In direct contravention of my wife's explicit instructions, herewith I inaugurate my first blog. Long may it prosper.

For some reason, I think I have something to say to you. You think you have something to say to me? Email me at: gideonsblogger -at- yahoo -dot- com

 
Two follow-ups to my last post, from The New Republic. Peter Beinart appropriately rips conservatives who want to blame Enron on Clinton's moral idiocy. While I would argue that the lobbying against, for example, the FASB's efforts to make stock options expensed was more bi-partisan than Beinart claims, the notion that Clinton's zipper was at all relevant is absurd, and points up serious problems that the GOP has in addressing economic problems. Clinton's team is looking better all the time, just because they took the substance of this stuff seriously, which the current team - in Congress and the White House - decreasingly seems capable of doing.

Meanwhile, the editors correctly point out that Bush is trying to do with corporate governance what he has done in other areas where he wants to move rhetorically in one direction while substantively in the other. He did this on the tax cut, selling it on false pretenses (which he partly had to do because of his own caving to Congressional special interests in structuring the cut, but which he also did in part because he didn't believe people would buy into the supply-side premise of the better parts of the tax cut). It won't cut it in this case: we need real action, if only to forestall alternative reforms that would do more economic harm and less good.
posted by Noah at 5:33 PM