TARP Lessons for Iowa's Budget Cutters

October 23, 2009, 7:40 a.m.

Today's blog entry is another in a series devoted to Iowa's budget crisis and its impact on the University of Iowa. Prior entries included:

"How Many Administrators Does It Take? Administrators are Multiplying & Sucking Us Dry," July 16, 2009

"A University's Strategic Communication; A Modest Proposal to the Regents' University Presidents," October 7, 2009

"Iowa's Budget Cuts and the University; Economic Collapse Tests Moral Values," October 9, 2009.

"How to Cut Iowa's Budget; Fairness, Justice and Leadership by Example," October 15, 2009.

"UI Budget: Waivers Wave Goodbye to Savings; Consistency, Hobgoblins and Waivers," October 19, 2009

Barofsky: "Anger, cynicism and distrust [an] unnecessary cost of TARP"
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Iowa Governor Culver's axe has begun to fall. Jennifer Jacobs, "1,300 state jobs at risk in proposed cuts," Des Moines Register, October 22, 2009 ("Iowans could see fewer troopers on highways, less treatment for addictions, fewer prison guards, delays in new dental coverage for children, less child abuse prevention work, longer waits for state tax refunds, less aid for college and dozens of other impacts if the governor approves budget cuts his agency directors presented to him. State corrections and human services workers would see the brunt of the layoffs. Those departments account for nearly 600 of about 793 layoffs proposed statewide.").

Next Wednesday the Board of Regents will announce with a little more specificity how the three Regents' universities should respond to the Governor's order that they, too, are expected to further cut their state appropriations by another 10%. See Staci Hupp, "Regents propose surcharge, 6.5-percent tuition and fees increase," Des Moines Register, October 23, 2009.

What an awful, and thankless, responsibility. History records no occasion when a budget cutter's decision was greeted with a standing ovation. Usually the recipients' reactions are just the opposite. No applause; little understanding; just "anger, cynicism and distrust."

These are the public reactions the Department of the Treasury's Special Inspector General, Neil Barofsky, says the Treasury's handling of the TARP program have produced: "Treasury's actions in this regard have contributed to damage the credibility of the program and of the government itself, and the anger, cynicism and distrust created must be chalked up as one of the substantial, albeit unnecessary, costs of TARP."

But note that while Barofsky acknowledges the public's "anger, cynicism and distrust," he says that reaction was not a necessary cost, and that it could have been avoided if the government officials involved had behaved differently.

It's a model Iowa's budget cutters would do well to study -- in order to avoid that reaction here, on the part of Iowans generally, and those associated with its universities in particular.

But first an update on another scandal and advice to Iowans on how not to do government programs, whether of largess or of budget cutting.

Wednesday I wrote about another example of Congress handing over taxpayers' money to generous campaign contributors from another sector of our economy -- the developers, contractors, home builders, real estate brokers and mortgage bankers. In addition to the trillions of dollars they already get, they are now pushing to expand and extend their version of "cash for clunkers" (without the need to come up with the clunkers): an $8000 grateful taxpayers contribution for each house sold (which they wish to expand from first time home buyers to all buyers, and from $8000 to $15,000). (Needless to say, there's no provision in this program to help those who are providing the houses through bankruptcy, foreclosure, and their willingness to live on the street.) "Housing for the Wealthy, Unemployment for the Poor," October 21, 2009.

Yesterday we learn of yet one more reason to oppose this program (a program that most economists agree is loony from their perspective as well). It turns out it's been riddled with fraud. Jackie Calmes, "Fraud Reported in Program to Help New Homebuyers," New York Times, October 22, 2009 ("Just as Congressional leaders are calling to extend a popular tax credit for first-time homebuyers, government investigators are reporting new findings that point to widespread fraud in the program. A previously undisclosed report from the Treasury Department’s inspector general said that as of Sept. 30, the Internal Revenue Service had identified 167 suspected criminal schemes and opened nearly 107,000 examinations of potential civil violations. In late July, the I.R.S. announced its first successful prosecution.").

That same Wednesday (October 21) PBS' "Frontline" revealed what those now advising the President were doing to beat back the calls for regulation during the 1990s, efforts that played a major role in creating our current economic crisis -- in the midst of which their Wall Street friends and former colleagues at Goldman Sachs are continuing to earn billions in bonuses.

