The Bailout Cronyism and Corruption Have Already Begun

We need to bail out the economy, and it's not going to be cheap. The government is going to have to carry the economy for 18-24 months. There's no way of avoiding that. But we don't need to be stupid or corrupt about the way we do it. And stupidity and corruption is unfortunately so hardwired into the Trump administration's DNA that it is being reflected in virtually every proposal out of the administration. 

Start with Treasury's ill-advised proposal to send checks out to every man, woman, and child in the United States. Beside being operationally difficult and misdirecting much of the aid, it is first and foremost a political move. These are serious times. They call for serious responses, not political maneuvers.  

And now, we learn that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is proposing turning to Goldman Sachs executives to provide assistance in administering the bailout. It's hard to think of anything more politically tone-deaf other than perhaps delegating the bailout to Wells Fargo.

More importantly, Goldman is objectively not the right institution to help. Goldman does virtually no small business lending, and their consumer lending is a small portfolio of loans to affluent individuals. It’s not even at the top of the bracket in commercial lending generally. Goldman is primarily an investment bank that does M&A and securities underwriting; they're not known as commercial bankers. The challenges in the bailout response are restructuring and commercial banking issues, including a lot of operational problems. That's just not where Goldman's strengths lie. So why Goldman? Just more cronyism.

This should be a bright flag to ever member of Congress that Steven Mnuchin cannot be trusted to lead the bailout efforts. If he does, we're looking at something a lot worse than HAMP 2.0. A key part of any bailout is going to be its governance. There's inevitably going to be a fair amount of discretion involved in the bailout efforts. We need the bailout to be led by serious people. Sadly, there are not many serious people in any position of authority in the Trump administration. That suggests that Congress needs to come up with a governance structure for any bailout funds that is new and independent of the Trump administration.

I don't mean by this that it needs to be a bunch of people who share my political views. There are plenty of competent and serious people from both parties who aren't in the Trump administration. Hopefully this is a time that Senator McConnell recognizes that he can't turn the keys over the Trumpists; the effectiveness of a bailout is going to depend on whether Congress gets the governance structure right. We need to take a serious problem serious and not see it as an opportunity for self-enrichment and political gain.