Insomnia Cure: Listen To Larry Summers Talk About The Economy
Discussing the Obama administration's plan to boost economic recovery, with Lawrence Summers, National Economic Council director and CNBC's Maria Bartiromo (7:34).
Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, tells CNBC's Maria Bartiromo it's going to take a long time to get through the economic slowdown (15:52).
Summers is a nasal drone. How he became a debate champion at MIT is beyond comprehension. Wall Street Larry was on with Maria Bartiromo this afternoon. We have both CNBC clips after the jump.
From Reuters/CNBC:
There are some encouraging signs in the U.S. financial sector, but it has a "long way to go" to work through strains in the system, Lawrence Summers, U.S. President Barack Obama's top White House economic policy aide, said on Tuesday. Summers, speaking to a meeting of fund managers, bankers and industry groups in New York, said that the economy, after being on a steep downward slope, is now in a "flat patch which may have some uphill on it ... but there is still a lot of uncertainty." "If you look at the early part of this year, you couldn't find anything good," he said, referring to the economy. "Now there is a much more mixed picture." Summers cautioned that after suffering through one of its worst years in history last year, the financial sector will be in a state of repair for "a significant interval." U.S. banks, insurers and other financial companies are under tremendous stress as they fight to shore up balance sheets beaten down by the credit crunch and outsized losses from the housing crisis. Summers' comments came after prominent investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc reported a better-then-expected quarterly profit, bolstered by substantial risk taking, and after the bank's shares had more than doubled from their record low of $47.44 last Nov. 21. "There are some encouraging signs in the financial sector," Summers said, "but it's important to understand we have a long way to go in working through the strains in financial system." Asked whether he considered it a favorable development that Goldman Sachs plans to quickly repay the bailout funds it received from the government, Summers said he would not comment on specific companies. Analysts warn that letting Goldman Sachs pay back its bailout funds could create a two-tier banking system divided by those seen as reliant on government handouts and those that are not. It would also clear the way for Goldman to resume paying the big salaries and bonuses that have angered taxpayers whose money is being used for bailouts. "More generally, nobody intends the TARP to be permanent," Summers said, adding that in the long-run the Obama administration clearly wants to see a banking system that does not rely on government help. "There is nothing we would like more than for the financial system to function robustly. If this can happen without need of government involvement...that would be welcome."
Apr 15, 2009 at 4:34 AM
Reader Comments (9)
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/04/14/americas-peasant-mentality/
Sorry, that was my forehead falling into my keyboard -- totally forgot what I was going to say. Um... Oh, right, if a politician says "There is nothing we would like more than...., BUT..." you know they have no intention of doing what they just said they "would like" to do.
Obama's talk (yesterday?) more or less said the same thing: We will prop these banks up for as long as it takes, and no matter how much of your money we have to use. Oh, and we totally support free-market capitalism.
By the way, the wife and I just wrote out the checks for our taxes today and it makes me SICK. The only thing that makes me sicker is the fact that a bunch of Republican hypocrites are trying to horn in on the tax protests going on today and turn them into anti-Obama protests. ( Now, I know that there was some covert GOP involvement from the start, but there was also an actual, genuine popular movement to get these things started -- of course the media will turn this into a Republican vs. Democrat thing and do some "hard, investigative reporting" on whether or not these protests were just Astroturf. Sorry, MSM, but Playboy already beat you to that punch -- as DailyBail knows all too well!).
Some covert GOP involvement? Some? Um, you may wish to check out the excellent Taibbi link above for a different opinion. Dick Armey and FreedomWorks aren't exactly Teh Peoples. And do you think any specific "media" is at fault for the disinformation? (Hint, it rhymes with "Lox Blues.) The real shame is that Daily Show and Colbert are on vacation this week. They'd know how to cover this travishamockery.
More:
http://thepoorman.net/2009/04/15/who-was-trained-not-to-spit-in-the-fan/
You've missed the point. Dick Armey et al. are the ones "trying to horn in". This is obvious, transparent. We all know this. The only question is whether there was GOP involvement from the start. In some cases yes. In some cases no. The fact is that people have been energized for protests for several months now. You might "um" (as you put it) get in touch with people like Jim Ostrowski of Buffalo, NY -- no Republican shill in his case, for sure. Taibbi is typically top-notch, but he also misses some things here and there in trying to sniff out "conservative" hypocrisy (a tall order, no doubt). In any case, I think the Republicans will be surprised by how little electoral support they get out of these shenanigans. The bailouts were, after all, put together by a Republican administration. We'll see.
I just read the curv3ball piece. That's pretty much the tack I would expect from anti-Republican crowd. There's some truth in it, and the retard Republican make it all too easy, but there is also, I think, a deliberate attempt to overlook the roots of people's anger and the level of their understandning of the issues. In fact, I've heard some of the protesters speak on youtube or be interviewed by youtubers and some of them diss the whole Federal government, including Bush, for what they're doing. They also -- some of them -- understand the issues much better than Obama does (which isn't saying much, I suppose, given his obvious igorance of finance and economics). But like I said, it's pretty much what I expected to see when I wrote the first post above.
No matter, I don't have a dog in that fight, necessarily. Here at Daily Bail and other places, we're committed to the long haul and we expect to get the bailouts repealed eventually. There's just no way they can get away with this. Hope you're on our side!
Awesome!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1PKLIMcM8Q
She often likes to bring those Ron Paul Republicans into the conversation (does she have a sneaking admiration for their principles?) and I think she might be one Democrat commentator worth watching. She has a tiny core of decency -- which of course makes her an oddball in the MSM -- and she might be one of the first Obama supporters to crack. It might take a few more rounds of "stress tests" and "public-private" investment programs before she does, but there's an outside chance she will. Which reminds me that the great Glenn Greenwald has already "cracked" on both the bailouts and civil liberties.
(Greenwald RULES!)