Oratorical Animal

Eyes that fail to see; Ears that fail to hear

It is rare when a public debate that so consumes the nation has so little to do with the national welfare. At present, the United States runs the risk of blowing through its debt ceiling because a portion of the House Republicans, representing a minority of the American people, refuses to negotiate in good faith for a solution. In a larger sense, however, this is the wrong debate at the wrong time in the wrong nation.

The United States still suffers from the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. Better than 9% of those still looking for work are unemployed and the real unemployment rate is well over that. The Great Recession has hurt the prospects of all Americans, but, as the NYT reported the other day, it has hit Latinos and African Americans particularly hard. 

Unlike previous postwar recessions, this is a financial collapse. Most households accumulated high levels of debt in the past twenty years--to compensate for the lack of any real rise in median income over the past 30 years--and do not feel free to spend until they work debt down to manageable proportions. The president, to give him some credit, understood the problem and sought to fill the demand gap with the economic stimulus. Unfortunately, it was too small and too weighted toward tax cuts. So, it didn't possess the potential to generate the demand needed and what demand it could create was lowered by the fact that people too often bank tax cuts rather than spending the funds. Plus, heavy cuts at the state and local level counteracted federal spending. The president also, to his credit, pursued other policies, particularly help for the auto industry, that paid major dividends for the economy, meaning that it is in significantly better shape than it would have been otherwise. But it's still not good.

Equally important, although most news organizations fail to cover foreign economic news, the rest of the world is currently facing serious problems. Even as Republicans needlessly risk the nation's credit rating, the Euro Zone stares into a serious financial abyss. Unwilling to restructure any debt, it seems, the policies of the European Central Bank--and Germany/France in addition--threaten to create financial catastrophe. Nations such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy find themselves struggling to stay in the euro, looking at decades of austerity because they cannot devalue their currency in order to become more competitive on the world market and grow out of recession, as, for instance, Britain did in the early 90s. No "rescue" package for these nations or the euro has done the job. The interest rate spread between Italian and German bonds is, this morning, as bad as it was before the most recent effort. By the by, it is delusional to think that the peoples of these nations will not eventually look to more political, more radical solutions to their problems, given that they have had almost no say in current policy. And, of course, three of the four BRIC nations (Brazil, India, China)--who have driven what world recovery there is--are now seeking to slow economic growth in the face of mounting inflation. In short, the world economy is in serious trouble.

Any rational set of American policymakers, as even that center right bastion of economic advice,  The Economist argues, would nurse the present recovery through short term stimulus (aid to states is my favorite--it gets spent on important stuff and prevents state cuts from balancing federal spending) and develop medium and long term plans to bring the debt down gradually as good times take hold. Instead, Washington obsesses over cuts to the budget at a time of weakness. This is ridiculous. Again, The Economist (its Economics focus columnist): "In a recent study of 173 fiscal-policy changes in rich countries from 1978 to 2009, economists from the IMF found that cutting a country's budget deficit by 1% of GDP typically reduces real output by about two-thirds of a percentage point and raises the unemployment rate by 1/3 of a percentage point." Small percentages, but bad numbers in terms of real money and people, at a time when we're alreadyy suffering. Surprisingly, it seems, contractionary fiscal policy contracts the economy.

Nothing better illustrates the complete disconnect between the capital of a nation and its people than this present debate. Those in Congress, commenting in the media, working in the bureaucracy, issuing reports from think tanks--they have good jobs, with health benefits. They've convinced themselves that only debt matters. More important, it seems, they all know only each other and cannot seem quite able to imagine the distress in the rest of the country. They talk to each other, listen to each other, dine with each other, golf with each other, and gossip about each other, including our ostensibly Democratic president. It is a perfect example of groupthink; it's liable to work as well as it always does. And, as in Europe, if the leaders of presumed "democracies" fail to address the problems suffered by their peoples, then they are likely to turn to more potent alternatives.

Classical Obama

President Obama's speech yesterday makes me wonder yet again whether he spends his spare time with Sharon Crowley and Debbie Hawhee. Four factors interested me about this speech.

