“It does not take a majority to prevail…but rather an irate, tireless minority keen on setting brushfires of freedom and liberty in the minds of men.”

-Samuel Adams

Just a reminder to readers I’ll be covering the Woodbury Tea Party tomorrow morning. The rally kicks off at 11:00 a.m. in Kennedy Park at the the intersection of Routes 6 and 64 in Woodbury, CT.

Kennedy Park is easily accessible from Waterbury via Rte 64, from Watertown via Rte 6 and to those coming from Danbury. Take exit 15 on I84, turn left at exit and follow Rte 6 through Southbury into Woodbury, approximately 5 miles.

If you’re planning to attend please RSVP to wood...@gmail.com

See you there!

(CNSNews.com) – An Arizona congressman wants to know why Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner isn’t facing tough questions over his apparent about-face on whether the U.S. would consider China’s request to abandon the dollar as the global currency, in favor of a mix of currencies.

Geithner told Congress under oath Tuesday that he wouldn’t consider China’s proposal to shift away from the U.S. dollar toward a world currency — then the following day (Wednesday) said the U.S. would “be open” to the idea.

Rep. John Shadegg (R.-Ariz.) thinks the Treasury secretary’s swift about face demands an explanation.

“Beginning with his tax difficulties, and continuing through the puzzling narrative of when and what he knew about the AIG bonuses, Treasury Secretary Geithner has done little to inspire the confidence of the American people,” said Shadegg.  “Oddly, Secretary Geithner continued his bizarre and puzzling conduct this week, making flatly contradictory statements about the dollar in a span of only 24 hours. This weakens confidence not only in him, but in the currency he is entrusted to protect.

Shadegg isn’t alone in wanting answers, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has introduced legislation that would bar the dollar from being replace by any foreign currency:

“Yesterday, during a Financial Services Committee hearing, I asked Secretary Geithner if he would denounce efforts to move towards a global currency and he answered unequivocally that he would,” said Bachmann. “And President Obama gave the nation the same assurances. But just a day later, Secretary Geithner has left the option on the table. I want to know which it is. The American people deserve to know.”

My guess is that Sec. Geithner simply misspoke but at the same time I’m not sure how he could make that mistake.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent the dollar tumbling with comments about China’s ideas for overhauling the global monetary system, only to drive it back up by affirming that it should remain the world’s reserve currency.

Geithner was initially asked at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York about proposals from People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan for a new international reserve currency. He said “as I understand his proposal, it’s a proposal designed to increase the use of the IMF’s special drawing rights. And we’re actually quite open to that.”

The dollar slid as much as 1.3 percent against the euro within 10 minutes of news accounts of Geithner’s remarks. The U.S. currency was down 0.6 percent at $1.3553 as of 12:31 p.m. in New York.

Roger Altman, who worked with Geithner as deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, later asked Geithner whether he wanted to “clarify” his remarks.

“I’d like to ask one final question, in effect on behalf of the market,” said Altman, founder of Evercore Partners Inc. “Let me ask the question this way. Do you see any change over the foreseeable future in the basic role of the dollar as the world’s key reserve currency?”

‘Strong’ Dollar

Geithner responded by saying that “I think the dollar remains the world’s dominant reserve currency.” In an interview with CNBC broadcast after the event, the Treasury chief said that a “strong dollar” is in “America’s interest.”

Inexperienced, incompetent and in over is his head.

Related

• Still Mr. Lonely: Another Treasury pick jumps ship – Michelle Malkin
• Fumble! Geithner speaks, dollar dives – Hot Air
• Geithner Reiterates Support of a Strong Dollar – Wall Street Journal
• Geithner gaffe roils markets – Washington Times

With the braying of 328 yahoos — members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate the legal earnings of a small, unpopular group — still reverberating, the Obama administration yesterday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.

TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and, last week, some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab automobile company is on its own: “The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”

Read the whole thing… Will nails it, at time when we need reasoned, intelligent leadership we’re saddled with what can best be described as a Parliament of Whores.

Related

• The Most Transparent, Ethical Congress Evah strikes again – Hot Air

President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end “tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans,” and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won’t see their taxes increased by “one single dime.”

This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can’t possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama’s new spending ambitions.

Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and “the wealthiest 2%.” Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That’s about 7% of all returns; the data aren’t broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% — about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 — paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

Read the whole thing… The simple reality is there is no way Pres. Obama can pay for his agenda by simply by raisng taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans. Higher taxes will eventually “trickle down” to the middle class and then to those who can least afford them.

Bottom line: Americans are not under taxed, our government spends to much!

A lot of optimistic people bought houses near the historic height of the market, say November 2005, for absurdly high prices, say $1.12 million, in places like the eastern Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles. These people are very, very sad. Trust me on this. But the sudden drop in housing prices hasn’t made it any harder for these people to pay their loans. That’s because your home’s value is utterly irrelevant until you want to sell it — the same as your baseball cards, Hummel figurines or casual encounters.

