Obama Shoud Hire Elliot Spitzer
Slate has taken on Eliot Spitzer as a columnist. Spitzer’s recent column is a gem, arguing against the Rubinesque economics that got us here and which are still apparently being applied in the bail-out scheme, and providing a well-needed fresh perspective.
Spitzer argues:
The concentration of power—political as well as economic—that resided in these few institutions has made it impossible so far for this crisis to be used as an evolutionary step in confronting the true economic issues before us. But imagine if instead of merging more and more banks together, we had broken them apart and forced them to compete in a genuine manner. Or, alternatively, imagine if we had never placed ourselves in a position in which so many institutions were too big to fail. The bailouts might have been unnecessary.
In that case, vast sums now being spent on rescue packages might have been available to increase the intellectual capabilities of the next generation, or to support basic research and development that could give us true competitive advantage, or to restructure our bloated health care sector, or to build the type of physical infrastructure we need to be competitive.
It is time we permitted the market to work: This means true competition with winners and losers; companies that disappear; shareholders and CEOs who can lose as well as win; and government investment in the long-range competitiveness of our nation, not in a failed business model of financial concentration and failed risk management that holds nobody accountable.
He’s got a good point. We need to break these behemoths up so that real competition can spur us on to new frontiers, and so that we might be able to reassume a leadership position in the world. While we’re wiping all the pie off our face, China is still growing, galvanized by its huge symbolic victory at the Olympics, and is poised to become a new global economic leader. And nothing in the bail-out schemes is anticipating that.
Mother Jones ran a piece on Spitzer’s Slate-sponsored rehabilitation, arguing in earnest (while recognizing the futility) that Spitzer is a better pick as chief economic advisor to Obama than Larry Summers. I believe that too. That a man with Spitzer’s vision and passion can be totally crippled politically because he’s had sex with hookers, is wrong. Thomas Jefferson owned and had sex with slaves, and he somehow remains a legend.