First, the president again reveals his love of order--the speech is classically organized. He opens with his exordium, emphasizing that he'll discuss the "kind of future we want...and the kind of country we believe in." These are powerful incentives to listen. He then turns to his narratio, a brief survey of American history and, more particularly, US history since 1980 (more on this later). That's followed by a statement of significance which leads into his refutatio, or his dismissal of the Republican plan. The confirmatio, or statement of his case and plan follows, and he closes with his peroratio. It might seem unusual to engage in refutation before confirmation, but, given the publicity accorded to Representative Paul Ryan's budget plan, Obama's choice to undermine it before proposing his own course makes sense. He needed to clear room on the public agenda. All in all, the classical lines of the oration make sense of the formless, buzzing debate that preceded his appearance and, given the power embodied by the president's role as the nation's chief storyteller (as Mary Stuckey put it), he sets the ground on which the subsequent argument will proceed.

Second, Obama also again reveals his love of history. The narratio begins with "our first days as a nation" and tells the tale of a nation whose citizens are "rugged individualists," but who also believe "that we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together as a nation." From there, Obama offers a strong defense of liberal government--a conviction that while individuals act in their own interests, the nation, through its elected representatives, makes investments in the commons--a strong military, schools, universities, roads, bridges--that benefit all. Simultaneously, American also beleieve that "each one of us deserves some basic measure of security." Accidents, illness, simple bad luck can short circuit our efforts and so we make those commitments to each other--a social compact.

Two strategies of note here. Initially, Obama assumes the role of narrator, a trick he undoubtedly picked up from President Reagan. As the narrator of American history, the president rises above politics and merely tells the story of our growth as a nation. Then, he weaves this social compact into our history, legitmating it through that tale and through the authority of Lincoln (cited here).

From there, the narratio turns to the contemporary era and gains a sharper edge. Democrats and Republicans brought the deficit under control, he argues, and the country was "in great shape by the year 2000." But "we lost our way in the decade that followed." Obama graciously claims Democrats and Republicans messed up, but the implicit argument is clear--the very same Republicans who wish to shred the social compact now created the problem during the Bush Administration. Much like Lincoln's Second Inaugural, in which the culpability for the civil war clearly rests with the south in the first part of the speech, despite protestations to the contrary, so Obama's speech makes clear where the blame lies.

Third, then, that leads naturally into the refutatio, a stronger than expected condemnation of the Ryan plan as a radical departure from the American way. Again, two helpful strategies. The initial grounding of Obama's position in a seemingly nonpartisan account of American hsitory, one generally acceptable to most Americans, authorizes him to condemn Ryan's plan as "deeply pessimistic," as "not right," as "not a vision of the America I know." Next, a large amount of evidence--statistics, authority evidence, reluctant testimony ("As Ronald Reagan's own budget director said, there's nothing 'serious' or 'courageous' about this plan.") ground the argument and justify Obama's rejection of Ryan.

Equally important, perhaps, Obama's direct assault on the language used to (wrongly) describe Ryan and his plan--the serious, courageous stuff--clearly provoked the representative, there at the president's invitation. As a result, Ryan threw a hissy fit after the speech, relying on no evidence, argument, or history to condemn shrilly Obama's effort. In other words, his response nicely verified Obama's characterization of him as a radical.

Finally, I've become increasingly interested in Obama's allusions to Bill Clinton. In 1996, for instance, Clinton famously said in his State of the Union (my imperfect memory): "The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to a past when Americans were left to fend for themselves." Obama puts front and center those Americans who will be damaged by the Republican plan and concludes, "These are the Americans we'd be telling to fend for themselves." Like Clinton at the 2004 DNC, Obama uses himself as an example of the wealthy 2% who do not need more tax cuts. Near the end, in the peroratio he positions himself between those who say "we shouldn't even consider raising taxes" and those who "say that we shouldn't even talk about cutting spending until the economy is fully recovered" in a manner akin to Clinton. I'm not quite sure where I want to go with this observation, but it's clear where Obama is getting at least some of his plays.

This was a good speech, but it's likely to be more important down the road. Obama has exerted the power of the presieency to define the debate in these terms; this is why it's tough to get into this sort of fight with a president. He'll keep hammering at these definitions until Paul Ryan's handsome young mug morphs seamlessly and gracefully into the scowling, bloated face of Newt. Of course, Newt's likely to help that process along!

Alexander Hamilton loved him some big guvmint

Former Majority Leader, current lobbyist, and de facto head of the Tea Party Movement, Texan Dick Armey, came to Washington a few days ago. He extolled the Founders at the National Press Club, wondering why liberals had abandoned the wisdom of the Federalist Papers. That's when the fun started:

A member of the audience passed a question to the moderator, who read it to Armey: How can the Federalist Papers be an inspiration for the tea party, when their principal author, Alexander Hamilton, “was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central government”?

