“Confidence Men.” Great book. Ironic? title.
Author: StarMediaGuy
Powered through Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind’s “The Confidence Men” over the last couple of days. What an amazing job of reportage on the financial crisis, Wall Street, and, as he calls it: “The education of a President” – in this case, Barack Obama.
The book has an amazing depth of detail on the inner workings of both the White House and Wall Street, and it offers so many lessons it’s hard to know where to start. One thing becomes incredibly clear, though, and that is that Washington and Wall Street have spent WAY too much time scratching each other’s back. The process whereby senior government officials are welcomed into big business for brief periods where they make huge money, and then go BACK to government to supposedly ‘govern’ the industries that just made them rich, is deeply flawed. And it has recently crushed ‘The American Dream’ for most citizens of the United States.
The really sad news in Suskind’s book tho, is about the missed opportunity that the ’08 crisis presented – a chance to rein in the ‘off the books’ banking and accounting tricks that have led to the biggest bankruptcies in global history, and the defrauding of millions of people’s pensions, savings, and retirements. Unfortunately, President Obama chose as his senior economic advisors and gatekeepers men – and they were all men – who were both cosy with, and philosophically aligned, with Wall Street and its massive ‘financial services industry.’ An industry that had, over the preceeding couple of decades and with the help of the Bush presidencies, managed to gorge itself on the carcass of America, turning American debt into opaque, dishonest, and massively profitable financial ‘instruments’ that, when the chickes came home to roost, was found to be a house of cards built, sometimes quite literally, on nothing. One mortgage could be included in 40 or 50 different ‘investment’ vehicles, each taking a little piece of the pie. Do the math – that just doesn’t add up. And the bankers knew it, but just kept running anyway.
It’s a shameful tale, but its not the only profound story in “The Confidence Men.” There’s also amazing insight into the inner-most workings of Obama’s White House. Some things that I’m amazed have been made public, specially so soon after the fact. The book includes, verbatim, a copy of the memo written to the President outlining how his most senior staff were undermining his decisions. It also makes it clear that sexism had an ugly role to play in making Obama’s White House a pretty dysfunctional place in the first years of his reign. Women were ignored, over-ridden, or shut out of the process. And former Wall St. insiders, like Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, believed – perhaps with good reason, perhaps naively – that any attempts to impose strict new rules on the banks, in the midst of the crisis, might have brought the whole economy to a grinding halt.
If the last three years have, in fact, ‘educated a President,’ then there is still hope that Obama can live up to the promise of his election. The senior staff have been replaced, wholesale, at this point, and new people are running the White House. But the loss of confidence in Obama may be too deep, at this point, for him to get to a second term next year. Then again, what are the alternatives? Mitt Romney, the likely Republican candidate, certainly seems to be as much of a ‘friend to business’ as anyone in Obama’s inner-circle was. It’s hard to see, basically, where the game that sees the 1% get richer, and the 99 get screwed over, is going to change any time soon.
“Confidence Men,” at the very least, gives you a pretty clear understanding of just how difficult a job it is, to pass legislation in America. And also just how much the individual principles and beliefs of the people at the very top have an all-too-human influence on the affairs of the whole wide world.
