You Don’t Get a Vote!

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Written by James Kwak

June 15, 2009 at 12:48 am

Barack Obama came to office as the conciliator, the bipartisanizer, the anti-Bush. But this is going too far.

The administration’s style has been to float policy proposals in public, listen to the responses (from other politicians, from the private sector, and from the blogs that Obama does not read), and adjust accordingly. When it comes to the financial regulation proposal that Tim Geithner is scheduled to deliver on Thursday, there may be little left after all the adjusting.

We heard last week that the initial plans to consolidate regulatory agencies have been scrapped, with the exception of closing the hapless Office of Thrift Supervision. Now The New York Times has a story that is ostensibly about the feud between John Dugan, the Comptroller of the Currency (and regulator of many large national banks), and Sheila Bair, head of the FDIC, but is also about the compromises that have dictated the administration’s regulatory plan.

You Don’t Get a Vote! « The Baseline Scenario

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