Fine op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times, entitled "The Dilbert Strategy," by Times columnist Paul Krugman. We incorporate Krugman's lead paragraphs below:
Anyone who has worked in a large organization — or, for that matter, reads the comic strip “Dilbert” — is familiar with the “org chart” strategy. To hide their lack of any actual ideas about what to do, managers sometimes make a big show of rearranging the boxes and lines that say who reports to whom.The full NYT article is available here.
You now understand the principle behind the Bush administration’s new proposal for financial reform, which will be formally announced today: it’s all about creating the appearance of responding to the current crisis, without actually doing anything substantive.
Just for kicks, we link a powerpoint tutorial transmitted to us a few weeks ago by one of our gentle readers, revealing in a nutshell the chain of causation that resulted in the current investment banking financial mess. As the presentation makes clear, there's plenty of blame to go around, running from the borrowers who signed for the bogus loans, right up to the investment bankers who underwrote the hokey mortgage backed securities (many AAA rated) that have fouled investment portfolios all around the world.
Warning to our gentle readers: The power point presentation contains language which some might deem to be a mite "earthy." No problem, we think. We're all grownups here @ Weber County Forum... right?
So far none of the "players" who participated in this giant world-economy shaking scam are regulated in any meaningful way under the latest Bush administration "plan"; and under the Bush "Dilbert Strategy," the entire investment banking financial edifice depends, even now, upon the continuing “market discipline" which was so woefully lacking in the first place.
In our view, the real gist of the plan is to bail out unregulated investment banks one by one, as the whole house of cards continues to tumble... at taxpayer expense, of course.
Hyper-inflation here we come.
And what say our gentle readers about all this?
5 comments:
Neil Bush gave us the S&L scandal, Dubbya just did him one better. This is what happens when government goes too far in the direction of deregulation, and now we have to depend on the same government to solve the problem?
The PowerPoint presentation was fraking brilliant!
The power point is just like Godfrey and it will soon hit the city with a ton of bricks and he will walk all the way to the bank laughing at the people that voted for him.
The presentation was very accurate, but forgot the slide where the bankers get a regulation change so they can carry their can of garbage that no one will buy at full value on their books, thanks to a rule change. That way they don't have to declare bankruptcy, even though that's what they are.
They also forgot the slide where the broker paid himself billions for thinking up the scam, and the money he gave the politicians to let him do it then bail him out with taxpayer money afterwards.
BTW, the mentioned rule change (to let banks carry their garbage at full value on their books) was made by the government. The private board, FASB, did not suggest or approve this change.
So those who look to government regulation as the save-all should consider their view some.
Chaos on Wall Street
Googleboy:
Thanks for the link on the Sloan article. I generally like his commentary on such matters, since he speaks plain English, not Accountingese...an arcane tongue that combines to less intelligible features of Gobbldegook, Welsh, and the Wit and Wisdom of G. Bush.
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