Steven Pearlstein: Gut Check

[babylonsister]

Gut Check

By Steven Pearlstein
Friday, September 26, 2008; Page D01


You're angry. I'm angry. House Republicans are angry. We're all angry at having to put up huge amounts of cash to rescue a financial system because a lot of very rich people rolled the dice with other people's money and lost.

Now let me tell you something very simple and very important: You can try to prevent a financial meltdown or you can teach Wall Street a lesson, but you can't do both at the same time.

So which will it be?

You say you want straight talk -- no spin, no bull, no sugar-coating. Okay, here goes.

First, stop fixating on Wall Street executives -- there will be time to deal with them later. Even if you clawed back every dime they made over the past decade, it would come to several billions of dollars. That's a rounding error compared with the size of the financial problem we're facing here.

Second, we need to act quickly. The financial situation is now downright scary. Don't look at the stock market -- that's not where the problem is. The problem is in the credit markets, which are quickly freezing. I won't bore you with technical indicators like Libor and Treasury swap spreads, but if you talk to people who work these markets every day, as I have, they report that the money markets are in worse shape than they were last August, or even during the currency crises of 1998.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092504311.html

[pnwmom]

1. Trust the same Treasury Secretary who helped get us into this mess?

Now he's going to get us out? Sorry, Pearlstein, we're not that dumb.

[babylonsister]

2. I posted this only because of Pearlstein's bio. Granted, opinions,

in this case, are like assholes. Everyone has one. Tweety complimented him recently on his performance on Charlie Rose, which I didn't see. :shrug:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pearlstein

Steven Pearlstein is an American columnist. He writes a column on business and the economy that is published twice weekly in The Washington Post. In 2008 Pearlstein received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "his insightful columns that explore the nation's complex economic ills with masterful clarity," at The Washington Post.<1><2>

Pearlstein was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts and graduated from Trinity College in 1973. He started out in journalism at the Concord Monitor and the Foster's Daily Democrat, in New Hampshire. He was the founding publisher and editor of The Boston Observer, a monthly journal of liberal opinion, and was a senior editor at Inc. magazine for two years. Pearlstein then joined The Washington Post, where he has served as deputy business editor. Pearlstein has also worked as a television news reporter at Boston’s public television station, WGBH-TV. During the late 1970s, he served as administrative assistant to U.S. Senator John A. Durkin and U.S. Representative Michael J. Harrington and was elected to the position of town moderator in West Newbury, Massachusetts. As of 2008 he lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Wendy Gray, and two children.<3> <4>