Here is the cleaned up quote from Bill Seidman yesterday on CNBC Kudlow on Treasury's bank bailout plan and the allegations of 20 cases of fraud: "And let me say about fraud, I'm surprised there aren't 50, not 20. This program is made for fraud. And it's just too big to control, they don't have the internal control systems, and that really wor ... I hate to see people stealing my money." Video link, 11:46, but the real fireworks start at 10:00, Seidman's last blast is a "must see/hear", IMO:
cnbc.com
(BTW, Seidman was head of the Resolution Trust Corporation, not Realty Trust as I mis-stated yesterday.)
Even those who have been kindly to big banks in the past, such as Kudlow (Wall Street Pollyanna cheerleading clown, IMO), Art Laffer (ditto) and Seidman (whose opinion I respect), are losing stomach for this scale of rip off.
BTW, here's a Conde Nast Portfolio article link for "The Reeducation of Tim Geithner", by Gary Weiss, an even-handed treatment, I believe, certainly not a hatchet job, but tells from where Geithner has come and who/what his influences have been. Interesting exchange between Geithner and Bill Seidman therein. When Geithner mentor Lawrence Summers was Treasury secretary in the late '90s, and Geithner was his undersecretary for international affairs, Seidman made some critical remarks while in Japan about a Summers' speech on the Japanese banking crisis. Geithner responded to Seidman, "You’re a disloyal American. You can’t make statements like that on foreign soil about a secretary of the Treasury." To which Seidman replied, "Where does it say that in the Constitution?" That's the whole situation in a nutshell, where does one's allegiance lie, to a political/business faction, or to the US Constitution, freedom and liberty?
portfolio.com
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