As Dr. Scott Gottlieb, "a partner to a firm that invests in health-care companies," explains that the "surest way to intensify flaws in the delivery of health care is to extend a Medicare-like 'public option' into more corners of the private market," it seems only fair to balance the debate with a secret memo from the files of one of those enterprises in which the good doctor has such faith:
TO: Claims Prevention Department
FROM: President, HMO
Bills are being processed and paid without full use of our avoidance procedures. Such negligence impacts your company’s bottom line, let me review our guidelines:
1. Use the response “require more information from physician” to its full extent. Some providers fill in code numbers, diagnoses and dates of treatment. But who are these people? Can we trust them with the health of our insured not knowing when and where they went to medical school, how long they have been practicing, and whether they rent or own their Lexuses?
2. Handle phone queries properly. Quick answers deprive members of full participation in their care. For the persistent, employ your half-hour hold capability and, if that fails, tell them the computer is down and promise to call back. That will keep them close to their phones and away from doctors’ offices.
3. Don’t confuse claimants with data overload. Just indicate service is not covered because of a,b,c,d,z or some combination. Our forms make definitions of a,b,c,d,z easily comprehensible with the aid of a magnifying glass and legal dictionary.
4. Use “pre-existing condition” as a disqualification. If enrollees are treated for back pain or headaches, assume they had backs and heads before signing up. Are we to pay for problems that should have been treated in the past?
5. When all else fails, deny reimbursement with “This claim has been previously considered.” By the time the patient, physician, laboratory and hospital check with one another, no one will be sure who sent or received what. We should not pay twice or, better yet, once.
We will soon have new tools to aid in your work. A revised schedule of “customary fees” will reflect the global economy by factoring in provider charges of emerging nations. And our accountants are number-crunching the promising concept of a receding deductible.
Our new non-discriminatory policy of hiring applicants regardless of IQ, education or Attention Deficit Disorder will insure better performance in the future. Remember: A claim denied or delayed is a drop of lifeblood to the health of our organization.
Dr. Gottlieb and others may claim the memo is a hoax, but millions of Americans will testify that it understates the reality of what he glorifies as "inherently personal transactions between doctors and patients."
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The Pariah Channel
If Barack Obama risks media overexposure, the no-shame threats to American values are getting equal time on the public stage.
With Dick Cheney leading the way, the should-be-hiding-in-disgrace are popping up everywhere. John Yoo, the torture memo author, writes a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Rupert Murdoch's book-publishing arm has signed up the memoirs of Sarah Palin, who helped wreck John McCain's presidential campaign with her aggressive ignorance.
If Karl Rove is a political analyst, can Bernie Madoff be far behind as a financial cable news commentator?
In an age long gone, as an editor and publisher, I declined to bid for the "inside stories" of criminals, crooks and celebrity liars, on the principle that reporting on their activities was a better journalistic and moral choice than going into business with them.
Silly me! I didn't know that I was being an unbearable gatekeeper against the public's bottomless right to know. Soon we may have a 24/7 pariah channel, or with Fox News on the job, would that be redundant?
With Dick Cheney leading the way, the should-be-hiding-in-disgrace are popping up everywhere. John Yoo, the torture memo author, writes a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Rupert Murdoch's book-publishing arm has signed up the memoirs of Sarah Palin, who helped wreck John McCain's presidential campaign with her aggressive ignorance.
If Karl Rove is a political analyst, can Bernie Madoff be far behind as a financial cable news commentator?
In an age long gone, as an editor and publisher, I declined to bid for the "inside stories" of criminals, crooks and celebrity liars, on the principle that reporting on their activities was a better journalistic and moral choice than going into business with them.
Silly me! I didn't know that I was being an unbearable gatekeeper against the public's bottomless right to know. Soon we may have a 24/7 pariah channel, or with Fox News on the job, would that be redundant?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Prudence Doesn't Pay--Much
Under all the boom-and-bust news, old-fashioned American caution and thrift still exist, but the exemplars of those virtues are not being rewarded for them.
Smaller banks across the country complain they are being tarred by stress-test results of the Citicorpses and Bank of Americas that are soaking up bailout money after turning the old-fashioned business of savings, checking accounts and loans into high-stakes gambling.
“Banking should not be exciting,” says a small-town Indiana banker. “If banking gets exciting, there is something wrong with it.”
Depositors are suffering, too. Those who have saved enough to take out certificates of deposit now find one-year rates barely averaging 1 percent as worried banks see their FDIC insurance premiums soaring to cover the cost of sobering up institutions that went on drunken-sailor sprees.
Meanwhile, back on Wall Street, buoyed by recent market gains, the fast-buck boys are starting their spiels again, a recurrence of euphoria alarming enough to turn the usually cheerful Arianna Huffington into Cassandra.
Prompted to caution by, of all people, Eliot Spitzer, Ms. Huffington recalls John Kenneth Galbraith's warnings about "the pathological weakness of the financial memory" and a "mass escape from reality" in America's past.
Prudence is getting a lot of press these days, but those who practice it aren't getting much else.
Smaller banks across the country complain they are being tarred by stress-test results of the Citicorpses and Bank of Americas that are soaking up bailout money after turning the old-fashioned business of savings, checking accounts and loans into high-stakes gambling.
“Banking should not be exciting,” says a small-town Indiana banker. “If banking gets exciting, there is something wrong with it.”
Depositors are suffering, too. Those who have saved enough to take out certificates of deposit now find one-year rates barely averaging 1 percent as worried banks see their FDIC insurance premiums soaring to cover the cost of sobering up institutions that went on drunken-sailor sprees.
Meanwhile, back on Wall Street, buoyed by recent market gains, the fast-buck boys are starting their spiels again, a recurrence of euphoria alarming enough to turn the usually cheerful Arianna Huffington into Cassandra.
Prompted to caution by, of all people, Eliot Spitzer, Ms. Huffington recalls John Kenneth Galbraith's warnings about "the pathological weakness of the financial memory" and a "mass escape from reality" in America's past.
