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Ratigan goes from Fast Money to Morning Meeting, but his blistering attacks and blustery style have not changed. And I for one am thankful.
Guests were Daphne Aviatar, William D. Cohan and Eliot Spitzer.
Yesterday Ratigan began new his MSNBC show with the same issues he flailed back at CNBC. Any of these sound familiar: bank bailouts, financial de-regulation, rearranging the deck chairs, compromised regulators and politicians, oversight, leverage, Hank Paulson, the guilty staying in control, the Banking Oligarchy, too big to fail, Wall Street bonus and compensation structures, the revolving door, the SEC, Goldman Sachs, Larry Summers, derivatives regulation, Tim Geithner, and probably a few that I missed.
By far the funniest moment begins at the 4:25 mark, where Cohan says "There is a reason Spitzer was Governor..." Make sure to see that part.
And the best bit for taxpayers occurs in the last 15 seconds when Spitzer, railing on the AIG bailout, demands to know why we didn't receive additional warrants and shares in Goldman and the other banks in exchange for payments they received through AIG. He asks specifically why we didn't get $12.9 billion more of shares in Goldman since AIG was simply a conduit to Goldman:
"We took stock in AIG that is worthless. We gave a 12.9 billion dollar check to Goldman Sachs. Why didn't we take stock in Goldman Sachs? Why didn't, if they knew these were conduit payments, we should have taken stock in the institutions that had value, not wasted it on AIG. Why didn't that happen?"
Bravo. I wrote back in April that Eliot Spitzer deserves a 2nd chance. Familial peccadilloes aside, the guy is a prosecutorial beast and US taxpayers desperately need him back in Albany as Attorney General for the Sate of New York.
My face mimics a smile as I imagine his hit list: Paulson, Rubin, Cassano, Athan, Mozilo, Dodd, Cox, Cramer (yes Jim Cramer, just for general douchebaggery), Blankfein, Lewis, Thain, Pandit, Fuld, Schwarz, Cayne. Do not deny this writer his dreams.