Regulate, Regulate, Regulate

Just in from the Drudge Report:

"Obama will call for increased oversight of 'executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies' as part of sweeping plan to 'overhaul financial regulation', NY TIMES reporting Sunday, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE... Developing.."

Never let a crisis go to waste, says Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff. Well, the guy sure lives by his words. Now that AIG has become the whipping boy for the hypocrites in Congress who actually created the mess for which they claim to be outraged, a bill is being considered to claw back the bonuses paid under contracts approved by Congress . Ahhh, but we knew it wouldn't end there. We've reached the slippery slope, my friends, on which Congress and the Obama administration will push through part of their socialist agenda on the sled of populist outrage at any company associated with those greedy Wall Street types. Let's get 'em! says Obama. Let's regulate their bonuses, let's get the government to step in and determine how much people should be paid in our free market society. Oh wait. When the government controls who gets paid what, that's no longer a free market, is it? It's a government controlled market, otherwise known as socialism.

Forget for a minute that this intrusion into the free market system is the antithesis of what our country stands for and the foundations upon which it was built. Forget Obama's determination to turn the USA into a social democracy. What we cannot forget is that we are in the midst of an economic crisis in which the financial sector will play an integral part in our recovery. Until the credit markets and the underlying toxic assets which plague the system are addressed, our economy is going nowhere, no matter how many talk shows Obama appears on. Don't get me wrong: I'm as outraged as anyone about the unbridled greed on Wall Street which, along with the complicit folks in DC created this financial perfect storm. But who is going to run these companies when they are being targeted by the government as the bad boys who go to detention and don't get their lunch? Just as Tim Geithner cannot find people to staff his Treasury Department, nobody in their right mind is going to work for the very companies upon whom our economic recovery rests. So we have nobody in the government coming up with a solution (except for Obama and Congress who's solution is to punish) and nobody in the private sector who will want to work for the companies who need to help unravel the mess. Hmmmm. So who exactly is going to save our economy? Maybe ACORN can look up Mickey Mouse from their voter registration drive and he can fix the whole thing for us.

Secretary of Tax Cheats

Timothy Geithner's little "goof" in forgetting to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for years has been getting the white glove treatment from the mainstream press. Aw shucks, it was just a silly, completely innocent mistake. Is this what we can expect from the guy who will head the Treasury and thus, the IRS? Apparently he not only has issues with handling his own money, but check out this from the NYTimes:

Where Was Geithner in Turmoil?
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/business/25sorkin.html?_r=1&dbk

President-elect Barack Obama unveiled on Monday an economic team with deep experience handling economic crises. But does the man at the center of this star-studded cast, Timothy F. Geithner, the nominee for Treasury secretary, have what is needed to take the nation in a new financial direction?
But Mr. Geithner’s involvement in several ultimately ill-fated efforts to buttress the American financial system is the very reason some Wall Street C.E.O.’s — a number of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of piquing the man who regulates them — question whether he’s up to the challenge.
“We have only two things to say about Tim Geithner, who we do not know: A.I.G. and Lehman Brothers,” said Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics. “Throw in the Bear Stearns/Maiden Lane fiasco for good measure,” he said. “All of these ‘rescues’ are a disaster for the taxpayer, for the financial markets and also for the Federal Reserve System as an organization. Geithner, in our view, deserves retirement, not promotion.”
Ouch.
“He was in the room at every turn of the crisis,” said another executive who participated in several such confidential meetings with Mr. Geithner. “You can look at that both ways.”

Mmm, hmmm. That surely inspires confidence. A tax scoflaw AND a lousy financial overseer to handle the worst economic crisis in decades.