Prudence is getting a lot of press these days, but those who practice it aren't getting much else.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Being Depressed
The cover of yesterday's New York Times Magazine in jangled hand-printing reads "I have sat in shrinks' offices going on four decades now and talked about my wish to die the way other people might talk about their wish to find a lover." These words surround a small dark snapshot of a woman's face looking at the camera in utter despair.
I know that face, just as I know something about the feeling those words describe. A quarter of a century ago, the writer, Daphne Merkin, fresh out of college, worked for me at McCalls, a gifted young woman, more serious than most but glowing with ambition for the literary career that stretched ahead of her.
Now, in painful detail, she tells of a life since then in a black cloud of chronic depression punctuated by constant psychiatry and mounds of medication, ending in a hospital stay anguishing over whether or not to submit to ECT, electro-shock therapy.
Her thousands of words evoke the extreme of a condition I have lived with since childhood, suffered with in loved ones and anguished over with friends and colleagues. Her account will resonate with the afflicted and baffle those lucky enough to find it exotic, perhaps even self-indulgent.
Yet it is at the heart of modern life, as painful, debilitating and destructive as cancer. Psychiatry and pharmacology almost randomly seem to help some victims but fail those who are most directly connected to life and most vulnerable, as I once wrote about Marilyn Monroe and my best friend, the photographer Ed Feingersh, both of whom died in their thirties, unable to keep living with it.
Like them, Daphne Merkin seems to have suffered from that gift and used it to connect with other human beings as a writer, perhaps never more so than in this account of her struggles.
Even those who can't understand what she is going through may find something of themselves in her and wish her well for the future.
I know that face, just as I know something about the feeling those words describe. A quarter of a century ago, the writer, Daphne Merkin, fresh out of college, worked for me at McCalls, a gifted young woman, more serious than most but glowing with ambition for the literary career that stretched ahead of her.
Now, in painful detail, she tells of a life since then in a black cloud of chronic depression punctuated by constant psychiatry and mounds of medication, ending in a hospital stay anguishing over whether or not to submit to ECT, electro-shock therapy.
Her thousands of words evoke the extreme of a condition I have lived with since childhood, suffered with in loved ones and anguished over with friends and colleagues. Her account will resonate with the afflicted and baffle those lucky enough to find it exotic, perhaps even self-indulgent.
Yet it is at the heart of modern life, as painful, debilitating and destructive as cancer. Psychiatry and pharmacology almost randomly seem to help some victims but fail those who are most directly connected to life and most vulnerable, as I once wrote about Marilyn Monroe and my best friend, the photographer Ed Feingersh, both of whom died in their thirties, unable to keep living with it.
Like them, Daphne Merkin seems to have suffered from that gift and used it to connect with other human beings as a writer, perhaps never more so than in this account of her struggles.
Even those who can't understand what she is going through may find something of themselves in her and wish her well for the future.
Life-and-Death Games
The health-care finals start in Washington today with the Obama home team hosting the all-stars who have made the American medical system one of the most expensive and least effective in the world.
The name of the game is cooperation as insurers, drug makers, hospitals et al come to the White House reportedly to announce "a voluntary plan to hold costs down, which health care industry officials involved in the effort say could save a family of four $2,500 a year in the fifth year, and a total of $2 trillion for the nation over 10 years. But there is no way of ensuring that the providers keep their promises, beyond publicizing their performance."
As a basketball fan, the President should recognize a fakeout when he sees one but, just in case, Paul Krugman has a head's up for him:
"What’s presumably going on here is that key interest groups have realized that health care reform is going to happen no matter what they do, and that aligning themselves with the Party of No will just deny them a seat at the table. (Republicans, after all, still denounce research into which medical procedures are effective and which are not as a dastardly plot to deprive Americans of their freedom to choose.)"
Behind all the trash talk this week will be the crucial contest over whether Congress will enact health-care reform that includes a government-sponsored option (Medicare-for-all) to give consumers a chance to buy care directly and pressure private insurers to improve what they offer.
Without that, they're just playing the same old games.
The name of the game is cooperation as insurers, drug makers, hospitals et al come to the White House reportedly to announce "a voluntary plan to hold costs down, which health care industry officials involved in the effort say could save a family of four $2,500 a year in the fifth year, and a total of $2 trillion for the nation over 10 years. But there is no way of ensuring that the providers keep their promises, beyond publicizing their performance."
As a basketball fan, the President should recognize a fakeout when he sees one but, just in case, Paul Krugman has a head's up for him:
"What’s presumably going on here is that key interest groups have realized that health care reform is going to happen no matter what they do, and that aligning themselves with the Party of No will just deny them a seat at the table. (Republicans, after all, still denounce research into which medical procedures are effective and which are not as a dastardly plot to deprive Americans of their freedom to choose.)"
Behind all the trash talk this week will be the crucial contest over whether Congress will enact health-care reform that includes a government-sponsored option (Medicare-for-all) to give consumers a chance to buy care directly and pressure private insurers to improve what they offer.
Without that, they're just playing the same old games.
Cheney's Media Torture
After eight years in the Bush bunker, the former Vice-President is out waterboarding voters with interviews to make them confess that electing Barack Obama was a plot to subvert national security.
Dick Cheney capped his first hundred days as a voluble has-been with a "Face the Nation" appearance yesterday to illustrate Murray Kempton's classic definition of politicians as generals who watch the battle from afar and come down afterward to shoot the wounded.
His main target was a real general, Colin Powell, whose injuries leading up to the Iraq war were inflicted by Cheney's own twisted Scooter Libby intelligence used in Powell's speech to persuade the UN that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.
Asked to choose between Powell and Rush Limbaugh to represent Republican principles, Cheney did not hesitate to side with The Mouth, saying "my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican."
More and more, Cheney is looking like one of those Japanese soldiers discovered in caves long after World War II ended to emerge blinking in the daylight, convinced that their emperor was still on the throne. The difference is that they slunk off in silence, too shamed to be giving interviews.
Dick Cheney capped his first hundred days as a voluble has-been with a "Face the Nation" appearance yesterday to illustrate Murray Kempton's classic definition of politicians as generals who watch the battle from afar and come down afterward to shoot the wounded.
