Posted on 03/24/2009 5:42:08 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Obama administration will ask Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said this morning.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is set to argue for the new powers at a hearing today on Capitol Hill about the furor over bonuses paid to executives at American International Group, which the government has propped up with about $180 billion in federal aid. Administration officials have said that the proposed authority would have allowed them to seize AIG last fall and wind down its operations at less cost to taxpayers.
The government at present has the authority to seize only banks.
Geithner will testify alongside Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee that begins at 10 a.m. Although the stated focus of the hearing is the controversial bonus payments AIG awarded its employees after receiving the government bailout, Geithner will try to advance the argument that the government needs more tools in its arsenal in order to right the nation's economic ship. ad_icon
"We need resolution authority to go in and be able to change contracts, be able to change the business model, unwind what doesn't work," Gibbs said on CNN in one of several morning television interviews aimed at promoting the administration proposal. " . . . This is the exact type of authority that will allow us to deal with the problems in AIG . . . that will address the systemic risk without having to put [a failing firm] in bankruptcy."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yeah...so noted but its a stupid proposal.
Every f___ing thing they can get their hands on.
They are out to do away with private property rights. They are unalloyed communists. Period.
They came for the AIG execs, and I said nothing because I was not an AIG exec; they came for the hedge fund managers, and I said nothing because I was not a hedge fund manager; they came for the investment firms, and I said ...then they came for the white,heterosexual Christian males (that’s me)and there was no one else to speak up.
Don’t drive when John Galt’s speech is on. You’ll fall asleep at the wheel...............
Oh Yes, I know.
My questions were rhetorical. :-)
Be scared people.
Seizing businesses in the name of “too big to fail” is a frightening concept.
“I believe the business community will rise up against this — in a big way.”
They didn’t rise up when the House passed their stupid 90% confiscatory tax on AIG execs.
Meanwhile....the drip-drip-drip of Marxism continues!
That anyone in AMERICA would PROPOSE this is scary enough.
The forcing our children to perform community service was just a proposal until the House passed it. Now if the Senate passes it and the President signs it, it’s gone way beyond ‘just a proposal’.
Here in the US, our constitution does not have an "article 48" equivalent. But Obama seems to be doing "just fine" without it.
LOL! Thanks :)
Un-freaking believable.
The Gall. Obama wants the authority to bypass Congress and confiscate your 401k, bank accounts, and any other investment you may have set aside for retirement, and give that to lazy non-working bums. That is his idea of redistributing the wealth from one race to another. And he is using the whites to accomplish this. Ben and Tim.
Do you really think they intend to follow that law, when they don’t follow any others?
This is a coup.
Sounds as if Hugo Chavez is our president.
The only thing I honestly don’t understand about this is why corporate heads and business leaders all over the country aren’t up in arms. Why are they all sitting by so quietly and just watching their companies be seized by Obama?
The business establishment of this country is transfixed, like a bird staring into the eyes of a snake. They genuinely do not believe the now failing nascent obama regime would do such a thing. Yet we see the process of de-industrializing America proceed apace. And one of the big clubs they intend to swing is the introduction of carbon cap-and-trade. This will raise the price of energy so high that the pie can no longer grow, and in all likelihood, will probably shrink.
The cultivation of growth industries, like the extraction and generation of energy sources, and the wide-spread distribution of this energy at relatively cheap cost, connected to the re-establishment of a viable manufacturing capability in this country, would seem to be the right application of assets and resources. But as long as there is this insistence of tearing down the edifice at one end to do a patch job of shoring it up at the other end, there shall never be much in the way of “growth”.
It is like the old parable of cutting off one end of the blanket,and sewing it on the other end, to supposedly make it longer. Prosperity is not a “zero-sum” game.
To make the blanket longer, it is necessary to start up the loom and weave new cloth.
I believe a good portion of America is currently a powder keg. “Something” will ignite it eventually and you are going to see an explosion of pent up anger unleashed like you never thought possible.
Can’t wait to see what this announcement will do to the Dow Jones Average today.
Yep, in a nose dive. Open 20 minutes and down 87 points already.
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