The DISH

Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use

Vol. 12 Issue 44…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…November 1, 2009

Intuit's Vibe

Living For The City

By Stevie Wonder

A boy is born in hard time Mississippi

Surrounded by four walls that ain't so pretty

His parents give him love and affection

To keep him strong moving in the right direction

Living just enough, just enough for the city...

His father works some days for fourteen hours

And you can bet he barely makes a dollar

His mother goes to scrub the floor for many

And you'd best believe she hardly gets a penny

Living just enough, just enough for the city

His sister's black but she is sho 'nuff pretty

Her skirt is short but Lord her legs are sturdy

To walk to school she's got to get up early

Her clothes are old but never are they dirty

Living just enough, just enough for the city.

Her brother's smart he's got more sense than many

His patience's long but soon he won't have any

To find a job is like a haystack needle

Cause where he lives they don't use colored people

Living just enough, just enough for the city...

Living just enough...for the city..

His hair is long, his feet are hard and gritty

He spends his love walking the streets of New York City

He's almost dead from breathing on air pollution

He tried to vote but to him there's no solution

Living just enough, just enough for the city...

I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow

And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow

This place is cruel no where could be much colder

If we don't change the world will soon be over

Living just enough, just enough for the city!!!!

Bit of History

Augustus Freeman Hawkins (1907-2007)

"The leadership belongs not to the loudest, not to those who beat the drums or blow the trumpets, but to those who day in and day out, in all seasons, work for the practical realization of a better world--those who have the stamina to persist and remain dedicated."

Born on August 31, 1907 in Shreveport, Louisiana, Augustus Freeman "Gus" Hawkins was the youngest of five children born to Nyanza and Hattie (Freeman) Hawkins. Nyanza Hawkins, who left his native England for America, was a pharmacist and African explorer. When Augustus was 11 his family moved to California. "Gus" Hawkins, bore a striking resemblance to his English paternal grandfather; his skin was so fair that people often thought he was a Caucasian.

Hawkins attended local public schools, graduating from Jefferson High in 1926. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles (1931). A lack of financial support, which was exacerbated by the Great Depression, forced Hawkins to alter his plans to study civil engineering. Instead, he opened a real estate company with his brother Edward and took courses at the University of California's Institute of Government.

New to politics, Hawkins supported the presidential candidacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932) and the 1934 gubernatorial bid of Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle. Hawkins successfully ran for the California Assembly in 1935. He served in the Assembly for 28 years. As a California assemblyman, Hawkins amassed an impressive legislative record that centered on the interests of his predominantly black and Hispanic Los Angeles district. He chaired the joint legislative organization committees and introduced a fair housing act, a fair employment practices act, legislation for low-cost housing and disability insurance, and provisions for workmen's compensation for domestics.

Hawkins served as a delegate to the National Conventions of 1940, 1944 and 1960 and was an Electoral College presidential elector from California in 1944. On August 28, 1945, he married Pegga Adeline Smith.

In 1962, Hawkins entered the Democratic primary to represent the newly created majority-black 21^st congressional district, which included central Los Angeles. With the endorsement of President John F. Kennedy and an established civil rights record, Hawkins easily captured the primary. And, in defeating his Republican opponent in the general election with 85 percent of the vote, Hawkins became the first black congressional representative from any western state.

Hawkins sat on the Committee on Education and Labor and continued to sponsor legislation designed to create jobs and insure civil rights. A notable accomplishment early in his congressional career was authoring Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission--a federal agency to prevent workplace discrimination.

In 1965, one term after taking office, Hawkins was thrust into the political limelight. The Watts riots leveled an impoverished section of his Los Angeles district. He challenged his fellow lawmakers to help his constituents and declared, "The trouble is that nothing has ever been done to solve the long-range underlying problems." While he described the rioting as an expression of desperation, partially due to the absence of long-promised anti-poverty funds, Hawkins did not condone the violence. In 1966, Hawkins' first wife died; he married Elsie Taylor on June 30, 1977.

