Geithner: My Dog Ate My Homework
I am unimpressed by the explanation for why Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s hyped financial system rescue plan was so fuzzy.
Just days before Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner was scheduled to lay out his much-anticipated plan to deal with the toxic assets imperiling the financial system, he and his team made a sudden about-face.
According to several sources involved in the deliberations, Geithner had come to the conclusion that the strategies he and his team had spent weeks working on were too expensive, too complex and too risky for taxpayers.
They needed an alternative and found it in a previously considered initiative to pair private investments and public loans to try to buy the risky assets and take them off the books of banks. There was one problem: They didn’t have enough time to work out many details or consult with others before the plan was supposed to be unveiled.
Not like I’m missing the Henry Paulson Show or any other remnants of the last administration. However, you don’t have to be a raving right-wing talk show host to be increasingly alarmed by the Obama Administration’s capabilities with respect to managing the economy.
Instead of having his team write a stimulus plan, they outsourced it to House Democrats — a group that, as a whole, is not known for fiscal acumen. News reports made it clear that Speaker Pelosi’s methodology for crafting the one shot we have at avoiding a Depression was to ask fellow Democrats, or at least the ones not in her doghouse to send her their wish lists. The bill was somewhat improved by the legislative process, but it is not “temporary, targeted and timely,” the original criteria laid out by Assistant Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Now this.
By Wednesday, Feb. 4, Geithner was leaning toward a different approach that his former colleagues at the Federal Reserve had developed months earlier, the source said. This involved a joint public-private fund to buy up the assets. Private investors, likely hedge funds and private-equity funds, would put up capital, and the government would loan money to the fund. If the private investors made wise decisions about which assets they bought, they would be able to pay back the government and make money for themselves.
For the policymakers, the chief appeal of the public-private partnership is that it solves the problem of how to price assets. The private money managers who provide capital for the fund would decide which assets to buy, and at what price, taking government bureaucrats out of that difficult task.
Moreover, the private contribution lowers the total amount of money the government would need to put at risk. Also, the government would require private investors to incur any losses before the government does, reducing taxpayers’ exposure to potential losses (but also potentially depriving them of any windfall profits).
But there were multiple complications: How much government financing would be needed? What other incentives would be needed to get private firms on board? Where would the government get the money? What assets would the fund buy? Would the government have a say in which banks they’re bought from? Might there be more than one fund?
The clock was ticking. But Geithner wasn’t ready to share his thoughts with senior government officials outside his narrow circle. He and his team worked on the plan through the weekend, with some of his staff working until 4 a.m. The team grew to about 20 officials, including lawyers, finance experts and public affairs staff.
(snip)On Saturday, Feb. 7, the officials won a slight reprieve when the White House asked that Geithner’s speech be postponed from Monday to Tuesday to allow Congress to focus a little longer on the on the massive economic stimulus package still pending.
But there still was not enough time to sculpt the detailed plan that the financial markets expected. In the end, Geithner and his colleagues decided that it would be better to take flak for being vague than publicly offer half-formed details that might later have to be revised. And ambiguity, the officials concluded, would make the plan an easier sell on Capitol Hill, as congressional leaders could be brought into the discussions of details rather than be presented a detailed plan as fait accompli.
Right. Maybe Pelosi should write it. No point in trying to tell Congress what to do — let them tell us. That seems to be the worrisome approach of the early days of the Obama Administration.
