The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.
As Glenn Greenwald notes today (citing the article which is the source of the excerpt), expecting real change from this economic crew will be an uphill battle. It is more of a "hey, we are adults here, we won't mess up like the last bunch." But, the mentality is too much the same. This attempt to get an end around to limits (already too minor) on the institutions that were part of the problem -- poor babies might be too oppressed by that "populist anger" (you can hear the sneer when that term is used) -- is distasteful at best.
Change will come slowly, it is more likely with the current bunch than the alternative available last November, but complacency is not acceptable. The (in)famous Justice Douglas once wrote of the problem at hand:
The suggestion that Congress can stop action which is undesirable is true in theory; yet even Congress is too remote to give meaningful direction, and its machinery is too ponderous to use very often. The federal agencies of which I speak are not venal or corrupt. But they are notoriously under the control of powerful interests who manipulate them through advisory committees, or friendly working relations, or who have that natural affinity with the agency which in time develops between the regulator and the regulated.
As early as 1894, Attorney General Olney predicted that regulatory agencies might become "industry-minded," as illustrated by his forecast concerning the Interstate Commerce Commission:
"The Commission . . . is, or can be, made of great use to the railroads. It satisfies the popular clamor for a government supervision of railroads, at the same time that that supervision is almost entirely nominal. Further, the older such a commission gets to be, the more inclined it will be found to take the business and railroad view of things."
As it the case here, the economic team part of the "industry minded," akin to a general serving on a peace commission. Obama recently said in a speech in France that change comes slowly and in fits and starts. True that.