The American Spectator : Mr. Geithner Lays an Egg

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Mr. Geithner Lays an Egg

By G. Tracy Mehan, III on 2.11.09 @ 6:07AM

With help like this, who needs a recovery?

Would it be terribly uncharitable to suggest that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was better at navigating the Internal Revenue Code than revitalizing our flagging economy? He seems to be doing a pretty good Hank Paulson imitation.

After announcing, in relatively vague terms, his plans for spending, oh, one, maybe two trillion dollars on our ailing financial system, the Dow Jones Industrials market index nose-dived, losing 381.99 points or -4.62%, the largest drop since President Obama took the oath of office.

Either the stock market did not like what it heard, did not have enough details or simply lost faith in the Administration's general approach, well, to everything. A lot of the commentary tried to attribute this drop to the lack of details, mere details. Few linked the laying of this egg with the Senate passage of the monster stimulus package.

You know we are in trouble when our Commander-in-Chief starts defending out-of-control spending, garnished with a light sprinkling of actual economic stimulants, by citing the once fiscally incontinent Republicans for running up a trillion dollar plus deficit over the past eight years. "If they could do it, we can do it,” seems to be the sub-text of the President's line of argument. Yes, we can. God made Democrats to spend, not Republicans. Let the amateurs step aside for the real pros. No, he didn't really say anything like this. But he really should come up with a better argument than "The Republicans did it, too.”

The Republicans did lose their souls and spent like it was 1965. Shame on them for that. Still, as my wise mother told me, time and time again, two wrongs do not make a right. Newsweek says we are all socialists now, and that government at all levels is going to consume close to 40 percent of our GDP!

I am starting to get really depressed. I was listening to Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on C-SPAN radio Monday while driving home from work. He used to be Secretary of Education. He observed that the stimulus bill doubles -- doubles! -- that Department's budget, which is $68 billion, with no provision for reforms of any kind. Whodathunkit? This is just one of the many snakes which will continue to crawl out of this legislative tangle. We will be hearing about these kinds of abominations for months to come if this becomes law. If? I wish.

Have you noticed how President Obama seems to be assuming a passive-aggressive stance with respect to the deliberations on the stimulus package? On one hand he seems to say that he is respectful of differing opinions. On the other he is calling down hellfire on those who would presume to doubt the wisdom of massive deficit spending for pet programs at the expense of real stimulus. As the Wall Street Journal has noted, the President has signed on for the view that just about any kind of federal spending qualifies as "stimulus" except for those contraceptives they recently ditched.

And perish the thought that any supply-side tax cuts, i.e., reducing marginal income tax rates, might be seriously considered in this stimulus package. That economic boom during the Reagan years, which carried over to the benefit of Bill Clinton, was just a mirage.

One positive note: the GOP seems to have found its conscience, although it is pretty late in the game. Except for the usual suspects, it is heartening to see Republicans stand shoulder to shoulder against what promises to be another four-year spending spree right on the heels of their previous eight-year run.

Thank the Lord for small favors.

topics:
Stimulus Package

About the Author

G. Tracy Mehan, III served at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the administrations of both Presidents Bush. He is a consultant in Arlington, Virginia, and an adjunct professor at George Mason University School of Law.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (24) | Leave a comment

Rocco| 2.11.09 @ 7:01AM

Well, those of us who maintained that the election of Pebo would be the second term of Jimmah Carter were remarkably prophetic, unfortunately. The Idiot-in-Chief and his coterie of tax cheats will do more damage to this country in four years than any enemy, from the Kaiser's Germany up to the present, could have ever dreamed. And most Americans are too numbed by our modern equivalent of "bread and circuses" to even give a damn, as long as they're on the receiving end. Didn't Ben Franklin once say, once the people found that they could give themselves money from the Treasury, that would herald the end of the Republic?

Rocco| 2.11.09 @ 7:03AM

Every time Pebo and Geitner shoot off at the mouth, the markets drop another 200-350 points. They would perform a signal service to the country and the world by just keeping their mouths shut and letting the markets recover.

Robert Rosencrans| 2.11.09 @ 7:50AM

There should be 30 days a year where all politicians are required to keep their mouths shut. The results would be fascinating.

Paul| 2.11.09 @ 9:24AM

Hey Rob, there IS a way that we can get all the lying big government politicians to "keep their mouths shut", and not just for 30 days either. It's called a REVOLUTION. A real one, just like we had once upon a time when Americans were not drowning in a slave mentality. A real one, and not just going on cruises or having neaty keen seminars. We need to take our country back, and that won't be done by making sure our wingtips are well polished or that our ties and hankies match: it will be done by blood sweat and the burning torch. We should not rest until every single hate America traitor is in the ground, in jail or in exile.