"The Warning," PBS Frontline, October 21, 2009 ("'We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,' says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. 'They were totally opposed to it,' Born says. 'That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?' . . . Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation of derivatives. 'Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation at a time when the stock market was booming,' ["Frontline" producer Michael] Kirk says. 'Alan Greenspan was the maestro, and both parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take care of themselves.' Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, 'The Warning' reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one. 'It'll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps,' Born warns. 'There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience.'" From the "Introduction."). If you missed it, you can watch streaming video of the program from the "Frontline" site.

On October 5 the New York Times reported:

The inspector general who oversees the government’s bailout of the banking system is criticizing the Treasury Department for some misleading public statements last fall and raising the possibility that it had unfairly disbursed money to the biggest banks. . . . A Treasury official made incorrect statements about the health of the nation’s biggest banks even as the government was doling out billions of dollars in aid, according to a report on the Troubled Asset Relief Program to be released on Monday by the special inspector general, Neil M. Barofsky.

The report also provides new insight into the way the Treasury allocated billions of dollars to nine of Wall Street’s largest players.

Louise Story, "Report on Bailouts Says Treasury Misled Public," New York Times, October 5, 2009, p. B2.













[Photo Credit: Larry Downing/Reuters; Time; "TARP recipients testify before the House Financial Services Committee on Feb. 11. From left: Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, Bank of New York's Robert Kelly, Bank of America's Ken Lewis and State Street's Ronald Logue."]

Jim Kuhnhenn, "Watchdog: Bailout Helped, but At a Cost," Associated Press/Time, October 21, 2009 ("[Treasury Special Inspector General Neil] Barofsky said [in his latest quarterly TARP report that] the Troubled Asset Relief Program has come at great cost to taxpayers, to the integrity of the financial system and to the public's perception of the federal government. 'Despite the aspects of TARP that could reasonably be viewed as a substantial success,' he wrote, "Treasury's actions in this regard have contributed to damage the credibility of the program and of the government itself, and the anger, cynicism and distrust created must be chalked up as one of the substantial, albeit unnecessary, costs of TARP.' . . . The integrity of the industry: Many firms considered "too big to fail" last year, and thus in need of government assistance, are even bigger now. 'Absent meaningful regulatory reform, TARP runs the risk of merely reanimating markets that had collapsed under the weight of reckless behavior,' the report states."). (Time has also kindly provided us with "25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis," Time.)

So now we have "Frontline" passing along former CFTC chief Brooksley Born's warning that "There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience," and Neil Barofsky warning that "Absent meaningful regulatory reform, TARP runs the risk of merely reanimating markets that had collapsed under the weight of reckless behavior."

And how is the Obama Administration and Congress -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- responding to this urgent need that their most generous campaign contributors be more effectively regulated in the public interest? With a wink and a nod and an outstretched hand.

As the Wall Street Journal reports,

Some of the biggest Wall Street firms are back in the political-spending game after hunkering down while they were getting government bailout funds. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., Morgan Stanley and other large financial-services firms stepped up their political donations in September to members of Congress . . ..Most Wall Street firms stopped making donations to lawmakers when they were receiving government funds, and many lawmakers stopped accepting them. But now . . . they are making campaign donations again. At the same time, they are increasing their spending on lobbying . . ..

For the details on who has given how much see Brody Mullins and T.W. Farnam, "Wall Street Steps Up Political Donations, Lobbying; Firms Boost Outlays Amid Debate on Financial-Services Overhaul, After Slowing Spending While Getting Bailout Cash," Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2009.

Sadly, this includes as well the President of the United States, Barack Obama, who even personally went to New York earlier this week for another $30,400-a-plate fund raiser. David D. Kirkpatrick, "Wall St. Giants Reluctant to Donate to Democrats," New York Times, October 20, 2009, p. A1.

Ironically, the "reluctance" to which that headline refers is the Wall Street executives "fear of getting caught in the public rage over the perception that Wall Street titans profiting from their government bailout may use their winnings to give back to Washington in return. And the timing of the event, as the industry lobbies against proposals for tighter regulations to address the underlying causes of last year’s meltdown on Wall Street, has only added to the worry over public appearances."

This is not the most laudatory basis for reluctance, perhaps, but at least it's better than that of a President who seems to be either unaware of or unconcerned about "the public rage over the perception" -- what Barofsky identifies as the unnecessary public "anger, cynicism and mistrust" fomented by such fund raisers.