Historian Armey was flummoxed by this new information. “Widely regarded by whom?” he challenged, suspiciously. “Today’s modern ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that was the case in fact about Hamilton.”

Oh my. There's not much that can be said here except: 1) The new Texas school board standards have evidently already come into effect; and 2) One suspects that Alex would have treated Tea Partiers with the same loving respect he offered to the Whiskey Rebellion. Look it up, Dick. 

Nobeling Goldman, Sachs

As I've mentioned here before, I have a peculiar interest in economics, despite my complete lack of any numerical competence. They awarded the Nobel Prize in economics this week. For the first time in its history, a woman, Dr. Elinor Ostrom, of Indiana University won the prize. She shared the honor with Dr. Oliver E. Williamson of California, Berkeley. Hooray! to both.

A couple of things struck me about this award. First, neither winner is technically an economist. Williamson teaches in a school of business while Ostrom is a political scientist. The NYT article that I linked to above, in fact, introduced them as "two American social scientists" and Robert Shiller of Yale had a nice comment: "This award is part of the merging of the social sciences. Economics has been too isolated and too stuck on the view that markets are efficient and self-regulating. It has derailed our thinking." Indeed--in his interview, Williamson takes a nice little shot at Alan Greenspan, always a good thing.

Second, both winners studied institutional economics, the effect that, duh, institutions and social structures have on economic activity. Here at the Dept. of Comm Illinois, we had a reading group last year (in addition to our rhetorical studies group; we're a beehive of intellectual activity) on institutional research and the ways in which the NYT and other sources explain Ostrom's work, in particular, sounds a bit familiar.

She studies what I would call the normative and regulative rules that govern institution formation when people confront a "commons"--a shared resource that a number of people have an interest in preserving. In other words, what values and behaviors evolve to maintain a resource that provides a living for the people concerned? Her work seems to skip from one side of the political aisle to another. Internal norms, she argues, work better than external rules in such situations. Let parties come up with their solutions rather than impose government regulations. But the old market theory example of the "tragedy of the commons" (that greedy individuals will destroy a shared resource and it should be sold to self-interested private owners) is also wrong. Cooperative behavior evolves to preserve the resource, she argues. An institution, shared sets of rules for common beliefs and actions, emerges and the resource is preserved.

Which is quite cool. Except for the column that appears on the same page, detailing the ways in which Goldman, Sachs intends to cock a snook at American taxpayers. The semi-private economic giant, which appears to run the Treasury Department, New Jersey, and the Democratic Party on the side, is setting aside more than $23 billion for its annual bonus pool--the largest in its history and more than twice the size of its 2008 pool.

Please recall three pertinent facts. First, the government bailed out Goldman to the tune of $10 billion last year. GS paid that money back and claimed it was unnecessary, but somehow liked the very public govt. endorsement received at the time. Second, the government allowed GS to reorganize as a bank holding company which, in turn, offers it cheap financing. Finally, given those two events, GS is now implicitly backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America. So, when it takes the chances it takes, it knows it's not going to be allowed to fail. Heads, GS wins. Tails, taxpayers lose. All the thrill of rooting for the house in Vegas or the Yankees in the playoffs. But highly profitable. For GS employees.

I understand that Dr. Ostrom researches "relatively small forests in undeveloped countries." But I'd sure like to turn her loose on Goldman, Sachs and come up with some way to preserve our commons and give those people a conscience. Sadly, that may require a Nobel in genetic engineering.

Smart presidents are useful

There's been a bit of a kerfluffle lately about President Obama. He wants information. He seems to understand that information. Paul Krugman, for instance, put up this lovely item in which a reporter not only criticized the president for being too smart, but also got the economics wrong. In fact, as Krugman points out, Obama was asking for important information, not trivia. These sorts of stories cause me to have two responses.

First, despite the distinguished journalists and journalism teachers in my beloved's family, I still wonder if aspiring journalists should simply take a broad liberal arts curriculum. The above doof might then have recognized and understood what the president wanted and why it was useful.

Second, when journalists are intimidated by a president's brains, this is the narrative arc. They cannot say, "Smart is good" because then "everyone" will call them elitist. Smart is not good in the United States. So, the president is "overly concerned" with detail. He gets "bogged down" with minutia. Since Nixon went bad, the three smartest presidents have been Carter, Clinton, and Obama (All Democrats. Coincidence? Hmmmm.). All three faced this storyline--too much detail, no big picture, too consumed with trivia, too worried about those pesky "facts."

