I’m sold, as I think most people are, on the proposition that the collateral damage of the failure of major financial institutions is simply too great to allow. There seems to be a pretty clear consensus at this point that letting Lehmann fail in the way it did, for instance, was a category error. What’s not as clear to me is the public interest in maintaining the equity of the companies’ current shareholders.
Late Update: He’s not necessarily addressing the same point. But Krugman thinks the Citi deal blows.
Shorter Austen Goolsbee: We only have one president at a time. But Bush is hardly even being president at the moment. So there’s plenty of room for a big fraction of Obama starting now.
(ed.note: Not that I disagree.)
Obama announces the team of economic advisers he’ll use to plug the holes in the financial dike:
Bill Kristol was just on Fox sounding surprisingly sane.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty: “We have a divided government.”
Late Update: Here’s the full quote …
We have a divided government, we have a divided country facing an historic challenge, so hearing him out and trying to find some common ground is a good and worthy goal, but we need to see the details obviously and see what he has in mind
Set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission? Prosecute them all? Leave it Congress? Just forget about it and move on? This week at TPMCafe we’re discussing what to do about continuing secrets, lawlessness and law-breaking of the Bush administration. We’re focusing discussion around a new article out in the Washington Monthly, ‘Last Secrets of the Bush Administration: How to find out what we still don’t know‘.
Joining for the conversation are Scott Horton, New York attorney specializing in human rights law and the law of armed conflict, and regular contributor to Harper’s; Suzanne Spaulding, lawyer specializing in national security issues, including homeland security, intelligence, and terrorism; Daniel Larison, Ph.D student at the University of Chicago and host of the blog, Eunomia; Mickey Edwards, former congressman (R-OK), lecturer at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson school, and Vice President of the Aspen Institute; Anne Weismann, Chief Counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington; and finally, Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies.
You can join the conversation in progress here.
Fareed Zakaria: “Some of us–especially those under 60–have always wondered what it would be like to live through the kind of epochal event one reads about in books. Well, this is it. We’re now living history, suffering one of the greatest financial panics of all time. It compares with the big ones–1907, 1929–and we cannot yet know its full consequences for the financial system, the economy or society as a whole.”
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, less than a week after indicating he would let the Obama administration decide how to use the second half of the $700 billion financial fund, is considering asking for the money.
Another Obama press conference today at noon ET focused on the economy. That and the day’s other transition news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.