Not to be outdone by Sen. Maria Cantwell’s in-your-face complaints to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on Tuesday, Washington’s other senator, Patty Murray, is spreading advance word that she’ll be tangling with the TeasSec tomorrow.

From Murray’s press release:

In Face-to-Face with Geithner, Murray to Call Attention to Washington State’s Lost Jobs, Struggling Small Businesses, and Failing Banks

Also noted in the release: Murray’s bill to give $30 billion to struggling community banks.

Obama talked about this—or, depending on how you look at it, stole the idea—in his State of the Union. Cantwell took up the community bank cry on Tuesday. And now, it seems, Murray wants to remind everyone that it was her idea first.

Noted.

Tomorrow’s main event begins as 10:00 AM EST/7:00 AM PST, and will be webcast here.

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

4 replies on “Tomorrow: Murray vs. Geithner”

  3. Her bill is, like Obama’s spending freeze, the opposite of economically helpful. Washington’s community banks overall have the greatest percentage in the nation of troubled assets tied up in underwater commercial real estate loans. Make no mistake, many community banks here would have been shut down already under a stricter regime.

    But not ALL of our community banks are in (richly deserved) trouble now, which is why we need to not hinder the good local banks from absorbing the bad. As with last week’s failure of Bainbridge’s American Marine Bank: the FDIC arranged for a healthy community bank to take over, thereby strengthening that local bank even further. A bailout would keep the healthier local banks, the ones that refused to engage in WAMU-style easy lending (in commercial property rather than residential), from reaping the competitive benefit of their prudence. It would help keep the idiots among our local bank leaders in place, penalizing the good ones.

    As for a bailout’s effect on commercial values, to the extent it simply artificially slows the price decline it would delay the onset of the eventual price recovery as well. How is that good for us overall?

    That aside, I must admit the prospect of Murray spanking Timmy makes me tingle.

  4. Murray voted for Ben Bernanke’s confirmation, Cantwell voted against. Says it all.

    Giving money to banks will not somehow rescue the economy, it is just more of the looting which has already occurred at a massive scale. The federal government should keep its powder dry to protect insured depositors and people who fall out the bottom of the economy and need help to survive.

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