I can’t believe this, but I am actually going to post in a Pit thread where I am not just gleefully contributing to some thread gone wild.
I am a Democrat and did vote for Obama, but have no POV about Geithner - I am neither for or against his nomination.
However, as a senior executive of a company who is responsible for making strategic decisions that affect our company’s direction while also having to do personal things like taxes, I want to point out that having expertise in how to strategically manage the macro-economic forces affecting our domestic and the overall global economy is COMPLETELY SEPARATE from how you manage your taxes. One is getting your shopping list correct; the other is building out and managing a chain of supermarkets. Evaluating Geithner as SoT based on his performance completing his taxes has NO applicability.
Okay, well, scratch that - the one obvious link is ethical - if he can be shown to have actively lied, then, sure, he might do the same thing in his job. But again, in reviewing the data that is out there, one can just as easily make a case for “honest mistake” as “the dude lied” - bottom line is that there is plenty of evidence that other folks in his shoes made similar mistakes - so the evidence against him was NOT incontrovertible.
In many ways, based on what I have read about the deliberations, Geithner WAS considered “the one best guy” given his involvement in the recovery to date - he was seen as a conduit through which Obama, Larry Summers, etc. could get their POV into the Bush/Paulsen-led efforts while 43 was still in power. If TG represented that level of involvement and understanding and could be the bridge to transition from what 43 did to what 44 wants to do, he could indeed be the only game in town.
Ultimately, this felt more like a hiccup - but it checked out good enough to be filed under “honest mistake” and from there it has been used for political purposes…if more evidence was found, fine - but if not, move on.
Then they’re either not looking hard enough, or there’s a whole shitload of “money guys” that should be incarcerated. My guess is a combination of the two.
However, I believe the line of argument here is that somebody who can’t get his shopping list correct probably won’t be much good at building and managing a supermarket chain.
Dude - I hear you, but I also deal with that everyday. I mean, I couldn’t figure my way out of a paper bag when it comes to some simple activities at home, but that has NO bearing on whether I have the craft skills related to strategic planning at the Corporate level. Trust me on this - you WANT me doing your strategic planning :D;); you DO NOT want me figuring out your personal budget or doing your taxes :smack:.
I agree with what you’re saying, WM, as usual. I’m a planner/scheduler, and I can lay out a complex, airtight schedule like a mofo, but my wife’s always wondering why I’m not that way at home… Like the mechanic that drives a smoking POS.
I didn’t mean to sound like I have a hard-on for shitcanning Geithner; just a general “Couldn’t we get someone cleaner?” and I refuse to believe that, in a country of 300+ million people, that he’s the only game in town. I felt the same about the whole Bush/Clinton toggle (of which we fairly narrowly avoided Part IV).
After the wholesale theft that has been going on for the last decade. I want someone pristine. I believe they exist. Geithner played it loose. I want someone who will tighten it up. Paulson showed what a insider who was involved in the looting of America would do in that position. He just tossed bundles of money at the bankers while saying we are too stupid to be allowed to see where it went. Trust me, I have destroyed the financial system but I am the only on qualified to fix it. BS. There are a lot of people who watched the thieves and foretold the mess that would happen. They were not on the inside getting rich.
I think it’s fucked up that the IMF doesn’t pay the employers share of taxes. I’ve never heard of anyplace doing that, and I can see how a mistake could be made. He paid his portion of the taxes. SO I can believe it was an honest mistake.
The reason he was nominated is that he is extremely qualified. He was yelling from the rooftops two years ago that the financial instruments like the dcs and others were going to doom the economy, and was ignored. He not only knows the intricacies of the complex world of finance, but he has shown an understanding of the underlying problems that very few have shown. That is why he wasn’t pulled as a nominee, because there wasn’t much in the pool to chose from after him.
Fuck that. There is one person who has been on the front line of this whole mishegoss who was giving excellent advice to Sec’y Paulson that the Secretary failed to follow. No one else the president might have chosen has had the hands-on experience with this economic crisis as Geithener. This really is the rare case where there is one single person who is a demonstrably better choice than any other person. And the objection is that he made an innocent error in the calculation of taxes that was made by thousands of other people? Seems like it would be a good thing to have the boss of the IRS be aware of how the complexities of the tax code lead to innocent mistakes.
And yes I read the thread. I read the background articles. And I listened to Mr Geithner’s confirmation.
What is it with you? Are some kind of idiot who thinks there is no reason to criticize here? Among other things, if what Mr Geithner did before he was nominated was commendable and appropriate, there’d be no need to pay up the back taxes after he was exposed to public scrutiny.
