Jr. Deputy Accountant reports that Tim Geithner Muses On Fed Independence, Redefines "Credibility," wonders what credibility he is referring to. – Ilene
Watch him squirm!
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the Obama administration would oppose any effort to strip the Federal Reserve of its mandate to pursue full employment and warned Republicans against politicizing the central bank.
“It is very important to keep politics out of monetary policy,” Geithner said in an interview airing on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” this weekend. “You want to be very careful not to take steps that hurt our credibility.”
Wait a second, bailing out Bear Stearns but allowing Lehman to die didn’t hurt their credibility? What about that whole thing with Crooked Pinky Hank Paulson going in front of Congress begging for TARP claiming that they’d use the money to buy crap assets and then turning around to use it as a bailout slush fund for suffering banks? Or how about that time the Fed decided to buy $300 billion in Treasurys and then decided that wasn’t enough and went for $600 billion instead? None of that hurt our credibility but somehow stripping the Fed of a duty it has failed miserably in anyway would? Please. WC Varones shares my sentiment on this issue, it’s a little late to start talking about politicizing the Fed now.
Timmy is confused as to the actual definition of credibility but that shouldn’t be shocking to anyone familiar with his sleazy hypocrite a**. After all, Timmy is the one who was president of the New York Fed as the bailout checks went out, "credibility" is the last word one might pluck from the dictionary when describing our esteemed Treasury Secretary.
Little Timmy met with several House GOP members last week, presumably trying to charm them into seeing his viewpoint and/or not making him look like a complete and total tool (as if he needs any help on that).
Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo felt compelled to point out last week that though the Fed is allegedly independent from the political whims of the moment (as in "Hey, Ben, it’s Barack. Can you guys do me a favor and print me up $600 billion or so? We’re a little low on cash and those f**king Chinese aren’t loaning us any more money, just tell them it’s because the economy sucks or something"), that doesn’t translate into being able to do whatever they want. If you buy that, I also have a bridge to sell you and sorry, payment in gold only.
The Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decisions are rightly insulated from short-term political pressure, but the U.S. central bank is not completely free to do what it wants, a top Fed official said Friday.
Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo said the U.S. has a wise tradition of keeping the central bank’s decision on interest rates insulated from the poltics of the moment. But he underlined it’s the "politics of the moment" from which the decisions are insulated–not from basic policy decisions taken by Congress.
"It’s not as if we’re just independent in the sense that we’re out there and we can kind of take whatever policies we want," Tarullo said.
See, I think that would imply that Congress has any idea what it is doing. I gather that they don’t even realize they ultimately have the power to kill the Fed if it comes to that and why would they? Bernanke is the one who signs all the checks at the end of the day, with few of those Congressional asshats smart enough to realize that we do, in fact, have to pay for all of this in the end.
Geithner is afraid that if Congress starts going for the Fed’s throat, even on an insignificant issue like redefining their alleged dual mandate, that it will dawn on many of them that our central bank has been robbing us blind for nearly 100 years under the guise of monetary policy. A criminal will do anything to make sure his crimes are not uncovered, until he gets sloppy and one day leaves a bloody footprint leading from the scene of the crime.
Seeing as how Geithner practically signed a lot of those 2008 bailout checks himself, it makes sense that he’d be extra paranoid to have anyone sniffing around at his former place of employment.
Originally published at Jr. Deputy Accountant, Tim Geithner Muses On Fed Independence, Redefines "Credibility".
