The Secretary’s New Clothes

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has announced what the media are calling a “massive overhaul” of America’s regulatory agencies, but columnist and liberal economist Paul Krugman isn’t impressed. Krugman doesn’t think the administration’s cosmetic solutions will mitigate our current economic crisis or prevent the next one.

New York Times:

Anyone who has worked in a large organization—or, for that matter, reads the comic strip “Dilbert”—is familiar with the “org chart” strategy. To hide their lack of any actual ideas about what to do, managers sometimes make a big show of rearranging the boxes and lines that say who reports to whom.

You now understand the principle behind the Bush administration’s new proposal for financial reform, which will be formally announced today: it’s all about creating the appearance of responding to the current crisis, without actually doing anything substantive.

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