Keith Olbermann busts Eric Cantor over his many problems, including his wife benefiting over the bank bail out
By John Amato Wednesday Feb 18, 2009 12:30pmKeith Olbermann puts forth all the idiotic moves and conflicts of interest that have followed Rep. Eric Cantor around.
Rep. Cantor played a key role in getting bipartisan approval for the controversial $700 billion bank bailout bill in September, although since then he has been a vocal opponent of the surprising way the money is being spent: buying up stock in banks.
Still, it is one of those strange quirks in politics that $267 million of the money is going straight to a privately owned bank where Cantor's wife, Diana, is the managing director at a subsidiary. It's a job she apparently started early last year, after years in finance.
Cantor's people maintain that his wife and he did not even know that her employer was applying for a federal taxpayer bailout.
I guess he forgot to tell her all about it. I guess all that advice from Gingrich is paying off.
Rob Collins, Cantor's deputy chief of staff, said the congressman didn't know the bank was seeking bailout money and never interceded on the bank's behalf with government regulators. He also said Cantor had never intended the bailout bill to be used to buy up stock in banks.
"No one knew outside the Treasury Department, including Congressman Cantor, how the bailout money would be used," Collins said.
A spokesman for the bank said Diana Cantor "has nothing to do with the operation of the main bank" and was "never aware that the parent bank was seeking or received [bailout] funding."
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Don't sweat the small stuff.
What is needed is full scale meticulous audits of the bailed out banks NOW.
Here at Naked Capitalism William Black: "There Are No Real Stress Tests Going On"
IMHO Alice...
But I agree about the full scale audits!
It is a matter of scale.
PERSPECTIVE
$267 million is a big deal to me, as an individual. My net worth is not $267 thousand. That is irrelevant.
The $267 million is less that ONE ONE THOUSANDTH of the $301 billion pledged loss backstop to Citigroup. The authority for which is still a mystery.
That is: $267 million is less than .1% of $301 billion.
The $301 billion pledged to Citi is less than ONE THIRTIETH of the total $11+ trillion pledged.
That is: $301 billion is less than 3% of $11 trillion.
Taken together the $267 million is less than ONE in THIRTY THOUSAND of the total pledged.
That is : $267 million is less than 0.0025% of $11 trillion.
That is the PERSPECTIVE.
Put another way: Penny wise, pound foolish.
Geithner's plan envisions as much as $2.5 trillion on on top of $9 trillion already committed. Yet, they have NOT conducted audits. The supposed 'Stress Tests' do not and will not be a satisfactory replacement.
It is nice that KO talks about the conflict of interest of another disingenuous and hypocritical congressperson, and a republican at that.
Why doesn't he point out that there is MASSIVE fraudulent activity by the Bailed out Banks and that we as a nation are being
FLEECED.
Still can't let 'em get away with it though.
and you will find a line directly to the bush wh
6 years of growth was a paper myth
100 Billion. Pfft. Amateurs. The Pentagon lost 2 Trillion!
i agree this is just a side show. although it does raise one's interest,i'm more interested in what henry paulson/BUSH administration pulled as far as the TARP. paulson/bernacke told the administration there would be global financial melt down within days. ok we responded NOW tell us who/how much every institution received and why. as far as cantor he's just a pawn in this ponzi scheme of all ponzi schemes.
I would like to remind people that it was Clinton's policies that allowed Enron to make the fraudulent claims that it did. Just like it was Clinton's lack of policy that allowed 9-11 to be planned. Both events happened in 2001, mere months after Bush was inaugurated.
Don't bother with the counter argument because I already know it. Deregulation goes back to Reagan and also that bin laden started out as a terrorist under the Reagan admin.
Clinton is one of my favorite Republicans. But that doesn't get him very far with me.
It certainly doesn't make me like the Financial Modernization Bill of 1999 (repeal of Glass Steagall) or the Commodities Futures and Modernization Act of 2000 (deregulating Credit Default Swaps) both of which were travesties.
Add to that the April 28, 2004 SEC ruling that allowed the five largest investment banks to increase their debt to capital ratio from 12:1 to 30:1 or higher.
Bear Stearns was at 35 to 1 when they incinerated.
That leverage is what burned the house down.
Even though you know the counter point, that still does not slow you down in your parroting of GOP and FOX talking points.
You know the ones where you completely ignore the role of Republicans like Graham in the destruction of all the regulation set forth by the New Deal...
that it was a Republican-dominated Congress that fashioned those policies, albeit with Clinton's assistance. So don't try laying all the blame on Slick Willie while exonerating the repugs who drove the bills.
Cantor is the kind of pencil-necked geek, complete with eraser head that we all hated in school. This is the type that was class president because he had no life.
Just say no? Is that the best they can do?
The GOP (Grand Obstructionist Party)is intellectually and morally bankrupt and they are gonna be in the wilderness for a long time to come.
Nothing geeky about that asshole. He could not find his own ass with a map and a flash light...
Cantor is just another rich boy jock, lazy and useless but with an unmitigated sense of entitlement.
