White House Photo by Eric Draper – a really good guy (Eric, that is)
This photograph really has nothing to do with what I’m thinking about today, other than it shows the President of the United States at an empty counter (probably due to security, not lack of business, I hope) in San Antonio. I know that this guy (Bush) cares – I’ve seen it with my own eyes – but I’m also deeply troubled by the lack of leadership in this country.
Two stories have struck a nerve with me today. One involves a man in Los Angeles who has killed himself, his family and his mother-in-law because of despondency over financial troubles.
Either that story is a harbinger of things to come; or, it is another isolated story which has been blown out of proportion by the media. We’ll have to wait and see. You can read about this unfortunate incident in California here.
So, while we have at least one family dead on the West Coast because of financial problems, we have a dearth of leadership in Washington, DC. The finger-pointing and blame game is in full throttle.
Can anyone tell me of any story, article, news cast that has concisely, logically and reasonably explained the pros-and-cons of letting failing institutions fail? Can anyone tell me of any story, article, news cast that has objectively talked about the failings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and what caused those failings? I didn’t think so. If you have a link, send it to me and I’ll gladly post it.
So what do we have in Washington? Insane finger-pointing.
Read a few of these lines from the top story Lehman executives seeking (and receiving) huge payouts while they knew Lehman was failing. These lines are reported from the Associated Press and its coverage of a congressional hearing about the collapse of Lehman Brothers:
The panel unearthed internal documents showing that on Sept. 11, Lehman planned to approve “special payments” worth $18.2 million for two executives who were terminated involuntarily, and another $5 million for one who was leaving on his own.
That was just four days before the government let Lehman go under, touching off a cascading series of financial shocks and failures that put Washington on track for the multibillion-dollar rescue the Bush administration urgently requested from Congress at the end of that week.
Mad yet? Read on about Lehman’s CEO and his (seems to me, anyway) very appropriate question:
Also haunting him, Fuld said, is the question of why Lehman didn’t get a federal rescue while others did: Bear Stearns, the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and insurance giant American International Group Inc.
Good question, huh?
More good questions to follow, plus a great example of the finger-pointing that will, undoubtedly, help us ignore the real issue – the lack of leadership in Washington:
Republicans dismissed the hearing as little more than a political stunt given that it failed to probe the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — huge players in the mortgage market — in the financial meltdown.
“If you haven’t discovered your role today, you’re the villain, so you have to act like the villain,” Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., told Fuld facetiously, earning a tight smile.
In a statement, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the House minority leader, accused Waxman of refusing to investigate the mortgage giants “solely to shield his fellow Democrats politically,” and said it “cheats the American people of key facts that could help all of us learn how we got here — and what we must do to make certain this situation never repeats itself.”
Ah, politics at its best. You can read the full story here.
Leadership. That’s what we really need.
May God have mercy on that family in California.