Bigfoot journalists HATE it when they know a president is smarter than them and when that president knows he is smarter than them. This story began last year with some mutterings about eggheads and Adlai Stevenson. It is accelerating now because, I think, the president has taught himself and been taught to understand the intricacies of the economy and health care even as many journalists have claimed that both issues are simply too complicated for "people" to understand. When the president's every public appearance demonstrates that these issues aren't too hard, the journalists look like fools.

It might be better for all of us if some of these people did less talking and more learning.   

The Dismal Humanity

My favorite course during my freshman year at Bradley was the mass lecture macroeconomics class taught by Kal Goldberg. He was a wonderful teacher. In retrospect, I deeply admire his evident goal: He wanted to create informed citizens, not professional economists. Unfortunately, I thought it was so cool that I became temporarily deranged and took other econ classes, all of which I loathed (except for American Economic History) and some of which I dropped. At any rate, I've remained oddly intrigued by the economy and by macroeconomic theory, with books like this, for instance, on my shelves.

I also subscribe to The Economist, in spite of its occasionally, um, idiosyncratic take on American politics. But it's generally been very good on the economic crisis and a recent report on macroeconomic theory and scholarship was particularly intriguing to a geek like me.

It's all worth reading, but one argument about argument caught my eye. The essay notes that my favorite contemporary pundit/economist Paul Krugman has, during the current downturn, argued from history. The paper tellingly notes, "In the humanities this would count as routine scholarship. But to many high-tech economists it is a bit undignified. Real scientists, after all, do not leaf through Newton’s “Principia Mathematica” to solve contemporary problems in physics."

Yep, that's pretty much it exactly. It's not only that Krugman (and Brad DeLong) are liberals. It's that they argue in ways that make sense to me and in the public sphere--they refer to past experience and note that we have, in effect, lost the wisdom of the ancients. This is a humanistic, prudential mode of argument--even conservative, in some ways. We learn from the past and apply its wisdom--carefully and flexibly, of course--to changed but similar circumstances.

Yet it tends to be the political conservatives who now argue from technocratic or mathematical premises, asserting that their computer models prove that people make rational choices or that government can't affect markets or, technically speaking, of course, create a job. The real world must mkatch their theories. 

I'm not sure that mathematical models offer a competitive mode of argument--they never quite worked for liberals in the past--but I know about my personal response. I am a humanist--and there's evidently a reason beyond ideology for my acceptance of Paul Krugman's arguments. Of course, he can do the math. As the Nobel committee realized. 

Back to the Future with TR and Woody

An article on the front page of the Times today reminds me again that the past is not dead--it's not even past. The article notes that private equity firms ("Low life grave dancers" as one of them calls himself) are circling slowly and happily over the struggling, dying bodies of many banks in the country. Yet the Federal Reserve Board forbids such firms from taking control of banks. Yes, the firms have a lot of private capital they could inject into struggling banks. But these not-so-tiny dancers are among the riskiest players in the financial world. The Fed doesn't want to set the stage for the next financial meltdown in the name of solving this one. It's also easy to imagine one of the firms becoming "too big to fail": a private equity firm that becomes a bank that becomes a key player that becomes a lynchpin of the system...Well, one can guess where this goes. Into my pocket.

It ties in a bit with the arguments I've read concerning compensation limits. If we don't allow, say, Goldman Sachs to pay big salaries with taxpayer money, then the "talent" that drove it into the ground will look elsewhere--one article I can't find now, but recall, argues that smaller boutique firms are stealing away this talent. My initial reaction? Good. Because those firms won't be too big to fail. Lots of little firms will be better for us than too few big firms that we'll have to save from their own "expertise." But, I wonder to myself, can little firms be competitive in a globalized world? Should we just regulate the hell out of the big ones, make banking boring again, as Paul Krugman argues?

My argument with myself rehearses, as many liberals are beginning to rehearse (often without knowing it) a debate that dates back at least to the Progressive movement. We've been here before.

On the one hand, TR and others claimed that, in a modern world, companies and banks needed to grow, become large enough to move effectively in a mass society. Yet that very size posed a threat to the social and political order. So, the New Nationalism argued, government, the one entity potentially big enough and tough enough to master the Leviathan corporation, should become active. No more laissez faire. The government, most often in the form of an extremely active president, should step into the fray, encouraging corporate growth when it benefited the public and shooting corporate big game when it abused its privileges. Some wondered whether TR possessed the wisdom to make that distinction. He did not so wonder.