Hawkins is best known for co-authoring with Senator Hubert H. Humphrey the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978, also known as the Humphrey-Hawkins Act. He also succeeded in restoring an honorable discharge for the 167 black 25th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army after being falsely accused of public disturbance in Brownsville, TX, in 1906. Over his career, Hawkins authored more than 300 state and federal laws, which were principally concerned with education, job training, and equality in the workplace, legislation aimed at improving the lives of minorities and the urban poor.

Hawkins enthusiastically backed much of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society legislation, but he found fault with the administration's foreign policy in Southeast Asia. Hawkins's 1970 tour of Vietnam convinced him that America should withdraw its troops from Southeast Asia.

Although he was a founding member, Hawkins played a modest role in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). He came to view it as a social club, commenting in 1980 that the CBC "could do a better job," since "now it's 85 percent social and 15 percent business." Throughout his career, Hawkins preferred working behind the scenes. He caucused with blacks and whites to get significant legislation passed that would improve the lives of his constituents. Hawkins eschewed the militant approach of some of his congressional colleagues, arguing, "We need clearer thinking and fewer exhibitionists in the civil rights movement."

Hawkins retired at the end of the 101st Congress in 1991. For many years, he lived on Capitol Hill. On November 10, 2007, Hawkins died in Bethesda, Maryland. (Sources: www.aaregistry.com, http://en.wikipedia.org/, http://bioguide.congress.gov/ and http://baic.house.gov/)

Politics Y2K9

Full Employment and Balanced Growth

By Dot

If you have heard it once over the past few months, you have heard it dozens of times, i.e., talking heads predicting a "jobless recovery." Since the recession officially began in December 2007-- I say "officially" because some segments of the US population were in the midst of a recession long before one was publicly declared -some 7.2 million jobs have disappeared. This number has absolutely nothing to do with new entrants, young people entering the labor market. And, according to some estimates, the economy needs to provide a hundred thousand new jobs each month just to absorb these workers. Yet, politicians are touting recovery, as if the US economy can recover without the jobs that provide the income individuals and families need to secure the necessities of life in America; income makes consumption possible. Last time I checked, consumption was a major component of the US economy.

On Friday, the Obama administration announced its stimulus package had saved or created some 650,000 jobs. The government's announcement was cold comfort for the millions of workers unemployed with little prospects of finding a job in an economy where there are six or more job seekers for every vacancy.

At present, the "official" national unemployment rate is 9.8 percent. The official rate does not include persons discouraged or those job seekers that look for work in ways not measured. According to some economists, the real jobless rate could be as high as seventeen percent. The job loss has devastated blacks and Hispanics. Given the US' pattern or structural unemployment problem, blacks and other minorities have historically borne a disproportionate share of the welfare loss due to unemployment in good and bad economic times. While the current national unemployment rate is 9.8 percent, blacks and Hispanics have unemployment rates of 15.4 and 12.7 percent, respectively.

With employment and the income it provides to fuel consumption so crucial to the health and welfare of the US economy, one wonders where is the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act? It remains in effect the last time I checked.

Signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on October 27, 1978, the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act, also known as the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, explicitly instructs the nation to strive toward four competing and possibly inconsistent goals, i.e., full employment, growth in production, price stability, and balance of trade and budget. At the signing ceremony, Augustus Hawkins received a standing ovation for the important role he played in the legislation's passage, but even he recognized the final version only vaguely resembled the ambitious first draft. Hawkins felt, "the legislation was clearly symbolic." He wanted the government to do more to fight the underlying cause of poverty in America. Today, one in six Americans lives in poverty.

Rather than focusing specifically on full employment, as Hawkins would have liked, the final act specifies four objectives. It directs the government to rely primarily on private enterprise in achieving these goals. By 1983, unemployment rates should be no more than 3% for persons aged 20 or over and not more than 4% for persons aged 16 or over, and inflation rates should not be over 4%. By 1988, inflation rates should be 0%. The law allows Congress to revise these targets overtime. Some economists have suggested the long-run equilibrium unemployment rate is closer to 7%, instead of the initial 4% unemployment rate target set in Humphrey-Hawkins.

