Kucinich slams Paulson testimony, pans CNBC hosts
Published: July 16, 2009
Updated 4 months ago
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) expressed shock at former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s testimony Thursday before a House panel probing possible improprieties tied to the takeover of Bank of America.
Appearing on CNBC’s The Call, Kucinich was highly critical of Paulson’s interpretation of events that involved Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis.
“Why wouldn’t Secretary Paulson take action to remove management and Mr. Lewis if he knew, and apparently he did know, that Merrill Lynch had all these losses and that Bank of America didn’t inform [the] shareholders?” said Kucinich.
Paulson defended his role in the takeover to the House committee, which, Bloomberg reported, was “trying to determine whether government regulators put undue pressure last year” on BoA “to complete the takeover during the height of the financial crisis.” [Lewis] told Congress last month the bank considered abandoning the deal in December as Merrill’s losses spiraled toward more than $15 billion.
“You have a signal being sent to Wall Street that if there’s [sic] potential misdeeds, you can still stay in the game,” Kucinich continued. “That creates a moral hazard.”
Hosts Trish Regan and Larry Kudlow took issue with Kucinich’s zeroing in on Paulson, with both suggesting Lewis was more to blame.
Kudlow shouted at the two-time former presidential candidate over inconsistencies in his assessment of the situation, saying, “None of this makes any sense to the viewer, to investors, whatsoever!”
Kucinich countered, “We have to have the ability to tell shareholders that things are legit, and they weren’t legit for the shareholders of Bank of America.”
This further inflamed Kudlow, which led to loud crosstalk between him and Kucinich, before co-host Regan stepped in and again questioned the congressman’s stance. Taken aback, Kucinich said, “How can you even have a show about this when you say shareholders can be notified after the fact?”
Kucinich is not the only lawmaker to grill the embattled Paulson.
“Hank Paulson never should have had that job in the first place,” Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) said on MSNBC. “He had a $700 million conflict of interest and everything that he did while he was Treasury Secretary, every single thing that he did, has one explanation - what’s good for Hank Paulson?”
Veteran journalist Robert Scheer also blasted Paulson over his connections to investment giant Goldman Sachs in a column that appeared Wednesday at Huffington Post.
“Goldman Sachs made $3.44 billion in profit this past quarter, while the U.S deficit topped $1 trillion for the first time in the nation’s history,” wrote Scheer. “Since most of the increase in the federal deficit is due to bailing out the banks and salvaging the greater economy they helped destroy, why is the top investment bank doing so well?
“Because that was the plan,” Scheer continued, “as devised by [Paulson], a former CEO of Goldman Sachs.”
This video is from CNBC.com, broadcast July 16, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
The following video is of Rep. Grayson’s appearance on MSNBC, 16 July 2009.
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the FED shills are now starting to pour out of the woodwork.
I saw it live on CNBC earlier in the day the Kudlow Kucinich bought, it was funny. It goes to show you that CNBC is truly a shill for the govt. and the financial system. Kucinich took Kudlow to task when Kudlow said that the investors knew about the Bank of America situation before the vote, and in so doing he assumed they didn’t need to be notified of the financial problems with the buy in or merger. Kucinich said your making this up and made a comment about the network having this type of thinking. He literally said what are you guys doing then if your not helping investors have a transparent view of the markets if you believe that they don’t need to be notified before a vote about the thing they are voting on.
Best line Dennis: “What’s with ‘the media’…you are just making stuff up”
Kudd-low was screaming a defense at an elected official about a banker who was not in the room?
What the fuck is the Kudd-low’s job, really? Though the commercials were only during the commercial breaks, but on CNBC, its one big greed-gasm 24/7.
These fucking bankers are the people we need Cheney’s assassination teams for. They have committed treason against the United States by stealing all of it’s wealth.
Talk is cheap and ineffective. It is time for action.
It is time for action.
————————-
From whom exactly do you expect action? Surely not from the Bush-accomplice war criminal super-majority Dem congress or their Bush-accomplice/war criminal in the White House.
The only action comes from the Repugs, and it’s consistently in the regressive direction. And the Dems serve as their regressive accomplices.
And Kucinich is the only real, true Democrat in congress. The rest charade as Democrats. They could officially switch parties (and become Repugs) tomorrow and one would not be able to tell any difference.