The only people affected by plummeting real estate prices are the ones who bought a house that cost more than they could afford, hoping for a spike in value so they could sell at a profit or take out a new loan based on an increased value. Their home wasn’t just a place to live; it was an investment they thought they could liquefy at will. If we’re saving these poor souls from the 26.7% drop in their investment, we should give twice as much aid to everyone who has lost approximately 50% in the stock market since its peak. Especially those in Vanguard’s Tax-Managed Capital Appreciation Fund.

Meanwhile, mortgages held by the responsible people Obama says he is trying to help only go into foreclosure when the owners lose their jobs. But the best way to help them is through increased unemployment benefits and job creation.

The entire purpose of Pres. Obama’s Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan is to help people who made poor economic decisions to escape from the consequences of their decisions. The simple reality is many of people who get relief under Pres. Obama’s plan will still default even after their mortgages are restructured… All he’s doing is kicking the can down the road and prolonging the instability in our banking system.

Here she is discussing the plan with Bill Schieffer of CBS News.

Watch CBS Videos Online

I like it, a payroll tax holiday would put more money in people’s pockets immediately… Money they can spend on goods and services or invest now. That will have a much more direct impact on the economy than the pork laden stimulus law recently passed by Congress. Much of the spending in that bill doesn’t actually enter the economy until 2010, 2011 or 2012.

Personally, I go step farther and cut the corporate income tax rate from the current 35 percent rate to 20 percent and suspend the capital gains tax for one or two years. Both of which will help encourage investment and help get the economy moving again.

Ungrateful Sallie Mae

By Kevin Cullen, Boston Globe, December 18, 2008

Ian McVey could have been anything. He chose to be a Marine.

It is not a path that most kids from Weston would take, but Ian Thomas McVey was not most kids. He coasted at Weston High. But when he transferred to The Rivers School, where his father taught Latin, he got serious and blossomed.

One day, he told his father, “I want to join the Marines.”

His father said he was proud of him, but had one caveat: go to college first.

Ian McVey went off to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in upstate New York, graduating last year with a double major in computer science and computer engineering. He spurned a lucrative career in the private sector to join the Marine Corps.

“I have wanted to be a Marine for as long as I can remember,” he wrote in his officer training application. “After September 11, 2001, I knew more than ever that this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to serve my country, and after the attack I knew I wanted to join the Marines’ ranks and go into harm’s way so others would not have to.”

Last summer, Second Lieutenant Ian McVey got his orders. He was to go to Iraq as a platoon commander with the Second Combat Engineer Battalion of the Second Marine Division.

On July 19, not long before his unit was to ship out, McVey’s motorcycle was blindsided by a car driven by an 84-year-old woman near Camp Lejeune, N.C. He was killed instantly. He was 23 years old.

John McVey went through his son’s things. Cluttered bureau drawers. Photographs and memories. He also had to settle Ian’s college loans. He wrote to the lenders, asking that the debts be forgiven. Two wrote back, saying they would forgive the loans.

The third, Sallie Mae, the government-created college loan provider that privatized its operations in 2004, refused.

John McVey then wrote a very personal letter to Sallie Mae:

“In the process of his education, Ian amassed considerable loans. But Ian was steadfast in his desire to serve our country rather than begin a life in business where his income would have been double or triple his Marine service payment. Giving to our country was Ian’s calling, and we admired and supported his choice of service. He was a good and noble son and better friend.

“We are asking that you forgive Ian’s loans as his federal loans are being forgiven on the basis of Ian’s choice of service to our country as a patriot and so that our family may not have to bear these financial burdens while we deal with the inconsolable grief over the senseless, tragic and untimely loss of our son. While life has not been fair, we pray that you will be.”

Sallie Mae responded with a computer-generated letter that, aside from a “Please accept our condolences for your loss” stuck in the middle, was a demand for $53,144.

There was no name on the letter. John McVey’s attempts to get a human being to talk to him about this have been met with computer-generated voices.

“What bothers me most is we say our country is at war, but it’s only the soldiers, the Marines, and their families who are at war. We’re not in this together. Sallie Mae couldn’t care less,” John McVey said. “I put my heart and soul into that letter. And a computer wrote back.”

It is beyond obscene that a government now handing out billions in bailouts to boardroom executives whose idea of risk is using a 9-iron instead of a wedge on an approach shot could spawn a lender like Sallie Mae to soak the family of a young man willing to spill his blood for others.

Someone at Sallie Mae had to actually read Mr. McVey’s letter, they owe him more than a simple computer generated form letter.

H/T: Rachel Lucas.

Update: Good News Sallie Mae has decided to forgive Lt. McVey’s student loan:

Sallie Mae, the nation’s biggest provider of student loans, said today it would forgive the debts of a US Marine from Weston who was killed in an accident last summer shortly before he was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq.

Officials at Sallie Mae said they learned about the plight of the family of Marine Second Lieutenant Ian McVey in a column by Kevin Cullen published today in The Boston Globe.