Humphrey-Hawkins also directs the government to take reasonable measures to balance the budget and avoid trade surpluses and deficits. It mandates the Federal Reserve to establish a monetary policy that maintains long-run growth, minimizes inflation, and promotes price stability. Twice annually, the Federal Reserve must send Congress a report outlining its monetary policy.

In addition, the President must establish numerical goals for the economy in the Economic Report of the President; the report must provide suggested policies that will achieve these goals. The Federal Reserve must connect its monetary policy with the presidential economic policy.

Whenever the private sector fails to achieve its four goals, Humphrey-Hawkins directs the government to create a "reservoir of public employment," jobs in the lower skill and pay ranges that do not compete with the private sector. Like most federal laws, Humphrey-Hawkins prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, race, age, and national origin in any program created under the Act.

While Humphrey-Hawkins has been amended twice, in 1979 to include federal outlays as a proportion of gross national product when calculating numerical goals and in 1990 to change the reporting time for the economic report to the president, it has not been repealed. Moreover, neither of these two amendments changed the law's fundamental goals. Had the government adhered to Humphrey-Hawkins, it would have focused on creating jobs to booster the economic welfare of individuals and families. There would be no "jobless" recovery, since the entire focus of the government effort in ending the recession would have been creating jobs rather than spending hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banks and insurance companies that created the financial crisis. Now, thanks to the government working to improve the banks' balance sheets, the fat cats on Wall Street can pocket huge bonuses for making bad bets, while folks on Main Street lose jobs, homes, healthcare and pensions. Where is today's Gus Hawkins?

Hood Notes

Pensions: The Next Casualty of Wall Street

By Mark Brenner

Nobody wants to admit it, but the next casualty of the Wall Street meltdown will probably be your golden years. For years corporations have been trying to choke the life out of traditional pensions, working hard to get out from under the risk-and cost-of providing for their retirees. Between last year's credit crunch and changes to federal pension laws, they may get their wish.

Nearly $4 trillion worth of retirement savings were wiped out in the first weeks of the 2008 financial free-fall. Half of the drop was concentrated in traditional pension plans, also known as defined-benefit plans. Most workers in these plans haven't had their monthly benefits cut, unlike the 46 million people riding the stock market with 401(k) defined-contribution plans; the storm clouds are gathering.

Labor needs a strategy to protect what we've won. Holding our ground requires moving from defense to offense. If the pension crisis is going to be solved for union members, it has to be solved for everyone.

Corporations got a great deal, paying about half what they used to towards their workers' retirement by the '90s. Even more important-as anyone who has opened their 401(k) statement recently can attest-the move shifted risk off companies and onto us.

Traditional pensions were a collective solution to a collective problem. Young and old contributing together smoothed out insecurity for all. Now it's just you and the stock market-with far less in your pocket.

Even before the crash, studies showed that 401(k)s leave workers with 10 to 33 percent of what traditional pensions provide. Given the 30-year squeeze on wages, most people haven't saved much, which explains why more than half of all 401(k) participants have less than $75,000 when they retire.

Even for those with superior defined-benefit plans, the last 20 years have been rocky. Companies spent much of the 1990s gaming the system, siphoning off pension funds to pad the bottom line.

At the start of this year the nation's defined-benefit pension plans had only about 75% of what they owed participants. Companies may need to contribute as much as $100 billion to cover the gaps.

Although Congress waived compliance with new pension rules this year, the law will take effect, and will force employers to cover these pension gaps.

Rather than clean up their act, more and more employers are looking for the exit. By April of this year nearly a third of America's largest companies had frozen their pension plans.

Many others are invoking the nuclear option, declaring bankruptcy as a way to unload their pension plans on the taxpayers. Unfortunately, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), established in 1975 to backstop private sector pensions, is already reeling from a decade of high-profile and expensive pension defaults at companies like United Airlines and steelmaker LTV.

Nine of the 10 largest pension defaults in history occurred since 2000, leaving the PBGC with a deficit of $11 billion at the end of 2008. That gap could swell to more than $100 billion over the next few years, amounting to a backdoor bailout for big corporations, and a bitter pill for abandoned retirees.

