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Bailout Architect Runs For California Governor; World Laughs
Matt Taibbi doing what he does best -- skewering our Galtian Overlords. Definitely read the whole thing.
If you don't remember Kashkari's name, you might be excused – he was actually better known, in his 15 minutes of fame five years ago, as "The 35 year-old dingbat from Goldman someone put in charge of handing out $700 billion bailout dollars."
Now you remember. That guy! Neel Kashkari when he first entered the world of politics was a line item, usually the last entry in a list of ex-Goldman employees handed prominent government and/or regulatory positions, as in, ". . . and, lastly, Neel Kashkari, the heretofore unknown Goldman banker put in charge of the TARP bailout program . . ."
...
So Kashkari takes the job as bailout czar and starts hurling fistfuls of cash at the banks, in a fashion that turned out later to have been beyond haphazard. Critically, even though the Treasury promised only to give out TARP funds to institutions that were "healthy" and "viable," Kashkari had no protocol in place to even decide whether a bailout recipient was solvent or not.
They forked over billions in cash to failing institutions and then failed to enforce crucial provisions, like for instance measures put in place to prevent executives from bailout-out companies from giving themselves huge bonuses.
...
The Kashkari story is a perfect little allegory about the arrogance and cluelessness of the people who run the American economy. Kashkari talks passionately about free markets, forgetting that he was the individual who was actually in charge of the biggest-in-American-history government program to subvert the free market, bailing out countless institutions that should otherwise have gone out of business due to their own incompetence and corruption.
He talks about how the "free markets" allocate capital better than any system we have, but then again he was the person who had to step in when that system failed and institute a different system of capital allocation, one in which public treasure was unorganically re-allocated from taxpayers to private companies. His complaints about "misplaced priorities" are almost beneath comment – there's just not much to say about someone who committed public funds to million-dollar bonuses but believes regular people accepting government benefits have a "me-first" mentality.
Anyway, having this guy run for public office is like a gift from the blogging gods. How funny will this get? Will this one go to 11? I'm taking the over.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/bailout-architect-runs-for-california-governor-world-laughs-20140124
Now you remember. That guy! Neel Kashkari when he first entered the world of politics was a line item, usually the last entry in a list of ex-Goldman employees handed prominent government and/or regulatory positions, as in, ". . . and, lastly, Neel Kashkari, the heretofore unknown Goldman banker put in charge of the TARP bailout program . . ."
...
So Kashkari takes the job as bailout czar and starts hurling fistfuls of cash at the banks, in a fashion that turned out later to have been beyond haphazard. Critically, even though the Treasury promised only to give out TARP funds to institutions that were "healthy" and "viable," Kashkari had no protocol in place to even decide whether a bailout recipient was solvent or not.
They forked over billions in cash to failing institutions and then failed to enforce crucial provisions, like for instance measures put in place to prevent executives from bailout-out companies from giving themselves huge bonuses.
...
The Kashkari story is a perfect little allegory about the arrogance and cluelessness of the people who run the American economy. Kashkari talks passionately about free markets, forgetting that he was the individual who was actually in charge of the biggest-in-American-history government program to subvert the free market, bailing out countless institutions that should otherwise have gone out of business due to their own incompetence and corruption.
He talks about how the "free markets" allocate capital better than any system we have, but then again he was the person who had to step in when that system failed and institute a different system of capital allocation, one in which public treasure was unorganically re-allocated from taxpayers to private companies. His complaints about "misplaced priorities" are almost beneath comment – there's just not much to say about someone who committed public funds to million-dollar bonuses but believes regular people accepting government benefits have a "me-first" mentality.
Anyway, having this guy run for public office is like a gift from the blogging gods. How funny will this get? Will this one go to 11? I'm taking the over.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/bailout-architect-runs-for-california-governor-world-laughs-20140124