This is probably enough reference to stories for a blog entry. But here are a few more for those interested in pursuing this, The Crime of Two Centuries, before turning to the lessons for Iowa's budget cutters.

U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $23.7 trillion to bolster the economy and bail out financial companies, said Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. . . . including $6.8 trillion in aid offered by the Federal Reserve, Barofsky said in a report released today. . . .

Barofsky’s estimates include $2.3 trillion in programs offered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., $7.4 trillion in TARP and other aid from the Treasury and $7.2 trillion in federal money for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, credit unions, Veterans Affairs and other federal programs. . . .

Barofsky offered criticism in a separate quarterly report of Treasury’s implementation of TARP, saying the department has “repeatedly failed to adopt recommendations” needed to provide transparency and fulfill the administration’s goal to implement TARP “with the highest degree of accountability.”

As a result, taxpayers don’t know how TARP recipients are using the money or the value of the investments, he said in the report. . . .

The Treasury has spent $441 billion of TARP funds so far and has allocated $202.1 billion more for other spending, according to Barofsky. In the nine months since Congress authorized TARP, Treasury has created 12 programs involving funds that may reach almost $3 trillion, he said. . . .

Barofsky said the TARP inspector general’s office has 35 ongoing criminal and civil investigations that include suspected accounting, securities and mortgage fraud; insider trading; and tax investigations related to the abuse of TARP programs.

Dawn Kopecki and Catherine Dodge, "U.S. Rescue May Reach $23.7 Trillion, Barofsky Says," Bloomberg, July 20, 2009.

"Watchdog: Treasury and Fed Failed in AIG Oversight," Associated Press/New York Times, October 14, 2009 ("Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is 'ultimately responsible' for regulators' failure to rein in massive bonus payments at American International Group because he led the agencies that provided AIG's lifelines, according to a bailout watchdog. Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before taking over at Treasury in January. He has said he did not learn until March about the $1.75 billion in bonuses and other compensation promised to AIG employees. But Geithner's subordinates at the New York Fed learned of the payments in November, according to Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the $700 billion financial bailout.").

Pallavi Gogoi, "TARP report slams lack of transparency," USA Today, October 20, 2009 ("In a scathing report out Wednesday, a government watchdog blasts the Treasury Department for its handling of a $700 billion bailout program and for not adopting all of its earlier recommendations [and] Treasury's failure to provide more details about the use of TARP funds . . ..").

"Bailout watchdog Barofsky: Too early to say how much of $700B will be refunded to taxpayers," Associated Press/Baltimore Sun, October 21, 2009.

"U.S. 'unlikely' to recoup aid to banks; TARP watchdog's report is also critical of secrecy," Bloomberg/Washington Post, October 22, 2009.

William A. Barnett, "Who’s Looking at the Fed’s Books?" New York Times, October 21, 2009 October 22, 2009, p. A35.

And the meat-less, dry bone thrown the public's way turns out to be little more than public relations window dressing in front of what looks very much like same-old, same-old in the back rooms. Joe Nocera, "Pay Cuts, but Little Headway in What Matters Most," New York Times, October 23, 2009, p. B1. (They don't affect many people; for those they do affect, it only impacts their salaries for November and December of this year, then they can be renegotiated; stock options are exempted, so there's no limit to that continuing source of income, so long as they hold them for two to five years -- which they'd do anyway to ride up the price; and they can make more if things improve for their company, regardless of what they personally had to do with that. As the headline puts it, there's "little headway in what matters most."). See also, Editorial, "Symbolic Cuts Need to Set Tone for Real Cuts," Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 23, 2009 (regarding Governor Chet Culver's self-imposed salary cut).

As for Iowa's budget cutting, it's important for us to keep it in context. Take a look at this report prepared by one of the other Nicholas Johnsons (in addition to this one a couple of the others are the law professor at Fordham, and the literal rocket scientist). Nicholas Johnson, Phil Oliff, and Jeremy Koulish, "An Update on State Budget Cuts; At Least 41 States Have Imposed Cuts That Hurt Vulnerable Residents; Federal Economic Recovery Funds and State Tax Increases Are Reducing the Harm," October 20, 2009 (with a link to the full report in pdf).

