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The Times lets Neel Kashkari, the Treasury’s bailout guy, off the hook in a news story on congressional hearings yesterday.
Congress wants bailout funds to be accompanied by serious disclosure rules and a mandate that banks actually lend the money given to them instead of hoarding it. Kashkari doesn’t:
In response, Mr. Kashkari drew a distinction between the conditions imposed on failing institutions as they were being rescued and strings tied to the money being injected into healthy banks to strengthen the financial system.
The Treasury has been âvery aggressiveâ in dealing with failing institutions like Fannie Mae and the American International Group, he said. It has required the replacement of top management and demanded âthe ultimate sacrificeâ from shareholders as the price of the bailout.
But he argued that it would be counterproductive to impose similarly drastic conditions on healthy banks that receive money because the goal of those investments is to encourage the private sector to invest alongside the government.
Overly harsh conditions âwill discourage private investors from getting in,â he said. âWe donât want to scare them off.â
Wait a minute. Congress is asking to disclose lending here, not fire managers and wipe out shareholders.
The Times shouldn’t have let Kashkari get away with opposing a straw man.
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