His main target was a real general, Colin Powell, whose injuries leading up to the Iraq war were inflicted by Cheney's own twisted Scooter Libby intelligence used in Powell's speech to persuade the UN that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.
Asked to choose between Powell and Rush Limbaugh to represent Republican principles, Cheney did not hesitate to side with The Mouth, saying "my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican."
More and more, Cheney is looking like one of those Japanese soldiers discovered in caves long after World War II ended to emerge blinking in the daylight, convinced that their emperor was still on the throne. The difference is that they slunk off in silence, too shamed to be giving interviews.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
A DiMaggio in the Age of Ramirez
His brother's death this weekend, coming right after the suspension of Manny Ramirez for drug use, recalls Joe DiMaggio as an American hero in a different century and a different world.
Dom, who died at 92, was one of three sons of an Italian immigrant fisherman to become major league baseball players and, like Joe, an All-Star. Family fame notwithstanding, after Pearl Harbor, the elder DiMaggios had to register as enemy aliens, were not allowed to travel more than five miles from home and had their fishing boat seized by the government.
In 1949, as the dominant figure in the game, Joe was the first to earn $100,000 in a time when players were indentured to their teams by law.
Now, in the era of free agency, Manny Ramirez will forfeit $7 million of his $25 million annual salary in a 50-game suspension for failing a drug test, a loss that far exceeds the total earnings of all the DiMaggios in their careers, adjusted for inflation any way you like.
But much more than money and drug use have changed. After he leaves the game, no one will be writing songs about Ramirez as Simon and Garfunkel did with "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you."
A few years after his retirement, I saw up close the mythic figure Joe DiMaggio had become. In a small gathering of friends, he was like a matador with an adoring entourage, saying little and smiling shyly.
A pair of middle-aged businessmen were brought in to shake hands and, posing for a Polaroid with DiMaggio's arms draped around them, years fell from their faces as they were boys again in the embrace of their idol.
Joe married Marilyn Monroe and, even after their divorce and her death, was sending flowers to her grave. In today's world, Alex Rodriguez has a brief affair with Marilyn wannabe Madonna that breaks up his marriage.
Years from now, A-Rod and Ramirez will still be rich and famous, but it's not likely that anyone will be writing songs about them.
Dom, who died at 92, was one of three sons of an Italian immigrant fisherman to become major league baseball players and, like Joe, an All-Star. Family fame notwithstanding, after Pearl Harbor, the elder DiMaggios had to register as enemy aliens, were not allowed to travel more than five miles from home and had their fishing boat seized by the government.
In 1949, as the dominant figure in the game, Joe was the first to earn $100,000 in a time when players were indentured to their teams by law.
Now, in the era of free agency, Manny Ramirez will forfeit $7 million of his $25 million annual salary in a 50-game suspension for failing a drug test, a loss that far exceeds the total earnings of all the DiMaggios in their careers, adjusted for inflation any way you like.
But much more than money and drug use have changed. After he leaves the game, no one will be writing songs about Ramirez as Simon and Garfunkel did with "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you."
A few years after his retirement, I saw up close the mythic figure Joe DiMaggio had become. In a small gathering of friends, he was like a matador with an adoring entourage, saying little and smiling shyly.
A pair of middle-aged businessmen were brought in to shake hands and, posing for a Polaroid with DiMaggio's arms draped around them, years fell from their faces as they were boys again in the embrace of their idol.
Joe married Marilyn Monroe and, even after their divorce and her death, was sending flowers to her grave. In today's world, Alex Rodriguez has a brief affair with Marilyn wannabe Madonna that breaks up his marriage.
Years from now, A-Rod and Ramirez will still be rich and famous, but it's not likely that anyone will be writing songs about them.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Supreme Demographics
As Barack Obama, who changed the face of America's executive branch, prepares to name his first Supreme Court justice, speculation focuses as much on demography as it did during his presidential campaign last year.
Does he "have to" name a woman? Will his choice be a Hispanic woman or perhaps a Lesbian? Is political correctness running amok?
Not if you look back at Supreme Court history which, before the nasty Bork confirmation fight in 1987, is widely believed to have been beyond politics in a bipartisan search for the best legal minds available.
When FDR railed at the "nine old men" who blocked New Deal initiatives and made his ill-fated attempt to expand the Court by as many as six members, the only demographic issue was the naming of Jews, to the consternation of Justice James Clark MacReynolds, a Woodrow Wilson appointee and avowed anti-Semite who refused to talk to them or acknowledge their presence.
In those halcyon days, not long after women got the right to vote, the "best legal minds" were to be found almost exclusively in a white Protestant male gene pool that reflected not the diversity that Obama stresses but a minority of Americans that constituted a ruling elite.
Now that those barriers are down, there are heated arguments about which former outsiders have the strongest claim to representation, but when voters put Obama in the White House, they were giving him the power to decide what the redefinition of "best legal minds" should be for the 21st century.
After all the sound and fury die down, he will do just that.
Does he "have to" name a woman? Will his choice be a Hispanic woman or perhaps a Lesbian? Is political correctness running amok?
Not if you look back at Supreme Court history which, before the nasty Bork confirmation fight in 1987, is widely believed to have been beyond politics in a bipartisan search for the best legal minds available.
When FDR railed at the "nine old men" who blocked New Deal initiatives and made his ill-fated attempt to expand the Court by as many as six members, the only demographic issue was the naming of Jews, to the consternation of Justice James Clark MacReynolds, a Woodrow Wilson appointee and avowed anti-Semite who refused to talk to them or acknowledge their presence.
In those halcyon days, not long after women got the right to vote, the "best legal minds" were to be found almost exclusively in a white Protestant male gene pool that reflected not the diversity that Obama stresses but a minority of Americans that constituted a ruling elite.
Now that those barriers are down, there are heated arguments about which former outsiders have the strongest claim to representation, but when voters put Obama in the White House, they were giving him the power to decide what the redefinition of "best legal minds" should be for the 21st century.
After all the sound and fury die down, he will do just that.
