Video: Ratigan with Barry Ritholtz and Steve Rattner
- "He's headed back to Harvard. Presumably to teach students how to steal a whole bunch of other people's money, cover it up and then go back to your old job."
---
Click the following, very-short, John McEnroe youtube links:
Answer the question Rattner. Why were bonholders of banks protected while autos were not? Please tell me, I've been waiting 20 months for an answer.
Counterparties had to be protected? Too complicated? You CANNOT be serious.
You guys are the pits of the world.
---
Barry Ritholtz says he would have liked to restructure the banks -- wipe out shareholders, replace managements and whack bondholders. Rattner says:
- "oh gosh, gee, I really would like to do that too -- in theory...but see, the banks are different from car companies...the banks have this thing called "counterparties." and it would have been, like, really complicated to do anything other than what we did...you know, lehman (scary, scary) had like a million counterparties."
Is this smug stupidity? Covering for team Obama? Doesn't matter. All that is a smokescreen. Rattner talks as if Ritholtz wanted to just seize the banks on Friday, Sept. 19 and open up on Monday. Bullshit. There was a whole period in 2009 where it made sense to kill the zombies. Nobody was saying do Citi, BAC, et al. all on a Friday. But this could have been done piecemeal, in an orderly (but not painless) fashion. The captured mandarins just failed. Failed miserably.
At the VERY least, there is absolutely no excuse for not replacing managements and severely restricting pay (of any kind) at the bailed out institutions.
More on Larry Summers:
Check Out This List Of Bailout-Loving Replacements For Larry Summers (A Detailed Look)
Dr. Peter Morici Torches Obama, Geithner & Summers For Economic Blame Game (VIDEO)
Attention Investors: Do Not Let This Man Anywhere Near Your Money (The Larry Summers Legacy: Harvard Loses $1.8 Billion)
Boehner To Obama: Fire Geithner And Summers (VIDEO)
Erin Burnett Challenges Larry Summers On Spending Cuts
---
Screenshot
Summers annihilation. Give this 2 minutes.