«WASTING MONEY PUTS YOU IN A REAL PARTY MOOD»

"Everybody understands," Geithner said on This Week, "that we cannot have our financial system go back to the practices that brought this economy to the brink of collapse." The problem is, it already has. If we're really going to protect taxpayers and create a more stable system, the most important reform is to ensure that there are no financial institutions any more that are too big to fail. That we can never again be held hostage by institutions that have the power to tell us: "If you don't give us the money, we're going to blow up the whole system." Actually, what we have now is worse than a hostage system because in a classic hostage setup, after you pay the ransom you get the hostage back. We've paid more than a king's ransom, but have not taken the hostage -- our financial system -- back from the banks.

Arianna Huffington
August 7 2009