It seems to be a consensus in Washington that Hank Paulson is a very smart, knowledgeable and sincere man. But he comes to the job of Treasury Secretary as a hugely successful Wall Street CEO, and it is only natural that his instincts and experience lead him to see this crisis from that perspective. We need that expertise, but it must be tempered by wise judgment that puts it into a larger context than Wall Street.
In my opinion, one of the best editorial writers around is our own local Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jay Bookman, who writes today about two of the plan's aspects: the lack of oversight and the refusal to reign in excess CEO compensation. He says:
"In other words, to cure a situation worsened or caused by a failure to exercise oversight, the Bush administration proposed a solution in which oversight would be abandoned altogether."
With regard to limiting exeucitve compensation, Paulson warned that "If we design it so it's punitive and so institutions aren't going to participate, this won't work the way we need it to work." Bookman writes:
"If you think about it, that's a pretty incredible statement. The Treasury secretary -- himself the former chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs -- is admitting that to preserve their exorbitant pay packages, corporate CEOs might bar their companies from participating in the bailout, even if doing so would endanger their companies continued existence and the nation as a whole."
And then Bookman concludes: "However, if companies are healthy enough to decide not to participate, they didn't really need the bailout in the first place."
Now that's some clear thinking. We need expert advice such as Paulson's, but the inevitable bias and special interest inherent in becoming an expert in a technical field must be tempered by wise judgment that considers a larger field than Wall Street.
This whole debacle and its antecedent stampedes toward bad laws in times of crisis show the importance of a strong, wise President who can take advice from his experts but ultimately is capable of making hard decisions that have one over-riding principle: what is best for the country in the long run. That should be the job of the president. Unfortunately George W. Bush is not that kind of president.
Instead, we have a weak president who gives way to Cheney's power-mad grabs and paranoid secrecy, and Rummy's do-or-die, my-way aggressiveness, and now to Paulson's understandable bias toward the executives on Wall Street. We need an adult minding the store who is capable of saying no to the individual interests of his experts.
Too idealistic? Of course, but we should aim for it anyway. And I do believe that Barak Obama is that type of leader.
Ralph
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5 comments:
Funny, you knock Bush for doing nothing when he did try to do things to prevent this crisis. I have give the info on previous posts.
And you laud Obama as a better leader in this economic crisis even though a member of his campaign team is the former CEO of Freddie MAC and he has received the 2nd most money of all politicians from Freddie MAC. Doesn't sound like the resume of someone I want trying to fix this problem.
We need a "Draft Ross Perot" movement.
Bush did nothing in 8 years to prevent this from happening. He got nothing through Congress because his arrogant, condescending, us vs. them, unilateral attitude alienated him from any potential allies in the Democratic party.(Sounds like the same attitude Palin exhibited in her acceptance speech). McCain has alieanted all his Democratic friends by his Rovian tactics, and he will be working with a Democratic Congress, using, essentially, the Bush 'brain trust'. So he has about a 100% chance of accomplishing the same thing as Bush. Nothing.
Perot - you will probably find him hiding under one of those aluminum helmets he talked about that ruined his last presidential bid - remember that?
I, too, saw where Obama received $109,000 from FM.
I guess you must've forgotten that McCain's campaign manager ran a firm that was on retainer for them at $15,000 from late 2005 through last month. Help me out here. Which is bigger? $510,000(McCain Inc.'s haul), or $109,000?
Jesse -- your claim that a member of Obama's team is the former CEO of Freddie Mac -- if you are referring to Raines, that claim in McCain's ad has been thoroughly discredited by FactCheck. It all stems from a comment by Raines to a reporter during a photo shoot that he had "taken a couple of calls from the Obama campaign asking for information about general economic matters, not anything to do with mortgages.
To call that a "member of the team" is quite a stretch.
It's true that Bush's Treasury Dept. did propose in a 2003 hearing that oversight of the F-M's be transferred from Congress to Treasury. Apparently it didn't get anywhere, despite the fact that the Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress at that point.
It seems that the plan was sunk because the F-M's killed it. How else could it have failed if the Republicans wanted it?
It's not clear anyway whether that would have fixed the problem or just shifted it to the Exeuctive Branch, which hasn't had a very good record of making anything work right.
I thought I responded to this already but I don't see it.
Weather the Bush plan would have prevented with crisis or not is another debate about macroeconomics, but he did try and do something.
The bill was killed by Chris Dodd, who killed the bill in committee where it stayed until the Dems took control of congress in 2006 when it died with all other unresolved bills.
As far as Obama's connection to Freddie MAC, I meant James Johnson, not Raines. I guess he is the chairman not the CEO, my bad. But I could not find anything on factcheck about the Obama-Raines connection, do you have a link?
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