TimmyG: It's Bush's Fault

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

TimmyG was prez of the NY Fed Reserve for 5+ years prior to becoming SecTreas. He had oversight of, inter alia, the multiple criminal conspiracies and massive failures on Wall Street. He failed, we lost, he got promoted to SecTreas.

He told the Senate Finance Committee yesterday "We begin our time in office after a long period..." of government failures. He limits those failures to "health care, energy and education" so as not to implicate himself. He wants you to ignore the economic and Wall St. collapses on his watch. Watches, actually, first as NY Fed prez and now as SecTreas. He's the government common denominator that spans both failures.

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$43 bil... no, make it $65 bil! for clean energy tech. TimmyG says the former to CharlieR in hearings on Tuesday, the latter Wednesday to the SenateFinCmte. He's SecTreas and he's testifying about his budget and he can't get closer than $22 bil one way or the other on this? I'm feeling stimulated again.

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Thanks, Bloomberg: Allowing companies and individuals to escape paying their share “isn’t fair, particularly given the scale of the fiscal challenges we inherited”, Timmy tells the SenFinCmte.

Let's review: He did his own taxes because no tax pro would sign off on them. He received extra pay to offset his income tax liabilities but he kept it rather than pay what he owed. He lied about it and didn't pay until the Obama vetting team caught him in the act. Now he's telling us what is and isn't fair when We pay Our taxes. Have we become so immune to hypocrisy?

Ron Kirk? More administration tax problems but I'm not excited. I'll jump on cheats but I try to accept brainos. I've made 'em too, and that looks like what his is.

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From Bloomberg again: "Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner warned the U.S. recession is worsening, and the Federal Reserve said there’s little hope of an improvement in coming months."

And: "Geithner also said yesterday that details on a separate $1 trillion program to remove distressed mortgage assets from banks’ balance sheets will be coming within the next two weeks."

Another tril? The eyes glaze over.

Mortgage breaks for the wealthy. NancyP chokes on tax breaks for the wealthy (it's not fair) but she's OK with refinancing toxic home mortgages up to $729K -- including second mortgages! -- and reducing renegotiated mortgage rates to as low as 2%. That's fair? Who does she think has mortgages that big? The DC mindset can't imagine us with our 150-350K mortgages.

Paul Volcker thinks that TimmyG's miserable performance is because he doesn't have a deputy or any undersecretaries. Maybe in part, but he had all of that when he was prez of the NY Fed and he didn't do any better then. AP says the reason turns out to be that they're taking extra time vetting potential nominees. Can't seem to find enough honest applicants.

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USA -- Big, powerful, lots of home-grown rich folks

Switzerland -- Tiny, snooty, where the rich folks play and hide their money

Tell me again, why can't we get banking information from the Swiss to use in our criminal tax investigations? Time to get tough on this one, Tim. Oh, I forgot, no deputies.