If only every industry got to appoint its own "indendent" regulators and could throw off the government monkey that is on their back.

If the notion of selecting one's own oversight persons isn't the definition of corrupt, what is?

Perhaps if this were an elected position, we'd see more action.

bignflnut 431 days ago

I'm writing a piece right now about how there's a direct correlation between regulation and corruption.  Laws protecting me against fraud and theft are easy to enforce...trying to pretend that a bureaucracy could protect me from fraud and theft is, has been and always will be a waste.

Madoff should be hung by his toenails upside down.  That'd do more to stop future fraud and theft on Wall Street than giving more power to the SEC to pretend it can create systems that corrupt people won't game.

Cody Willard 431 days ago

If memory serves this has been done before in various ways.  I believe that then Vice President Al Gore had a government reform effort.  Both Nixon and Reagan had blue panel commissions that studied government efficiency (my father was a member of one).  Certainly, if you take a few hours to review executive orders you will see numerous efforts in "streamlining" and "efficiency."

So will this person oversee and direct all of the individual agency Inspectors General?  How will she fit into the oversight function of the OMB?

My inner cynic is screaming "WINDOW DRESSING!"

Curmudgeon 431 days ago

It seems to me that the best way to eliminate government waste would be just to eliminate government waste.  What am I missing?

seaheather 431 days ago

Reply to Cody

This is typical of our government though.  They reward failure and discourage success.  The SEC is a failure so what does the government do?  They want to give them more money and more power.  The FED is a failure so what does the government do?  Give them a blank check to do whatever the hell they want almost being an economic czar.  The government themselves are failures so what do they do?  The give themselves yet another raise for the great job they have done destroying our country.  I could go on and on really I could but you get the point.  You want a well ran country?  Shrink government and enforce laws that are on the books.  The SEC SHOULD NOT EXIST PERIOD!!!!!!  They have failed so many times and give the SEC about a billion a year.  Get rid of the FED.  We dont need a lender of last resort because the lender of last resort is us anyways.  They TOO have failed so many times and if you want to remedy failure let the suckers go bankrupt.  I love how these banks can use other peoples money for unlimited upside potential but then have our money being used as a backstop for limited downside potential.  What kind of F***ing scam is that?  Then why not hire a wolf to guard the henhouse while were at it as in many of these appointments of the Obama administration.  These people should be getting raises these people should be getting jailtime for their failures that have led to the bankruptcy of this country.  Disgusting Im going to go throw up now.

tjeffersonsghost 431 days ago

Yeah, (definitely) mis-spelled "independent" previously. I blame my keyboards and my pens for that, since we are to blame guns for violence.

bignflnut 431 days ago

And SUVs for running over people!

seaheather 431 days ago

Bastiat speaks all about this.  A few quotes from a must-read work, The Law:

"But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.

How has this perversion of the law been accomplished? And what have been the results?

The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy."

Further:

"Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it."

On legal plunder:

"But it does not always do this. Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim — when he defends himself — as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder"

"Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism."

Regulation is just a milder form of this.

bhweingarten 431 days ago

Another made up position to control waste that is waste.    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> muckMapWidth="645"; muckMapHeight="500"; muckMapCtx="http://www.muckety.com/Java"; muckMapProps=({center:'91004'}); </script><script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.muckety.com/js/relation-map.js"></script>

Shawn 431 days ago

Cool, already spending like a mad man and using the previous presidency as an excuse for it. I will tell you if obama keeps blaming bush throughout his term he won't last very long. He is supposed to be "the magic man". CPO chief performance officer saweeeeet!  Did you hear Paulson today? Said he was forced to bailout the auto industry. Are you kidding me?! like he had a gun to his head or something. Incredible!

Madoff solution. Throw the book at him! Life in prison or give him the death penalty! Did you see that interview FOX business network had on the other day, where a guy told asman that the Madoff fiasco of $50 billion may actually be upwards of $3.?? trillion in off shore accounts!!!! holy moly batman!

jojo 431 days ago

Wouldn't it be fascinating to find someone NOT BLOVIATING ON TV who actually think a Chief Performance Officer was a good idea?!

Never happen though.

Cody Willard 431 days ago

Nope, the press loves obama. Good word "Bloviating," o'reilly likes that word.

jojo 431 days ago

This whole thing - God, is there some way we can travel back in time and assassinate enough Senators to prevent the FIRST bailout from passing? - is such a debacle that it hurts just to think about it.  It' so comforting to know that our own government is finally going to bring an end to "life as we know it".  The more I think this through, the uglier the "end game" looks, because with every new wave of federal intervention and regulation, any hope of the free market being able to correct things becomes more and more a dim possibility.  Instead of a natural market correction of conditions, what we are apparently doomed to live (suffer) through now is the inept government bureaucracy sticking more and more fingers in the dike, until finally the whole thing blows up on us like a nuclear bomb.

Hell, I'm still trying to figure out where people ever got the hare-brained notion that the stock market is supposed to always and only go UP.  And - quick show of hands - Who believes that the Fed can just print an endless amount of dollars without it eventually causing serious financial/economic repercussions?

jbmaverick 431 days ago

Yeah this is pretty ridiculous.  Obama's already (well soon) got what he needs to eliminate waste... it's called the veto.

Erik Berte 431 days ago

Butch Cassidy: Hey, wait a minute.
Sundance Kid: What?
Butch Cassidy: You didn't see Lefors out there, did you?
Sundance Kid: Lefors? No.
Butch Cassidy: Oh, good. For a moment there I thought we were in trouble.
[They both run out of the building, only to be met with gunfire from all sides from the Bolivian army]

Cody Willard 431 days ago

Definitely one of the best lines in the movie.  And Paul Newman's delivery was perfect.

jbmaverick 431 days ago

bjmaverick, I like your posting about going back in time and killing the senators. We need to fired all of them and get brand new good looking guys in congress.

mebaria 431 days ago

Mebaria - I understand your point.  I mean, if they can't be smart, they ought to at least be easy on the eyes, right?  As it is now, they're, for the most part, dumb and ugly.

jbmaverick 431 days ago