Here’s Greg Newton’s commentary on "Hank’s Henchmen," courtesy of Greg Newton, at NakedShorts.
The Treasury Godhead
The New York Times takes a look at Hank’s Henchmen, the Gang of Five Gen-Xers currently feathering their future employment prospects by vigorously exercising the virtually untrammeled authority granted by The Busted Banks Executive Bonus & Securities Fraud Enabling Act of 2008.
Remember the transparency guff? Out the window.
Mr Nason said the process had to be confidential so that rejected banks did not suffer damage in the markets. Even to disclose the selection criteria could quickly destabilize banks perceived to have the wrong profile, he said.
But rest assured, no ideologues here.
The Treasury’s approach has its defenders, among them a former senior Treasury official, Edwin M. Truman, who said he believed the people running the bailout were technocrats trying to shore up the system, not ideologues.
Really? The non-ideologues include David Nason, former counsel to former US Securities and Exchange Commission member Paul S. Atkins, the “free markets” Ayn Rand acolyte hugely influential in aiding and abetting the vast conspiracy (Christopher Cox, frontman) to collapse the agency’s oversight and enforcement efforts; and Philip L. Swagel, once chief of staff to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and a former resident scholar at the Bruce Kovner-financed American Enterprise Institute. 
Never forgetting Neel T. Kashkari, the Paulson kiss-up who has carefully evaded Senate confirmation by keeping the ‘interim’ in his job title; James H. Lambright, president of the Export-Import Bank of the US, a bipartisan route for laundering, and providing a substantial ROI on corporate political contributions; and Anthony “Banks must meet their responsibility to lend (wink, wink)” Ryan.
Technocrats. Not ideologues. Got it. Can’t wait to see where they pop up when their “public service” ends. Not to mention the accompanying executive compensation disclosures. It says here that the Gang of Five get a bigger and quicker return on the taxpayers’ investment than the taxpayer.
Not that the sleaze isn’t already bustin’ out.
New Terrain for Panel on Bailout
by Mark Landler, in the NY Times