Friday, May 08, 2009
Depoliticizing Prayer
After eight years of White House showboating on National Prayer Day, Barack Obama celebrated the event yesterday with a proclamation that emphasized the private nature of religious observance.
In his proclamation, the President noted that on "this day of unity and prayer," we "live in a nation where people of all faiths can worship or not worship according to the dictates of their conscience."
The Religious Right was not pleased, The marketing and media manager of the National Day of Prayer Task Force harrumphed: "The White House is a small part of what the national day of prayer is all about. Tomorrow there will be dozens of events held in our nation's capitol and governors from all 50 states have already issued proclamations...It would be belittling to those millions of people to reduce this day to merely one event not being held at the White House."
The irony in all this is that Obama, from all evidence, is more genuinely religious than Bush, who found his faith only when he was forced to give up booze in midlife.
Shortly before taking office, the President-in-waiting disclosed that he had been getting spiritual support every morning from "a prayer circle" of pastors from all faiths and denominations, some of whom "get on the phone and pray for me."
With the way the economy is going, even the most devout non-believer must be hoping that they are continuing their devotions.
In his proclamation, the President noted that on "this day of unity and prayer," we "live in a nation where people of all faiths can worship or not worship according to the dictates of their conscience."
The Religious Right was not pleased, The marketing and media manager of the National Day of Prayer Task Force harrumphed: "The White House is a small part of what the national day of prayer is all about. Tomorrow there will be dozens of events held in our nation's capitol and governors from all 50 states have already issued proclamations...It would be belittling to those millions of people to reduce this day to merely one event not being held at the White House."
The irony in all this is that Obama, from all evidence, is more genuinely religious than Bush, who found his faith only when he was forced to give up booze in midlife.
Shortly before taking office, the President-in-waiting disclosed that he had been getting spiritual support every morning from "a prayer circle" of pastors from all faiths and denominations, some of whom "get on the phone and pray for me."
With the way the economy is going, even the most devout non-believer must be hoping that they are continuing their devotions.
Morning-Aftering the Meltdown
Congress is pushing through a 9/11-like bipartisan commission to root through the ruins of the economy, discover what happened and figure out how to avoid another meltdown, and the White House has signaled its approval.
With Democrats and Republicans already arguing over how many members each will pick, it promises to be an exercise in finger-pointing unless the lead investigators are imbued with the zeal and bite of the Pecora Commission that unearthed the causes of the 1929 market crash.
Back then, the inquiry started as a Republican whitewash of Wall Street that ran through three tame lead counsels until a bulldog New York assistant DA named Ferdinand Pecora took over and started grilling elite bankers and brokers to lay bare Wall Street abuses, up to and including the fact that J.P. Morgan, Jr. and his partners had not paid any income taxes for two years.
The issues are much more complicated now, and the Meltdown Commission investigators will need not only the subpoena power to root out wrongdoing but the expertise to trace and dissect the complex derivative deals that caused today's mess, and the members will have to have the background to understand what they find.
Congress will undoubtedly round up the usual suspects such as James Baker and Lee Hamilton, but this one could use a couple of Nobel economists who are not uncritical fans of the Obama Recovery campaign. Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz should be at the top of the list.
With Democrats and Republicans already arguing over how many members each will pick, it promises to be an exercise in finger-pointing unless the lead investigators are imbued with the zeal and bite of the Pecora Commission that unearthed the causes of the 1929 market crash.
Back then, the inquiry started as a Republican whitewash of Wall Street that ran through three tame lead counsels until a bulldog New York assistant DA named Ferdinand Pecora took over and started grilling elite bankers and brokers to lay bare Wall Street abuses, up to and including the fact that J.P. Morgan, Jr. and his partners had not paid any income taxes for two years.
The issues are much more complicated now, and the Meltdown Commission investigators will need not only the subpoena power to root out wrongdoing but the expertise to trace and dissect the complex derivative deals that caused today's mess, and the members will have to have the background to understand what they find.
Congress will undoubtedly round up the usual suspects such as James Baker and Lee Hamilton, but this one could use a couple of Nobel economists who are not uncritical fans of the Obama Recovery campaign. Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz should be at the top of the list.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Washington Charade Week
These are days of political pantomime in which nothing is happening, but the Obama Administration is busy manufacturing reassuring pictures:
*The President poses with the elected leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan, who preside over impotent, corrupt regimes, and expresses confidence: “We meet today as three sovereign nations joined by a common goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its extremist allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to prevent their ability to operate in either country in the future." The news on the ground tells a different story.
*Results of the bank stress tests are leaked in a flood of contradictory interpretations that inspire the stock market to rise as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner hires a key counselor--to help him persuade the public that the sky is not falling. It may not be, but we have no real way of knowing.
*The White House tells us a line-by-line scouring of the budget is saving $17 billion, but the fine print is that the amount is peanuts and, even so, is not likely to survive special-interest resistance.
Barack Obama promised us an end to "politics as usual"--theatrics and trivia to cover up what is unknown and unknowable--but we are still not ready for a president to tell us he doesn't know exactly what to do about nuclear weapons in a country threatened by murderous extremists or how to get the banks to stop stuffing their balance sheets and start lending again or how to control budget deficits in a time when government spending is needed to give the economy mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
So we get the usual charades and photo ops. The bottom line may be depressing, but at least we have a relatively smart government looking for answers.
*The President poses with the elected leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan, who preside over impotent, corrupt regimes, and expresses confidence: “We meet today as three sovereign nations joined by a common goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its extremist allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to prevent their ability to operate in either country in the future." The news on the ground tells a different story.
*Results of the bank stress tests are leaked in a flood of contradictory interpretations that inspire the stock market to rise as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner hires a key counselor--to help him persuade the public that the sky is not falling. It may not be, but we have no real way of knowing.
*The White House tells us a line-by-line scouring of the budget is saving $17 billion, but the fine print is that the amount is peanuts and, even so, is not likely to survive special-interest resistance.
