The Banks Are Not Lending, Oh My!

While one wishes the banks would be more motivated to ease credit (and they aren't), what does one expect? Hungry lions dont choose salad and brie on crackers from the menu. Banks who have been near to failure plus been reamed pretty good by the Feds and media should be expected to return to what we expected of them all along - rigorous, by-the-book lending. Lamentable, but what else could happen from the banks? As usual, there are larger questions such as the nature of business institutions and national loyalty, the cooperation of business institutions with national interests (let's say, national survival), the boundaries between a democracy and facism, and the old bugaboo, the role and powers of transnational corporations.

Not the least in this list of questions one is compelled to look at the definition of business ethics relative to the behavior expected from a real person: imho, they are not the same. Business ethics and cooperation-with-government is a subject that bears thinking about and this blogger will do so and blog about his "discoveries".

Geitner, Again: Puppet Plays the Puppeteer, Maybe , (PPIP, What?)

Hmmmm... with half-lidded smirk. So who, or what, is Mr. Geitner ..exactly. "Exactly" may never be known. Mr. Geitner, according to some,is best simulated as something sloozing from under yon rock.

PerchedEye sees the whole matter as a truth revealed: Wall Street's nature is to smell the easiest path to the money...screw elegant, long lifed systems approaches. "Give me the $, now and let's get with it."

The point? Geitner's toxic asset purchase plan, the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP), will probably work since it promises a most juicy bait to attract Wall Street to end its hibernation and come forth for spring feeding.

The Bailout, the Bankers Who Hustle and Con, ...and the Kid Geitner

Mr. Geitner's reticence in the face of bank bullying is a mystery. Just hope it is worth it for him, as the front man for the new administration, to keep taking it (ok, on the chin) from the bankers. It's like we've gone back to the era of big bucks and Taft.

The bank CEOs are colluding and bullying Mr. Geitner like he is a junior go-fer.

Mr. Geitner increasingly comes off as a fresh-faced kid. Where is Mr. Geitner's backbone, expertise and, supposed, professional insight in all this? One surely hopes he is holding some trump cards.

The banks are essentially kaput yet acting as if entitled to the bailouts. They continue to carve bonuses out of bailout finds as if nothing has happened. They apparently regard Mr. Geitner like a Carnie flattie drools when a curious mark comes to the booth. Sharks and minnows.

PS: The paying out of bonuses earlier than their normal payout date to make it appear the bonuses are acts prior to bailout, is transparent deception and should be treated as crimes. What is going on with Geitner, IRS, SEC, Obama ? Many web sites are questioning this, notably Huffingtonpost in their series,"
Tim Geithner, CNBC, and the Second Coming of Known Unknowns"

Auto Bail Out, and a National Energy Plan

There seems to be something missing in the national dialog about the problems of American auto industry. The auto industry is in collapse, no question there. There is lots of public money going to bail it out, that has already begun so no doubts about that also. And it appears public money will continue to flow in that direction as the auto industry has kind of implied, mainly because it has not expressed any notion of a target timeline for ...what, exactly? This vagueness of objective other than "sometime somehow, we hope to be profitable", leaves the question standing there naked, just why is the public going to bail it out? What is the objective because other than getting the big three through each upcoming quarter, there does not appear to be measurable objectives along the way, nor conditions and purpose going along with the money.

A background thought: no other developed country has the same reluctance as the United States to guide a national industry resource when there is obviously a crisis right now. A personal explanation is that America is caught in trap of its own making, a quick sand of theological-economic ideology that holds sacred the preserving of a free-market icon. The truth is there is no such thing as a free market that obeys the axioms of theoretical market models. And the current Wall Street collapse, revealed after the previous administration's denials even up to the last second, has again scholed us on the real, human fallibility, vunerable to corruption, dynamics of our market system our mis-named market system. Exactly what is the appropriate name for our system, maybe junior-league facism? Hmmm, free-market, believe-me-when-I-tell-you, revivalist hokum?.

Why does America have such difficulty with the 'bail out' concept, when America has singled handedly bailed out, redirected, modernized, made over, and gifted the major global industrial giants (former fight-to-the-death enemies no less) with the Marshall Plan after WW2. Why does America have such a difficult time telling essentially bankrupted, bad product making, unimaginative and unadaptable auto company leadership its time to change in very basic ways.

A big problem, a missing puzzle piece, as I see it is that America needs a coherent, clearly objectified, National Energy Plan wherein the auto industry can have a clearly defined interdependent, and profiting, niche along side other major industries whose products use, produce, design, and integrate into the energy big picture. But again there seems to be an ideological block that prevents an even open dialog on that subject.

Bank CEO Testimonies Before House FSC

After looking at Rep Frank's House Financial Services Committe grilling of the TARP CEOs on the morning of February 11, '09, Pericles21 feels the CEOs deserve no heavy blame. Further, at this point, blame talk is pointless. It is simply a bad financial situation that needs fixing. But, the public wants to see the wringing of hands and several kinds of mea culpa. So, the Frank Committee hearings were useful. And so, what now? We are still left with the problem of how to save the financial sector loans from defaulting and homes from foreclosure. That problem will require cleverness and innovation because the solutions will have to go against the ABC's of economics which is bad debt should be dropped and bad businesses should die off as a natural culling process leading to the better health of thebusiness organism. The problem is things have gone so far into badness that bad business represents a major portion of the organism. Letting "bad" die off will be like cutting off a leg to save the foot.

Recession, Let It Be

Perched Eye had a worrisome dream that it is too early to see how to fix this recession. So, unpleasant as it seems, would it be best to let things get worse until patterns and critical variables are clearer? Will money spent now actually work? Does government need to excercise a kind of national triage for the time being, maybe until unemployment reaches around 8.5%?

Nice compromise for Congress: Repubs won't have to spend money, Dems won't have to stick their necks out. Just have to accept a few million more job losses. Hmmmm?