One of the consequences of the Washington-Wall Street Axis, described above, is that it really is tough all over. Those SOBs have harmed every single American -- except for themselves, their friends and colleagues, and others in the top 1% of the wealthiest. Iowa is even in some ways, such as unemployment, better off than many.

In terms of the universities all Iowans, not just the Board of Regents, Iowa Legislature, and the universities' presidents, need to do some serious and heavy thinking about the role of "public education."

I've written about this before, and undoubtedly will again. Here's a summary:

o A century ago or more the American people and their elected officials decided that a fourth- or eighth-grade education was not enough for our kids. If nothing else, our economy and our military required a minimum of 12 years of schooling (what is popularly referred to as "K-12"). We agreed this was so important that it would be provided free to all at taxpayers' expense, because we all benefitted.

o It is not a stretch to say that if K-12 was essential a century ago, K-16 (that is, a college education; or its equivalent for those in the trades, something similar to the German system) is equally essential for today's economy and military -- not to mention the "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" of our citizenry and their self-governing democracy. This is also sufficiently important that it should be paid for by all.

o The GI Bill after World War II brought returning veterans to the University of Iowa and other colleges and universities throughout America, at little or no cost to the students, but with an economic return many times over for our post-War economy and the American people.

o An economic downturn is precisely the time when it makes sense to increase the number of citizens getting additional education. (a) Rockwell and other corporations are pleading with educators to help create a better educated workforce. What better time to do it than when there are fewer jobs available? (b) Isn't laying out money for public education better than laying out the same amount of money for unemployment compensation? (c) If we're looking for long term economic growth, and not just short term fixes, there's no better investment than education.

o As recently as 1981 the State of Iowa paid 77.4% of the cost of an Iowan's university education; the student, and his or her parents, paid 20.8%. Today that has dropped for the State from 77.4% to 42.8%, and increased for the student from 20.8% to 51.3%. (See the Register story and chart, below.)

o One can argue over the most appropriate allocation of the costs of education between those who benefit directly (the students, and to some extent their parents) and indirectly (every American taxpayer). But whatever that most appropriate relationship is thought to be, what is the rationale for the enormous disparity between the relationship for K-12 (0% for students; 100% for taxpayers) and the 13-16 of K-16 (51.3% for students; 42.8% for taxpayers)? Would we ever consider, as a budget cutting measure, going back to the days of K-8 -- providing free public education through junior high, and then charging parents 51.3% of the actual cost of providing high school education? Think about it.

For the Register's chart, and story, see Gunnar Olson and B.A. Morelli, "Tuition now top funding source for regents universities," Des Moines Register, October 23, 2009 (including a chart showing the relative percentage of costs covered by tuition vs. appropriations increasing from 20.8% vs. 77.4% in 1981 to 51.3% vs. 42.8% in 2010). And see the news this morning that Staci Hupp, "Regents propose surcharge, 6.5-percent tuition and fees increase," Des Moines Register, October 23, 2009.

I sympathize with you, Iowa's budget cutters. Yours is not an enviable task. But you can learn from the errors of Washington, and try to avoid them.

Be fair and just in your judgments. Be rational, and fulsome in your explanations. Be transparent and open in your process.

And keep in mind Barofsky's observation that the public's "anger, cynicism and distrust" -- while warranted and understandable -- is a dangerous thing, with long lasting consequences, and that it is, above all "unnecessary."
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
# # #

Citigroup Deal Stinks

November 25, 2008, 9:00 a.m.

Change? Pocket Change, Maybe
But the Reality is Worse than the Stinking Citigroup Deal
Because It's Only Symptomatic
The Citigroup deal stinks to high heaven.












[Photo credit: Washington Post; "In this 1999 photo, then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, right, addresses the media with Citigroup co-chairmen and co-CEOs Sandy Weill, center, and John Reed. Rubin joined Citigroup management after resigning as Treasury chief."]

Let's start with Steven Pearlstein's column in the November 24th Washington Post. Steven Pearlstein, "A Bailout Steeped in Irony," The Washington Post, November 24, 2008, p. D1.

He concludes:

What is indisputable is that all of the decisions that have led to Citi's recent troubles were taken while Rubin was chairman of the executive committee, and made by executives with whom he worked closely. He defended them repeatedly and unequivocally, and as a director, he approved compensation packages that rewarded them (and himself) handsomely for judgments that proved disastrous.