Workers at Republic Steel saw first hand how it works when they had their pensions cut by $1,000 a month in 2002 by the PBGC and then cut again in 2004. Five workers from the Lorain, Ohio, plant committed suicide after the first time their pension was diminished. In the second round of cuts, retirees like Bruce Bostick, former grievance chair for USW Local 1104, saw their retirements fall from $1,047 a month to $125.

The situation for public sector workers isn't much better. Although 80 percent of public employees have traditional pensions, those benefits are now in the cross-hairs of conservative and liberal politicians. Two-thirds of public sector pension plans are underfunded-to the tune of $430 billion-and state and local budget crises are pitting taxpayers against public employees from California to Maine.

For nearly 20 years the various financial bubbles-from the dot-com frenzy of the 1990s to the recent housing market run-up-papered over the urgent need to address the faltering retirement system.

Wall Street's collapse last year revealed how the current patchwork of retirement plans is failing almost everyone. As with health benefits, union workers with stable pensions increasingly find themselves on an island of security in a sea of uncertainty.

But the water is rising rapidly. As the debate over the auto bailout and state budget crises revealed, defending your own decent pension is tough work when half the workers in the country don't have any retirement at all.

The PBGC-which has been swimming in red ink since 2002- is currently set up to pay less than half of what people were promised. If the funding gaps widen, it could fall to pennies on the dollar.

There will be calls to bail the PBGC out-which needs to happen-1.2 million people now depend on it. A sensible demand is to make it function more like the FDIC, by guaranteeing 100 percent of pension benefits up to a reasonable threshold.

But reform can't stop there. If it does, workers are on the same path as before the economic collapse, with a temporary reprieve. Employers will still seek to drive union workers down to non-union standards and dump more risk onto individuals.

We need to return to the original vision of Social Security: a program that (like in Western European nations) can actually pay for most of your old-age living expenses. (Source: http://labornotes.org/node/2466)

Venue for an Artist

The Financo-State: Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?

By Paul Craig Roberts

Evidence that the US is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it. One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and to advance their private interests.

Another conclusive hallmark is rising income inequality as the insiders manipulate economic policy for their enrichment at the expense of everyone else.

Income inequality in the US is now the most extreme of all countries. The 2008 OECD report, "Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries," concludes the US has the highest inequality and poverty rate across the OECD and that since 2000 nowhere has there been such a stark rise in income inequality as in the US. The OECD finds that in the US the distribution of wealth is even more unequal than the distribution of income.

On October 21, 2009, Business Week highlighted a new report from the UN Development Program concluded that the US ranked third among states with the worst income inequality. As number one and number two, Hong Kong and Singapore, are both essentially city states, not countries, the US actually has the shame of being the country with the most inequality in the distribution of income.

The stark increase in US income inequality in the 21st century coincides with the offshoring of US jobs, which enriched executives with "performance bonuses" while impoverishing the middle class, and with the rapid rise of unregulated OTC derivatives, which enriched Wall Street and the financial sector at the expense of everyone else.

Millions of Americans have lost their homes and half of their retirement savings while being loaded up with government debt to bail out the banksters who created the derivative crisis.

Frontline's October 21 broadcast, "The Warning," documents how Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt blocked Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, from performing her statutory duties and regulating OTC derivatives.

After the worst crisis in US financial history struck, just as Brooksley Born said it would, a disgraced Alan Greenspan was summoned out of retirement to explain to Congress his unequivocal assurances that no regulation of derivatives was necessary. Greenspan had even told Congress that regulation of derivatives would be harmful. A pathetic Greenspan had to admit that the free market ideology on which he had relied turned out to have a flaw.

Greenspan may have bet our country on his free market ideology, but does anyone believe that Rubin and Summers were doing anything other than protecting the enormous fraud-based profits that derivatives were bringing Wall Street? As Brooksley Born stressed, OTC derivatives are a "dark market." There is no transparency. Regulators have no information on them and neither do purchasers.

