November
10Obama’s New Think Tank
In Hollywood, whenever there’s a management upheaval, the “new guys” coming in seem strikingly similar to the “old guys” going out. The club is still intact.
Staring at President-elect Obama’s new crew of economic gurus, it seems many of them represent the same Wall Street crowd that got us into this mess. So here’s an unsolicited suggestion to the next President: Why not exercise a few restrictive criteria to keep out the crooks?
For example, anyone who ever had anything to do with selling things like synthetic collateralized debt obligations or who ever auctioned off credit default swap positions should be banned from the new economic think tank. Why not confine the new “in group” to those who actually dealt in legitimate financial instruments, like stocks and bonds, rather than inventing new products that no one really understood?
Every time I’ve looked into some esoteric new financing ploy that had a complicated name, the guys who created it also had names I couldn’t pronounce, like those two Merrill Lynch geniuses, Osman Semerci and Abmass Fakahany. Will they be on the Obama team?
So let’s keep it simple, Mr. President Elect: Appoint some serious businessmen and economists and keep out the financial hucksters with unpronounceable names.
Staring at President-elect Obama’s new crew of economic gurus, it seems many of them represent the same Wall Street crowd that got us into this mess. So here’s an unsolicited suggestion to the next President: Why not exercise a few restrictive criteria to keep out the crooks?
For example, anyone who ever had anything to do with selling things like synthetic collateralized debt obligations or who ever auctioned off credit default swap positions should be banned from the new economic think tank. Why not confine the new “in group” to those who actually dealt in legitimate financial instruments, like stocks and bonds, rather than inventing new products that no one really understood?
Every time I’ve looked into some esoteric new financing ploy that had a complicated name, the guys who created it also had names I couldn’t pronounce, like those two Merrill Lynch geniuses, Osman Semerci and Abmass Fakahany. Will they be on the Obama team?
So let’s keep it simple, Mr. President Elect: Appoint some serious businessmen and economists and keep out the financial hucksters with unpronounceable names.
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Peter, before you go say anything more about people having the wrong name, check out all those funny named fellow Jews you work with. I don''t believe you think only Smith and Jones are reliable names.
Posted by: mitchw | 11/12/2008 5:08:43 PM