IQ test

Steve Steckler, Chairman and founder, Infrastructure Management Group (IMG):

...They set high expectations that they -- unlike Paulson and Cox --knew what they were doing and would point the way out. They don't..and they can't.

Sailors learn to use hand signals because when the wind is blowing like hell it's impossible to hear the captain's instructions. This administration badly needs some hand signals. While I want to give Obama and his folks the benefit of the doubt this early in the term, the confusion is of their own making. Trying to cram its non-recession square-peg agenda into a deep round recovery hole cuts means that neither objective will be achieved quickly, and certainly not before the resulting chaos becomes unacceptable to the American public.

This all started with Obama's and Geithner's surprising inarticulation on the banking and mortgage crises. By merely heaping blame on the Bush years, Wall Street and deregulation of any kind, they set high expectations that they -- unlike Paulson and Cox --knew what they were doing and would point the way out. The don't (at least any more than Bush's economists) and they can't, respectively, in part because their hands are contorted among relatively unrelated objectives. Repeated admonitions that insuring the uninsured, raising taxes on the entrepreneurial class and expanding federal intrusion into K-12 education are keys to ending the recession are close to becoming a talk show joke. Like a frustrated coach, the American public is about to scream "focus!!!"

End the recession first by the fastest, most effective and most politically-neutral means possible, even if that includes temporarily cutting capital gains taxes for the rich and payroll taxes for the poor. Doing otherwise will cost too many jobs and lost homes. Allocate a much greater share of administration's leadership to being smarter on the banking and credit system recovery (thus ending a string of PR disasters), and save most of the non-recession agenda for a time when the ship of state is not pounding wildly with the sails in all directions.