There is no controversy as to the facts here, you twit. There may be folks who have a different–and in my view, incredibly naive–view that his actions were accidental for the original non-payment but to pretend whatever he might have done wrong “has been refuted” as if the putatively incorrect facts around his payments and when they were made have now been corrected is stupid.
The whole thing reminds me of Steve Martin’s comedy bit on “How to make a million dollars and never pay a penny in taxes”:
Step one: Get a million dollars.
Step two: Don’t pay taxes on it.
Step three: If the IRS comes calling, just say, “I forgot.”
See, it’s funny because it’s so lame. As is Mr Geithner. And it’s even lamer to pretend that if I just read the posts here of the knee-jerk liberals kissing up to whoever is blessed by Mr Obama, why that would just clear everything up.
I like what Obama is doing here. He promised change and he’s delivering. Instead of putting people in charge of our taxes who we just kinda assume are scum and cheats, he’s giving us people who have proven track-records. I guess a critic could say he’s just following his party’s lead here. I mean, they did allow Charlie Rangel to keep his position even after his tax cheating was revealed. But I think Obama deserves the benefit of the doubt here. I applaud his era of change and transparency.
Wow - okay, this is life in the Pit, fine. But my POV has NOTHING to do with kissing up to Obama.
You clearly have decided that Geithner was “working the system” with ill intent. I choose not to try to change your mind - sounds like I couldn’t anyway. However, I can see another way to look at it, and stated as much - which is why I am supportive of the decision.
Sometimes it is tax evasion and sometimes it is an honest mistake and should not get in the way of a bigger decision. You think the former, I am okay supporting the latter, which appears to be the way the Senate ruled. It’s done now anyway…
I do not know if Geithner was working the system from the inside. I do know he did not take care of a simple and obvious debt to the government. Am I to assume that that is the only thing he did? Why should I? I know he was playing loose. I also am sure he will not reveal all the things he did, if he did some other things wrong.
I can accept him, but I want someone on his back all the time. Unfortunately we no longer have investigative reporters.We all know that Paulson was the only one who could save us. He just chummed the financial sharks with 300 million in tax money.
Can you imagine, some people don’t think Citi should buy a 50 million dollar jet while taking a tax bailout. They need that jet don’t you know. You have to be a financial experts to make that judgment.
It’s true I think it’s naive to think anyone at Mr Geitner’s level would “forget” to pay SS taxes, but what pissed me off was the patronizing response to my post when Captain Carrot implied if I had only bothered to read the other posts in the thread, everything would have been cleared up.
As to the facts: most indicting, and most indicative to me of Mr Geithner’s character is what he did after he became aware of his error: he paid only what he was forced to pay even though he had clearly taken more from the public coffer. Since the statute of limitations had expired, he could not be forced to pay what he had cheated us out of, and so he chose not to (until he was offerred a job where that choice would look like the cheating decision it was). If I “erred” and swiped $20,000 from you, and you were unable to collect it from me because a SOL had expired, and I chose not to reimburse you, what would your opinion be of me? Well, that’s what Mr Geithner did, and I’m the one he refused to repay.
Now he wants to ask the country to do the right thing. What an ass.
Here’s an approximate transcript of part of his hearing that set me off:
*Got away, that is, until the questioning came around to another Republican, Sen. Jon Kyl. The IRS has a three-year statute of limitations on offenses such as Geithner’s, Kyl said, which meant that, after that 2006 audit, Geithner was obligated to pay for 2003 and 2004 but not for ’01 and ’02, which were too distant in time. Kyl wanted to know whether Geithner, when he paid for ’03 and ’04, knew that he also would have owed for ’01 and ’02 were it not for the statute.
“When you found out what you had done wrong, it is incomprehensible to me that you did not immediately realize that you had done it wrong for the entire time that you had been at the IMF,” Kyl told Geithner.
“Senator, as I said before, I took the audit very seriously,” Geithner answered. “I hired an accountant to go back and help me figure out what I’d done wrong and how to correct it. I paid what the IRS said I owed.”
“I understand that,” Kyl said. “But I’m asking about your state of mind when you were — when you first became aware of the fact that you had an additional liability as a result of this audit and you found out why you had that additional liability. It strains credulity to think that it didn’t immediately occur to you that you had that liability for the whole time that you were at the IMF.”
“Senator, as I said, if I thought about it more at the time, I would have asked more questions,” Geithner said. “I would have handled it differently, and I regret not having done so. This is my mistake, and it’s my responsibility…I looked carefully at what they said I owed. I paid what they said I owed.”
“Sure,” Kyl said. “Any taxpayer would. But my question to you is a little different from that. And that is whether you thought at the time or at any time thereafter, you know, ‘I didn’t do anything different those first two years, I probably would have owed that too, except that the statute of limitations has run so I don’t have to pay that.’ Did that thought never cross your mind until you became a candidate for nomination as secretary of the treasury?”
