OK, now I am starting to get scared here... - Granite Grok

OK, now I am starting to get scared here…

Many of us were surprised at the CEO of GM, Rick Waggoner, basically getting fired by Obama.  Then, in terms of business parlance, Obama pulled off a hostile takeover by replacing half of GM’s Board of Directors – effectively giving him and Government control of one of the largest American manufacturers. 

Yes, we know all about the TARP money, but when you look at the above, the statements by Barney Frank (D-MA) and other Democrat leaders that they want to set compensation for ALL executives at ALL companies (regardless of whether they have received bailout money or not), and now the following, aren’t you starting to get the shivers?

  • First, Obama threatens the bank CEOs

Politico reports: 

…Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees — and, by extension, to themselves.

“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”

But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

…According to the accounts of sources inside the room, President Obama told the CEOs exactly what he expects from them, and pushed back forcefully when they attempted to defend Wall Street’s legendarily high-paying ways.

No, President, it is not WE who hold the pitchforks!  You and your supporters whipped up the populism hatred of these guys – you built the factory, you passed them out, and you are aiming them. Sir, YOU are the Pitchfork-In-Chief

You have taken this crisis, whipped it up, and are now manipulating it. And Obama’s pitchfork is the example of Rick Wagoner.

  • Next, Obama’s Administration is refusing to accept the TARP money

From the Wall Street Journal (by Stuart Varney):

I must be naive. I really thought the administration would welcome the return of bank bailout money. Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn’t much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street’s black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back?

My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell ’em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.

If the banks are forced to keep TARP cash — which was often forced on them in the first place — the Obama team can work its will on the financial system to unprecedented degree. That’s what’s happening right now.

Think about it: If Rick Wagoner can be fired and compact cars can be mandated, why can’t a bank with a vault full of TARP money be told where to lend? And since politics drives this administration, why can’t special loans and terms be offered to favored constituents, favored industries, or even favored regions? Our prosperity has never been based on the political allocation of credit — until now.

Temporary?  OK, as much as I disliked the notion, it happened (not that I had any say in what went down).  But now, it seems this crisis is being moved from temporary to permanent.  The tentacles of government are solidifying in place in the most effective place possible that can then re-order our society – after all, no loans, no companies.

  • Then it threatens the banks who don’t need TARP and don’t want government instrustions:

From FoxNews (Andrew Napolitano):

…I recently met with the Chair and CEO of one of the country’s top 10 bank holding companies. His bank is worth in excess of $250 billion, has no bad debt, no credit default swaps, no liquidity problems, and no subprime loans. He told me that he and others were forced by Treasury and FDIC threats to take TARP funds, even though he did not want or need them.

The FDIC — with Treasury backing — threatened to conduct public audits of his bank unless his board created and issued a class of stock for the Feds to buy. The audit, which he is confident his bank would survive, would cost it millions in employee time, bad press, and consequent lost business.

He pleaded with the Feds to leave his successful bank alone. He begged his board to let him tell the Feds to take a hike. But they gave in. The Feds are now just a tiny shareholder, but want to begin asserting more and more control. This is a classic extortion: Controlling someone’s free will by threatening to perform a lawful act. (Blackmail is the threat is to perform an unlawful act in order to control someone else’s free will.)

Chicago politics right before our very eyes – the best of the Daley machine combined with Al Capone. Now do you think it was temporary assistance from the Feds?

  • Now, Obama’s Blue Ribbon panel head says "Fire them all!"

From the NY Post: Fire Them All!

The chief watchdog of the government’s $700 billion bank-bailout plan says top executives of struggling financial institutions must be fired if the economy is to have any chance of recovery.

Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and chair of the congressional oversight committee monitoring the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, told The Post that letting banking leaders off the hook for the mess their companies are in will plunge the country into a deeper hole.

"The management of the institutions receiving subsidies from the government must be replaced," she said in an interview last week.

…Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last week said he would be willing to fire bank CEOs who took the cash.

Ask yourself:

  • Who will then get to replace the bank CEOs? 
  • You really think it will be the Board of Directors (hahahaha!) who should do so?
  • Who will then then be electing the next Directors after Obama sacks them (again, the precedent has already been set).
  • Will they EVER be allowed to return the TARP money?

Answer – only after Obama has control of the Board.  Then it won’t matter.

I’d say "look at the irony of people who are basically running the government into the ground trying to now run some of the biggest corporations in the world" but it’s not funny any more.  This is past jokes of "Founding Fathers spinning in their graves".  And while I might have believed that Bush / Paulsen wanted to do these actions strictly as a temporary bailout

Didn’t anybody take Michelle Obama serious when she said that Obama would "transform you"?

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