From Financial Weekly;
In a pointed criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the financial bailout, the head of a congressional oversight panel said the new Treasury Department plan “lacks crucial details,” especially about how it will treat toxic securities held by banks.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, like his predecessor Henry Paulson, also has failed to articulate a clear strategy for the $700 billion rescue, said Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The bailout is now called the Financial Stability Plan.
“These general frameworks do not provide an adequate foundation to oversee Treasury’s activities or to measure the success of the TARP or the Stability plan,” Warren, a Harvard Law professor, told the House Financial Services subcommittee on oversight today.
A Treasury spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Well, they have changed the name of the bailout didn't they? I was on a panel yesterday and a lovely young woman (who, by the way, was the 7th person voted off of last years "Apprentice"....that's pretty good I think) politely chastised me for complaining that the Obama Administration hasn't done enough (or really anything regarding the TARP or Financial Stability Plan). I politely replied that the whole reason Tim Geithner was picked so quickly after the election, and stayed nominated after his tax "issues" was because he has really been working on the problem since it started 18 months ago. Plans are great, which by the way they still have to come up with, but where's the BEEF??
The first thing I would have done is immediately hired two or three hundred financial professionals, like the ones currently sitting at home after getting laid off, and made a big speech with all these guys, plus the existing regulatory armies behind me. I would have laid out my plan and told you the specific resources that I was going to bring to bear on the crisis at hand. That would inspire confidence. Instead, The Administration comes out with half-formed plans without the real specifics and more importantly the resource requirements to do the job. It would be like General Eisenhower laying out the plan for D-Day without having decided what beaches he was going to storm and who was going to be doing the storming!
In fact, I'll do one better. Right now Geithner reminds me of King Arthur in "Monty Python and The Holy Grail", pretending to be riding a horse across the countryside, but instead of a horse he's just skipping while his trusty servant skips behind him banging two coconuts together to sound like horses! Here, have a look.
Comments