Axing CEOS Is Entertaining, But It Doesn't Solve Our Economic Crisis

By Frank Rich, The New York Times. Posted April 6, 2009.

But facts matter little when set against the public anger at corporate America in general and banks in particular. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 80 percent of the country blames banks for the financial crisis — a percentage even larger than that blaming George W. Bush (70 percent). To be less popular than our departed president is a Herculean feat heretofore achieved only by Dick Cheney.

The cheering news in this poll is that Barack Obama remains hugely popular, with a 66 percent approval rating that has surely gone up since, boosted last week by his and Michelle Obama’s beguiling representation of America abroad. It doesn’t hurt that the president’s political opponents back home are laughable. Last month Republicans in Congress offered a budget plan with no numbers. Then they belatedly fleshed it out by calling for a nonsensical spending freeze at a time when desperate Americans need every last federal safety net they can grab.

The only group more out of touch remains bailed-out Wall Streeters. “The era of this high living, this is over now,” said Ben Bernanke on “60 Minutes” last month. For whom? Witness the former A.I.G. executive who recently complained on the Times Op-Ed page about being unfairly tarred for corporate outrages he didn’t commit. He didn’t seem to understand that his (to his mind) unfairly maligned bonus — $742,006.40 (net) — would have amounted to $0 had American taxpayers not ponied up more than $170 billion to keep A.I.G. from dying.

Such tone-deaf antics by entitled Wall Streeters will keep coming. As we hope Obama learned from his narrow escape from the A.I.G. bonus firestorm, it’s imperative he stays clear of these conflagrations. Timothy Geithner’s latest bank-rescue plan has not remotely addressed fears that the fix is in for the same well-connected banking crowd that created the mess. The plan’s transparency — let alone its effectiveness — will be essential to deflecting those suspicions.

But in the unsatisfying aftermath of Rick Wagoner’s demise, we must rid ourselves of the illusion that there’s a rigid separation between Wall Street and what John Rich calls “the real world.” Any citizen or business that overspent or overborrowed in the bubble subscribed to its reckless culture. That culture has crumbled everywhere now, and a new economic order will have to rise from its ruins.

This is what Obama is talking about when he insists on pushing for change simultaneously on so many fronts — green jobs, health care, education, new financial regulation, infrastructure spending and all the rest. As has been true since he promised “a new foundation for growth” at his inauguration, the most important question is not whether he will try to do too much at once but whether he will and can do enough. Change is hard. Change is traumatic. Sending a juicy C.E.O. — or six — to the gallows is at most a crowd-pleasing opening act to the heavy lifting of reform and rebuilding we still await.

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