Saturday, March 21, 2009

Obama's Wall Street Bailout Failure

Obama's Wall Street Bailout Failure

 

     Before it can clean up Wall Street or do much of

     anything else, the administration has to clean up

     the way it's been trying to clean up Wall Street.

 

By Robert Reich

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/03/20/reich/

 

Mar. 20, 2009

 

AIG is rapidly becoming a nightmarish metaphor for the

Obama administration's problems administering the

bailout of Wall Street. One central problem is the lack

of transparency. According to some news reports,

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner knew weeks ago that AIG

was planning to issue the bonuses to executives in its

notorious credit default swap unit, and felt it was

contractually bound to do so. But even if Geithner

discovered all this just last week, he faces an awkward

question about why he didn't know sooner. These bonuses

in fact were only the latest in a series, and were not

even distributed until last Friday. But it was not

until Saturday, after the story leaked to the press,

that Geithner went public to express his "outrage" about them.

 

Meanwhile, the Treasury has been readying yet another

big multibillion-dollar payout to AIG on top of the

$170 billion already provided the company, because AIG

has been hemorrhaging red ink. The company's balance

sheets have been deteriorating far more quickly than

the Treasury had anticipated. But there's been no clear

exit strategy for stopping the flow of taxpayer money.

 

What's particularly embarrassing for the current

administration is that it had promised to undertake the

Wall Street bailout far more transparently and

effectively than the way the Bush administration went

about it. The Obama administration had assured the

public that, among other things, taxpayer money would

no longer be used to backstop Wall Street bonuses.

(It's worth noting, in this regard, that the related

plan put forward by the Obama Treasury to limit

executive pay in Wall Street firms that received

bailouts turned out to be riddled with holes.)

 

We've also learned that much of the $170 billion has

been used by AIG to pay off AIG's putative obligations

to other Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs.

Goldman has maintained that it got no bailout money

from the Treasury. But in fact it received some $13

billion through AIG. More troubling is that the

original plan to bail out AIG was concocted at a

meeting held last fall, run by then Treasury Secretary

Hank Paulson who, before becoming treasury secretary,

had been CEO of Goldman Sachs. Also attending the

meeting was Lloyd Blankenfein, the current CEO of

Goldman Sachs. Also at the meeting: Tim Geithner, then

head of the New York Fed.

 

None of this would be nearly as awful if the Wall

Street bailout were working. But here we are six months

after it began and it’s still the case that almost no

loans are being made to Main Street. This week the Fed

is launching its own program to get loans to consumers

financed by private investors, in effect bypassing the

big Wall Street banks.

 

The Wall Street bailout is starting to look like the

most expensive tax-supported fiasco in history. The

problem for the Obama administration is that this

bailout is near the very center of the president's

economic recovery program. It's not possible for the

economy to bounce back until credit markets are working

again. Yet even though the bailout so far is a bust,

Geithner still hasn't decided -- or told the public --

how he's going to use the remaining $300 billion of

bailout money differently.

 

The president cannot afford to lose the public's

confidence that his administration is a careful steward

of the public's money. The public was willing to go

along with a large stimulus package. But it won't go

along with a second stimulus, and certainly not another

TARP. And until the public feels confident that its

money isn't being thrown down a rat hole, it may balk

at other ambitious undertakings such as healthcare or

education or the environment.

 

Bottom line: Before it can clean up Wall Street or do

much of anything else, the administration has to clean

up the way it's been trying to clean up Wall Street.

 

-- By Robert Reich

 

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