Legal Commentary

?The Opacity Of Hope?

From the London Sunday Times:

How would the Treasury secretary invest the hundreds of billions earmarked to ?rescue? the housing market? ?We will announce details in the next few weeks.? How, exactly would he construct the announced $1 trillion public-private partnership to absorb the banks? ?toxic debts?? ?We are not going to put out details until we have the right structure.? With apologies to Obama the author, this might be described as the opacity of hope....

You simply can?t tell the public on the one hand that there is an imminent danger of economic meltdown if your plans are not implemented ? and on the other, give the impression that those plans are little more than scribbles on the back of an envelope. Obama is much more able to get away with such a mismatch between promise and practice ? he has a fresh mandate and the high level of opinion poll support which tends to attach to that. Yet, for the same reason, he will never have had a better opportunity to harness popular goodwill to political action.

Full post as published by Discriminations on February 15, 2009 (boomark / email).