Sen. Richard Shelby wants the banks to go out of business: Incompetence
By John Amato Tuesday Mar 10, 2009 8:00am
How can this country ever get through this economic nightmare with leaders of the Banking Committee that are Republicans like Sen. Shelby, who just want the banks to go under:
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said today on "This Week" that the government should let troubled banks fail.
"I don't want to nationalize them, I think we need to close them," Shelby told me this morning.
"Close them down, get them out of business. If they're dead, they ought to be buried," he said. "We bury the small banks; we've got to bury some big ones and send a strong message to the market. And I believe that people will start investing [again] in banks."
I asked Sen. Shelby if he was referring specifically to Citigroup, the struggling bank that has received about $45 billion in taxpayer money.
"Well whatever. Citi's always been a problem child," said Shelby, who has long opposed giving federal TARP money to struggling banks.
But Thomas Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, disagreed.
"It's not practical to talk about closing a bank that is integrated throughout the whole global economy," he said. "It is practical to talk about buying some of those assets away from those banks and holding them in an institution that would have both public and private money." Donohue said federal bailout money for the banks was the right thing to do for the economy
How can we accomplish anything with a ranking member giving us the Hoover treatment? The banks are so interconnected to the global economy that you just can't treat them like a mom and pop grocery store, but thi sis what Republican leaders want to do.
From Josh Marshall:
Something like this is both heartening and insanely distressing at the same time because what exactly does he think people are talking about when people talk about nationalization? They're talking about some form of FDIC-like takeover, though probably one that would take longer and be much more complicated since you simply can't find another bank that is going to buy up most or all of Citi's assets at some knock-down price over the weekend -- certainly not in the present climate. You either clean the bank up (which would require what amounts to a de facto bankruptcy proceeding) and sell it back into private hands or break it up and sell it off in individual pieces -- likely some combination of the two.
It would be one thing if Shelby were just one more Fox News robot. But he's the ranking member of the friggin' Banking Committee.
C&Ler David emailed me this:
Keith Olbermann: Shelby didn't just say the banks should be left alone to meet their own fate to fail if that's the case. He suggested having federal regulators come in and shut them down. How is that not government intervention? How is that not nationalization?. And just because there's no bank standing at the end of this, how is that not socialism by [Shelby's] own terms and definitions?
Richard Wolffe: Well, I love the "socialist" debate. It's just so
amazing that people throw the word around and they have obviously no idea what it actually ever meant. You just have to be grateful that this congress wasn't dealing with the Soviet Union otherwise they would have threatened Sweden with nuclear annihilation.
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Sorry about that.
like Alabama.
Simple minded Republicans are always comming up with simple solutions to complex problems. First, also.
But yeah...they think in simple black and white terms....so therefore, every problem has a simple solution.
At least Shelby is transparent. It is transparently clear that he is an idiot.
If you are a Republican and the director of the Chamber of Commerce takes issue with your comment, you must be a crack addled fool. Without any delay, let us introduce the poster boy of stupid, Richard Shelby.
So Shelby wants the auto makers to fail and all the jobs that go with it. He wants to shut the banks down. Not let them fail but shut them down. Of course they need to be nationalized but shut them down? Is this guy retarded (I hate to use that word but it is appropriate here I think)? I would hope that the people in my state are smart enough to have this guy recalled for stupidity if he represented us. Of course we have Diane Feinstein so you can see were a recall of Shelby would go.
when you have money in the bank, a job that pays well and is guaranteed employment, housing assistance, top-shelf health care for your family, and a pension.
No real courage in his convictions there.
I'd like too see the President lay a smack down on the banks. Put that money in the private banks and let the big ones be liquidated if they can't stay afloat.
After that's done bust the doors down too the lender of last resort and demand they open their books! They my friends, are the ultimate manipulators... The big thumpers that pay no taxes are not far behind. Tax a church save a bank...
Is that it? Is that all the GOP, the party of capitalist geniuses, can come up as solutions to the worst economic crisis in decades?
In other words, their "solution" is "doing nothing"
If Shelby thinks that by burying the banks, it means closing their doors and turning off the lights overnight – then yes, he’s stupid.
I’m not sure this is what he’s saying (it could be, but that’s not my initial take).
Letting them fail is a good first step. They have already gone bankrupt. Giving them money over the last few months is nothing less than ridiculous. But if by burying them, he means letting the FDIC come in, popping them into a bankruptcy court that will negate the criminal toxic asset contracts and saving the valid loans, deposits and credit loans, well - HELL YEAH! That ain’t stupid.
Now that CITI has posted two straight quarterly gains and is leading a surge on the DOW today Shelby looks like even more of an idiot than usual.
and I would be posting quarterly gains in perpetuity.
Holy mother, you guys are in for a rude awakening
I don't buy it.
Richard Shelby has the sort of mouth I'd only seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8zkYCEOUJY
Or
http://static.crooksandliars.com/files/upload...
The Republicans are trying to destroy our economy so they can come in as saviors in the next election and offer tax cuts.... the only problem is nobody will be paying taxes by then if they keep this up. We will all be flat broke.