Even after Long Term Capital Management blew up in 1998 and had to be bailed out, Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers stuck to their guns. Greenspan, Rubin and Summers, and a roped-in gullible Arthur Levitt who now regrets that he was the banksters' dupe, succeeded in manipulating a totally ignorant Congress into blocking the CFTC from doing its mandated job. Brooksley Born, prevented by the public's elected representatives from protecting the public, resigned. Wall Street money simply shoved facts and honest regulators aside, guaranteeing government inaction and the financial crisis that hit in 2008 and continues to plague our economy today.

The financial insiders running the Treasury, White House, and Federal Reserve shifted to taxpayers the cost of the catastrophe that they had created. When the crisis hit, Henry Paulson, appointed by President Bush as Rubin's replacement as the Goldman Sachs representative running the US Treasury, hyped fear to obtain from "our" representatives in Congress with no questions asked hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars (TARP money) to bail out Goldman Sachs and the other malefactors of unregulated derivatives.

When Goldman Sachs recently announced that it was paying massive six and seven figure bonuses to every employee, public outrage erupted. In defense of banksters, saved with the public's money, paying themselves bonuses in excess of most people's life-time earnings, Lord Griffiths, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, said that the public must learn to "tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all." In other words, "Let them eat cake."

According to the UN report, Great Britain has the 7th most unequal income distribution in the world. After the Goldman Sachs bonuses, the British will move up in distinction, perhaps rivaling Israel for the fourth spot in the hierarchy.

Despite the total insanity of unregulated derivatives, the high level of public anger, and Greenspan's confession to Congress, still nothing has been done to regulate derivatives. One of Rubin's Assistant Treasury Secretaries, Gary Gensler, has replaced Brooksley Born as head of the CFTC. Larry Summers is the head of President Obama's National Economic Council. Former Federal Reserve official Timothy Geithner, a Paulson protege, runs the Obama Treasury. A Goldman Sachs vice president, Adam Storch, has been appointed the chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Banksters are still in charge.

Is there another country in which in full public view so few so blatantly use government for the enrichment of private interests, with a coterie of "free market" economists available to justify plunder on the grounds that "the market knows best"? A narco-state is bad enough. The US surpasses this horror with its financo-state.

As Brooksley Born says, if nothing is done "it'll happen again." But nothing can be done. The crooks have the government.

Note: The OECD report shows that despite the Reagan tax rate reduction, the rate of increase in US income inequality declined during the Reagan years. During the mid-1990s the Gini coefficient (the measure of income inequality) actually fell. Beginning in 2000 with the New Economy (essentially financial fraud and offshoring of US jobs), the Gini coefficient shot up sharply.

About Me: Roberts is an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as the "Father of Reaganomics." (Source: http://counterpunch.org/roberts10262009.html)

Disgruntled feels: Repetitious! The United States has failed to address the underlying cause of the gross disparity in economic welfare between black and white Americans. There is a pattern of unemployment such that historically black Americans experience rates of joblessness two times or greater than those experienced by white Americans during good and bad economic times. Since the vast majority of Americans reside in families and rely on income from employment as their chief source of economic welfare, this pattern of unemployment has led to a gap or chasm of inequality in the economic welfare enjoyed by black and white families. The median family income statistic offers an excellent measure of economic welfare in this country. As I have noted, repetitiously, the gap in median family income between blacks and whites mimic the 3/5 Compromise found in Article 1 Section 2 of the US Constitution. Thus, the pattern of unemployment, which is the underlying cause of the gross disparity in income between black and white Americans, ensures the continuation of the grand agreement between the founding fathers that codified slavery.