Now, the government has been forced to save Citi by investing $45 billion in new capital and by putting a floor under its losses. By any measure, it is a sweetheart deal for shareholders, who will suffer minimal dilution of their shares. Most startling of all, however, is that Rubin and other directors and top executives have been allowed to remain at the helm. You have to wonder how much more money this crew would have to lose before the Treasury and the Fed would demand their resignations -- $100 billion? $200 billion? $1 trillion? Why weren't they dispatched as were the executives at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG?

The ultimate irony is that just as Rubin & Co. were being bailed out at Citi by the Bush administration, President-elect Obama was announcing a new economic team drawn almost entirely from Rubin's acolytes.

That's not to take anything away from the qualifications of Tim Geithner, the new nominee for Treasury secretary, who owes his appointment as president to the New York Fed to Rubin's aggressive lobbying; or Larry Summers, who was Rubin's deputy secretary at the Treasury and whose appointment as president of Harvard was championed by Rubin as a member of the university's government board; or Peter Orszag, the soon-to-be-named nominee for budget director, who was hired by Rubin to head a Democratic think tank on economic policy that he founded.

No doubt about it -- it's a fabulous team. But perhaps the next time Obama thinks about assembling his group of wise men to give advice on the economic crisis, he might at least have the good sense to leave Rubin out of the mix. At a minimum, it's a glaring conflict of interest. More significantly, it sends a terrible signal about accountability and corporate governance.

So what brought on our current, ever-increasing economic collapse? Many things, including either a greed bordering on criminality, or exceptional ignorance, on the part of leading financial CEOs and regulators. But what made it all possible was the repeal of a structural/regulatory protection that wiser heads put in place following the 20th Century's Great Depression: banks were forbidden to get into the investment business. It was called the Glass-Steagall Act.

Pearlstein reports:

The combination of Citibank with Salomon Smith Barney under the bright red umbrella of Travelers Insurance was accepted with a regulatory wink and nod by the Federal Reserve until Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan could persuade Congress to make it legal. The hurdle was the Glass-Steagall Act, put in place during the Great Depression to prevent another market crash like that of 1929. Now that another market crash has required the government to rescue a commercial bank done in by its investment banking subsidiary, there will certainly be those who wonder whether the New Dealers didn't have it right all along. . . .

As Treasury secretary, Rubin joined with Greenspan in supporting Citi's campaign to repeal Glass-Steagall.

And:

While it was [Sandy] Weill who created the modern Citi, it was his handpicked and hapless successor, Chuck Prince, who steered the company into the ditch. . . .

[W]hen he resigned from the Treasury in 1999, Rubin accepted Weill's offer to become what amounted to vice chairman of Citi, where he has quietly worked the back channels to Washington and other international capitals while serving as strategic counselor to the chief executive and the board of directors.

Rubin has been cagey about defining his role at Citigroup -- and at one point he got caught making a phone call to the Bush Treasury in a bid to help out Enron, a Citi client, during its death throes.

Here's more from the Post: David Cho and Neil Irwin, "Familiar Trio at Heart of Citi Bailout; Rubin, Paulson, Geithner's Shared History Paved Way for $300 Billion Federal Guarantee," Washington Post, November 25, 2008, p. A1.

The bailout of Citigroup, which put the government at risk of hundreds of billions of dollars of losses, was set in motion by three men whose professional lives have long been intertwined.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.; Citigroup board member Robert E. Rubin; and Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, have for years followed one another in and out of jobs in government and industry. Their close relationships helped pave the way for one of the largest and most dramatic government interventions to date in the financial crisis. . . .

Once Citigroup's stock price plunged 60 percent last week, Rubin, an old colleague from Goldman Sachs, told Paulson in phone calls that the government had to act, according to industry sources familiar with their discussions.

Geithner, too, shared a close relationship with the pair. He worked for Rubin at the Treasury Department in the 1990s and now is President-elect Barack Obama's nominee to follow Paulson as Treasury secretary.

As Citigroup's lead regulator, Geithner was deeply involved in the rescue of the firm, participating in meetings and conference calls with Paulson through the weekend. . . .

The government is guaranteeing a total of $306 billion of Citigroup's assets against losses greater than $29 billion. In exchange, it is requiring the firm to hand over $7 billion worth of preferred stock, essentially paying the government an insurance premium. . . .

