The bully pulpit doesn't really work with banks, but capital does,''

[Jeff Tumbarello]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=amZ3uCIUB8GQ&refer=home

Paulson Lacks Leverage to Compel Banks to Put New Cash to Work

other great quotes

``You'd probably want to have Hank Paulson, more than a lot of other people'' overseeing the bailout, said Edward Fleischman, a Republican Securities and Exchange Commissioner from 1986 to 1992, and now a senior counsel at the Linklaters law firm in New York. ``But you're not going to have any choice who takes his job.''

Tim Ryan, head of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and a former bank regulator, said the sheer scale of the capital infusion banks are receiving is in itself a powerful incentive to put the funds to work in the economy.

``The bully pulpit doesn't really work with banks, but capital does,'' said Ryan, who directed the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision in 1990-1992.

The government is providing banks with ``quite a war chest that they were not expecting,'' Ryan said. ``They need to put it to work. The only way you put it to work is to lend.''

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Paulson's a lame duck - no real power, a lot of noise to cover The Plan, wielding real money to hand out, but with no way to NOT hand it out. He'll make tough noises, then leave the whole mess, join Greenspan's Grinches and author his history rewrite by slamming HIS OWN results and blaming the replacements.

There are two kinds of Banks now - REALLY Federally-Chartered and Soon-to-be-merged-into-really-federally-chartered. This is truly a brand-new world, so I'll be very interested to see whether we're creating THTF from TBTF (HUGE vs. BIG) organizations like Iceland's position of today. When your Banks are larger than your Gov't, there's no longer any question about who's in power, just who's been put in Office for as long as they're useful.


PS: It's NOT a conspiracy, it's a PLAN and it's been in place since the second Temple decided to "secure other people's gold" so long ago the history's hard to find. Instead of competing, they worked together to squeeze ALL the customers for everything they could get. Temples CHARGED interest for safe-guarding, they didn't pay interest for it - they loaned it just like Banks do, but I assure you the "qualification process" was a bit more stringent than even today. Some stories claim robbers were hired to steal from the non-Customers so the rest of the neighborhood would see the "need" for storing their gold in a safe place like a guarded Temple. It worked - it wasn't very long before anybody with any "savings" had their gold under guard at up to FOUR PERCENT cost/yr paid to the neighborhood "branch" of the Temples.

Nothing changes but the dates & the faces. Once you get the hang of that, the thin paths through the maze sometimes show themselves. The answers generally come only in the dark, well after the rest of the masses are dreaming of the future they probably won't have because they didn't understand The PLAN. Unfortunately, the WRONG paths are lighted as well and often look much easier at the entry-point. You never really know which path you're on, so moving carefully and slowly wins most days.


This should be fun to watch.....