It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
But their shift to the Obama administration from Citigroup has raised questions about the potential for conflicts of interest, and about whether Mr. Obama’s own staff members benefited from the kinds of Wall Street excesses he has criticized.
“You sort of have to wonder why it is so smart to put them in charge now, if they helped create the mess that we are in,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “They wouldn’t strike me as the natural choice.”
'Incestuous'
Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, has questioned whether the Obama administration, like the Bush administration, is relying too much on former bank executives in shaping the bailout of the financial sector. Recent appointees include Mark A. Patterson, a former lobbyist at Goldman Sachs, who is now the chief of staff to the Treasury secretary.
“It seems to be an incestuous financial relationship situation here,” Mr. Shelby said at a Senate hearing last week, referring to senior Treasury executives, like Mr. Patterson, who once worked at investment banks. “And that’s very troubling not only to a lot of people on this committee but to the American people.”
"Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over."
- Herbert Hoover, responding to a delegation requesting a public works program to help speed the recovery, June 1930
Originally posted by rattan1
reply to post by badkarma90
Not the web bots again. Last time I checked, their predictions are not comming true
Originally posted by rattan1
The Economic Meltdown is over….. Time to make some money.
Decisively the opposite what should've been done: Pick an economics team of proven failures and second choices, burn money instead of investing, throw money at failing companies instead of the strong, send money to people who never paid taxes.
Originally posted by disgustedbyhumanity
Thats why it wasn't over. Hoover failed to act. We have acted decisively.
The derivatives were the biggest danger to the system. By not allowing the banks to default(fail), they have removed that danger from the system.
Thats why the market went up yesterday. Because Bernanke made it a point that the big banks WILL NOT FAIL! The mark to market and uptick rule were just sideshows, but will also have a positive effect once they are corrected. This will take care of a bunch of solvency issues and allow repayments to the goverment. AIG is the most effected. Then Citi. Then BAC.
Originally posted by skeeveve
What the H, I just enrolled in my employer's 401K
We might not be at the very bottom yet, but we sure as H are close. So anything I put in now should go way up over the next 10 years or so, until we hit the next recession.
Good time to start investing, IMHO.
What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."