I've been trying to pin down a republican 'type', and it seems democrats have geeks too, so that's not it. I think it all has to do with how your dad handled the situation when you broke your first window with a baseball bat.
MSNBC (from NYT): States and cities in scramble for stimulus cash
Good luck with that!
Good for him. I wish all of these GOP fascist goons would turn down the money in red state amerikuh.
In a couple of years, maybe those evangelical dupes will have a rebirth when they are all eating shit out of Wal Mart dumpsters in order to survive, while their idiot Governor is focused on cutting taxes for billionaires. I love it.
Send the money to the blue states who pay most of the taxes anyway!
Good for him. I wish all of these GOP fascist goons would turn down the money in red state amerikuh.
In a couple of years, maybe those evangelical dupes will have a rebirth when they are all eating shit out of Wal Mart dumpsters in order to survive, while their idiot Governor is focused on cutting taxes for billionaires. I love it.
Send the money to the blue states who pay most of the taxes anyway!
I find it really annoying when liberal blogs make up these "stories" using innuendo and allegations instead of facts to make somebody look bad. Is there a chance Cantor's wife did something wrong? Sure. But I think there are no facts out there now that really even make her even have the appearance of guilt. I mean, come on -- a director of a bank subsidiary is pretty far down the relative chain of command. Yes she is an executive, but why would anybody think she is making decisions for an entity she doesn't control?
Besides, isn't she suffering enough married to this guy?
She could stay true to her principles and resign her job in disgust that the bank where she works has accepted federal bailout funds.
Or she could distance herself from those principles by divorcing Eric.
of the bank, she should know something about what is going on as far as the bailout. She should even be aware of how well thw bank is doing.
If she's like most of the repug women I know, they are worse than their husbands.
And when a repuke is involved with tax dollars, my thought process automatically defaults to hypocricy mode. Just reality and experience talking mind you.
seems reasonable to me to question a wife(bank executive) of a congressman involved in the forming/administering the TARP cheddar. she is a bank executive of a bank that received funds.did
anyone for sure say there is/was foul play.i don't think so. reasonable questioning comes with the territory.
That excuse (Cantor's "I knew nothing about it!") is SO lame. His wife knew, and does he ever talk to his wife? And it is a red herring to state that she wasn't in that exact office. Managers (and higher) know. Corporation-wide.
has the answer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWbmV9WFP1U
Maybe he doesn't talk to his wife? Maybe he's like so many of the other GOP closet gays who only have wives as props for photo-ops.
Wouldn't surprise me with this wack job.
Two points:
1. "No one knew outside the Treasury Department, including Congressman Cantor, how the bailout money would be used," Collins said. I believe that. I really don't believe congress understands anything it spends money on.
2. If his, Cantor's, wife is a managing director, she knew and had knowledge of how to change the tax structure to get the loan.
Yeah, and Mrs Madoff didn't know she wasn't supposed to withdraw that $15M dollars either, shortly before her husband's arrest.
I love the way people in finance suddenly claim they have no idea how finance works. Bank managers? Bank presidents? Please, they have no clue! How should they know what they are supposed to be doing at their jobs?
It's all so complicated, you know?
And relatives of financiers. They are dumb as posts about finances, even if they happen to be working at banks, investment firms, brokerage houses, hedge funds, or in congressional finance. How should they know what's going on?
Like Bernie Madoff's sons who worked alongside him for years. "Who, us? We had NO IDEA!" And his wife who just happened to withdraw $15M right before his arrest, but hadn't CLUE ONE that something a little fruity was going on. "Me? Know anything about money? Of course not! I leave all that to my husband. I just buy all the houses and furniture and jewelry and autos and pick the colleges and the tuition and have the pre-nup made out. But understand money? Never!"
Mr.Cantor thinks he is the New Tom Delay! Well they do have a few things in
Common,For one neither could Talk Strait or Walk the Strait and Narrow.
For Tom Delay the historical Verdict is Guilty. Now in the case of Cantor
the Verdict is going to be Guilty as well. As Cantor and the Republicans
will prove beyond a doubt that Zero Action in the face of the Greatest
Financial Crisis in History,is in Fact a Crime against the American People.
Is this their new leader, or are they staying with Rush, Sarah, and Joe the Plumber? Sheesh. Talk about crooks & liars!
The Cantor story has legs -- and fortunately it's going to cut his off before he starts a really nasty class-war within our country.
I sense a double bus accident coming --- very soon.
Cantor will throw Dayspring under the bus, and then AIPAC, if it’s smart, will throw Cantor under the bus.
A sad end to a sad political career.
Cantor is singing the wrong song for the times.
He's got very traceable baggage at GS, with skin in the game of the Wall Street looters.
His biggest backers will have to throw him under the bus.
This is a particularly bad time to be riling the goyim ‘working class’ ---- sort of like a fireworks factory owner throwing lit matches at his fired workers’ protest line.
The only stupider thing that Cantor could have done would have been to have Bernie Madoff help Dayspring send out the video.
This outburst will kill his political career ---- but thankfully
before Cantor could become even more dangerous to our country and the world.
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