ON SELF-DESTRUCTIVE RAGE (Part 2)

FOLLOW THE LEADER...NOT

Joe Nocera of the New York Times more eloquently expresses the concerns I outlined yesterday with the efforts by Congress to apply a 90% tax on bonuses to employees of TARP recipients.  He captures exactly how I felt at the end of this unbelievable week with these words:

"By week’s end, I was more depressed about the financial crisis than I’ve been since last September. Back then, the issue was the disintegration of the financial system, as the Lehman bankruptcy set off a terrible chain reaction.

Now I’m worried that the political response is making the crisis worse. The Obama administration appears to have lost its grip on Congress, while the Treasury Department always seems caught off guard by bad news.

And Congress, with its howls of rage, its chaotic, episodic reaction to the crisis, and its shameless playing to the crowds, is out of control. This week, the body politic ran off the rails.

There are times when anger is cathartic. There are other times when anger makes a bad situation worse. “We need to stop committing economic arson,” Bert Ely, a banking consultant, said to me this week. That is what Congress committed: economic arson."

He goes on to make a thoughtful case why this path is very wrong for all our interests, regardless of how angry we may be at AIG executives.

The whole piece is recommended in it's entirety, even if you think Congress is doing the right thing. 

And if you think it makes any sense at all, please, please, write your representative in Congress, and tell them not to walk us all off a cliff.

Comments

[Nathan Ketsdeve]

Nocera's words are "rhetorical arson"....or perhaps more properly rhetorical maltov cocktail. Lets hope not, for our collective economic welfare.