There was no question mark. It was an exclamation point. Gergen kept talking about how Obama’s big problem was that he wasn’t being nice enough to America’s CEOs. What drives me nuts about that sort of thing is that it’s an idea that becomes self-fulfilling if enough people like Gergen say it – then you get Democratic operatives who can point to news stories and say, “Gee, we need to do something to improve our image with CEOs.” Or at least they use these news stories as an excuse. It becomes a trope with a life of its own.

My wife is looking at me accusingly — dinnertime apparently. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks to TBogg — I may have to bow out now, though. Thanks everyone for coming!

Teddy, wow, I haven’t heard that. That would be horrifying, but also sort of funny, particularly since Dodd was not exactly a proponent of creating that particular position.

No, seriously, I know someone who knew him in college… his father was a big shot at the Ford foundation and Geithner apparently grew up in an atmosphere of cuddling up to rich benefactors, which seems to have shaped his worldview.

He’s a dick?

Fred Hiatt was the Moscow bureau chief when I was there in the nineties. He would have made an excellent Soviet reporter, let me put it that way.

Uncertainty, later in the day, when my editors and I figured out what had happened, we were all laughing hysterically — somewhere that night David Gergen was telling someone what an asshole Matt Bai is.

lake, I’m sure Dodd is up to his ass in a shady deal with Countrywide/Angelo Mozilo and they told him to do a Frankie Pantangelo and open his veins before it all came out. Something stinks there, I agree.

Ruth –
Exactly right. They hope this all blows over and that the underlying toxic assets somehow recover before the pyramid collapses and they are all exposed.

GlenJo,

Obama will not grow a spine and the TeaBaggers will never get a clue. I just don’t see it. I spent literally hours one afternoon trying to explain the commodities bubble to a crowd of TeaBaggers in Kentucky. Not one of them got it after hours and hours. My hopes in that regard are very faint.

I will say that I met plenty of people in Jefferson Cty Alabama who hated JP Morgan Chase for jacking up their sewer bills. BUt it took something like that.

Tan, the question of abolishing the Fed feels a little above my pay grade. I’m not sure how that would work. But QE seems like lunacy to me. It’s a gross handout to the banks and it hammers individuals via the effect on daily prices. I don’t see how it doesn’t have a hyperinflationary effect at some point.

RevBev–

Most of these people are accustomed to accepting the arguments of the industry leaders reflexively. They are not geared toward questions of systemic fraud. Regulators prefer to capture individual miscreants committing obvious crimes. The Geithners and Greenspans and Bernankes do not see it as their job to revamp whole industry practices like the mismarking of AAA MBS or front-running in the commodities markets or HFT corruption (computerized insider trading). On the HFT stuff, you had banks that went whole quarters last year without posting a single losing day trading on the NYSE. That is impossible without fraud. But the regulators will not touch these huge questions.

TBogg in defense of most reporters, most of the ones I know who are doing say the campaign trail stuff have absolutely zero leeway to venture into anything real with regard to the economy — no space, no time. On the other hand, none of them know a whole lot about it, either. Most of us campaign trail types are trained to look at the NYSE and the unemployment numbers — if those are good, we say the economy is strong, etc. I was in a unique position because my bosses were supportive of me taking time out to spend months dwelling on things like the commodities bubble.

Shoto, I agree with you. I bet most of the large banks are really functionally insolvent, if we were to actually mark their assets on their balance sheets according to their real values. They all have mountains of MBS and bonds that are being marked near par when they are worth 10-2- cents on the dollar.

The small banks are in bad shape as well, of course partly because the Too Big to Fail thing screws them — since only the big guys have the implicit guarantee of the state, the small banks have to pay more to borrow money, which puts them at a major disadvantage and is the reason for the surge in bank failures in recent months.

Maui, the regulators still have enormous power. I don’t remember saying that but the Fed, the SEC, the OTS, the FDIC, the CFTC etc, the IRS, they all have the tools to police a lot of the more obvious scams withut additional legislation. But the problem is that many of the people currently sitting in these positions don’t see that as their role. They could have and should have forced the ratings agencies to take a perp walk years ago for instance, and have not.

gnarly, the problem I see is that our media habits tend more and more toward short-attention-span products, little boxes and inserts in magazines, 30-second pieces on TV news, while our economy is becoming more gnarled and complex by the second, impossible to cover in a short space. I just needed all of 6000 words to do a foreclosure piece, even to just explain the basics, and I had to leave a lot out… impossible to do this stuff on TV, that leaves so many people without a clue.

blenkinsop, I don’t know the extent of the investigation yet, but people are telling me it’s going to be mostly confined to the practice of hiring consultants who feed inside info on things like medical mergers. Some of those companies however are linked to SAC capital which is at the seat of some very serious systemic controversies, including the Lehman collapse, where there were allegations of mass collusion/insiderisms on the part of hedgies and i-banks that got short of Lehman and then blew it up. If the investigation goes there it will be very interesting… there are multiple Watergates in that Sep-August 2008 period.

TBogg, yes, there are dozens of these deals in the pipeline right now, including more parking meter deals. Indianapolis just became the latest major city to do one. Many cities, including Los Angeles, are selling public parking lot revenue (including often airport parking lot revenue). It’s a friction-free way for executives to get their hands on cash without raising taxes, so it’s growing. I think it’ll be a while before the public comes around on this stuff, although some notoriety (the Indy deal was nicknamed “Son of Chicago”) will help defame this practice.

lake, Himes sits on the committee for Capital Markets… watch what he does w/regard to the Volcker rule and the rollback of Dodd-Frank, pathetic as it was.

Virtually the entire tri-state area delegation is bankrolled by the financial services industry and they vote as a bloc and are powerful during the conference process. NY-NJ-CT submarined the Lincoln rule and gutted Volcker during the Dodd-Frank thing.

kall –

Hilarious story: Gergen apparently mistook me for Matt Bai of the New York Times. That is why he kept expressing surprise at my opinions. Apparently he expected less hostility from a NYT reporter!

Maui, I think your husband is right, I don’t think they care at all. Preserving the middle class for the sake of long-term financial health is so much further beyond the immediate goal of HOW DO I GET A BIG BONUS FOR MYSELF THIS YEAR? that none of these guys will ever get there… that is too meta of a question for all but a few, and the few that would think about it with the ability to impact the question, the Blankfeins etc, will not think about it in a positive way, let’s put it that way.