On the other hand, Woodrow Wilson and others said that big was inherently bad. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If a corporation or a bank got big enough to suit the purposes of John D. Rockfeller or J.P. Morgan, then it was bad. So, the New Freedom argued, bust them up. Attack big corporations and make sure that they could never threaten the body politic. Make them transparent as well. At a certain size, they inherently corrupted political life. They could not be allowed to obtain such influence.

In practice, TR busted trusts and Wilson regulated, but their respective emphases were clear. FDR tried both approaches. The first New Deal allowed monopolies (encouraged them, in fact) in an effort to put floors under prices in the face of deflation. Cartels were useful, they thought. The Supreme Court disagreed. Louis Brandeis, the Wilsonian justice, reportedly told Tommy the Cork Corcoran that all of you clever young men should leave Washington and go back to the states, fight the good fight there. Big was bad.

The second New Deal attacked big business. FDR ran for reelection in 1936 with some of the most vitriolic language seen in American politics: "And we know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred." Stomp them and break up their businesses. Make them negotiate with labor. Make sure they knew who truly ran the country.

World War II simmered things down and ushered in the era of the Grand Bargain--Big Labor, Big Government and Big Business negotiated things out. "Countervailing powers," as John Kenneth Galbraith put it, checked and balanced each other in the economic arena just as Fed #10 said they should in the political arena. The Reagan era ended that.

And, so the debate recurs again in liberal circles. As we seek to set out a new financial structure, what is the choice? Is big inherently bad? Can government power check corporate power or will it always be corrupted or captured by that power? Obama faces those same arguments.

Upon This Rock

President Obama's economic address is a lovely speech. Yes, I know, that assessment is getting old. But if he keeps giving excellent speeches, then I have to keep giving him As. It's an odd relationship--good product=good evaluation--that many undergraduates never quite grasp. Some highlights:

*This is a speech for adults. It is long, careful, and clear. With one notable exception (see below) it offers good reasons for Obama's policies--reasons rooted in principled and practical concerns. It calls for an adult response. Tea parties won't cut it. Obama has spoken on the day before a temper tantrum to offer his opponents the chance to deliberate. He has represented their arguments with considerably more grace than one might expect, given their vitriol toward him, and he has refuted their claims. It is their time to respond. They need to follow his example by treating Americans--and themselves, for that matter--as adults. It's easier to be a Beck, Hannity, or Limbaugh. It's not so good for democracy.

*Obama nicely uses time as a rhetorical resource. On one level, he uses chronology to structure the speech, thus representing the economic crisis and his response to it as we experienced the economic crisis and his response. As a result of that structure and of his authoritative position as president, he crafts our interpretation of those events. They happen in the speech as we experienced them in the world; that congruency grants authority to his interpretation. He cannot represent events in a speech as fully and completely as they occurred--no one can--but his highlights become our history, at least until someone displaces them. That's the lovely advantage built into chronology. 

On a second level, he shapes his response to these events as timely; that is, he uses the traditional rhetorical principle of kairos--his sensitivity to the moment, the notion of speaking and acting at just the right moment to influence events. Thus, this moment calls for government spending to restore demand because so many families and businesses are doing precisely the opposite at this moment. We're hoarding; the government is spending. If the government joined in the hoarding, disaster would result.

Finally, that last line ties in with a third timing strategy, the locus of the irreparable--the notion that if we do not act now, we reach a tipping point, a moment of no return. Most often seen in environmental arguments (think of global warming arguments), the strategy works particularly well as Obama argues for his long term plans. If we don't act, even in spite of the obstacles, we will have no future. So, just as a family will cut back on luxuries in bad times, but still invest in their child's college education, so, too, will Obama cut back on wasteful defense spending and invest in alternative energy. His analogy, by the by. The guy also makes good use of analogy.

*For the most part, the speech is nicely argued; one could use the Toulmin model (a claim supported by evidence with a warrant, or accepted reasons, connecting the two) to chart these arguments. The one exception is revealing; it concerns his banking plan. Paul Krugman, among others, criticizes Obama's bailout plan as inadequate and argues we need to take over and liquidate zombie banks, much as the FDIC does on a regular basis. Critics have also noted the strong ties the Administration has to Wall Street and claimed that is the reason why Obama hasn't taken over or nationalized some banks. After recounting that argument and denying the undue influence charge, Obama says, "Rather, it is because we believe that preemptive government takeovers are likely to end up costing taxpayers even more in the end, and because it is more likely to undermine than to create confidence. Governments should practice the same principle as doctors: first do no harm." A lovely claim supported by a common maxim, but where, pray tell, is the reasoning or evidence? Does the FDIC cost taxpayers too much or undermine confidence? Why? How? If this is the best an orator as skilled as Obama can do with the bailout, it's time for a new bailout plan.