Regulators also prohibited Citigroup from paying dividends to common shareholders of more than a penny a share in the coming three years and required a dividend payment of 8 percent on the government's preferred stock -- higher than the 5 percent dividends that it required of institutions that took rescue money from the Treasury Department over the past few weeks.

The Treasury also has the option of buying warrants in Citigroup if the firm's shares recover. If that happens, the government would end up owning slightly less than 8 percent of the bank's shares.

"It strikes me as unbelievably generous," said a former Fed official who has been in touch with Citigroup. "I'm sure it will be controversial. . . ." . . .

Rubin called Paulson several times to make the case for intervention on behalf of Citigroup and the banking system as a whole, said two sources familiar with the conversations.

In an interview, Rubin explained his involvement by saying that, since arriving at Citigroup in 1999, he has had "a dual role of providing strategic advice or managerial advice and also to work with clients. And that's what I've done."

"I had operating responsibilities for 33 years. And I simply didn't want any operating responsibility, and that's been the case since I've been here," he said.

On Friday, Citigroup approached the Treasury and the Fed with a plan of its own, essentially asking the government to take on the risk of hundreds of billions of dollars in troubled assets on its books, but with little compensation for the government. . . .

[T]hey [federal regulators] could have enacted a highly punitive complete bailout, like that of American International Group, requiring terms that strongly punish existing shareholders and give the government control of the Citigroup board, as well as firing the chief executive. They rejected that approach, preferring to try to give the existing Citigroup leadership team time to work through their problems. . . .

The New York Times editorializes:

Both men [Larry Summers and Tim Geithner], however, have played central roles in policies that helped provoke today’s financial crisis. Mr. Geithner, currently the president of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, also has helped shape the Bush administration’s erratic and often inscrutable responses to the current financial meltdown, up to and including this past weekend’s multibillion-dollar bailout of Citigroup.

Given that history, the question that most needs answering is not whether Mr. Geithner and Mr. Summers are men of talent — obviously they are — but whether they have learned from their mistakes, and if so, what. . . .

As treasury secretary in 2000, Mr. Summers championed the law that deregulated derivatives, the financial instruments — a k a toxic assets — that have spread the financial losses from reckless lending around the globe. He refused to heed the critics who warned of dangers to come.

That law, still on the books, reinforced the false belief that markets would self-regulate. And it gave the Bush administration cover to ignore the ever-spiraling risks posed by derivatives and inadequate supervision.

Mr. Summers now will advise a president who has promised to impose rational and essential regulations on chaotic financial markets. What has he learned?

At the New York Fed, Mr. Geithner has been one of the ringmasters of this year’s serial bailouts. His involvement includes the as-yet-unexplained flip-flop in September when a read-my-lips, no-new-bailouts policy allowed Lehman Brothers to go under — only to be followed less than two days later by the even costlier bailout of the American International Group and last weekend by the bailout of Citigroup.

Editorial, "Mr. Obama's Economic Advisers," New York Times, November 25, 2008.


So What Can Be Said About All This?
Citigroup Only Symptom The Citigroup deal stinks. That's for sure, and by now well documented. But that's not the most important point. It's merely symptomatic of what's going on and who's doing it.

Obama to Govern From "Corporate Right" Candidate Obama may have tried to woo us and wow us with a rhetoric designed to make many of us think he would govern as a progressive populist. But when called on it he replied, accurately, that he never said so explicitly and that indeed his past history should have alerted us to the fact he would likely govern from the corporate center-right.

We Are to be Ruled by the Eastern Establishment's Elite Much of the nation's power, however measured, is to be found in a corridor running south from Boston, along Interstate 95, and the Amtrak line, to Washington. That's where you'll find a goodly number of our most prestigious colleges and universities, corporate headquarters, wealthiest Americans, most powerful politicians, most influential media, military brass, manufacturing, those who make or influence foreign policy, and the financial community. That is where you'll find much of America's "elite," or "Establishment" (what C. Wright Mills titled his book as The Power Elite) -- in the descriptive, rather than the pejorative, sense of the word.

For President-Elect Obama (Columbia undergrad; Harvard law) to "go east, young man" as he looks for some of the 7,000 individuals to whom he will give presidential appointments is both naturally to be expected and to some extent commendable. But he has, so far, overdone it a wee bit. As David Brooks observed, after analyzing the schools attended by his appointees, "If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed." David Brooks, "The Insider's Crusade," New York Times, November 21, 2008.