Geithner simply wasn’t going to answer. “Senator, again, as I said, the IRS told me what my obligations were,” he said. “I met the obligations…”
Kyl became visibly frustrated. “Would you answer my question rather than dancing around it, please?” he asked.
Kyl’s demand forced Geithner to open up, just a little. “Senator, I did not believe when I settled that audit and paid what they said I owed that I had obligations to go back,” he began. “I did not think about that until I was going through the vetting process…I had not thought about it in the intervening years. No occasion to think about it. And I might not have thought about it unless I had gone through the process.”
“Okay, that’s a relatively clear answer,” Kyl said, “the answer being no, you didn’t think about it until it became important in connection with your nomination.”
Geithner wouldn’t agree with Kyl’s characterization. “Well, what I said was that I didn’t think about it until, having gone through that process and disclosed all this to the transition team, I was forced to go back and go through it again and think about it. And having done that, I did what I thought was appropriate then.”
“Yes,” Kyl said. “And that’s the first time it occurred to you that it may be that you had avoided the liability because of the statute of limitations.”
When Kyl said that, at that moment, Geithner’s perfect composure broke slightly for the first and only time. “I did not believe, senator, that I was avoiding my liability,” he told Kyl. “Senator, I have worked in public service all my life. My first job in government was as an employee of the treasury. I grew up in government with a deep appreciation of the obligations that come with that. I would never put myself in the position where I was not — where I was intentionally not meeting my obligations as an American taxpayer.”
“Okay,” Kyl concluded. “Rather than me asking for any additional testimony, review carefully what you said, and if you think it needs to be modified — because you’re under oath here — if it needs to be modified in any way, please provide that for the record.” The message could not have been clearer: Kyl simply didn’t believe Geithner’s story and was giving him one last opportunity to change it.*
While it’s from a conservative site, I think the transcript is pretty much the way I remember hearing it…he met the obligation forced upon him when his “forgetfulness” was found out. That he did not know–and ignore at the time–that he had cheated the country’s taxpayers the two other years does more than strain credulity. He simply did not have a moral sense that the obligation should be met if the IRS couldn’t enforce it.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t mean to sound patronizing, it just seemed to me like the accusations you leveled weren’t all that credible given the stuff that had been cited and explained earlier in the thread. My apologies.
And quite frankly, my opinion is not changed by the transcript you quoted here. I still think that he didn’t do anything wrong. Stupid, perhaps, but I can’t really blame someone for not paying something that he didn’t legally have to pay. (Referring, of course, to the returns in 2001 and 2002 that were beyond the statute of limitations, not to the money erroneously withheld in the first place.)
Let me try to explain this one more time. Not only could he not be forced to pay, he could NOT pay. At all. Impossible. YOU CAN NOT PAY FEDERAL TAXES AFTER THE SOL HAS EXPIRED. The IRS can not even assess taxes after the SOl has expired. Now, do you understand? Do you need smaller words and bigger print?
What Geither did later was make a voluntary contibution that just happened to be = to the amount he would have owed.
Nor did he cheat you out of anything. If we are talking theory, what he didn’t pay was Social Security, which in theory was paid into his own contribution fund. Addmitedly it’s more like a tax than a retirement fund in practice, but if we are talking theory, then it’s just cheating himself. In theory, of course.
Finally, *the IRS *didn’t consider this cheating, otherwise they would have assessed a penalty.
And so it goes…and you are welcome to have this type of individual as your leader. As I mentioned originally, it is exactly this type of behaviour that is rampant in the personalities which got us into the current fiscal mess.
Only the naive would consider his original non-payment to be a Steve Martin-level “I forgot” event instead of a calculated evasion. And only an imbecile would imply that I said the IRS could assess taxes after the SOL expired when I just finished explaining that that’s the excuse he used to not pay up. Perhaps I can make it more clear to you, Dr:
YOU CAN REPAY WHAT YOU OWE AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT MR GEITHNER DID WHEN HIS CHEATING WAS MADE PUBLIC DURING HIS VETTING PROCESS. HIS OWN CAPITULATION INDICTS HIM.
An honest individual would have stood his ground and defended his actions.
As to the idea that when you pay social security it’s going into a retirement fund–even in theory–well; let’s just say I am not surprised at the kind of government leaders we get when I look at the cognitive ability of the electorate approving them and apparently buying into their marketing rhetoric while they spend our children’s money.
Look…there’s a time to be sycophantic when you really really like your new President. This isn’t one of them. Get your nose and the rest of your entire head out of Mr Obama’s ass and your vision may clear up some. He is going to screw up sometimes, and this is one of those times.