Michigan-Matt| 2.11.09 @ 9:59AM

Timmie-the-tax-cheat doesn't have a clue about how to persuade others or the market. He needed, without a doubt, to prove in this debauched first outing that he was capable and up to the task. Confidence, Timmie. Confidence. if you can't project it, how can others be expected to have it?

Frankly, with this performance, he isn't even fit to be in the sandbox with the crooks and liars in Congress --and that's a pretty low threshhold for entry.

Michael Roush| 2.11.09 @ 10:15AM

Mark your calendars. On this date, Maureen Dowd and G. Tracy Mehan III agreed on the failure of Mr.Geithner's plan to save the economy. A few quotes from Ms. Dowd:

"The Obama crowd is hung up on the same issues that the Bush crew was hung up on last September: Which of the potentially $2 or $3 trillion in toxic assets will the taxpayers buy and what will we pay for them?

It wasn’t only that Americans’ already threadbare trust has been ripped by Hank Paulson’s mumbo-jumbo and the Democrats’ bad judgment in accessorizing the stimulus bill with Grammy-level “bling, bling,” as the R.N.C. chairman, Michael Steele, called it. The problem is that the “lost faith” that Geithner talked about in his announcement Tuesday cannot be restored as long as the taxpayers who are funding these wayward banks don’t have more control.

In a move that would have made his mentor, Robert Rubin, proud, Geithner beat back the populists and protected the economic royalists. The new plan offers insufficient meddling with Wall Street, even though Wall Street shows no sign that the hardscrabble economy has pierced its Hermès-swathed world."

It was a gloriously bi-partisan effort that created the financial mess we are enjoying and, sadly, a gloriously bi-partisan mindset that is keeping our officials from solving it. Mr. Mehan writes, "You know we are in trouble when our Commander-in-Chief starts defending out-of-control spending, garnished with a light sprinkling of actual economic stimulants by citing the once fiscally incontinent Republicans for running up a trillion dollar plus deficit over the past eight years. "If they could do it, we can do it,” seems to be the sub-text of the President's line of argument." We've heard this line of argument before. How often we heard supporters of W, when other arguments failed, assert that Clinton did it too. As if that justified anything.

frost| 2.11.09 @ 10:33AM

Excellent comments, although thoroughly depressing. And, like so many others, I'll be heading for my local neighborhood sporting goods store to stock up on mucho ammo -- in copious quantities, no less.....
These guys are scary. Very.

clahseeker| 2.11.09 @ 11:07AM

We have guns and ammo. An economic boycott is guns and ammo. Shut down the cable, stop going to movies, talk less on the cell phone, eat at home and brown bag it, don't buy Calfornia wine, Vermont cheese and maple syrup, screw anything Massachusetts ( screw your darling red sox), don't buy any car, flood city hall with complaints about basic needs like potholes, make sure anyone you hire is a citizen, call the tv station and tell them they have too many commercial so they need to pay the "stars " less, this and more by 10-20 million households and they'd be broken in 6 months. Leahy and that commie want a truth commission. Tell not Ben and Jerry, no Vermont dairy , Teddy bears. Quit venting and make them pay a price. Bomb them with post cards, " I bought my cheese made in Ireland today ", sign a Revolutionary Fighter. Will Limbaugh lead such a movement. Never. Nope. Just talk and write and lose. Guns and ammo. You people can't live without your HBO. Gonna shoot it out in the trenches, sure.

Chuck | 2.11.09 @ 11:33AM

The talk of Revolution sounds scary.
It also sounds like the only way to escape from this mess.
After the Revolution, THEN WHAT?

ImwithPaul| 2.11.09 @ 11:52AM

Paul is correct. We long ago (circa 1918) ceased to resemble the country our founders envisioned. The creation of the IRS and all that followed including the expansion of the federal government since has killed the experiment in limited government. Republican or Democrat, they are virtually the same and offer no hope of taming the central government. There is no return to the original model of liberty, limited government, individualism, and capitalism but with revolution.

Michael Roush| 2.11.09 @ 12:46PM

For those who speak of guns and ammo and revolution, be careful for what you wish. I would urge you to read up on the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the Revolution in Iran. Incredible bloodshed, dictatorship and prolonged war was the result of revolution in France. Communism with all that entailed followed the Russian Revolution. Theocracy was the outcome of the revolution in Iran. We Americans tend to view revolution through the lens of our own history which, unique among the nations, resulted in progress toward a more perfect society because of the enactment of the liberal ideals espoused in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Those who think a revolution in America today would return us to some halcyon earlier time in our history are ignorant of much of our earlier history and, in all likelihood, wishful thinkers. We are better as nation today than we have been in the past not because we stood pat or were governed by reactionaries but because we changed.

