The Crisis Last Time

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THE Federal Reserve chairman and senior economic officials of the Bush administration solemnly filed into the large conference room of the Treasury Department. There was a sense of urgency, an understanding that drastic action — restructuring the financial landscape of corporate America — was desperately needed.

Last week? Last night, as the president and his advisers prepared for his address to the nation? Hardly. It was Feb. 22, 2002. The officials were President Bush’s original economic team, including the Securities and Exchange Commission’s chairman, Harvey Pitt; Glenn Hubbard, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers; and the senior White House economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey. The Federal Reserve chairman, of course, was Alan Greenspan.

The crisis of that moment was the implosion of Enron, Global Crossing and other companies. Along with conflicts of interest and criminally creative bookkeeping, the culprit was often a combination of financial complexity and insanely expensive compensation packages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/opinion/25suskind.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin