Saturday, January 17, 2009

Timothy F. Geithner - a get out of jail free card

Just when I was worried that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert would have nothing to joke about with the end of the Bush Administration comes Timothy F. Geithner, President-elect Obama's choice for Treasury Secretary.

You folks are all smart so you already know that the Treasury Secretary is in charge of, among other things, the Internal Revenue Service.

So how funny is the news that Geithner (who is the darling of both Democrats and Republicans) forget, neglected, delayed, or mistakenly did not pay $34,000 in federal taxes between 2001 and 2003.

When was the last time you forgot, neglected, delayed or mistakenly did not pay your federal taxes? But if you ever do, now you can simply say: "I just did the same thing the head of your agency did."

If this doesn't argue for a simplified tax code (not to mention a higher degree of honesty) I don't know what does.

And how about the awful results of a Ponzi scheme in which someone takes money from you to invest for your future and then, instead of investing it, they give it in large quantities to another client who needs the money right now. What should happen to someone who does that to your money?

No, I'm not talking about Bernie Madoff who took $50 billion from his investors, but 70 years of Congressional representatives who have done that to your Social Security money. The problem for Madoff is that he can't print more money to get out of his hole, but Congress can.

If Madoff has done something horrible, how about those representatives who have withheld more than two trillion dollars from you and your employer and instead of investing it handed it to someone else to spend?

Just a little Saturday morning musings while we sit here buried in snow in frigid Buffalo.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Jim:
You are so right. Funny how the folks in the top strata who make the rules can't seem to follow the rules, even when they have the money to hire multiple advisers to keep them straight.
So we promote them to make more rules.
But the poor schmuck who doesn't have an accountant and a finance adviser and a lawyer and a fat corporate perk to pay for such things — they get hammered by the IRS.
I really think we are headed for another revolution, in many, many ways. The Boston Tea Party was over less than what we put up with today.
But, from what I hear, everything will start getting better starting on Tuesday night.
By Wednesday, everything should be just fine.