As far as I can tell, the thesis is that President Obama either isn't angry enough about the financial mess, or that his staff isn't angry enough about it, or that he's failed to assign the task of being angry about the financial mess to people who are best capable of rallying the anger of others.
Typically, Frank suggests:
To get ahead of the anger, Obama must do what he has repeatedly promised but not always done: make everything about his economic policies transparent and hold every player accountable. His administration must start actually answering the questions that officials like Geithner and Summers routinely duck.
Why should the President have any desire at all to 'get ahead of the anger'? Do you even know what that means? Which questions have they been ducking? Questions like: "how come nobody anywhere cared about how bad things were gonna get screwed up three years ago?" Real productive.
I'm pretty sure that Obama thinks that our pique, frustration, and anger will not get us anywhere. To that end, time spent on them probably won't get us anywhere either. I totally agree that some of the bailouts, the TARP, and other programs and initiatives which were around before Obama got in, and even the pre-existing policies that he has ratified, signed or implemented will continue to bear those signs of careful planning and public-spiritedness which we came to know as hallmarks of the Bush administration.
But what are we gonna do about it? If the answer is "nothing," then we need to move on. In a hurry.
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I know Williams is a big fan of Andrew Cuomo, but unless Cuomo thinks that issuing subpoenas for a show trial that doesn't end up sentencing people will be a good deterrent against bad behavior in the future, I don't really have much respect his actions here.
2 comments:
Well even for a show trial, they're going to hire attorneys--and probably very expensive ones at that. So, on average, if each subpoena recipient spends 50k on atty fees, cuomo can probably claim the moral victory.
for lawyers.
Cuomo's already begun taking credit for the fact that 15 of the 20 top AIG bonus recipients have decided to give the bonuses back. I think as a political tactic, Cuomo's actions have absolutely worked. However, I don't think that supporting the kind of demagoguery that leads to having bus tours of chanting protesters mob the houses of AIG execs is the sort of business that progressives want to be in.
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