Summers & Geithner Are Not Sharpshooters

John I. Young7716 Eastlake TerraceChicago, IL 6062614 April 2009Dear President Obama: Re: Financial Piracy; Summers & Geithner Are Not Sharpshooters As a volunteer for your campaign in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and a senior citizen / voter, I have great confidence in your capabilities, high expectations and a heavy investment in your success. I applaud the vision, plan and programs you laid out in your speech Tuesday morning, with one glaring exception. You said nothing that explained or excused your refusal to deal decisively and effectively with the financial firms, their officials, stockholders and creditors that caused the current crisis by making the reckless loans and securities. They continue to hold the nation’s economy hostage. Citing the pledge to first do no harm can be used to excuse any inaction, but most tellingly, it disguises that great harm has already been done; refusal to resolve the perceived and probable insolvency of financial in-stitutions does ongoing and irreparable harm to those sound businesses and indi-viduals that are driven into insolvency by the continued stagnation of money and credit that is always caused by ongoing insolvency of major financial institutions. Geithner and Summers have effectively nationalized the financial system so that it continues as a leach on the economy, sucking the blood out of the productive parts. The magnitude and nature of this financial crisis makes it different than those they are used to dealing with. Those smaller scandals merely required pro-viding the temporary liquidity, confidence and time to repair the small disruption to one part of finance. Instead, you are dealing with a massive, global, systemic blockage that requires that the bad debts be resolved in the only way bad debts can be resolved in a capitalist, free market economy: bankruptcy, reorganization, re-capitalization and re-privatization. Nothing can make the bad debts good. The longer the creditors hold on to false hopes and insist that the debts are good, the longer the stalemate poisons trust and strangles the financial system. Some harm now is much better that growing harm to more and more innocent parties for a decade or more. There is the perception and perhaps the reality that Summers and Geithner are primarily concerned with protecting the system that they have worked with and benefited from all their lives, instead of recognizing the ways it has grown to be destructive and moving to make it accountable. So long as they are your principle advisors and you are perceived to be subject to their influence, you will not be able to restore faith and trust in time to prevent additional, avoidable pain. Sincerely, John Young