Remember, when a private company wants to cover up billions in losses and the responsibility for them, that’s a major scandal and proof of the evils of capitalism. But when a government regulator does the same thing, that’s just how people are, these things happen, whaddyagonnado? Plus, more evidence that the country’s in the very best of hands:
After the companies were taken over, investors around the world who buy the companies’ debt and mortgage investments weren’t willing to pay top dollar, reflecting doubts about whether the U.S. government would stand behind the firms if they faltered further. As a result, mortgage rates initially rose, further depressing house prices, contrary to what the government intended when it took over the firms.
Then, earlier this month Freddie Mac lost its chief executive, longtime banker David Moffett, who joined the company at the government’s behest in September. He clashed with government regulators who pushed him to take steps that would forgo revenue opportunities. Freddie Mac is now looking for a new chief executive, chief operating officer and chief financial officer — and having trouble finding them.
Gee, why would a business that the government has taken over and mismanaged have trouble recruiting
fall guyssenior executives in this political climate?
I think that Liddy missed a big opportunity to have a McCarthy-hearing style moment, after having to take all that Bravo Sierra from the anal orifices on the Hill who really caused the crisis because they were on the take, after taking a thankless job for one dollar a year. He could have castigated them for their own roles, and resigned, with an “At last, Senator, have you no decency?” He’d have been my hero if he had, and I suspect a lot of people would have agreed.
Well, as the link on InstaP right above this one notes, vindictive people tend to have fewer friends, earn less money, and experience more erectile dysfunction. (I quote from memory.)
Unfortunately, the way the world works is that people who are reasonable (1) don’t fight City Hall and (2) don’t cooperate with dickheads and (3) do the best jobs.
What that means is that, as a rule, braying asses tend not to hear pushback from people in a position to call bullshit on them. Those people — the reasonable people — just pull a mini-Galt and vanish, leaving the braying ass furious at the amazing incompetence of the help he can hire, relative to the help his more reasonable predecessors could hire.
Then he goes on a crusade against the hidden wreckers and saboteurs…the usual Stalinist script.
Case in point? The difficulty Obama and Geithner are having staffing Treasury. Looks to me like no reasonable and competent person wants to work for these fools. But, of course, no such person is also suicidal enough to take a very public stand saying so, and explaining why. The satisfaction of shoving the job in their face doesn’t match up with the downside, particularly in today’s somewhat hysterical Obama-worshipping atmosphere.
I mean, really, there are most definitely places of business where you risk your job if you let fly with a critical comment about The One. It does feel rather like the idolatory of Dear Leader you get so often in fascist states.
” As a result, mortgage rates initially rose, further depressing house prices, contrary to what the government intended when it took over the firms.”
government policy should not be to make house prices
rise. Government policy should be neutral towards
housing prices. fundamentally that is the flaw in the
policy. If prices reverted to mean, more people would
buy houses and be able to afford them. The problem is
the price fall would bankrupt every wall streeter and
Greenspan and Bernanke don’t want that.