Oh, shit, well why didn’t you just say so? I mean, if we’d known that you mentioned it and all, why hell, we would have just rolled over and died. I recall you mentioning made up stuff, like paying delinquent taxes and stuff. I just thought it meant you didn’t understand how the American system of statutes works. If I’d known that it meant you are fully fucking delusional, I’d have taken that into account.
Then why don’t you address your self-righteous indignation at those people? Why are you bothering with people who consider his original non-payment to be an honest mistake on his part, especially given that he followed to the letter the advice of his accountant? He didn’t “forget” anything. When I failed to pay, it wasn’t that I forgot anything. It was that I didn’t know something. And it’s the same way for thousands or millions of Americans who do the same thing year after year.
Then what’s your fucking problem, you moron? Do YOU pay taxes which have not been assessed to you? If so, you’re fucking insane.
God, you’re an idiot. THERE’S A REASON THE IRS HAS A SYSTEM OF PENALTIES. IT USES THEM ON CHEATERS. IT ALWAYS PENALIZES CHEATERS, AND IT ONLY PENALIZES CHEATERS. IT DID NOT PENALIZE MR. GEITHNER, AND THEREFORE HE DID NOT CHEAT.
The only thing under indictment is your own intelligence and comprehension.
That would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. The notion that you fancy yourself as “an honest individual” who has standing to condemn the rest of us betrays some sort of Christ complex on your part. You’re like the goddamn dumbass on Court TV who points out that innocent people would cry a certain way, or would say certain things, or would act differently — apparently unaware of the fact that human nature is a rich and diverse set of norms. It’s surprising you don’t condemn gay people, reasoning that if they were honest, they’d marry people of the opposite sex the way most of us do. What a wretched fucking proclamation.
Social Security is part of the retirement plan of almost every American worker… When you work and pay Social Security taxes, you earn “credits” toward Social Security benefits… Your benefit payment is based on how much you earned during your working career. Higher lifetime earnings result in higher benefits… You can use the online Retirement Estimator to get immediate and personalized retirement benefit estimates to help you plan for your retirement.
Your stupidity is absolutely monstrous in its sheer magnitude. One would need Cantor’s infinities to quantify it. The opinions you voice are indistinguishable from farting noises. Your hatred of the president and your desire that he stumble and fail are in lockstep with Rush Limbaugh and other rightwing crazies. Your username is well earned, sir. You are truly “one who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge”. Before you type anything else, blow the air out between your ears. If you return with any more of your nonsense, I will taunt you with even greater vigor.
I am delighted with the election of Mr Obama. Calling me a right-winger made me burst out laughing. I have never listened to that buffoon Limbaugh and am surprised anyone does. I find being pleased with Mr Obama in general insufficient reason to refrain from criticizing him or his appointees when they cheat on taxes. Ultimately the tax system relies on voluntary and honest compliance, and what’s so ironic is how many times liberal posters on this board complain about the behaviour of the connected and wealthy. Unless, I guess, you are connected to Mr Obama.
I appreciate your efforts at taunting me, and I am sure you did your very very best.
If my SS contributions were funding my retirement, there’d be a little account somewhere with actual money in it held aside for me. There isn’t. But I guess it’s a good thing you are a slow-enough learner to have not figured that out yet. Puts off having to deal with your annoyance for a few more years. Your children will be the ones funding your retirement. Or not, depending on when the system breaks down.
If I cheat on my taxes and the IRS can’t hold me accountable because the SOL has expired…I still cheated on my taxes. I don’t cheat, but Mr Geithner did. That’s why his handlers had him rectify his evasion.
It will be difficult for you to clear your mind enough to understand those two very simple concepts–or even hear them–as long as it’s buried up inside Mr Obama’s behind. And the reason you can’t smell how stinky Mr Geithner’s behaviour is, is that your nose has grown accustomed to being buried in shit and can no longer distinguish real shit from anything else.
Now go practice some more taunting. Or come back when you have a refutation that’s cogent. I’ll let you know when you are up to at least a pre-school level of understanding. Or just keep your head buried inside the Presidential rectum. Perhaps he’ll eventually notice you kissing him there and send you a thank you. I kinda doubt it. But hey, if you believe your SS contributions are funding your retirement, you’ll believe anything.
The Social Security tax you pay today is being paid out to a retiree or disability recipient tomorrow. You pay into Social Security, but the money you get out isn’t the same money you paid in.
I’m a planner/scheduler, and I can lay out a complex, airtight schedule like a mofo, but my wife’s always wondering why I’m not that way at home… 
Like the mechanic that drives a smoking POS.