McVey, 23, was killed when his motorcycle was hit by a car driven by an 84-year-old woman near Camp Lejeune, N.C., where he was awaiting deployment with the Second Combat Engineer Battalion of the Second Marine Division.

After his son’s death, John McVey, a Latin teacher at The Rivers School in Weston, had written three lenders who held his son’s college loans, asking them to forgive his debts. Two agreed, but Sallie Mae refused, responding with a computer-generated letter that demanded that John McVey, as co-signer of his son’s student loans, pay the outstanding $53,144 debt. The letter was unsigned.

McVey said his attempts to speak to a person about the situation were thwarted by automated answering machines. Sallie Mae officials said the letter should not have been sent.

“Somebody hit the wrong button,” said Tom Joyce, a spokesman for Sallie Mae. “The wrong letter was sent. Somebody should have handled this differently. It wasn’t handled appropriately. We didn’t live up to our service standard.” Read the rest…

I’m glad to see Sallie Mae do the right thing here… As I said in reply to a commenter to me the issue wasn’t the money or whether or not Sallie Mae forgives the loan. It’s the insensitive and ham-fisted way they dealt with Lt. McVey’s father.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to deal with grieving parents… A real live human being had to read Mr. McVey’s letter and could have – should have – responded in a more compassionate manner.

Senate Republicans rightly stopped the auto industry bail last night and today the Bush Administration decides to use TARP funds to throw a life line to GM and Chrysler.

From FoxBusiness:

Despite the abrupt death last night of bailout legislation in Congress, it seems the Big Three car makers will still get billions of dollars in rescue funds from Washington.

The Treasury Department said Friday it will provide an unspecified amount of money to the cash-strapped industry, Fox Business Senior Washington correspondent Peter Barnes has learned from a source close to the discussions. It was not immediately clear from which funding source Treasury would get the money.

Still, industry experts are deeply skeptical that emergency cash is the answer to the myriad ills plaguing the industry.

“They’ll get the money, but it’s a very dangerous proposition. It’s a very complicated mess,” said David Magee, author of How Toyota Became #1.

In the wake of the failure of a $14 billion bailout bill in the Senate Thursday night, the Treasury Department said Friday it was prepared to step in and prevent a collapse until Congress takes up the issue again. Read the rest…

It’s a sad reality but  Billions in taxpayer dollars aren’t going to save the Big 3… They need to drastically restructure, bankruptcy is the only way for them get that done in the time frame required.

Update: Larry Kudlow posting at the Corner says there’s no deal yet:

Media reports and Wall Street investors are now assuming the Treasury will put up $15 billion in TARP money to keep the Detroit carmakers out of bankruptcy. But my sources tell me that the TARP deal is not done — not by a long shot.

At a minimum, it’s going to take the Treasury several days to walk through the financial numbers and gather all the facts before it takes any action. The Treasury wants to see the cash-flow data and get to the truth about GM and Chrysler. (Ford doesn’t need the money.) And nothing will happen until these numbers are properly crunched. And the Treasury may well want to arrange for a built-in monitor — something that might even look like a car tsar — if any TARP money is dispersed.

Senate sources tell me that any TARP-money allocation might include the very same conditions proposed by Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker in legislation that broke down in a marathon session in the Senate list night.

So folks shouldn’t count their TARP eggs before they’re hatched. And nothing is expected to be announced today.

Assuming Kudlow is right this is good news.

Whitewashing Fannie Mae

Congress begins its self-absolution campaign.

Henry Waxman’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform met Tuesday to examine “The Role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the Financial Crisis.” Alas, Mr. Waxman didn’t come to bury Fan and Fred, but to bury the truth.

The two government-sponsored mortgage giants have long maintained they were merely unwitting victims of a financial act of God. That is, while the rest of the market went crazy over subprime and “liar” loans, Fan and Fred claimed to be the grownups of the mortgage market. There they were, the fable goes, quietly underwriting their 80% fixed-rate 30-year mortgages when — Ka-Pow! — they were blindsided by the greedy excesses of the subprime lenders who lacked their scruples.

But previously undisclosed internal documents that are now in Mr. Waxman’s possession and that we’ve seen tell a different story. Memos and emails at the highest levels of Fannie and Freddie management in 2004 and 2005 paint a picture of two companies that saw their market share eroded by such products as option-ARMs and interest-only mortgages. The two companies were prepared to walk ever further out on the risk curve to maintain their market position.

The companies understood the risks they were running. But squeezed between the need to meet affordable-housing goals set by HUD and the desire to sustain their growth and profits, they took the leap anyway. As a result, by the middle of this year, the two companies were responsible for some $1.6 trillion worth of subprime credit of one form or another. The answer to Mr. Waxman’s question about their role in the crisis, in other words, is that they were central players, if not the central players, in the creation of the housing boom and the credit bust. Mr. Waxman released some of these documents Tuesday but kept others under wraps. Read the rest…

It’s easy to blame “Wall Street greed” for the mortgage bust, yes it played a part, but we can not ignore the roll played Congress and government regulators in creating the environment that allowed this to happen.