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April 23, 2009

In New Jersey, We Don't Call Leaning on Someone "Pressure"

It's more "making him an offer he can't refuse" (since "saying no" is interchangable with "garbage"). There seems to be quite a lot of that Barack Soprano negotiating method going on.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Department chief Henry Paulson pressured Bank of America Corp. to not discuss its increasingly troubled plan to buy Merrill Lynch & Co. -- a deal that later triggered a government bailout of BofA -- according to testimony by Kenneth Lewis, the bank's chief executive.

Uh huh. Yup.
Just a day before President Barack Obama announces his plans to help General Motors and Chrysler LLC, Rick Wagoner has resigned his position as Chief Executive Officer of GM. According to a report by Reuters, Wagoner resigned after being pressured from the Obama administration on Sunday as the government prepares to announce the second round of bailout money for the Detroit automaker.

Then here...
.... . While the Obama administration might not want to have the pricetag for its foreclosure efforts look too big, the reason regulators may have pressured Fannie to understate the cost of the program is pretty simple: both Obama and Geithner said publicly that it wouldn’t have a material financial impact on Fannie or Freddie.

...and now bodies are starting to surface.
...Mr. Kellermann, 41, began working nonstop, sometimes returning home only to change clothes, colleagues say. He was losing weight and telling friends that it seemed impossible to appease everyone — regulators, lawmakers, investors and other executives — given their competing demands. Someone was always angry with him, he told one friend. And no matter how many hours everyone worked, it seemed as if the economy and homeowners were still slipping farther into the abyss.

...Early on Wednesday, Mr. Kellermann went to the basement of his brick home and hanged himself...


I'm just sayin' it sounds familiar.
Tony: That's not it. That motherf*cker's full of sh*t. He's shaking me down.

Carmela: No, he's not.

Tony: Oh, yeah? Who knows more about extortion, me or you?



Apparently there're a lot of people in Chicago Washington who can 'tawk like dat', too, capiche?

UPDATE: Just detected: An Instalanche, for which I must immediately and profusely tank my Blogfaddah and den welcome all his friends.

Posted by tree hugging sister at April 23, 2009 07:59 AM

Comments

Yes, like the mob, once you get Obama as a partner, you're a goner. It's what the outfit calls a 'bustout'. Overwork wasn't what got to Mr. Kellerman. It was the realization of what he was involved in.

Posted by: Cris at April 23, 2009 11:15 AM

All of this becomes more unsavory and distasteful by the hour. It's depressing.

Posted by: Teresa at April 23, 2009 12:09 PM

This is the only way to get anything done that Obama has any experience with at all.

The reason it has so little to do with how our actual productive economy works is that Obama has no experience with how our actual productive economy works.

Posted by: Anon at April 23, 2009 12:20 PM

Chicago AND Washington. That's better.

Re: Anon, Obama knows you get more with a smile and a gun than you do with just a smile.

Posted by: Greg Toombs at April 23, 2009 12:28 PM

George Washington: Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force.
Mao Tse-Tung: Political power comes from the barrel of a gun.
Barack Obama: I'm asking you to (fill in the blank)

Posted by: Jim at April 23, 2009 01:06 PM

Fuggedaboutit.

Posted by: HoweeCarr at April 23, 2009 01:36 PM

We can solve this under Rule 7.62!

Posted by: Carlos at April 23, 2009 01:59 PM

Face the door next time you eat out. You got an Instapundit link.

Posted by: Gary from Jersey at April 23, 2009 02:19 PM

Kellerman, meet Foster.

Posted by: willis at April 23, 2009 04:20 PM