Web Letters: Why the Rush on TARP 2?

How did someone as apparently intelligent as Obama end up with a team of economics-challenged people like Geithner, Summers, Volker and, behind the scenes, Rubin? Even Greenspan and Reich have become tepid on the Reagan-Clinton "Economic Revolution." Why aren't we talking about mentally functional people like Sheila Bair, Paul Krugman, Jaimie Galbraith? Is there some kind of Haavaad thing here? I still don't think that B.F. Skinner was all that bright. Give me Abraham Maslow any day and a littler protectionism, please.

JAMES PINETTE

Caribou, ME

Why do we keep asking why? By doing so, The Nation just keeps up a pretense that events are unconnected, and that such surprises are small tactical failures of some kind.

There is a larger background fabric reaching back decades and crossing all political lines that can easily be seen, if not always easily understood in its immediate details. The "conspiracy of the rich" is a simple enough starting point. Why does the progressive movement (a Potemkin village in America today) not just figure out a way to expose and attack the underlying conspiracy? Well, of course, what's worse than being accused of being a conspiracy nut? I'll tell you what is worse: pretending to make inconvenient facts fit these persistently silly progressive dreams.

In a nation of 300 million people, our newly elected President of Change can only come up with Summers, Geithner, Clinton? What--there are no progressive economists alive today? No ethical economic experts to even draw from? No pool of available untainted talent in a nation of 300 million educated souls?

You folks at The Nation may be fooling yourselves, I can't be sure. But you are not fooling me.

Mark Deneen

Eureka, CA