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Investigation Reveals Geithner Should Be in Prison

We talked about the economy today, and whether Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner deserves more credit. What he should be getting credit for, it seems to me, is that Lehman Brothers report — well, not the report, but the cover-up.

To give you the thumbnail sketch, a court-appointed bank examiner spent a year researching the fall of Lehman — the trigger for the bailout crisis. As it turns out, surprise surprise, the accounting at Lehman was, to put it mildly, shifty… and our guests aren’t the only ones asking what did Geithner know and when did he know it?

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism is noting, “The NY Fed, and thus Timothy Geithner, were at a minimum massively derelict…”

Mike Whitney over at CounterPunch is faking disbelief: “Is there really any doubt that Tim Geithner at the New York Fed, or Bernanke knew that Lehman was trading its junk assets to finance its on-going operations?”

If Geithner and Bernanke didn’t know what was going on at Lehman, that’s bad. If they knew, that’s worse. One way, you’ve got to wonder why they’re still in work. The alternative is that it was all part of some bigger, nastier scam, which transferred huge amounts of wealth from taxpayers back to the very banks that created the crisis.

They shouldn’t just be out of work, quite possibly, Geithner or Bernanke (or both) should be in the clink. We learned long ago that this President can cut bait when he thinks it’s called for. Candidate, then president Obama has broken with his preacher, his green jobs guru, his social secretary. The last, Desiree Rogers, apparently got the boot for letting gatecrashers into last fall’s first State Dinner.

If she can get the boot for letting strangers into a feast, surely Bernanke and Geithner should get at least that for covering up for the banks who ate up our whole economy? Or does Obama only get tough with homies?

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.

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Laura is a long-time journalist, author and media activist. She wrote the New York Times bestseller Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species and Blue Grit: Making Impossible, Improbable, and Inspirational Political Change in America. Before founding GRITtv, she started up and hosted “Your Call” on public radio KALW in San Francisco and RadioNation on Air America Radio. She is also a regular contributor to The Nation magazine and the Huffington Post. Flanders was founding director of the Women’s Desk at the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and for more than 10 years she produced and hosted CounterSpin, FAIR’s nationally-syndicated radio program. Laura is a regular commentator on MSNBC’s The Ed Show where she has become the go-to source for reliable, progressive analysis of the day’s top stories. The Institute for Alternative Journalism named her one of ten “Media Heroes” of 1994 and she was recently awarded a NY Moves “Power Woman of the Year.”
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8 Responses to “Investigation Reveals Geithner Should Be in Prison”

  1. Does no one care if Geithner is guilty? Where is the outrage from those who were royally screwed? Is the Justice Department on vacation? Why isn’t Bernanke and Greenspan before a federal grand jury explaining how they can be viewed by the entire financial world as the topmost qualified masters of financial manipulations, and yet they didn’t see the inevitable crash of the system. How is that remotely possible? How naive would a jury have to be to accept that they didn’t know?

    I would especially like to hear Greenspan’s explanation of “irrational exuberance” to see if it might encompass fraud, cheating, or fake financial “instruments”.

    Where is the Justice Department? Where’s our justice, period??

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    Doubtom
    2010-03-16 14:56:38
     
  2. No one will be held accountable. Our politicians let Nixon go, and ever since, (and I am sure from the creation of the USA), people in power and/or with money NEVER are held accountable.

    Sure you have a “scape-goat” like Madoff once in a while, but that’s one in how many?

    It makes me sick when I see American politicians talk about the “rights” of people in other countries and how important that is.

    Well I would rather know flat-out, front and center that my government is watching me, taking my money, etc, instead of all the charades that this fake-democracy we have in the USA.

    It’s better to know that to not.

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    corey
    2010-03-16 14:56:49
     
  3. I suggest that Maddof is not a sacrificial lamb so much as he is unfortunate enough to have crapped on a great many of his very rich and therefor influential tribal members, who are never so rabid as when they turn on each other. Many of these rich and influential jews were seriously injured by Bernie Maddoff’s scheme and they called in their favors and phhhhhtt! Bernie is gone.

    Can we expect the same results with Goldman Sachs? Get real!

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    Doubtom
    2010-03-16 15:07:42
     
  4. He is and all his cohorts are rich enough to pull a K. Lay. pay off some coroner to say you died have Xe (blackwater) find some unlucky person who matches their height and weight then cremate they while they disappear to some exotic area and live like kings.

    This is why confiscation of all those guilty families assets is so important. So what if the elite have to learn how to dumpster dive and sleep in cardboard boxes. So what if their children didn’t actually have anything to do with the crimes that were committed decades ago by their great grandfather. If these children received a higher educations, well then lobotomies are in order. Fruit of a poisoned tree, right. If our elections can be predetermined, by an electronic voting machine then those people and their families should get a similar fate. Our children are going to suffer because of their psychotic,sociopathic behavior. Who’s crazier, them for doing it or us for not prosecuting them.

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    linecrosser
    2010-03-16 16:02:51
     
  5. Yes, where is the OUTRAGE! It must be in the same place as OUR NATIONAL PRIDE.

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    wormfarmer
    2010-03-16 16:09:39
     
  6. it kind of like saying someone was too busy faking reasons to go into Iraq to pay attention to 9/11 warnings vs intentionally ignoring the 9/11 warnings. Or Saying there are WMD’s in Iraq and we know where they are based on misleading reports from Iraqi and Iranians or saying it knowing it isn’t true. or saying a day may live in infamy after spending a year trying to provoke an attack or actually ignoring an attack you know is coming…it is funny how business mirrors the rest of our actions…the symbolism in hitting the world trade center and the pentagon(or white house) they certainly seemed for some reason to sense it was also a target.

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    maxsmart
    2010-03-16 16:30:27
     
  7. Yes he should be in jail, along with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of that mob. And then executed.

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    Ellie1
    2010-03-16 17:26:38
     
  8. In their confirmation hearings, both Geithner and Bernanke were questioned at length about their knowledge of the meltdown(Lehman, etal) prior to it taking place. Both denied any more than hearsay knowledge, even though the Fed had oversight of those very transactions.
    In 2005, Bernanke stated that the mortgage “problem” would have a cost of no more than $50B and that would be a worst case scenario. In the meantime, he increased Fed “float money” from $800B to $2.7T during
    2008.

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    mccloric
    2010-03-16 17:35:45
     

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