Our MBA President at work

[As previously noted, I'm going to miss that header - might as well use it frequently while I still can!]

Quick tapping of unspent $350 billion in works
By ANDREW TAYLOR and PHILIP ELLIOTT,
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, Jan 11, 2009
WASHINGTON – Senate Democratic leaders said a vote could come as early as this week on providing a second $350 billion for the financial industry, after assurances Sunday by President-elect Barack Obama and one of his top economic advisers that the money would be better monitored and spent.

Confession: My first read of this was that W was asking for the cash to spend in his final week in office.

... BUT- "Our MBA President at work" is still an okay header.
On Friday, 9 Jan 2009, the Congressional Oversight Panel published its second report on TARP.
The conclusions?
Shortened, paraphrased: Paulson's Treasury hasn't a clue!

A previous post noted Paulson's take on the situation:

"There is no playbook for responding to turmoil we have never faced," Paulson said in prepared remarks before the House Financial Services Committee.

This same previous post took the liberty of suggesting to SecTreas Paulson just what his job ought to be:

SecTreas Paulson, not that it's my place to tell you your job, but: isn't it a reasonable expectation that your top priority over the past 2 months ought to have been drafting a playbook???
This calls to mind a time-worn biz adage: "If there’s no time to do it right the first time, when will you find the time to do things over?"

So far I've seen no evidence that he's taken my advice!

Meanwhile, my email inbox features this purportedly true account:

The Mustang Ranch and $750 billion bail-out.

Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it.

They failed and it closed. Now, we are trusting the economy of our country and 850+ Billion Dollars to a pack of nit-wits who couldn't make money running a whorehouse and selling booze. Now if that don't make you nervous, what does???

Note: this was under Bush 41 - like father, like son.
[FYI: previous post noted that W has presided over worst economic fiasco in modern U.S. history. The linked article notes that income growth showed similar stagnation only under Bush 41!... if anyone's interested, I've got nice Excel graphs that confirm this contention!]

Meanwhile, David Brooks insists that there's no evidence supporting a belief that fiscal stimulus works - pretty much ignoring the New Deal & JFK's response to 1960 recession.

"The Keynesian policies enacted under the Kennedy administra­tion in the early 1960s had all the hallmarks of a successful economic experiment."
[Great Experiments in American Economic Policy: From Kennedy to Reagan]

In Brooks's world, the only reason we're talking fiscal policy is because we've run out of monetary policy options.

It's true that we've run out of monetary policy options - but that doesn't erase at least two very real examples of Keynesian fiscal policy success!

Have a nice day.