The GOP is so focused on breaking unions by allowing GM to file bankruptcy, and allowing banks to fail, and other apparent 'free market' principles, they neglect to consider the following:
- Companies go out, all of their downstream companies lose revenue and close up. More jobs lost. More foreclosures.
- Companies go out, all the local businesses that cater to those employees lose revenue, many close up. More lost jobs. More foreclosures.
- What sort of investor wants to invest in companies which are considered throw-away's by the government? What will this do to foreign investment?
We threw $700,000,000,000 at Wall Street in a matter of days. We now debate how to get the entire country on a positive path - ad nauseum.
Consumer confidence? How about investor confidence?
Which is not helped by the talking heads who do nothing but rail against anything Obama. As much as I loath Wall Street, it is a part of this experiment we call capitalism. With the constant gloom and doom on the likes of CNBC, et al, what person with money would want to invest it?
A little honest reporting all around would do a lot to improve the mood. I am not saying to lie about the bad, but don't ignore any good, which is what these money talking heads do.
I think Shelby is simply indulging himself in empty rhetoric to score a few populist points.He knows they can't simply shut down operations of this size so enmeshed in the global economy,but hey-Joe Six pack will love him for saying it.He couldn't be anymore self serving and irresponsible.
...if this dooshbag Shelby actually had the majority behind him, and/or McLame as Preznit, he'd be telling the redneck voters that bailing out the banks was an 'unfortunate' consequence of living in the "Land of the Free Market" (cue national anthem), and that once the economy was rolling again we'd all get a really big tax cut to reward us for bailing out the banks.
The fucking coward has the luxury of being able to say whatever he wants, because he knows that Obama and the Dems are the people who are forced to make the actual decisions.
He, just like all the other Republiscum, are betting their futures on an economic nightmare.
but for the wrong reasons.
If banks are not able to do the necessary write offs to clean up their balance sheets...oh well. Sucks to be them.
Also, Glass-Steagal needs to be put back in place.
Public money should ONLY be used to protect REAL banks (ie commercial banks)and depositors (put the money into the FDIC to cover depositors...the whole "investment banks are now becoming commercial banks" bullshit...is just so the pigs can find a place at the public trough. Allowing that shit was wrong. The same goes for insurance companies...like AIG.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/09/markets/thebu...
Let them fail? They already have, their undead bodies now haunt our land. I recall a bunch of people here only months ago arguing that we would not have Zombie banks, well that has been proven wrong.
Too big to fail? 5 biggest banks are 'dead men walking'
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090309/pl...
Yup.
"In the 1930s, at the trough of the Depression, when Glass-Steagall became law, it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets. We are here today to repeal Glass-Steagall because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers." - Phil Gramm signing statement upon repealing Glass-Steagal.
Learn anything new Phil?
Why did Obama consult Robert Rubin who recently resigned as head of Citigroup on the verge of collapse receiving $45 billion in bail-out?
Why did he appoint Larry Summers to director of the White House National Economic Council and Timothy Geithner, former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to be his Secretary of Treasury? All these men were members of Clinton’s economic team and played a part in repealing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933! That act forbade banks from selling investments such as the derivatives. They succeeded in repealing the act to legitimize the formation of Citigroup.
It was their incompetence that caused the mess we are now in and now we trust them to fix it? They helped accelerate the sale of derivatives, what Warren Buffet called “weapons of mass financial destruction!” It's stuff like this that has lead me over time to say both parties are at fault and neither can be trusted.
If there is any one person in government who is most to blame for this catastrophe, it is that asshat Phil Gramm.
And yet the MSM has convinced millions that it's all Barney Frank's fault.
It's stuff like this that has lead me over time to say both parties are at fault and neither can be trusted.
that wasteful pork site in Huntsville, Alabama. What's it called?NASA. And that other New Deal failure in northern Alabama can be sold to private enterprise. TVA. In Muscle Shoals they love their Guvnor. And screw Neil Young, too.
LMAO! There was a lot of truth in that song.
is a star. Imagined or real/engineered or actual, actually engineered. Instinct tells me this is a setup for future manhandling of our private lives. Heady detailed rhetoric aside, I trust none of this.
Every instinct tells me credit unions (outside FDIC) are for now a way to stay out of the belly of the whale.
last week Citibank was a shambles...it's book of business a joke.
They issue a memo saying they expect to make money this quarter...and it's OHHHH..we're HAPPY!. BUY BUY BUY!! Cramer is getting a hardon and all the world is good.
Of course, Citibank's book of business is still SHIT...the same problems still exist...the firings are continuing...but hey...we certainly can't let reality screw up the nice little fantasy world these people live in.
to let the bankrupt, go bankrupt, and guarantee public savings instead. Let the insolvent poorly run banks and industries die. Obviously, all those responsible for this economic mess are not hurting at all and won't be, so what does it prove allowing this to continue? They will do it all over again.
their agenda has little to do with such obvious solutions. Which means we ought to be paying attention to their clear actions which are not intended to serve our well-being. It's right here in the open in front of us.
