Geithner on TARP Money: 'We Have Roughly $135 Billion Left'

Good questions - good answers - good approach to economic situation.

Good! No more bailouts and no more robbing the taxpayers.

What a coached performance. Everytime George brought up a point, Geithner went into a coached type positive diatribe of how they are taking the right path and have to act quickly. Balony balony balony. He never delt with one concern and that's because he can't. We have to America. Don't let government take over your life. Let the banks close. Let the consequences roll because the result won't be big government telling us how to live. Get off your butts and educate yourselve. Don't let a smooth speach roll you over.
PJ

Good morning everyone.

Republicans come up with a VALID plan with NUMBERS yet ?!?!?!?!?

Look. Geithner, Obama, and Congress have proved that they don't give a flying flip about us either. Where's a decent third party that we can join? We need one.

Signed
A disgusted democrat

Every one of these Wall Street crooks are related in one way or another. Then the POTHUS places these crooks in charge of the agencies they are supposed to look over. Biggest bunch of crooks the world had ever seen, they pass laws to make stealing legal. You want to bet Madoff is really staying at a hotel or at home and no one knows it. Lets get a live web cam of his cell so we can see that crook in the poky.

Jimmy,

The Republicans don't have to come up with a plan. Since they don't have the numbers to stop anything all they have to do is do what the Democrats did for the past 6 years, criticize everything.

may godd help us if this plan doesn't work or we get hit by some disaster,cause were totally broke now.Obama blew all our grand kids cash like drunkin sailor.....Were F--ked now Better learn to speak chinese....

Republicans come up with a VALID plan with NUMBERS yet ?!?!?!?!? Right after the democrats do. ROFL..

Just a quick comment.

I work as Project / Program Manager for a major Fortune 500 company. My team and I manage several projects at any given time including the financials. At any time in the project execution, we should be able to provide our project sponsors, where we are on the project expenditure (how much we have spent, where the money went, and how much we are left with), etc.

I am so amassed that the executive team members in Obama's administration, when asked specific questions (in the congressional hearings as well as by news media) about how much money is spent, how much money needed for TARP and other programs going forward, the answer they give very vague. Imagine if I were to do the same for my projects at work, my project sponsors will let me out of the door by the end of the day.

One can extrapolate this to the way the treasury department is handling people's money. We need transparency and honest answers to straight-forward questions. Obama administration in this regard is much better. Hank Paulson and his team were a bunch of idiots not knowing where they were when the crisis happened in Fall 2008 and what to do.

Tried many times yesterday to post a question for the Secretary- never was able to get the link on the abcnews.com site to work- Would like to know what the Secretary thinks about " too big to fail." Doesn't that really mean these so called too big to fail companies should be broken up so that they don't jeopardize the entire country by taking many risks and getting us all in this terrible position?

Tried many times yesterday to post a question for the Secretary- never was able to get the link on the abcnews.com site to work- Would like to know what the Secretary thinks about " too big to fail." Doesn't that really mean these so called too big to fail companies should be broken up so that they don't jeopardize the entire country by taking many risks and getting us all in this terrible position?

Good morning everyone.

Republicans come up with a VALID plan with NUMBERS yet ?!?!?!?!?

Posted by: JimmyTwoTimes
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Come on Jimmy. The GOP has been relegated to insignificance now. Nobody listens to those bozos.

Kevin,

It's probably best that nobody listens to the GOP anymore because when Obama and the rest of the Democrats blow our children's future Obama and the Democrats can take all the credit.

Good! No more bailouts and no more robbing the taxpayers.

Posted by: t hill | Mar 29, 2009 9:28:54 AM

I agree with you, but unfortunately Obama/Geithner won't commit to no more bailouts. And why should they? Most taxpayers still seem content to let those two bailout whoever they want.

my gawd, does anyone believe geithner is anything but howdy doody without the red hair?

Well, what's Limbaugh & Hannity to do now. Appears the plans of President Obama and Tim Geithner are well on the way to actually working even though a few such as Paul Krugman have stated it may not be enough. What is interesting in this rhetoric of the war between the plans, of which Republicans have yet to present one, is the fact that while publicly denouncing the administrations plans, many Congressmen & women, and Senators, continue to accept campaign donations from the very institutions who has been bailed out from Tarp funds. Including Republican whip, Eric Cantor, who has been more than vocally opposed to Obama administration plans. He has accepted $2,500 from Citigroup; $5,000 from Bank of America; $1,000 from Chrysler; Republican John Boehner, House Minority Leader, who has acepted $5,000 from Bank of America; $5,000 from American Express; $1,500 from U.S. Bancorp Employee PAC. Other's, including democrats, are on the dole as well. The reality, of course, is that these contributions, individually, aren't a lot of money. But many members of Congress (including Speaker Pelosi and Financial Services Chair Barney Frank) have decided against taking any of the money. The optics of this for both the banks and for the members of Congress is bad, and only feeds the credibility problems both entities have with the American public. Appears to me to be rather hypocritical in the case of Cantor and Boehner who have been so openly opposed to the administration plans, spouting Limbaugh/Hannity like vile rhetoric almost on a daily basis, all while standing with a hand out behind their back being filled with taxpayer capital from the very plans they are opposing.

I've been critical of Mr. "Too big to fail" Geithner but now that he's unveiled his plan for the toxic assets, I can see some sense that he's trying to preserve America's capitalistic system and free market approach to problem solving. He could have done what Paul Krugmen recommended and nationalized all the troubled banks for auditing. Then we would be working out every asset on a case by case basis which would take much longer. There are some real gems worth buying among the toxic assets and letting a market work them out rather than assigning auditors to each bank seems like an interesting idea.

George and his wife are good friends with Obummer and his wife.

Kevin, I totally agree with you. Calling the President a socialist, complaining about the First Lady's arms, and how much fuel he uses in Air Force One, is all the GOP has. They have absolutely no solutions to any problems facing this country. None. Just look at the comments left by their supporters. Ask any of them for complaints about Obama, and you'll get a six page reply, but ask them for their solutions and you won't get one sentence.

It was disingenuous of Treasury Secretary Geithner to simply state that the government had no legal authority to alter the terms of the agreements (credit-default-swaps) between AIG and Goldman Sachs, Merrill, etc. resulting in all of those entities receiving 100 cents on the dollar.
Geithner's response is simply not credible. Contracts are broken and renegotiated every day; just read the sports pages!

We can't trust anything that Geithner says. I have ZERO confidence in the man and wouldn't trust him to run a lemonade stand on a hot day, much less trust him with the country finances. He needs to go! And his isn't any better. Our oaf of a president just named a member of AIG's Board of Directors to his "tax reform" task force! The AIG Board FAILED MISERABLY in its fiduciary duty, and Obama wants to use one of them to help come up with tax reform for the country?? What an idiot!

Good Show George, for once I will agree with George Will that American's do not care about deficeits as long as there is prosperity, so now we face the day of reckoning.
We do have to control our deficeit spending and this will be crucial to our recovery in the long run. Americans have to decide do they really want the Government to provide them everything? Personally I would like to pay down this massive deficeit.
We are a people of short memories and we are still trying to learn lessons of the great depression. Kudo's to Mr. Will he nailed it right. We have a lot of work to do in this country. From bailouts to bonuses to our banking system. So let's try and get this one right for our future generations.

Het Tim, can you send about three billion of that to Arizona? That will just about cover the deficit that Napalitano left us with.

Good session! I would have liked the segment with Stephanopoulos and Geithner to continue another hour, with Krugman also at the table for the continuation.