They're Really Very Good Boys, And You Shouldn't Be So Mean To Them

Barack Obama, it seems, is "viscerally antibusiness." Why? Well, it seems that he forced the CEO of General Motors to resign as part of the government takeover of the iconic company that successive CEO's had run into the ground. He prevented Wellpoint Insurance from evading provisions of the new health care law. He criticized as personally greedy the investment bankers who turned to government to avoid eviscerating the world's economy. And, of course, he exacted from BP the $20 billion escrow fund in large part because he and the American people doubted BP's sincerity in paying claims for damages.

For eight years, the boys got to play all by themselves without adult supervision; they delivered results that were more antibusiness than anything Barack Obama could come up with. Now a grownup has come along, called them on their shenanigans, and tried to impose a little discipline. So, the boys are fwowing tantwums. Well, Barack Obama didn't make GM design cars that no one wanted to buy, nor did he tell Wellpoint to pull a fast one. It wasn't him who constructed a financial version of the Ottoman Empire built on the shabby and barbarous foundation of predatory loans. And it's Tony Hayward who runs a $300 billion company that preferred to risk an entire ecosystem rather than use a half million dollar part (.00000167 per cent of the value of the company, in case anyone wants to know).

I spent a career in the corporate world. These frauds aren't getting half of what they deserve. Boys, you've made the world sick; the least you can do is take a little medicine...

Paul Krugman worries that it's 1937 all over again...

Slate's Michael Newman tries to give the devil his due in this oddly admiring account of Michael Corleone's Tony Hayward's testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. I don't see what there is to admire: Clearly, BP's lawyers coached Hayward in advance; he followed their instructions with testimony that amounted to invoking the Fifth Amendment. He's hardly the first unwilling witness to take the route...