You can add Timothy Geithner to the list of people who have abused Americans in the vain pursuit to keep Obama’s reputation well coiffed.
He joins a distinguished group of Obama scofflaws including the IRS, NSA, Eric Holderbeast, the Department of Energy, Lois Lerner, the Department of Justice, the National Park Service, Hillary Clinton, Debo Adegbile, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Sneezy, Doc and Hopey
Congress are you listening? Do you care?
Court filings in an ongoing lawsuit between the U.S. Department of Intimidation, er, Justice and McGraw Hill- the company that owns rating agency Standard and Poor’s (S&P)- say that Geithner, as Secretary of the Treasury, threatened the company with retaliation after the rating agency downgraded U.S. debt in the summer of 2011.
You remember that summer.
It was the second… or third?—I can’t remember—Summer of Recovery
when Obama and company refused to negotiate on the debt.
They eventually cut a deal that looked more like a game of chicken.
That’s the deal that got us the automatic sequester going into effect if neither side could agree to another deal by 2012.
It’s the “deal” that the newest budget “deal” just undid.
About the only thing voters were agreed on was cutting government, which is what sequester did, and Republicans and Democrats alike finally –sigh-- did away with that at the first of this year.
Thank goodness it’s an election year.
“Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner angrily warned the chairman of Standard & Poor's parent that the rating agency would be held accountable for its 2011 decision to strip the United States of its coveted ‘triple-A’ rating, a new court filing shows,” reports Reuters on the documents filed by McGraw Hill.
As I remember it, right after the deal was announced Obama promptly went on one of his celebrated Vacations of the Gods on Martha Vineyard or some other island place where liberals like to go to drink wine and whine about the terrible burden of knowing what’s soooo good for the rest of us.
After two of the worst weeks of stock market performance in the century, including a downgrade of America’s sterling credit, Obama is off to Martha’s Vineyard for nine days with the family, playing golf and doing whatever else you do on the seashore.
It seemed to me that the downgrade was precipitated by Standard and Poor’s non-confidence in the government more than any other thing-- of which Obama’s out of touch Vacations of the Gods are just another symptom.
The newest budget “deal” that increases spending and replaces the old deal that imposed a modicum of discipline on the government is also another symptom.
Geithner, who had a problem with his own math when he did his tax returns, says that S&P made a $2 trillion dollar error in math—which for liberals is just rounding error in their math anyway—while computing the necessity of downgrading the U.S. sovereign debt.
But at the time, S&P didn’t indicate they had a problem with the math per se, so much as they did with the politics of the debt-- of which Obama’s out of touch vacations are just another symptom, as I said before.
"We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process," the ratings firm said at the time according to USAToday.
Gee…They nailed that one didn’t they?
Even Obama donors were critical of Obama's timing.
“I think he can shorten his vacation and focus on this issue,” Peter Buttenwieser, a major Democratic donor who counts himself as an admirer of Obama told the LA Times. “If there were a real jobs summit and a jobs push I would feel much better. We’re not paying enough attention to jobs.”
In return for the downgrade, the Department of Intimidation, er, Justice hit S&P with a $5 billion lawsuit, saying “The fraud underpinning the [financial] crisis [in 2008] took many different forms, and for that reason, so must our response,” said Stuart F. Delery, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Department’s Civil Division, a guy who works for Eric Holderbeast. “As today’s filing demonstrates, the Department of Justice is committed to using every available legal tool to bring to justice those responsible for the financial crisis.”
Almost daily I run out of excuses for my liberals friends who don’t understand what government threats, intimidation and coercion are doing to our country.
So let me allow Abraham Lincoln explain it from his State of the Union address of December 3rd, 1861:
“I have been anxious and careful that the inevitable conflict for this purpose shall not degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle…. The struggle of today is not altogether for today; it is for a vast future also.”
Those who use revolutionary means should never be surprised when, in the course political events, those means are turned back on them.
And that time is coming. Soon.
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