Disgruntled wants to know: Recently, I read some really interesting articles on the fall of empires and the declining value of the US dollar as the international reserve currency. These articles coincide with the rise in the price of gold, lending them a certain amount of credence. In particular, I found columnist Robert Fisk's "Demise of the Dollar" most interesting. According to Fisk, the finance ministers and central bank governors of some key nations, including China, Russia, Brazil, France and the Gulf Arab states, are planning to end dollar dealing in oil. This could certainly explain the rise in the price of a troy ounce of gold above a thousand dollars, not to mention any such change will make it difficult for the US to finance its debt. In addition, Fisk cites "China's new financial power - along with the past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system" as a reason behind the latest round of dollar discussions among the Gulf states. Ironically, Iran has already dumped the dollar, a move that was accompanied by a great deal of saber-rattling ostensibly over Iran's nuclear ambition. Fisk reminds us of what happened to Saddam Hussein when he chose euros over the dollar in the UN Oil for Food Program. Iraq was invaded and Saddam was hanged ostensibly over non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Question is , will the growing clamor for a stable world currency lead to more wars, the dollar's demise and/or the fall of an empire?

Disgruntled says: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has finally awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to a woman. The news came a week after the controversial hoopla over the Academy's decision to award this year's Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama The Academy acknowledged Professor Elinor Ostrom for her work in economic governance, saying her economic analysis has "demonstrated how common property could be successfully managed by groups using it." Professor Ostrom will share the prestigious prize with fellow American Professor Oliver Williamson for his theory on business firms serving as structures for conflict resolution. Obviously, awarding the prize in economics to a woman did not create drama like giving the Peace Prize to Mr. Obama. But, the news was a delightful surprise in that it showed that one does not have to be steeped in Wall Street, stuck on "free enterprise" or be a man to receive recognition for their work in the field of economics.

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Phone Calls

Email http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com....The Real Reason That - For the First Time Ever - More Women are Working Than Men...For the first time ever, at least half of all American workers are women. In addition, mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of families. These are the findings from a new report called The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything, put out by Maria Shriver, wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger. While the mainstream media is heralding these findings as showing that women have achieved gender equality with men, the true meaning of these statistics is actually quite different. As Wendy Norris, an investigative reporter based in Denver pointed out in a recent interview, the "equality" of women in the workforce is the result of the severity of the financial crisis and the resulting unemployment among men. Specifically, it is well-known that men have suffered the majority of job losses from the rising tide of unemployment hitting America. Norris also points out that these are lower-paying jobs, as women typically earn less then men. So what is being celebrated as a sign of progress and equality is actually an indication of the severity of the unemployment crisis in America.

Email www.msnbc.com ....Americans' confidence about the U.S. economy fell unexpectedly in October as job prospects remained bleak, a private research group said Tuesday, fueling speculation that an already gloomy holiday shopping forecast could worsen. The Consumer Confidence Index, released by The Conference Board, sank unexpectedly to 47.7 in October -- its second-lowest reading since May. Forecasters predicted a higher reading of 53.1. A reading above 90 means the economy is on solid footing. Above 100 signals strong growth. The index has seesawed since reaching a historic low of 25.3 in February and climbed to 53.4 in September. Economists watch consumer confidence because spending on goods and services by Americans accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity by federal measures. While the reading doesn't always predict short-term spending, it's a helpful barometer of spending levels over time, especially for expensive, big-ticket items. The figures showed that shoppers have a grim outlook for the future, expecting a worsening business climate, fewer jobs and lower salaries. That's particularly bad news for retailers who depend on the holiday shopping season for a hefty share of their annual revenue.

Email www.msnbc.com ...Geithner: Economy rebounding; job growth lags...Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner acknowledges the federal budget deficit is too high, but that the priorities now are economic growth and job creation. He did say President Barack Obama is committed to dealing with deficit in a way that will not add to the tax burden of people making less than $250,000 a year. The White House has not decided how to reduce the red ink, Geithner said in an interview broadcast Sunday. "Right now we're focused on getting growth back on track," he said. "And we're not at the point yet where we have to decide exactly what it's going to take." He acknowledged that the economic recovery, while showing positive movement, has been shaky and uneven. "A lot of damage was caused by this crisis. It's going to take some time for us to grow out of this. It could be a little choppy," he said. "It could be uneven. And it's going to take awhile." A bright spot in the recovery identified by Geithner is the banking system, which he said is "dramatically more stable" because of the government bailout.