Barack Obama promised us an end to "politics as usual"--theatrics and trivia to cover up what is unknown and unknowable--but we are still not ready for a president to tell us he doesn't know exactly what to do about nuclear weapons in a country threatened by murderous extremists or how to get the banks to stop stuffing their balance sheets and start lending again or how to control budget deficits in a time when government spending is needed to give the economy mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
So we get the usual charades and photo ops. The bottom line may be depressing, but at least we have a relatively smart government looking for answers.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Presidential Libidos
The flogging today of John Edwards in the public square, aka the New York Times, raises the question of what relevance marital fidelity has to the qualifications of an American president.
Trust and truth-telling come to mind, of course, but it gets more complicated in looking back. JFK famously cheated on his wife, while Richard Nixon, as far as we know, was a faithful husband while betraying the country.
Jimmy Carter told Playboy he "lusted in my heart" but presumably overcame his desires to become a disastrously naive president.
Uxorious Ronald Reagan, Bush I (although there were rumors) and Bush II bracketed Bill Clinton, who couldn't keep it zipped but left office with a budget surplus and no wars.
Now the Obamas, as they have in so many areas, have upped the ante on connubial bliss, often holding hands and displaying a closeness most recently reflected in their sneaking out of the White House for a dinner date last Saturday night.
But how much do we need to know about presidential marriages?
Elizabeth Edwards has dragged her husband into the spotlight for, as Maureen Dowd writes, "a gratuitous peek into their lives, and one that exposes her kids, by peddling more dregs about their personal family life in a book, and exposes the ex-girlfriend who’s now trying to raise the baby girl, a dead ringer for John Edwards, in South Orange, N.J."
We could have all lived happily ever after without hearing the details of their marital wreckage and, more to the point, is it at all relevant to voters who did not otherwise sense that John Edwards was not to be trusted, even if he had never succumbed to the stalker who told him "You're so hot"?
Trust and truth-telling come to mind, of course, but it gets more complicated in looking back. JFK famously cheated on his wife, while Richard Nixon, as far as we know, was a faithful husband while betraying the country.
Jimmy Carter told Playboy he "lusted in my heart" but presumably overcame his desires to become a disastrously naive president.
Uxorious Ronald Reagan, Bush I (although there were rumors) and Bush II bracketed Bill Clinton, who couldn't keep it zipped but left office with a budget surplus and no wars.
Now the Obamas, as they have in so many areas, have upped the ante on connubial bliss, often holding hands and displaying a closeness most recently reflected in their sneaking out of the White House for a dinner date last Saturday night.
But how much do we need to know about presidential marriages?
Elizabeth Edwards has dragged her husband into the spotlight for, as Maureen Dowd writes, "a gratuitous peek into their lives, and one that exposes her kids, by peddling more dregs about their personal family life in a book, and exposes the ex-girlfriend who’s now trying to raise the baby girl, a dead ringer for John Edwards, in South Orange, N.J."
We could have all lived happily ever after without hearing the details of their marital wreckage and, more to the point, is it at all relevant to voters who did not otherwise sense that John Edwards was not to be trusted, even if he had never succumbed to the stalker who told him "You're so hot"?
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
The Bank Stress Test Hustle
The process may tell us as much as the results, which are finally due later this week after many false starts.
The delays themselves indicate the government is negotiating stress-test grades with the recipients, and now a series of leaks has economists worried about the manipulation that is going on. What kind of truth will we see in this hall of mirrors?
Two headlines in the Wall Street Journal today encapsulate the doubts and fears: "More Banks Will Need Capital" and "We Can't Subsidize Banks Forever."
The latter proposes that banks be forced to sell all toxic assets, rather than cherry-pick them for cosmetic purposes, and that the government take tighter control in return for bailouts:
"(T)he government should stop providing capital, loan guarantees and financing with no strings attached. Banks should understand this. When providing loans to troubled companies, they place numerous restrictions, called covenants, on what these firms can do. These covenants generally restrict the use of assets, risk-taking behavior, and future indebtedness. It would be much better if the government focused on this rather than on its headline obsession with bonuses."
Meanwhile, as they always do, banks are paying off their shareholders while starving depositors with close-to-zero rates on their money.
A new study shows that "banks only marginally reduced dividends in the first 15 months of the crisis, paying out a staggering $400 billion in 2007 and 2008. While many banks have been reducing their dividends more recently, bank bailout money had been literally going in one door and out the other."
Among the big banks that will be at the government trough again after test results are announced will be Wells Fargo, partly owned by Warren Buffett, who at his stockholder meeting last week touted its strength and wished that he were legally allowed to own more of it.
Maybe the government should find a way to let that happen. Better him than us.
The delays themselves indicate the government is negotiating stress-test grades with the recipients, and now a series of leaks has economists worried about the manipulation that is going on. What kind of truth will we see in this hall of mirrors?
Two headlines in the Wall Street Journal today encapsulate the doubts and fears: "More Banks Will Need Capital" and "We Can't Subsidize Banks Forever."
The latter proposes that banks be forced to sell all toxic assets, rather than cherry-pick them for cosmetic purposes, and that the government take tighter control in return for bailouts:
"(T)he government should stop providing capital, loan guarantees and financing with no strings attached. Banks should understand this. When providing loans to troubled companies, they place numerous restrictions, called covenants, on what these firms can do. These covenants generally restrict the use of assets, risk-taking behavior, and future indebtedness. It would be much better if the government focused on this rather than on its headline obsession with bonuses."
Meanwhile, as they always do, banks are paying off their shareholders while starving depositors with close-to-zero rates on their money.
A new study shows that "banks only marginally reduced dividends in the first 15 months of the crisis, paying out a staggering $400 billion in 2007 and 2008. While many banks have been reducing their dividends more recently, bank bailout money had been literally going in one door and out the other."
Among the big banks that will be at the government trough again after test results are announced will be Wells Fargo, partly owned by Warren Buffett, who at his stockholder meeting last week touted its strength and wished that he were legally allowed to own more of it.
Maybe the government should find a way to let that happen. Better him than us.
Monday, May 04, 2009
"A Grandmother to Kill For"
The Obamas' live-in babysitter gets her first-100-days report in the White House and, fittingly enough, Sally Quinn, the sharpest-tongued reporter of Mrs. Robinson's generation, delivers the verdict: “the perfect grandmother you’d kill for: cozy, nice, sweet, friendly, dear.”
