Today's Strib ran a very long and sympathetic profile of Neel Kashkari, the bank bailout czar who burned out big-time working for the Treasury Department, trying to avert an economic meltdown. As a one-time near workaholic, I thought the account of the stress and Kashkari's enlightenment from his experiences rang pretty true.
However, the rerun doesn't mention the news that broke the day after the profile originally appeared in the Washington Post — and that the Strib did report last week — that Kashkari has taken a job with PIMCO, an investment firm that was deeply "enmeshed in the recovery effort he helped lead."
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I don't think Minnesota's titan of finance, Rep. Michele Bachmann, is impressed with what Kashkari thinks his team helped pull off.
She seems to think that the lack of a total economic meltdown is proof that no intervention was needed. The failure of lax regulation of runaway financial risk proves that regulation doesn't work, in her book.
Giving more power to government bureaucracies that have failed in the past* will do nothing to stabilize our markets.
This statement sounds a ringing note of principle that doesn't actually have to cash its check in the aftermath of now-stabilized markets. I shudder to think where we'd be had Bachmann been in Neel Kaskari's job.
* Presumably this does not apply to the Departments of Defense or Immigration
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The Minnetonka City Council is restricting a parking lot expansion proposed by the high school. Too many students drive to school and can't park on the campus, so they park along a nearby frontage road or in a K-Mart lot. These conditions are unsafe, school officials insist, and they must cut down 110 trees to make room for more cars.
[Minnetonka High School Principal Dave] Adney said it's troubling for the school to be portrayed as "not good guardians of the site."
"We are all environmentalists. We don't want anyone to think that parking lots are more important than trees.''
But parking lots are more important than sidewalks or other measures that might reduce traffic and improve safety.
There's irony upon irony in this tale of students who need more car-enabling infrastructure built because the car-enabling infrastructure around the school makes it unsafe for them to walk to school. More parking will mean more students can drive instead of having to car pool or (gasp!) take the bus, walk or cycle to school, making it more dangerous for those who try not to drive.