Nowhere is this more of an incestuous problem, as the two excerpted items, above, demonstrate than in his choice of an economic team.

"What Did You Do With the Last Nickle I Gave You?" My father told the story of a farmer in the area of Kansas where he grew up. Sitting on the porch with him one afternoon, the farmer's young boy approached them and asked his father for a nickle, to which the farmer responded, "What did you do with the last nickle I gave you?"

That's kind of how I feel about Citibank.

I didn't support the initial auto industry bailout plan for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the failure to provide anything resembling a business plan demonstrating how the $25 billion would be used, and why it could reasonably be believed to be the answer to their problems. Nicholas Johnson, "Auto Bailout: An Open Letter to Congress," November 19, 2008.

But Congress ultimately came around to that view and is now demanding something like what I was asking for.

What's the Citigroup story? Was a business plan demanded before the initial $25 billion bailout? If it was, it obviously wasn't a very good one; if it wasn't, it should have been. Was one demanded before this weekend's additional $20 billion -- and $300-billion-plus taxpayer guarantee of the bank's worthless loans?

Shouldn't the banks and Wall Street cronies at least be held to the same standards as the auto industry?

"What did they do with the last 500 billion nickles we gave them?"

Massive Debt's Costs and Consequences I have yet to see or read of anyone from the President-Elect, through his advisers, or members of Congress, provide a thorough overview of the downside of ever-escalating debt by the trillions. In addition to the $55 trillion in unfunded obligations, "The Debt Clock" reports that, as of the morning of November 25 our current national debt is at least $10.7 trillion. I say "at least" because I'm not sure it includes the $1-plus trillion we know the government has recently put on our credit cards, or the $2 trillion the Fed has added to that without telling anyone, or the additional $300 billion provided yesterday to Citigroup.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have run up this debt -- though my instinct is that we shouldn't have, and certainly not without exacting more conditions from the recipients and returns to the taxpayers. All I'm urging at the moment is that we are entitled to be able to confront, squarely and honestly, the fact that this is not free money, that there are consequences of running up such a debt whether for nations or individuals, and that we need to know some independent experts' predictions of what some of those consequences could turn out to be.

What's Your Share? Assume we have something like 120 million families or living units in America. (I'm going to use 100 million to make the math easier.) Assume all accumulated debt ($55 trillion, plus $11 trillion, plus, plus) is near $70 trillion headed for $100 trillion. The interest on $100 trillion, at 5%, is $5 trillion a year. Your family's share? How's $50,000 a year -- just for the interest alone -- sound? Your family's share of the entire debt? About $1,000,000. So what's happening is that these folks who've come from, and will be returning to, the Wall Street financial community, have decided to give you responsibility for paying off the mortgage on a one-million-dollar home -- but one you'll never get to see or live in (not incidentally because they're already living in it).

[Update: It turns out the nation's -- our, my, share of -- debt increases by the hour. Jeff Zeleny and Jack Healy, "U.S. Unveils $800 Billion Credit Program," New York Times, November 25, 2008 ("The United States government unveiled $800 billion worth of new loan programs and debt purchases on Tuesday, hoping another massive infusion of cash would smooth troubled credit markets . . ..").]

Priorities Note that this economic team from Wall Street is advising the President-Elect, as they've already advised President Bush, that the top priority in times of economic distress is to rescue Wall Street and the banks. That's understandable. Indeed, they may even believe what they're saying.

But it's like "the six blind men and the elephant." Ask farmers and the solution is price supports. Ask auto executives and it's a "bridge loan" for the auto industry. Ask trade unions and it's a "living wage," more favorable laws for union organizing, a jobs program, and extended unemployment compensation. Ask the working poor cleaning hotels and hospitals, or those working for less than the minimum wage in restaurants, and they'll say food stamps and help with rent and utility bills.

President-Elect Obama has chosen to ask Wall Street executives.

Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are not the only politicians and presidents to whom our new President-Elect can look for guidance and example.

The 18th Century political philosopher Edmund Burke is another. As he put it, "Society is indeed a contract [that] becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."

Those who are dead not only paid cash, they were thereby able to leave money for their children. Those who are living have substituted consumption and debt for frugality and savings. To leave only that debt, with substantially more to come, to "those who are to be born" is not a partnership of which we can be proud.

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