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Who Does Take Responsibility?
by James Glaser May 12, 2009 Can you even believe this? The White House Budget Director, a fellow by the name of Peter Orszag, said yesterday that the new $1.8 trillion dollar budget deficits are not President Obama's fault. He did admit that the budget was President Obama's budget, but the deficit spending in the budget wasn't the President's fault. Yes, President Obama did decide that because George Bush spent recklessly, he would have to spend recklessly, too, However, President Obama is only spending recklessly because George Bush made him. I guess the budget wasn't one of the changes President Obama was talking about when he was a candidate. Yesterday I wrote about how we should not trust what Washington tells us. It seems, when the White House did those stress tests on our biggest banks, they sort of played around with the numbers. According to the Wall Street Journal the banks were upset because the tests were going to be too tough. So, the White House and the Federal Reserve "used a different measurement of bank capital levels than analysts and investors had been expecting, resulting in much smaller capital deficits." It seems that analysts and investors were under the impression that these tests on the banks would be on the up and up. How silly of them. They did do the tests the right way, but when the banks heard of the results, "Bank of America, Citigroup Inc, and Wells Fargo were furious." When banks get furious with Washington, things have to change. So they changed the test, and low and behold the banks didn't do all that badly. Imagine that. |
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