Dylan Ratigan asks why Tim Geithner still has a job

In a succinct and powerful video, Dylan Ratigan wonders why Tim Geithner still is our Treasury Secretary. Senator Maria Cantwell, who makes an appearance on this video, wonders this too, calling Geithner's job performance "appalling." I agree. It's time for Obama to start fresh while we are not in crisis mode. He can do this without starting a panic by saying something like, "We thank Mr. Geithner for his service getting us through this crisis." But then, by all means, throw the bum out and let's pick an honest outsider (not another Goldman Sachs alum) to lead the way. Am I being harsh when I say "bum"? Nope . . . I'm being restrained. Geithner should be taking the time to use the mass media to teach common people what went wrong, how we can avoid it happening again, and explaining exactly where our public tax dollars have gone. Because he refuses to do any of this, and he refuses to be an powerful advocate for taxpayers, he should step aside. It is clear that he doesn't understand who he is supposed to represent. If I were to speak more bluntly, I would say that Tim Geithner is committing a fraud on the U.S. public. Here are the words of Robert Johnson, former economist at the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Budget Committee

[Geithner] speaks as though they’re doing very comprehensive reform. Unfortunately, in the United States, one of the reasons we had the bubble and the crisis was because we have a broken political system, where campaign money, lobbying influence of the financial sector is enormous, and it created bad regulations, bad laws. I’m going back into the Reagan period, Bush the senior, particularly the Clinton era. We’ve made a mess, and now we come back from a crisis where the population knows darn well what a mess we’ve made. But the problem is, at this point, the people in power, the moneyed interests are still in power. And a large portion of these reforms are either cosmetic or designed by the industry and quite ineffective. . . Ground Zero, the San Andreas Fault of our financial system, where it blew up last time, was in the intersection between “too big to fail” firms and over-the-counter derivatives and that these derivatives need to be put on exchanges, because they’re too complex, and when they’re combined with the “too big to fail” firms, which have a 95 percent market share in OTC derivatives, five banks, that it can create a situation, like we were talking about moments ago, where Citibank could not be restructured. The spider web of positions in derivatives is so complex and so entangled that it deters policy officials from being able to put them through restructuring, because they’re afraid of what kind of spin-offs and consequences will happen. I spoke about the credit default swap market and the illusion of safety that those credit default swap contracts created when they’re unregulated, because everybody thought AIG was going to be able to pay the bill, but they weren’t, and then the taxpayer got to provide that capital.
It's also time for Cantwell and her Senate colleagues to quit blaming Treasury for failing to lead the way. Congress has the power to make laws; it should should pass the necessary laws to close the "loopholes" she finds so appalling.

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What we need to do differently when we talk politics

To the extent that society can be understood as a big family, psychologist John Gottman has important suggestions for improving our communications. Based on his track record, Gottman is someone to whom all of us should carefully listen. His techniques have allowed him to predict with 90% accuracy which newly marriage couples will still be married six years later. Gottman describes many of his techniques in The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, a 1999 book that has enriched the lives of countless married couples trying to get back on track. In this book, he demonstrates that there is no better way to destroy a working relationship than to employ the following four techniques, which he labels “the Four Horsemen”:

A) Attacking another person's character or personality; B) Showing contempt through such things as sneering, sarcasm, cynicism, name-calling, eye-rolling, mockery and hostile humor. C) Defensiveness that proclaims that “The problem isn’t me, it’s you.” And D) Stonewalling: tuning out completely.
When I read this list, it struck me that these four techniques precisely describe the state of political dialogue in this country. These are also the techniques by many of the people who conduct interviews in the media. Think, for example, of a typical Bill O'Reilly interview, though O'Reilly is merely one of the more egregious examples. Many news programs expect and encourage conflict in an attempt to keep the audience mesmerized so that the network can sell more advertisements. The resulting conflict commonly manifests itself through these four above-mentioned techniques. It is critically important to note that none of these techniques is necessary, no matter who the other person is and no matter what he or she is saying. Smart and disciplined people don't stoop to these techniques. Period. Here's another important cause of communication failure: In functional relationships, the parties communicate at least five times as many positive ideas as negative ideas to one another. Consider that the ratio of positive to negative in public forums is probably the reverse of the minimum optimum. In most contemporary forums where political ideas are discussed, it is a rare bird who dares to admit that one's opponent has any decent ideas at all. Instead, we hear the parties villainizing each other and attempting to totally destroy each other ideas. Success is all too often seen as publically demonstrating that the other person, almost always termed one's "opponent," is an idiot. In short, the way we publicly attempt to communicate with each other regarding the important issues of the day has been scientifically demonstrated to be a guaranteed formula for failure. What is the solution? For starters, it would require that we stop using the above techniques when we attempt to communicate. In fact, until we call a cease-fire regarding these four techniques, further attempts to communicate will only exacerbate conflict and paranoia. Until we change the way we attempt to talk with each other on many news programs, it would be better if we stopped talking at all. That's how bad things have gotten.

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