Barack Obama's BlackBerry: Subject: Wall Street

Another look inside the president-elect’s BlackBerry, soon to be confiscated on security grounds “FIRST the good news. While the recession is getting worse, the financial crisis that started it has been contained—for now. The government has had to bail out only one big financial institution in the past six weeks. The bad news is that the Bush administration and the Fed had nothing resembling a consistent strategy. They crushed Fannie’s and Freddie’s stock holders. They saved Citigroup’s. Ad-hockery is costly: it keeps private capital on the sidelines for fear of being wiped out in the next Sunday night rescue. And the government is now on the hook for perhaps trillions of dollars of guarantees and new capital, in return for which it got no extra power to protect the system and the taxpayer in the future. ... (link)