“It seemed to me," Quinn says after meeting her at a lunch hosted by Teresa Heinz Kerry, "that she’s perfectly comfortable in her new life."
The Obamas may have been hoping for a full-time sitter, but it hasn't quite worked out that way.
"We're shuttling kids back and forth to play dates, just like usual," the First Lady says, "although now my mom does a little more of the shuttling than I do. I'm glad to have her here." But there's a but: "She has a very full social life, so much so that sometimes we have to plan our schedule around her schedule."
Mrs. Robinson, who at first resisted the move ("kicking and screaming," according to her son), has traded in her Chicago routine of friends, family and weekly yoga class for a taste of the Washington social whirl and seems to be savoring it.
Way to go, grandma.
“It seemed to me," Quinn says after meeting her at a lunch hosted by Teresa Heinz Kerry, "that she’s perfectly comfortable in her new life."
The Obamas may have been hoping for a full-time sitter, but it hasn't quite worked out that way.
"We're shuttling kids back and forth to play dates, just like usual," the First Lady says, "although now my mom does a little more of the shuttling than I do. I'm glad to have her here." But there's a but: "She has a very full social life, so much so that sometimes we have to plan our schedule around her schedule."
Mrs. Robinson, who at first resisted the move ("kicking and screaming," according to her son), has traded in her Chicago routine of friends, family and weekly yoga class for a taste of the Washington social whirl and seems to be savoring it.
Way to go, grandma.
Pakistan Nuclear Nightmare
With the repetitive rhythm of a bad dream, Pakistan keeps jarring America's sense of security, this week with the Washington visit of President Asif Ali Zardari, who will arrive with the usual assurances of stability while begging for more helicopters to fight off extremist insurgents.
As always, anonymous senior US officials warn they are "increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities."
Yet, at his press conference last week, President Obama was confident that Pakistan's nuclear weapons were in safe hands with "strong military-to-military cooperation," while back in the Swat Valley Islamabad's deal with the Taliban was unraveling, and the sense of alarm in Washington obviously growing.
Somewhere in the background of this mess is the figure of A. Q. Khan, their former top scientist, who was jailed for selling technology to Iran and North Korea, among others, but released by Pakistan's Supreme Court in February to do who-knows-what in the proliferation black market as his country keeps expanding the size and number of its nuclear plants.
At the Washington summit this week, along with Afghanistan's tower of strength Hamid Karzai, Zardari will be assuring the White House and Congress that the upcoming $7.5 billion in aid, with perhaps a little more military hardware thrown in, will keep everything quiet in their neighborhood.
We have heard all this over and over again ever since 9/11, and it keeps ringing more and more hollow as time goes on. If the Obama Administration has some new formula of carrots and sticks, now is the time to use it so we can all stop having those bad nuclear dreams.
As always, anonymous senior US officials warn they are "increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities."
Yet, at his press conference last week, President Obama was confident that Pakistan's nuclear weapons were in safe hands with "strong military-to-military cooperation," while back in the Swat Valley Islamabad's deal with the Taliban was unraveling, and the sense of alarm in Washington obviously growing.
Somewhere in the background of this mess is the figure of A. Q. Khan, their former top scientist, who was jailed for selling technology to Iran and North Korea, among others, but released by Pakistan's Supreme Court in February to do who-knows-what in the proliferation black market as his country keeps expanding the size and number of its nuclear plants.
At the Washington summit this week, along with Afghanistan's tower of strength Hamid Karzai, Zardari will be assuring the White House and Congress that the upcoming $7.5 billion in aid, with perhaps a little more military hardware thrown in, will keep everything quiet in their neighborhood.
We have heard all this over and over again ever since 9/11, and it keeps ringing more and more hollow as time goes on. If the Obama Administration has some new formula of carrots and sticks, now is the time to use it so we can all stop having those bad nuclear dreams.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Obama's Grandmother and End-of-Life Care
How much time on earth is enough? How good does it have to be? What price are we willing to pay for it?
For decades, Americans have been debating when life begins, but now come the questions about the last days, as Barack Obama raises the hard fact that "those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill."
As usual, he sees the issue in human terms, recalling that "when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer...terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall.
"So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look...maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that--you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.
"And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly...things fell apart.
"I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether...society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question."
Yet it is sitting there at the heart of health-care reform, as Obama anticipates "a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists" followed by a "democratic conversation" among all Americans.
"It is very difficult," he says, "to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels." An independent group can give guidance without being determinative, but politicians will ultimately have to find some answers.
One of them, Arlen Specter alluded to it on Meet the Press today. The 79-year-old senator, who has been battling Hodgins lymphoma for more than four years, said, "I would support advanced directives, where we find so much of medical care is paid for the in the last few hours or few days of a person's life. Not to tell people what to do on their care at that time, but have them, have them think about it."
It's going to be a difficult and emotional debate, not only for those of us who are directly affected, but for generations who love their parents and grandparents. It is time to start.
For decades, Americans have been debating when life begins, but now come the questions about the last days, as Barack Obama raises the hard fact that "those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill."
As usual, he sees the issue in human terms, recalling that "when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer...terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall.
"So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look...maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that--you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.
"And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly...things fell apart.
"I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether...society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question."
Yet it is sitting there at the heart of health-care reform, as Obama anticipates "a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists" followed by a "democratic conversation" among all Americans.
"It is very difficult," he says, "to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels." An independent group can give guidance without being determinative, but politicians will ultimately have to find some answers.
One of them, Arlen Specter alluded to it on Meet the Press today. The 79-year-old senator, who has been battling Hodgins lymphoma for more than four years, said, "I would support advanced directives, where we find so much of medical care is paid for the in the last few hours or few days of a person's life. Not to tell people what to do on their care at that time, but have them, have them think about it."
It's going to be a difficult and emotional debate, not only for those of us who are directly affected, but for generations who love their parents and grandparents. It is time to start.
