Just curious, would Clinton have appointed many of the same Wall Street folks to her cabinet?

View #1 is that we're looking at an unnecessary panic. The housing bust, so the story goes, has spooked the public, and made people nervous about banks. In response, banks have pulled back, which has led to ridiculously low prices for assets, which makes banks look even weaker, forcing them to pull back even more. On this view what the market really needs is a slap in the face to calm it down. And if we can get the market in troubled assets going, people will see that things aren't really that bad, and -- as Larry Summers said on yesterday's Newshour - the vicious circles will turn into virtuous circles.

So (according to view 1) it's our fault?! lol!~

And if we can get the market in troubled assets going . . .

1. Spend our money helping average, working class people, the victims of our unfettered "free marketplace," or
   
2. Bailing out the "Masters of the Universe," whose immoral, and over-the-top, avarice caused this financial collapse.

So, think about it; Obama ran on a campaign of "change," changing the culture of Washington, and changing the cozy, symbiotic relationship between Big Business, and our elected officials. So, what does he do once he's elected? He appoints the former head of Goldman Sachs, one of the largest recipients of our bailout money, and also the largest recipient of the taxpayer bailout money passed through AIG.

Obama, like his predecessor Bush, knows nothing about the economy, and appointed Geithner to head Treasury, not because he agrees with Geithner's solution to our problems, but simply because he likes him. And Geithner, as a card-carrying member of the "masters of the universe," believes, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously stated, "are different than you and me."

They want nothing about their lifestyle to change, even as millions of people have lost jobs, lost homes, seen their retirement accounts shrivel, have brought kids home from private colleges to live at home and attend the local state school, have given up health insurance and skimped on essentials.  

We should have known.  We should have known just by looking at Obama's economic policy talent pool that they were going to fulfill yet another dream of Obama's to really play with the movers-and-shakers, and they were going to teach Obama how to sound like a man of the people while they were going through the crowd picking our and the government's pockets.

You couldn't swing dead cat without hitting a Goldman Sachs alum - another not very promising sign.

I can hardly wait for the press conference tonight.  What I would give for Obama to have to face an audience full of economists he has not been listening to, and who know BS answers when they hear them, and see how well Mr. TelePrompter handles himself.  Maybe he will be overcome with the giggles like he was with Steve Kroft...

The whole point of the Geithner plan is to create a market to set prices...

if the plan doesn't work, the government has essentially declared a number of banks to be insolvent and unable to sell bad assets at a market price...

    I want the regulators to come into the banks and say - now you have a ready - if somewhat subsidized market for your assets then it is no longer tenable for you to say that the market price for them is unrealistic.

    This asset that you have marked at 95% of par.  We want you to sell some of it (or a part interest in it or similar.)  If you get 75% of par - then we want you to mark your book to 75.

    If - given a real market for bank assets - you are shown to be capital inadequate then you should have time (say 6 weeks) to raise private capital.  Failing that your bank becomes government property.

If this is the government's strategy, it implies that the main barrier to nationalisation is not the administration's fear of financial meltdown or concern over the logistics of managing huge banks, but is instead the suspicion that they couldn't get the necessary approval from Congress--which would involve a rather large new chunk of money, but might also mean statutory changes to give the administration the legal ability to take receivership of one or several large banks.

He was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998-2001) under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.[5] Summers was his mentor,[10][11] but other sources call him a Rubin protégé.[11][12][13]

Wiki

Just curious, would Clinton have appointed many of the same Wall Street folks to her cabinet?

I suspect that in the end we will be driven down the road to some form of bank nationalization -- and if that is where we are going Paul Krugman is correct to say that it is better to get there sooner rather than later. But unless Paul Krugman has 60 Senate votes in his back pocket, we cannot get there now. And the Geithner Plan seems to me to be legitimate and useful way to spend $100 billion of TARP money to improve -- albeit not fix -- the situation.

It has the added benefit, I think, of laying the groundwork to convincing doubters of nationalization: "We tried alternatives like the Geithner Plan and they did not work" might well be an effective argument several months down the road.

The polling a few weeks ago showed that the public doesn't need convincing.  Apparently Eric Cantor doesn't need convincing.  So who does?  Wall Street?  A few TalkLeft commenters?

Not results, not experience. Hope.

I prefer Obama to McCain/Bush. But that's like saying I prefer drowning to being buried alive.

What appears to me is this plan is a sort that is very close to that of reverse economic engineering. Something I never thought of before but should naturally be part of the project to flush out the real core of the problem is the center stage of this plan.

Perhaps the real reason the Republicans are on a rant to oppose it at every effort. This plan is basis dated for the economic turn down at 2007 which is well way back into the Bush and Company mischief. If that proves even earlier the Republican Neo's will likely go wild to engage in all kinds of smear and rant to oppose it.

This timing is well into the next election that would likely diminish the Congressional and Senate seats, and GOP slots at a time well into the ownership of wild Republican deals that could be the cause of the melt. To be sure Republicans do not want to be proved they are responsible for deliberate deceitful fraud and deception or calamity by their leadership. But it looks that way, so the fireworks will really light up.

There can be no other reason why they refuse to take part in being able to get free money. Heck, the recovery deal sort of reminds me of a profit sharing where if you kick in a hundred dollars you company will kick a hundred dollars. That sounds like a 100% return for banks interested if one has a good investment manager.

But what is really funny is all these years I have heard from the Republicans the country should be run like business. LOL and here we jumping right in and the Right wing neo-con's ranting that its not right for the government to this. It's so funny.

Two things seem to be out standing one is the "At Will" principle in business that always exercised its prerogative to be able to run things at will. Well now we the people are right there sharing the fun and they don't like it.

The other was the very funny comment Chris Mathews about taxing the heck out of this bonus bail out banker was not fair to use legislation to zero in on them. As I was sitting listening to that while thinking about the Federal Reserve, the Jekyll Island group, that was legislated almost a hundred years ago, that has zeroed in on the middle class for a century, was very funny to me anyway.