this.

So I just want to be clear that there are things that have to get done. This is our best chance to do it. We can’t keep on putting this off. Even if you’ve got health insurance right now, look at what’s happening with your premiums and look at the trend. It is going to gobble up more and more of your paycheck. Ask a chunk of you folks in here who have seen your employers say you’ve got to pick up more of your payments in terms of higher deductibles or higher co-payments. Some of you, your employers just said, we can’t afford health insurance at all. That’s going to happen to more and more people.

You asked about Social Security. Let me talk about Medicare. Medicare will be broke in eight years if we do nothing. Right now we give — we give about $17 billion in subsidies to insurance companies through the Medicare system — your tax dollars. But when we tried to eliminate them, suddenly there were ads on TV —

“Oh, Obama is trying to cut Medicare.” I get all these seniors writing letters: “Why are you trying to cut my Medicare benefits?” I’m not trying to cut your Medicare benefits. I’m trying to stop paying these insurance companies all this money so I can give you a more stable program.

And then came the grand finale, where Mr. Obama seemed to say he was committed to continuing an ambitious agenda, despite the loss of a Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts this week and the perception that his administration suddenly is on the ropes.

The point is this: None of the big issues that we face in this country are simple. Everybody wants to act like they’re simple. Everybody wants to say that they can be done easily. But they’re complicated. They’re tough. The health care system is a big, complicated system, and doing it right is hard.

Energy. If we want to be energy independent — I’m for more oil production. I am for — I am for new forms of energy. I’m for a safe nuclear industry. I’m not ideological about this. But we also have to acknowledge that if we’re going to actually have a energy-independent economy, that we’ve got to make some changes. We can’t just keep on doing business the same way. And that’s going to be a big, complicated discussion.

We can’t shy away from it, though. We can’t sort of start suddenly saying to ourselves, America or Congress can’t do big things, that we should only do the things that are non-controversial, we should only do the stuff that’s safe. Because if that’s what happens, then we’re not going to meet the challenges of the 21st century. And that’s not who we are. That’s not how we used to operate, and that’s not how I intend us to operate going forward.

We are going to take these big things on, and I’m going to do it, and you’re going to do it, because you know that we want to leave a better America for our children and our grandchildren. And that doesn’t mean standing still; that means marching forward.

I want to march forward with you. I want to work with you. I want to fight for you. I hope you’re willing to stand by me, even during these tough times, because I believe in a brighter future for America.

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/obama-vows-to-keep-fighting-for-health-care-overhaul/

[Stock Lobster]

Doh! U.S. Takes $1.5 Billion Hit as Citi Drops

January 22, 2010, 5:40 am

Highlighting the complicated ties that have arisen between the government and Wall Street since the taxpayer’s bailout of some of the nation’s largest banks, President Obama’s proposal, unveiled Thursday, to reign in some the largest financial institutions sent some of Uncle Sam’s own share holdings down.

The New York Post noted that because President Obama’s remarks prompted a sell-off of U.S. banking stocks, the U.S. government saw its own investment in Citigroup plummet, as well.
The U.S. government holds a 27 percent stake in Citigroup, making it the banking giant’s largest investor. And as Citi’s shares plunged 5.5. percent yesterday, that stake lost $1.5 billion in value, The Post said.

Aside from Citigroup, other banking stocks also tumbled: JPMorgan Chase fell 6.59 percent, Bank of America dropped 6.19 percent, and Morgan Stanley declined 4.21 percent.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us-takes-a-15-billion-hit-as-citi-drops/

6 Comments

1. January 22, 2010
8:17 am

it seems hypocritical to bail them out and then when they are recovering let’s regulate them into government puppets–might as well create national banking along with national health care this guy should have a wall street education, and understand business,
credit, unemployment & supply and demand.

— john libris

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2. January 22, 2010
9:04 am

This info certainly points out the facts that a non schooled(in finances/ramifications) leader with equally inept sycophants can cause long term fears in the markets which affect all the citizens. This is particularly intensified by the absence of the baffelgab/Gibbserish/Emanuelbull, which indicates they are in “it” up to their necks and cannot extricate themselves. They do not desire to save the nation but to “unsully” their battered and tattered reputations…which cannot be done. (see Mass election results/comments). The possibility of the DJ “market” sliding to 6500 is revived, and, even abetted by these operatives in Washingdung Dist of Clowns…right. Pogo?

— popskoenig

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3. January 22, 2010
10:20 am

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of Pirates. Am I glad I watched Conan last night. Not only did Robin Williams fly NBC a squadron of fingers, he and Conan shared some Pirate words. We’re gonna lose a lot more than that on Citi, mark my words to market.

— Abby Tucson, AZ
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4. January 22, 2010
10:29 am

Maybe Obama should impose another tax on banks (on top of all the others proposed) to recoup their losses in Citi after the market sell-off from Obama’s financial reform announcement.

— Marty

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5. January 22, 2010
10:51 am

Sometimes doing the right thing takes courage in the short term. It will all come to nothing if the banking industry doesn’t right itself on a firm footing. we could have bigger losses if we fall i to a cycle of distress and collapses.
— fxp

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6. January 22, 2010
2:59 pm

dang! let me get tis straight….America ran from 1776 to 1910 and had a total debt of $2.6 billion….and from 1910 to 2008 it adds up to over $12 TRILLION….

Well….tats looks like the more government gets involved…..the we the people of America gets the short in of the stick.

“It is the aim of good government to stimulate production, of bad government to encourage consumption.” - Jean Baptiste Say, French economist 1767-1832

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.” Alexander Tyler

— madmilker

[Stock Lobster]

LOL: "this is about getting our money back"...

...except those billions of dollars we still have tied up in Citibank and other financials

Obomb just lost the US taxpayer $1.5 billion as Citibank drops

Sharp!

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/citigroup_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org