Swine Flu Economics: Good News
The Wall Street pandemic may go away. Warren Buffett gave his State of the Union Address yesterday and offered some hope to the frightened populace, and Robert Shiller, the irrational-exuberance expert, says the current Depression scare has been "relatively mild."
"In the last few months you've seen a real pickup in activity although at much lower prices," Buffett said during the annual Omaha stockholder pilgrimage, citing data from Berkshire Hathaway's huge real estate brokerage business.
The slowdown of new housing starts from 2 million a year to the current 500,000 will ease the crisis. "We're going to eat up inventory," he predicted. "That may take a couple of years. When it gets done you will have stabilization in housing prices. Then you will have demand for more housing starts."
In a New York Times OpEd today, Shiller, who specializes in market bubbles, comforts us with the news that this Depression scare may dissipate because we as consumers of economic news are too stupid to understand it.
During earlier Depression scares, he writes, "out-of-control inflation was widely visible, but today many people haven’t personally experienced rising unemployment and foreclosures. And it’s possible that the optimistic tone of the president and the Fed has assuaged some fears, and that people might believe that the government is fixing their problems.
"This time, the reasons to fret about a possible depression may seem less concrete. For most people, the worries that consume economists and accountants, about things like bank stress-test results or the 'OIS-Libor spread,' are rather hard to comprehend."
But it is still not time to breathe easier. Buffett warned his shareholders that government stimulus efforts could infect both Berkshire Hathaway and its subsidiary, the US economy, with higher inflation.
So don't put away the fiscal face masks and vaccines quite yet.
"In the last few months you've seen a real pickup in activity although at much lower prices," Buffett said during the annual Omaha stockholder pilgrimage, citing data from Berkshire Hathaway's huge real estate brokerage business.
The slowdown of new housing starts from 2 million a year to the current 500,000 will ease the crisis. "We're going to eat up inventory," he predicted. "That may take a couple of years. When it gets done you will have stabilization in housing prices. Then you will have demand for more housing starts."
In a New York Times OpEd today, Shiller, who specializes in market bubbles, comforts us with the news that this Depression scare may dissipate because we as consumers of economic news are too stupid to understand it.
During earlier Depression scares, he writes, "out-of-control inflation was widely visible, but today many people haven’t personally experienced rising unemployment and foreclosures. And it’s possible that the optimistic tone of the president and the Fed has assuaged some fears, and that people might believe that the government is fixing their problems.
"This time, the reasons to fret about a possible depression may seem less concrete. For most people, the worries that consume economists and accountants, about things like bank stress-test results or the 'OIS-Libor spread,' are rather hard to comprehend."
But it is still not time to breathe easier. Buffett warned his shareholders that government stimulus efforts could infect both Berkshire Hathaway and its subsidiary, the US economy, with higher inflation.
So don't put away the fiscal face masks and vaccines quite yet.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Souter's Tears
In his 2007 book about the Supreme Court, "The Nine," Jeffery Toobin wrote about David Souter's reaction to the decision that gave George W. Bush the presidency:
"His whole life was being a judge. He came from a tradition where the independence of the judiciary was the foundation of the rule of law. And Souter believed Bush v. Gore mocked that tradition. His colleagues’ actions were so transparently, so crudely partisan that Souter thought he might not be able to serve with them anymore.
"Souter seriously considered resigning. For many months, it was not at all clear whether he would remain as a justice. That the Court met in a city he loathed made the decision even harder. At the urging of a handful of close friends, he decided to stay on, but his attitude toward the Court was never the same. There were times when David Souter thought of Bush v. Gore and wept."
Souter's resignation now as a healthy 69-year-old man, after Obama's first hundred days, gives weight to Toobin's assertion, which raised doubts at the time, and underscores President Obama's declaration yesterday:
“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives.”
Souter couldn’t have said it better, but he actually did, soon after his swearing-in in 1990:
"The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we're in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected. Some human life is going to be changed by what we do. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts and our beings to get those rulings right."
The confirmation of a successor will almost certainly be an occasion for venting by Republicans in disarray and liberal Obama supporters unhappy over his failure to be ideologically correct on every issue, but Souter's tears, real or not, may be the best metaphor for what's at stake.
"His whole life was being a judge. He came from a tradition where the independence of the judiciary was the foundation of the rule of law. And Souter believed Bush v. Gore mocked that tradition. His colleagues’ actions were so transparently, so crudely partisan that Souter thought he might not be able to serve with them anymore.
"Souter seriously considered resigning. For many months, it was not at all clear whether he would remain as a justice. That the Court met in a city he loathed made the decision even harder. At the urging of a handful of close friends, he decided to stay on, but his attitude toward the Court was never the same. There were times when David Souter thought of Bush v. Gore and wept."
Souter's resignation now as a healthy 69-year-old man, after Obama's first hundred days, gives weight to Toobin's assertion, which raised doubts at the time, and underscores President Obama's declaration yesterday:
“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives.”
Souter couldn’t have said it better, but he actually did, soon after his swearing-in in 1990:
"The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we're in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected. Some human life is going to be changed by what we do. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts and our beings to get those rulings right."
The confirmation of a successor will almost certainly be an occasion for venting by Republicans in disarray and liberal Obama supporters unhappy over his failure to be ideologically correct on every issue, but Souter's tears, real or not, may be the best metaphor for what's at stake.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Obama Beyond the Sound Bites
His press conferences are dazzling performances, but to get a glimpse of Barack Obama in the round takes the oldest journalistic setting of all, an extended one-on-one interview by David Leonhardt for this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
Under questioning to show his state of mind rather than elicit sound bites, we get a picture of how the President sees the economic crisis in the long run beyond the bailouts and fixes.
"The critics have said, you’re doing too much, you can’t do all this at once," he observes. "Congress can’t digest everything. I just reject that. There’s nothing inherent in our political process that should prevent us from making these difficult decisions now, as opposed to 10 years from now or 20 years from now...
"It is true that as tough an economic time as it is right now, we haven’t had 42 months of 20, 30 percent unemployment. And so the degree of desperation and the shock to the system may not be as great. And that means that there’s going to be more resistance to any of these steps: reforming the financial system or reforming our health care system or doing something about energy...
