Sheila’s Bank
August 20th, 2008 by 
reality
Now that the taxpayers have bought FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair a bank, IndyMac, she is trying out her ideas on how to run a bank. At our expense, of course. Chiefly this seems to be a “pay what you can” policy for borrowers, sort of like a soup kitchen. Send in 38% of your income. Just another opportunity for fraud, in my view. Now the race will be on to understate incomes instead of overstate them.
The problem is that the FDIC is clearly settling in to run this bank indefinitely. As usual, the bureaucrats think they know better. Can we presume that the banking system will be stealthily nationalized, that is, as banks fail, they will become government agencies as IndyMac clearly has, vague talk of a future sale notwithstanding?
Edit: Further on this subject, Tanta at Calculated Risk:
If, as I fully expect, they don’t do any better at making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear than anyone else can, maybe Sheila Bair will quit pontificating about a subject that remains a lot harder than she thinks it is. That, too, we could all get behind.
Posted in Debt, Fixed Income, Government, Rogues and Rascals | 
August 20th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down
Tan me hide when I’m dead, Fred
Tan me hide when I’m dead
So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde
And that’s it hangin’ on the shed !!
(I’d like to tan that sheila’s hide ;-)
August 21st, 2008 at 6:31 pm
As we typically do in the commercial world, let’s review the track record of our gov’ts. It might provide a glimpse on how good of a banker a gang of gov’t employees will be:
Public education: D (especially based on value for the $)
Invading and overthrowing other countries who have done nothing to us: A+ (however, considering value for the dollar and cost of a human life: E—-)
Redistributing dollars from the top 10% earners to everyone else: A+
Roads and infrastructure: A-
Police: B
Managing their own budget: E- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Us_federal_spending(4).png. Now THAT’s a bubble.)
Curing diseases (NIH, NCI, etc): E (i don’t know of any successes)
Delivering the mail: ? (Why on earth do we have paper mail? Talk about carbon footprint.)
Creating laws and rules: A++
Enforcing laws and rules: C (However, great at enforcing parking and speeding tickets)
I can’t think of anything else.