Tim Geithner Should Be Fired.

Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, should be fired. He's a lousy salesman if his job is to sell the public on the idea that the Democrats have done all they can do to help the working people of this country. He's a lousy Treasury Secretary and a bad liar. His pretend sympathy for the unemployed is fake and sickening.

Geither gave an interview this week on the Today show, nationally broadcast, in which he discussed the depression which is destroying working people's lives in this country. Most of what he said was just despicable. Excerpts from an AP article about the interview are below, in quotes.

For example, he said that the government had no choice but to give hundreds of billions of dollars to Wall Street, and to let the insiders continue to loot their companies, paying themselves hundreds of millions in bonuses, money that was stolen from the American public.

He said that the public needs to be prepared for long-term continued high unemployment. Really Tim? That's it? We should brace ourselves? Nothing will be done to help the people of this country until every penny they have, every asset they own has been stolen by Wall Street? That's the Obama administration answer to the desperate unemployed: get used to it?

"Geithner also said that administration officials are "very worried" about recovering the more than 8 million jobs lost in the recession. ....The secretary agreed that the national jobless rate -- now at 9.7 percent -- is 'still terribly high and is going to stay unacceptably high for a very long time' because of the damage caused by the recession.

"'Just because this was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,' Geithner said, 'a huge amount of damage was done to businesses and families across the country ... and it's going to take us a long time to heal that damage.'"

"More than 11 million people now are drawing unemployment insurance benefits, and the overall jobless rate of 9.7 percent understates the true level of economic misery because many people who give up looking for work are no longer in the official count of the unemployed." .... [Note: some are now estimating actual unemployment is 20%. And Geithner says people just have to get used to it.].

Geithner also said that the "risky" behavior of Wall Street should never be allowed to happen again, and there is legislation moving through Congress that will prevent that. But that's not true, Tim. Most observers see the Dodd proposal as doing nothing to stop the same type of criminal behavior. Most insiders, like Geithner, describe Wall Street's offending conduct as "risky," or "reckless," but that's not true. It's not risky to Wall Street, not reckless to them, just criminal, fraudulent theft. How long has it been now that this has been allowed to continue? Nothing has changed. Nothing will change because Wall Street pays enormous bribes to our politicians to make sure they can continue to steal our money and loot our country, without any consequences.

There are reports today that the Catholic Church is claiming its leadership (or at least the Pope) is immune from liability for the sexual molestation of children by priests. That's a shocking claim, no doubt. But not when we look at the immunity given to Wall Street by our government. Why haven't these criminals been arrested and prosecuted, why haven't their assets been seized, why haven't their corrupt little asses been thrown into Attica? Because our national government, off the record, gives immunity to Wall Street from any liability for its criminal behavior.

We are no longer a nation of laws. The laws do not apply to the rich and powerful, who have looted our savings, defrauded the public and people throughout the world, and (for the bush administration) they have committed kidnapping, torture, and murder, as well as bankrupting our country by needless wars of aggression against other countries. Yet they are not prosecuted. And nothing is done to end these criminal practices and wars.

We used to say that we were a nation of laws. That our laws apply equally to all people. Whether a millionaire or a pauper, if someone steals a pack of gum, the law will hold them responsible. Nobody can ignore the law or bribe our officials to let them off. That's what it means to be a nation of laws.

The benefits to being a nation of laws include stability. If everybody understands that there are laws which are enforced and which require certain behavior and prohibit other behavior, people tend to live within those laws, they tend not to assault or steal or rob from their neighbors because they are reasonably certain that if they do, they will be arrested and put into jail.

What are the consequences of a nation in which the laws are not enforced against the rich and powerful, who are allowed to pay bribes to politicians to buy their way out of prison, to avoid liability? Respect for the political system, the government, erodes, people across the nation begin to ignore the laws and to willfully violate them because they have no respect for the system. Each man or woman to themselves. A system of anarchy.

Tim Geithner should be fired. He's a big part of the problem, as are all the Wall Street insiders who are running our government. He actually has the gall to go onto national TV, say the government had to give hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and that the insiders are free to take whatever they want as bonuses, that the public needs to get used to 10% (really 20%) unemployment because nobody's going to do anything to change it. This man lives in a pampered world of wealth. He has no idea how desperate things have gotten in this country.

Again, the Democrats need to create jobs. I suspect that the Democrats plan to do nothing for the rest of the year except solicit bribes and begin the lavish campaigning around the nation, once again, spending hundreds of millions of dollars telling the public that the Democrats are wonderful, all is well, vote for them. My advice to the Democrats is this: get real, create jobs, and wake up.