Yesterday, I blogged on the possibility that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s TALF plan might be “all she wrote,” not only, or even primarily, because if he screws this up, Congress won’t give him another shot, but because he doesn’t plan another shot.
Paul Krugman touches on “risking trouble with Congress” angle, as part of his latest column, where he notes this is already the third time Geithner has floated warmed-over Paulsonism.
But, back to my original angle, taking Krugman a step further. Is Geithner simply deliberately regurgitating Paulson in different ways as “take it or leave it”?
I say yes.
More proof of that? The Paul Volcker-led Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board has yet to meet.
As Politico notes, this group was originally going to meet every few weeks. Then, it got shoved back to monthly. Then very few weeks. Now, it’s quarterly… but, we’re almost through the first quarter of this year!
And, if they’re meeting in private, it’s apparently in violation of federal open meetings law. (Not that that would surprise me; I think the Obama Administration is quickly proving to be almost as unsurprising in a mix of mendacity and hubris as BushCo was.)
That said, I’ll give you one guess as to who is stiffing the group; this time, his initials aren’t Tim Geithner; they’re Larry Summers.
On TALF itself, Krugman wraps up his latest column by saying Obama is “squandering his credibility.”
He’s lucky Bush was his predecessor, or he’d really look bad.
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