My LEAST FAVORITE Member of Team Obama is...
Fri Jan 23, 2009 at 02:13:55 AM PST
Obama has picked people to fill most of the important positions in his new administation which we all wish the best success. Some are clearly better than others from both an experience and an ideological perspective. Some are Republican holdovers (Gates) or Republicans put in a new position (LaHood); many others have ties to the Clintons; or, to Obama himself. Your task is to identify the lemon of lemons, the dredge of dregs in the following poll (or identify your own nominee).
Everyone makes a mistake (just ask Justice Roberts or for that matter, Obama who both seemed to have muffed the oath of office on inauguration day). And Obamamaniacs are sure to criticize me for saying this, but I think that Obama has picked several people who are
not only not qualified but should be disqualified in any forward thinking, change oriented administration such as his.
My own top lemon in Team Obama is Geithner, the tax dodging, illegal nanny hiring
head of the New York Federal Reserve Board who failed to see the oncoming storm in the financial markets, and indeed helped to precipitate it. As late as March, 2007, Geithner made this pie in the sky analysis in a speech at the Credit Markets Symposium hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Charlotte, North Carolina:
The latest wave of credit market innovations has elicited some concerns about their implications for the stability of the financial system, concerns similar to those associated with earlier periods of rapid change in financial markets. Will the most recent credit market innovations amplify credit cycles, contributing to "excessive" lending in times of relative stability, and then magnify the contraction in credit that follows? Will they introduce greater volatility in financial markets? Will they create greater risk of systemic financial crisis?
These concerns have been heightened in some quarters by the problems currently being experienced in the subprime mortgage sector. It will take some time before the full implications are understood and the full impact can be assessed. As of now, though, there are few signs that the disruptions in this one sector of the credit markets will have a lasting impact on credit markets as a whole.
Indeed, economic theory and recent practical experience offer some reassurance against both these specific concerns and more general worries about the implications of credit market innovations for the performance of the financial system... .
http://72.14.235.132/...
Moreover, a ProPublica investigation this month found that the
Fed had lifted some restrictions on Citigroup, allowing it to engage in risky ventures with insufficient capital. In the 1990's Geithner worked for Rubin who headed Citi during the crisis. In answers released today to the Senate, acknowledged that
"Citigroup's supervisors, including the Federal Reserve, failed to identify a number of their risk management shortcomings and to induce appropriate changes in behavior." www.propublica.org/article/more-mea-culpas-from-geithner-as-regulator-090122