CNBC is slavishly devoted to the the filthy greed of the have-mores. On a daily basis Kudlow and Co. kiss the assess of the obscenely wealthy and act as if it’s normal and human. They are people with grotesaque and distorted values. Kucinich is a decent man whose frame of reference that is polar opposite of the Kudlow bunch. They can’t understand why anyone would not be as totally devoted to the almighty dollar at the expense of everything else as they are. All they can understand is unfettered greed. They are able to communicate with each other, or like-minded people (virtually all Republicans) but few others.
CNBC shills are so ridiculously transparent I no longer see any difference between them and Faux News. Do they truly not realize how obvious it is what corporate owned shills they are? Incredible.
Kucinich seems to set a lot of the blatant msm propagandists into loud rant mode: in 2004, while eating breakfast in a Bangkok hotel, watching the omnipresent CNN on the tv, I had the good fortune to witness Larry King (of shills) interviewing a panel of Democratic presidential candidates. I believe it was Kerry, Kucinich, and one or two other easily forgettable candidates.
When Kerry stated he would have “done Iraq differently”, Dennis asked “In what way?”, and was totally ignored by Kerry, with no follow up by King for an answer.
When Kucinich stated he wanted to bring Universal Health Care to all Americans, King went ballistic, SHOUTING: “Socialism!! Socialism Socialism, That’s Socialism, socialism, socialism!!!”
Wow. And there are folks, millions of them daily, that would vow to you they are intelligent and sane, and yet watch this msm brainwashing from KrudLow and Kingster as if they had a SHRED of CREDIBILITY.
Can you imagine addressing an House representative by his first name, the way Kudlow did?
What a classless act. Kudlow is such a stinking turd.
With all due respect, Kudlow: Kiss my ass, you s***-head.
If people do not get behind Kucinich in 2012 to de-throne the current Emperor, this country is truly lost. It’s Kucinich or bust, Folks. This man is CONSTANTLY fighting the power-hungry, one-party bastards for US: We The People. Kucinich/McKinney 2012!!! Let’s start now for that year by spreading D.K.’s praises….
Kudchew is an ass wipe. Him and Crammer were constantly stating in ‘03, ‘04, ‘05 that there was no housing bubble and that housing prices could only go up. These guys, Kudchew and Crammer, are almost worth the price of bullets, but I think garroting is more economical and I’d just settle for them to go to county lock up for 4 or 5 years. They have life too good at a fed facility. At Fulton County lock up here in Georgia, they’d learn a lot about life…
Well, we’ve known whose side CNBC is on since Jon Stweart bitch-slapped that psycho Jim Cramer, who, after promising to cleanup his fucking act and do some reporting on behalf of viewers, went right back to his old corporation-sucking ways unrepentant. It’s CNBC’s job to fuck Americans out of their money.
There are other “irregularities”. WAMU shouldn’t have failed. It wasn’t in trouble till Indybank failed. When a lot of their commercial customers pulled their payrolls WAMU had a temporary cash flow problem. While they were hunting for a partner to help them over the hump, the FDIC stepped in and took over destroying any chance WAMU had of finding help. The FDIC which had stopped collecting from member banks years earlier decided it couldn’t cover WAMU deposits and gave it JPMorgan Chase for 10 cents on the dollar.
Earlier in the year JPMorgan Chase had offered to buy WAMU and was turned down.
Banks have succeeded in transfering all their risk, inappropriate and otherwise to the backs of taxpayers and have used government agencies to acquire assets for a fraction of their net worth.
Congress stands by, with the exception of men like Kucinich, and cheers them on.
We’ve been had…..again! Kucinich is one of 100 or so genuine progressives in Congress. His views are shared by a majority of American voters. Furthermore, the guy is HONEST.
This is reason enough for the DNC “leadership” to marginalize him. The Republocrats are threatened by anyone who challenges their “Cosa Nostra” set-up.
When are “We The People” going to stand up and vote for the BEST candidate, instead of believing what the “leadership” tell us (over and over and over and over) about what kind of candidate “can win”…as if it even matters which of the “approved” candidates of the “two” parties wins.
The major party operatives have learned that you can fool ’some of the people’ ALL of the time….and it’s these chumps that both parties count on as their respective ‘bases’. Their stategy works…and it will continue to work until we progressives find the courage to vote for “The Best” candidate, rather than one of the major party candidates who are picked and vetted by the party hacks who take their direction from the institutions that REALLY own this country, i.e., the banks, the private insurers, Big Pharma, and Big Oil/Coal.