Marc Jeric| 2.11.09 @ 1:22PM

Economic stimulus? Yes - for ACORN brown shirts and for teachers unions; for 600,000 more government employees producing nothing but more deadly regulations; for climate change hoax with more industry-killing taxes; for environmentalist criminals who have murdered so far more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao put together; for useless earmarks that produce nothing people would buy but will result in perpetual socialist power; for "green" power with unreliable $2/kwhr electricity; for bailout of "strong" unionized industries; for card check union goons taking over free enterprise; for shutting down opposition by "Fairness Doctrine"; for banana republic type inflation; for nationalization of banking and health care; for putting half the population on welfare; and by more... I am out of breath. Welcome to the United Soviet States of America!

Todd| 2.11.09 @ 1:28PM

I would have to agree with Michael on this though at some point it might be our only option on the road we are going. It would not be a revolution but a civil war I am afraid since so many people actually approve of socialism. The talk of revolution is presumptuous as this point, it is time for all lovers of liberty and limited government to become fully involved and seize back control through elections. I do feel like 2 years of socialist rule will sour enough people on liberalism that the pendulum will swing back much like 94. We will still have many problems to deal with and try to correct somehow but now is not the time for talk of revolution.

Patricia A. Helvenston| 2.11.09 @ 2:45PM

Those commentators who advocate for waiting until 2010 to vote are assuming there still will be a vote that is not monitored by brownshirts. I think they are overly optimistic. The way Obama the communist has behaved in the past 3 weeks clearly shows his every action is designed to destroy the US as quickly as possible. Civil war is a horrible thought but I don't want to live in a communist country. Contacting legislators is having little effect and nothing is stopping Obama. He recently rescinded the presidential decree Bush signed before he left office so now we will still not be able to drill off shore. His every action is designed to cripple our economy and he openly invites terrorists to come to the US. Two years is way too far off to base any optimistic assumptions upon. I would like to see local militias formed all over the US, to defend us against terrorists, illegals and brownshirts.

Todd| 2.11.09 @ 3:20PM

Patricia,
I think you are going a bit overboard though I understand where you are coming from. It is no time to sit around and wait for 2010 to come around before doing everything, time for us to get involved and fight back in a Democratic way. We each have to do our best to inform our fellow citizens that really don't understand what is happening. Most people are not in favor of socialism which is why Obama did not run as the socialist he actually is. Since the MSM made it their duty to get Obama elected with the hope and change nonsense and selling him as a moderate, we have to do everything we can to expose it for the charade it is. One positive thing about 2010 is that all the losers who made an effort to vote this election because of Obama will likely stay home. There is only so long they can get away with blaming Bush for everything.

Gill O'Teen| 2.11.09 @ 4:16PM

I certainly sympathize with all of you calling for Revolution. But we must be careful. The Constitution specifically empowers Congress to “suppress Insurrections” (Article I, Section 8). In short, that collection of Julios* would simply authorize O-bum-ah, he’s not my president, to sic the army on us. It would be most difficult for us to withstand such a force. However, I do think that we have a right to secede. If my ancestors had simply left the Union and not fired on Fort Sumter, Lincoln would have had no legal justification for his genocide against the South. Of course, O-bum-ah, he’s not my president, might shortly so tick off our soldiers, especially when elderly veterans are denied health care by the Obamoid National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, that they would join our freedom fight.
*Julio Osegueda is the “college student” McDonald’s clown who wet his pants for O-bum-ah, he’s not my president, in Fort Myers yesterday.

Michael Roush| 2.11.09 @ 7:50PM

Todd,
You make a very good point. Instead of revolution, we would likely be looking at civil war given the passion of the ideologues on both the right and the left. God save us from the extremes.

Nick| 2.11.09 @ 8:59PM

Mr. Roush,

Ideologues on the left are pacifists (except the ones that plant bombs, like B.O.'s friends) and hate guns.
It won't be much of a war.

Michael Roush| 2.11.09 @ 10:53PM

Nick,
Pacifists who plant bombs? Interesting concept. Perhaps you are referring to IEDs. They have, unfortunately, proved to be deadly. Maybe you mean suicide bombers. Again, quite deadly. Guess we had better watch out for those leftist, pacifist bombers.

Nick| 2.11.09 @ 11:01PM

Mr. Roush,

Never heard of Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground? Didn't follow the election too close, huh?

Todd| 2.11.09 @ 11:01PM

Michael,
I believe Nick is referring to Obama's good buddy William Ayers. Of course William Ayers is a coward who would run away if it came to a real fight.

JeromeB| 2.11.09 @ 11:24PM

I started to do some research and found out that a ton of government money is given to people each year. The money can be pretty much used for whatever you want as long as you fill out all the info they need (your name and address, what you want to use the money for, any school you been to. I told them I needed to pay off my debts and that was it.

http://www.akabeezy.com/