But part of my job I think is to bridge that gap between the status quo and what we know we have to do for our future."
One of his goals in "the post-bubble economy," Obama says, is "restoring a balance between making things and providing services, whether it’s marketing or catering to people or servicing folks in some way. Those are all good jobs, and we’re not going to return to an economy in which manufacturing is as large a percentage as it was back in the 1940s"
He cites a campaign visit to a Seattle plant where welders and tradesmen were retrofitting buildings: "They’re not performing the same kind of manufacturing that their fathers might have, but with similar skill sets they are now making hospitals and schools and office buildings much more energy efficient, and...providing enormous value to the economy as a whole."
For such a future, the President points to "the smart grid," a huge project to modernize energy use, which is being hampered because "we don’t have enough trained electricians to lay down those lines." Government, he says, can help with "matching up the training with the need out there."
In looking at today's work force, Obama questions the level of education today by citing his grandmother who never went to college but worked her way up to being a bank vice-president. She "could write a better letter" than some of his former students at the University of Chicago Law School, he says.
As he pursues what he calls his "ruthless pragmatism" on the economy, Obama is asked about public impatience about not seeing improvement fast enough.
"In some ways it’s liberating," he says, "in the sense that whether I’m a one-termer or a two-termer, the problems are big enough and fundamental enough that I can’t sort of game it out. It’s not one of these things where I can say, Oh, you know what, if I time it just right, then the market is going to be going up and unemployment will be going down right before re-election. These are much bigger, much more systemic problems. And so in some ways you just kind of set aside the politics."
Under questioning to show his state of mind rather than elicit sound bites, we get a picture of how the President sees the economic crisis in the long run beyond the bailouts and fixes.
"The critics have said, you’re doing too much, you can’t do all this at once," he observes. "Congress can’t digest everything. I just reject that. There’s nothing inherent in our political process that should prevent us from making these difficult decisions now, as opposed to 10 years from now or 20 years from now...
"It is true that as tough an economic time as it is right now, we haven’t had 42 months of 20, 30 percent unemployment. And so the degree of desperation and the shock to the system may not be as great. And that means that there’s going to be more resistance to any of these steps: reforming the financial system or reforming our health care system or doing something about energy...
But part of my job I think is to bridge that gap between the status quo and what we know we have to do for our future."
One of his goals in "the post-bubble economy," Obama says, is "restoring a balance between making things and providing services, whether it’s marketing or catering to people or servicing folks in some way. Those are all good jobs, and we’re not going to return to an economy in which manufacturing is as large a percentage as it was back in the 1940s"
He cites a campaign visit to a Seattle plant where welders and tradesmen were retrofitting buildings: "They’re not performing the same kind of manufacturing that their fathers might have, but with similar skill sets they are now making hospitals and schools and office buildings much more energy efficient, and...providing enormous value to the economy as a whole."
For such a future, the President points to "the smart grid," a huge project to modernize energy use, which is being hampered because "we don’t have enough trained electricians to lay down those lines." Government, he says, can help with "matching up the training with the need out there."
In looking at today's work force, Obama questions the level of education today by citing his grandmother who never went to college but worked her way up to being a bank vice-president. She "could write a better letter" than some of his former students at the University of Chicago Law School, he says.
As he pursues what he calls his "ruthless pragmatism" on the economy, Obama is asked about public impatience about not seeing improvement fast enough.
"In some ways it’s liberating," he says, "in the sense that whether I’m a one-termer or a two-termer, the problems are big enough and fundamental enough that I can’t sort of game it out. It’s not one of these things where I can say, Oh, you know what, if I time it just right, then the market is going to be going up and unemployment will be going down right before re-election. These are much bigger, much more systemic problems. And so in some ways you just kind of set aside the politics."
Washington Bank Heist
Willie Sutton said he robbed banks because that's where the money is, but it was never their money. They only handle and maneuver it around, like parking lot attendants.
Yet, according to Sen. Dick Durbin, after smashing up financial vehicles and taking taxpayer billions for repairs, when it comes to the US Senate, banks "frankly own the place."
As he tried unsuccessfully to line up votes to help avoid foreclosures in bankruptcy, Durbin told voters that though it's "hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created," they "are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill."
In the lull before the Obama Administration announces results of bank stress tests, there is growing sentiment for getting tougher on the keepers of the keys.
Sheila Bair, head of the FDIC, in a speech this week called for an end to the "too big to fail" philosophy that has allowed banks to hold a gun to the government's head.
“Taxpayers," she said, "should not be called on to foot the bill to support nonviable institutions because there is no orderly process for resolving them.”
The President himself foresees an end to "the massive leveraging and the massive risk-taking that had become so common," but his economic team so far has been tiptoeing around the banking industry and their Wall Street cousins, hoping to bribe and cajole them into less greed and more responsible behavior.
The time is coming to sweep out the parking lot and get new attendants who can remember who really owns the money they keep jockeying around for their own profit.
Yet, according to Sen. Dick Durbin, after smashing up financial vehicles and taking taxpayer billions for repairs, when it comes to the US Senate, banks "frankly own the place."
As he tried unsuccessfully to line up votes to help avoid foreclosures in bankruptcy, Durbin told voters that though it's "hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created," they "are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill."
In the lull before the Obama Administration announces results of bank stress tests, there is growing sentiment for getting tougher on the keepers of the keys.
Sheila Bair, head of the FDIC, in a speech this week called for an end to the "too big to fail" philosophy that has allowed banks to hold a gun to the government's head.
“Taxpayers," she said, "should not be called on to foot the bill to support nonviable institutions because there is no orderly process for resolving them.”
The President himself foresees an end to "the massive leveraging and the massive risk-taking that had become so common," but his economic team so far has been tiptoeing around the banking industry and their Wall Street cousins, hoping to bribe and cajole them into less greed and more responsible behavior.
The time is coming to sweep out the parking lot and get new attendants who can remember who really owns the money they keep jockeying around for their own profit.
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