“Let’s do our job.
“Let’s be skeptical and ask the core questions, not the detailed ones around the edges.”
Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, a former New York Times reporter, brings some common sense and real watchdog journalism to the crazy race to pass legislation that nobody understands and that will benefit the same crooks.
In his latest entry on Nieman Watchdog (INNOVATION’s Barry Sussman is the editor), David poses the real questions:
Q. Do we need a bailout of American and foreign banks? Show us in detail the reasons for this, and the numbers. Make the case.
Q. Is there a market solution to this? If so, why impose a government solution? If not, what does that tell us about our entire economic theory?
Q. Is there a less expensive solution?
Q. How do we know this will not just be a down-payment on a much bigger bailout?
Q. Is there a solution that provides direct help to those who took out these loans, rather than those who sold them?
Q. If AIG and others are too big to fail, what does that tell us about government anti-trust policy and regulatory policy and inaction?
Q. Why have both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley made clear that they want in on this deal? Get skeptical and ask the basic questions: Who benefits, how much and what makes this plan so attractive that Goldman and MS want to participate? Ditto for GE. That they and others want to be included should prompt a great deal of skeptical questioning.
Q. How does banning short selling of the stocks of 900 companies help the markets? (The markets are heavily biased toward the sell side, so why constrain the shorts, who often turn out to be right about stocks whose share prices have been artificially inflated.)
Q. How does banning short selling of this growing list of companies show a commitment to “free markets,” a stated goal of this and a long lost of previous administrations?
Q. During this short selling ban, why are there no parallel controls on insiders getting out of their positions?