LAR: Some questions for Timothy Geithner on Greece
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March 20, 2012 Dodd-Frank required the Treasury Secretary and U.S. representative to IMF to evaluate the likelihood that loans made to Greece through the Fund "will be repaid in full". But did the evaluation occur? It's been two years since government health care was passed. That program has had a number of problems. Reporter Frank McCaffrey looks at the issues that have come up with ObamaCare over the last two years. If America loses faith that the political system is anything more than a dog and pony show, a Soviet-style election, the government loses its moral authority to lead. "Congress's normal reaction to wayward institutions is to extend their lives, expand their mandates and increase their money." Some questions for Timothy Geithner on Greece By Bill Wilson  Today, on March 20, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will be testifying the House Financial Services committee on the state of the international financial system. This is an opportune moment for members to ask tough questions about U.S. taxpayers' role in propping troubled sovereigns in Europe via the International Monetary Fund (IMF), especially with the Fund's newly approved to $36.7 billion of loans to Greece. This will raise taxpayers' stake in Greece to $13 billion, and Europe as a whole to $20.9 billion. Particularly, in light of recent amendments 22 U.S.C. 286 et seq. in H.R. 4173, the Dodd-Frank financial legislation, the IMF's U.S. executive director Meg Lundsager needed to have developed an evaluation for lending further resources to Greece. The law requires such an evaluation take place prior to approval, as Greece's debt was well in excess of its GDP, and needed to show the Hellenic nation would not default on its new loans. In addition, the law requires the Secretary to "report in writing" within 30 days of the loan's approval to your committee "assessing the likelihood that loans made pursuant to such proposals will be repaid in full". This is particularly important because Greece just defaulted on about ?105 billion debt ($138 billion) of its ?340 billion debt ($447 billion). Of course, not even that saves the Secretary from having to provide the evaluation to Congress, because Greece's remaining ?235 billion debt ($309 billion) most certainly still exceeds its GDP, which for 2011 was ?215 billion ($283 billion). Get full story here. A Look At The Flaws Of Obamacare On Its Two-Year Anniversary Video by Frank McCaffrey  Get permalink here. The thin veneer of democracy By Rick Manning  America's democratic republic depends upon the basic belief by the governed that those who represent them were elected through fair and honest elections. While the losing side in an election contest can be disappointed, if they know that they lost "fair and square" then that disappointment is tempered by thoughts of what they could have done better, or how they might work harder in the next go-around. However, if the voter and opposition party believe that the outcome is as straight as San Francisco's Lombard Street, the very heart of democracy is ripped out. Voter fraud is as old as the very act of voting has existed, and history is replete with examples of dubious election outcomes ranging from Kennedy's victory over Nixon in 1960 to the Bloody 8th Congressional District in Indiana in 1984, where Republican Rick McIntyre won a recount by 484 votes only to have the results overturned by the Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, to the Washington state governors race in 2004, when Christine Gregoire's team forced multiple recounts until they finally got into the lead and could secure the victory. And who could forget local Florida officials desperately trying to interpret voter intentions and hanging chads in the 2000 Bush v. Gore election. Through all of these isolated instances, however, the basic principle that voting counted and the outcomes were not pre-determined has held by a thread. Get full story here.  ALG Editor's Note: In the following featured column from the Washington Post, George Will makes the case against expanding the Export-Import Bank:  Export-Import Bank's damage to American firms By George Will Sallie James was born in Australia on July 4, 1976, which suggests that Providence planned what happened 30 years later: She moved to Washington. She studies trade policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, and her report "Time to X Out the Ex-Im Bank" illustrates how corporate welfare metastasizes as government tries to rectify the inevitable inequities of its constantly multiplying favoritisms. And while picking American winners, the Export-Import Bank creates American losers. The bank, whose current reauthorization expires May 31 and which two months before that might hit the $100?billion cap on its loan exposure, subsidizes myriad export transactions with guaranteed loans to make U.S. exports cheaper. Mission creep is a metabolic urge of government agencies, but there may be mission gallop at the bank as it tries to correct the collateral damage it does to some U.S. companies and as it is pushed to further politicize credit markets by mirroring the market-distorting policies of foreign governments. The bank's Web site says that it helps "to level the playing field for U.S. exporters by matching the financing that other governments provide to their exporters." But a leveler's work is never done. There is a reason critics have called Ex-Im "Boeing's bank." America's biggest exporter is by far the biggest beneficiary of the bank's activities. But when the bank's interventions in financing help Boeing sell planes to China, India and other nations, it enhances the ability of those nations' airlines to compete - often using discounted excess capacity - with U.S. international carriers. The bank is only lightly constrained by the law that supposedly leashes it. The bank is required to consider "any serious adverse effect" on U.S. companies before supporting foreign purchasers to help other U.S. companies. But Richard B. Hirst, general counsel of Delta Air Lines, charges that the bank exempts 99.8 percent of its transactions from this requirement. Get full story here. |
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