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Is Kashkari a Chump?

By Admin

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Peeved that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced a major change in the use of TARP funds in a press conference instead of in front of Congress, Dennis Kucinich and his Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform ripped into Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability Neel Kashkari this afternoon.

After Kashkari explained that he didn’t think “using taxpayer capital to support a financial institution that was not going to survive was a good idea”, Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings (D) incredulously asked Kashkari if he was a “chump”. Actually, he asked Kaskkari that in the third person as if he was really asking the question about somebody else. Who could he have been referring to?

Clearly, these members of Congress feel they were deceived by Paulson’s original September justification for the Emergency Economic Stabilization of Act and haven’t had the guts to ask the Secretary directly about it. Or perhaps it’s a backlash against the many golden Goldman alums scurrying about the Treasury Department’s many new activities. In any case, Secretary Paulson is clever enough about self preservation to make his about-faces in front of an obsequiece press corps (he held a press conference yesterday and is sitting down with CNBC, the Treasury Department’s new press office, this afternoon) and by sending his underlings in front of the firing line on Capital Hill.

So, is Secretary Paulson a chump? Or is Congress for giving him carte blanche?

Full post as published by Bailout Report on November 14, 2008 (boomark / email).