*Obama went for the big finish. I have not watched, only read, the speech, but it's been a while since he's composed a finish comprised of equal parts the Gospels (the house on a rock), King (a vision of America's future in which we're "teeming" and "humming"--its not a Dream, but close. Although the verbs make me feel somewhat like a bee), JFK (We will not finish it in one year or even many--All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days), and, elliptically, FDR--through the Kennedy quotation and through the timing of the speech--a 100 day report card, as it were.

*Finally, note the unity. Everything he has done ties to everything else, from the stimulus to the budget to foreign policy to health care to entitlement reform...Everything has a place and everything is in its place. Which is very reassuring. Particularly to people who looooove structure in their lives. Not that I'd name names. 

Where Have You Gone, Dwight D. Eisenhower?

For weeks, House Republicans criticized President Obama because his budget ran large deficits for a number of years. For weeks, they offered no alternative. Last week, they offered an alternative. They released a budget---with no numbers. Really. No numbers. If it seemed they could get no sillier, well, you don't know your House Republicans.

Today, they released some numbers. Their budget deficits looked pretty much as bad as Obama's--until you looked at the fine print. Then they looked worse. Why?

Republicans are again proposing a gigantic tax cut for the wealthy. Only they're making it "voluntary." That's right. Uh-huh. Voluntary. When they tote up their deficit numbers, they assume that wealthy people will refuse their tax cut. Turn it down. No tax cut for me. So, the deficits look smaller.

Honestly. They believe that wealthy people will turn down a tax cut. Just as they did their AIG bonuses, I suppose. House Republicans want to cut taxes and lower the deficit. It appears that's only possible if you make the tax cut voluntary. So, they did.

Never, ever misunderestimate the sheer cynical stupidity of House Republicans.

For the Sake of Change

On September 3, 1780, Alexander Hamilton, then a twenty-nothing aide to General Washington, wrote a long letter to Congressman James Duane delineating the "changes necessary to save us from ruin." The American Revolution was not going well ("Without a speedy change, the army must dissolve; it is now a mob, rather than an army, without cloathing, without pay, without provision, without morals, without discipline; we have become the University of Illinois on Unofficial St. Patrick's Day") and young Hamilton knew exactly what one and all should do to solve the problems. Seven thousand words made that clear.

Near the end, he confidently noted, "There are epochs in human affairs, when novelty even is useful. If a general opinion prevails that the old way is bad, whether true or false, and this obstructs or relaxes the operation of the public service, a change is necessary if it be for the sake of change. This is exactly the case now. 'Tis a universal sentiment that our present system is a bad one, and that things do not go right on this account." 

I think that's what Matt Yglesias nicely identifies here. I do not pretend to possess a level of expertise that would allow me to judge the Geithner plan for saving the financial system. As a good citizen, I've tried to read the debate and understand the issues, but they occasionally--more than occasionally--surpasseth my economic expertise.

But I am a student of rhetoric. I know that "novelty even" is a powerful rhetorical device. A "general opinion prevails" that our present system is bad. On too many levels, from the outline of the plan, as Paul Krugman notes, to those who staff the Obama Administration's economic positions (Fed hands, Clinton hands) to those "private investors" who will price the "legacy loans" (see below), this plan is more of the same. 

Most Americans, including this one, are going to have significant problems entrusting our economic system to the boneheads in NYC who created the crisis we're now bailing them out of--and helping those "savvy investors" realize a nice guaranteed profit besides. Again, I possess only the economic expertise of a Lake Wobegon child, but I know rhetoric. President Obama has not powerfully shown his understanding of the "'universal sentiment that our present system is a bad one" and that he won on "change." 

Or, to put it another way, clean out some moneychangers, Mr. President. Go into the temple, knock over some tables, and roust some hedge fund managers. Rather than, y'know, hiring them to start what is, in effect, a government-run hedge fund. I say that not just because it would make us feel better (although it would). I say that because a lot of Americans are going to keep their money in a nice, safe government insured savings account and continue the collapse of consumer demand until those people are running the prison laundry rather than the government's money. Seriously.