Arthur Levitt is the oldest, wisest man to brave the new media, and his weekly appearances on the ever excellent Bloomberg Surveillance with Pruitt and Keene are a real treat for someone like me who grew up on Huntley, Brinkley and Rukeyser. They say that there is no dignity, wisdom or sagacity in the Fourth Estate. Not true - just hard to find.
He has grasped the essense of what I fear is the most significant bruise on the face of the Obama Administration. Aside from the embarrassment of a misdirected compliment of Chirac, much to the consternation of Sarkozy, aside from the foolishness of seeing Crazy A of Iran as anything but The Cat Who Walks By Himself who righteously deserves shoes thrown at him, there is this idling complicity with the pitchforks of Congress aimed at abrogating contracts at AIG. Even over the voice of Larry Summers who flatly says we don't do that in America.
And yet where is Obama to quell this soak the rich mentality? On Leno talking about his bowling score. Real classy Barack, or should we call you Barry or B Man star of a B Movie? This ain't really a life, ain't really a life, ain't really ain't nothing but a movie. We expected you to have a backbone and stand up to the lunatic Left Mr President. Were we all tripping on angel dust?
With any luck, the Senate will come to its senses, and Obama will make the appropriate noises to nip this sort of Sherwood Forest hoodery in its barbarian bud. The chilling effect, as Levitt correctly notes, has already coerced some fraction of the AIG employees to fork over their dough, but who in their right mind is going to enter any partnership with Obama's government is this sort of envelope pushing his nationalization entails? Levitt is of the opinion, which I share, that this sort of arbitrary and instant taxation is unconstitutional. If Congress goes forward and Obama signs it, this will go to the Supreme Court. Forget William Ayers. This is the real thing.
Either way Geithner is going to have a hell of a hard time getting any more power to do anything, truly a squandered resource. If there isn't some decisive healing done right away, Obama may have alienated the last of his friends in the business community - which we should note are a different class of people than those idle wealthy liberal bored retirees who bankrolled Democrats and delivered him Colorado.
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