Spero Consulting

Has Pres­i­dent Bush, Sec­re­tary Paul­son, Chair­man Bernanke, or Speaker Pelosi taken a sin­gle action or spo­ken a sin­gle phrase dur­ing the past month to inspire con­fi­dence in their abil­ity – not to solve the prob­lem – but to sim­ply com­pre­hend it and char­ac­ter­ize it?

By “it,” of course, we mean the cur­rent liq­uid­ity cri­sis fac­ing cer­tain insti­tu­tions that seem to have lax boards and man­age­ments that encour­aged exces­sive risking-​taking behav­ior that led to over-​concentrations of hold­ings in cer­tain (nearly worth­less) asset classes.

Per­haps, that ques­tion is too harsh; so, we shall ask a dif­fer­ent one. Has Pres­i­dent Bush, Sec­re­tary Paul­son, Chair­man Bernanke, or Speaker Pelosi taken a sin­gle action or spo­ken a sin­gle phrase that has mit­i­gated, rather than exac­er­bated, the cur­rent crisis?

As reg­u­lar read­ers know, we often urge those with decision-​making author­ity to take a short­ened ver­sion of the Hip­po­cratic Oath and pledge to “do no harm.” Today we go beyond that and rec­om­mend: just shut up!

Of the most rec­og­niz­able national politi­cians – sorry most House mem­bers – the most intel­li­gent quote that we heard was from John McCain in an Obama, anti-​McCain ad. It’s the one with the bad cover of Sam Cooke’s “Won­der­ful World” with the lyrics “don’t know much about…”

In the quote, McCain admits to not know­ing much about eco­nom­ics. If he and the other national politi­cians could remain that hum­ble and thought­ful dur­ing the cri­sis, there is much less chance that they would exac­er­bate it and cre­ate a real panic. (Clearly, a for­mer “community-​organizer” would have a bet­ter grasp of sub­tle eco­nomic issues and con­cepts and thus be able to pro­vide such insights as – and we para­phrase–we’ll solve the prob­lem with com­mon sense solu­tions and, as a bonus for the envi­ous and spite­ful, we’ll screw the rich while we’re at it. (Reg­u­lar read­ers will recall our use of ital­ics to denote sarcarm.))