...."Basically, Obama's advisers are our advisers," said one Democratic leadership aide....
Obama's involvement with the Democratic leadership has not just been through his aides. He spoke personally with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) on Sunday morning, hammering out demands on corporate governance regulations, executive compensation caps and financial oversight that would go along with the $700 billion, according to congressional leadership aides. Pelosi's chief of staff, John Lawrence, has maintained close contact with Obama economic aides.
And Summers, who has become one of Obama's closest domestic policy advisers, is not the only Clinton administration official helping congressional Democrats. On Monday night, Democratic leaders convened a conference call that included Summers, former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin, former Securities and Exchange commissioner Arthur Levitt, Wall Street economist Allan Sinai and California investment banker William Hambrecht, almost all of whom have ties to Obama. Roger Altman, another Obama adviser from the Clinton Treasury, is scheduled to appear at an Obama economic forum in Scranton, Pa., today....
On March 31, Mr. Paulson released a blueprint that proposed the most sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929. It would change how the government regulates thousands of businesses, from the nation’s biggest banks and investment houses to local insurance agents and mortgage brokers.
from this June 20 A.P. piece,
Treasury Secretary Requests Greater Powers for the Federal Reserve,
required reading in my opinion--a short report on Paulson going out like Willie Loman to try to sell getting on Congress' ass to address his concerns ASAP, to a woman's banking group. The article further explains that Barney Frank announced his panel would hold hearings on Paulson's March recommendations "later this year," and Christopher Dodd set no date for hearings at all. The article summation is highly suggestive of Congress' motive for the delay:
Neither panel is expected to take up legislation on the overhaul proposals until next year, when a new administration will be in office.
Democrats have complained that Mr. Paulson’s regulatory proposals do not go far enough to deal with abuses in mortgage lending, while state officials have criticized what they see as an unwanted federal intrusion on their territory.
Note that Barney Frank put this op-ed on the mortgage crisis back on March 9, beginning with:
Problems that began in the U.S. mortgage markets have led to the most serious international economic crisis since the late 1990s. Huge losses and concern about credit quality have spread far beyond the housing sector....
And that last Thursday morning, before Paulson spoke of a bailout,
and Chuck Schumer was calling CNBC to give a little preview of his speech on the Senate floor that buoyed the market
Barney Frank was
once again pushing his idea of a Resolution Trust Corp. for banks—this time, to bankers. In a closed session this morning of the Financial Services Roundtable, Mr. Frank discussed his plan for disposing of toxic bank assets with the CEOs of the holders of those assets...
according to: Frank pitches bankers on the merits of RTC for banks, Financial Week, posted Sept. 18
I don't know much 'bout no economics, but it looks to me like this is partly about Congressional Dems gambling to see if they could put the financial reforms debate off until a new administration and a new Congress came in. And that they got blindsided by the crashing, that it came sooner than they expected. But they could have been fighting this fight since March if they wanted to, it's not like Paulson has been ignoring them until now.
