Good Luck With That . . .

Somehow I got connected with Planet Money and I tune in every couple of days or so. They had a post the other day that struck a cord:

Teaser:

Until this crisis passes, can we, as a nation, please just agree that Congress, the President and the Treasury Secretary are too busy to waste their time on any problem worth less than, say, $10 billion?

I wanted to put the cutoff at $100 billion, but I do think it's appropriate for those folks to deal with the bailouts of Citi and Bank of America, which are not that high.

But, clearly, with any problem less than $10 billion, the President, members of Congress, and Geithner could say something like this:

"That sounds awful. I really wish I could look into that. But our nation and the world is on the brink of severe disaster. We can get through this, but only if leadership stays focused. So, I've assigned some low level staffers to this relatively minor, if frustrating, issue. I am going to spend all of my time trying to save the world economy. When I have a spare minute, I'm going to focus on recrafting the regulation of financial markets. I promise that one day, a year from now, two years from now, when the fire is safely put out, we will have a full accounting of who did what, who is guilty, and who needs to be punished. Until then, every minute I spend on small things brings the world closer to disaster."

Eventually, it'll get easy. They just say: "Oooh, that's below the cutoff. Sorry."