This guy needs to be investigated. He might be a major stockholder in Mattress Barn...
in Alabamaster.
they're all shit thieves. All of them.
I have dropped politics itself. We're mewling dogs waiting for the hammer to come down.
The sooner we realize that the sooner we'll be able to think in rational terms for ourselves.
Fuck all of it.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2146...
forgot about Chief Load-in-the-Pants!
Tue, 03/10/2009 - 12:03 — crazytown
they're all shit thieves. All of them.
I have dropped politics itself. We're mewling dogs waiting for the hammer to come down.
________________________________________________________
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9nGyPz9uT0
the way you associate, you devil.
But I am sick and god damned tired of giving MY money to these bankers and bailing out these failed systems over and over while me and my family are bankrupt and about to lose our health insurance (already lost our home).
Here is what I suggest. All you folks who believe that we should prop up this "capitalist" system one more day start sending your money up there and bail them out yourselves.
But keep your hands off my money (tax-wise or not).
You sheople are killing me.
I think we should just let the Republicanic Party fail.
Oh.... it already has? Never mind!
if we collectively quit following the idiotic bouncing ball and include both parties (and the peripheral ones too).
Ask yourself when was the last time any politician gave us anything tangible. Kucinich's honesty is a sideshow curiosity.
I think it was when Carter asked us to save energy by wearing a sweater.
pay cut yet? Didn't think so.
As the French say:
Phénomène Shelby mort de ya de Richard de baisse/ Drop dead Richard Shelby ya freak........
Remember Shelby's success in the real-estate market???
Some of my best friends are thieves. Why, just last week we had the president of the bank over for dinner. WC Fields
The banks should be closed and shareholders wiped out and bondholders take a haircut if not a complete loss.
so long as his own holdings go under.
O'Reilly the clown , Fox the comical news? and other corporate bias news media are attacking Obama so they can blame him for the disaster which Bush's administration has cause and the disastrous fall out which is getting enormous and they do not want Bush and the republicans blamed for it..
This BS which is being propagandized 24/7 to the American citizens is to keep the real news facts from attaching these disaster which Bush & Republicans has caused and has not yet peaked..
The news media should be saying can Obama's programs stop the down slide and disaster which the Bush administration has caused in the past 8 years..
Beside that O'Reilly , Rove , Dobbs , Fox news? is a bunch of misstatement , BS and propaganda and should not be giving all this news coverage.. The corporate republican news media knows if you keep throwing mud on a wall that some will stick... They are reaching out to the un-informed so they can add them to the right wing corporate republican base...
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It time that Americans figure out the real problem and that is this Global Empire which has been created.... This Monopoly is dominating the wealth and causing a disaster to the rest of the world..
Just the elite are the ones which still have their wealth , power and they are trying to pick your pockets clean before you know what has happened..
Our bail out funds are being used to buy out others to stop competition and for funding foreign countries financial disaster
What we need to do is purge these republican-democrats like the blue dogs from our party.. If they believe in the republicans policies which have destroy our country then they should run on the republican ticket and we should make sure that only democrats run on our democratic ticket... These republicans-democrats have cause a disaster to our party's policies.
Even a crook like Joe the bummer ( your typical republican) that has lied , not paid his taxes for years , performed plumbing without a license . continually goes around spreading BS in which he has no clue about what he is talking about.
People think that Hoover "did nothing" when the depression first hit.
Some say that what he did actually made a depression out of a recession.
Hoover did stuff all right. They had a stimulus package coming in the form of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which gave $2 billion in aid to states, railroads, infrastructure, etc.
Then they passed the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which, I think was one of the major causes of the Depression.
Good God, does this guy know anything? What would it cost the FDIC if we just closed up all the sick banks instead of trying to repair them? It would make the run on the bank in Bedford Falls look like a slow day at the general store. This is a mess that the GOP made with its love affair with deregulation. Now that THAT didn't turn out so well, just close all the banks. Then there will be a run on shoeboxes for storing cash under the bed.
I think one of the most glaringly obvious points that comes out of this video is that it truly isn't practical to simply talk about closing huge banks, remove big contenders, etc. That's what always gets me--politicians like Senator Shelby will list of these negative ideas without explaining their confusing rationale and certainly without providing more helpful feedback. As Amato points out, this reverts back to Hoover philosophy. We don't want to go back down that direction.
produced the jackass State Rep. Bentley. Bentley being the cretin who he is, could only say that "you don't need money to be happy" as to why Alabama taxes the food and other nececities of the poor so heavily they have to make choices they shouldn't have to make (like bread vs. a gallon of milk).
I don't trust any Republicans with our money. And from what I am seeing, Alabama Repugs are high up the list of untrustworthies.
I can see there's a lot of fatigue and disgust right now amongst middle and lower classes towards bailouts, especially the way bankers and CEOs are pissing the money away, but I don't think letting the whole thing go completely to hell is the right solution to that.
He makes a good case. Bailout the people and screw the banks. We'll build new ones which don't charge 2.50$ just to use the ATM!
HERE HERE!
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