Anyone else reading Confidence Men?

[Ruby the Liberal]

I just started and am only to page 100 - here are some initial impressions.

- This isn't about Obama and his perceived 'centrism' (which Suskind denies) as much as it is about his heart being in the right/progressive place, but his management style being a challenge. Consensus building being the priority no matter who is at the table. I don't think thats news to anyone who has done the WTF!? over his choices of Econ advisors (and how the team changed so dramatically from the campaign to the administration).

- Suskind all but paints Elizabeth Warren as the do all end all - in economics, fairness, common sense and as a political megastar. The background stories about her are fascinating. Awesome stuff if you are a Warren fanboi like me. Paul Volcker is also portrayed as one who had the wherewithall to see 2007-8 coming along with Professor Warren.

- Larry Summers (so far) takes the lead role as Colossal (with a capital C) fuckup. Worse stuff than I had imagined. He basically presents Summers as a jack of all trades, master of none, whose ego will not allow him to differentiate between areas where he has expertise and areas where he has none (but strong, uneducated opinions nonetheless) who will listen to no one unless the idea is presented as his own. Suskind ties this back to Summer's days at MIT where he was captain of the debate team and as such, feels the need to win any argument just for argument sake. What I did not know is that Summers comes from a LONG line of tenured Economists (including 2 Nobel Laureate uncles) and was given tenure at Harvard at the young age of 28. He is presented as a smart guy, but one that doesn't know his role or limitations. Lots of stuff in there about Summers insistence in butting into the affairs of the Harvard endowment fund and how his decisions ran it into the ground.

That said, I will caution anyone picking this book up for a read:

- It is LONG. Almost 500 pages of small print - looks to be 9pt font.

- If I weren't aware of things like the tenure/timing of Stan O'Neal at Merrill, the identity and background of people like Greg Fleming and Robert Wolf, and how Jason Fuhrman's appointment to head up the Obama Econ team in August of 2008 lead to the decisions of Geithner/Summers/Emmanuel in November, the book would be incredibly difficult to follow. Without segue, Suskind goes from 2010 to 2007 to 2004 to 2006 to 2007 and then rallies back and forth between 2006-8. He also bounces around from Obama as Senator, Candidate, Nominee, President-elect and President in no apparent order. One minute, someone is having a conversation with Senator Obama, 2 paragraphs later, Obama won the nomination, then immediately after that, we are back to him as a long-shot Candidate again. It literally takes knowing who the players are in advance to be able follow what he is talking about from one minute to the next.

So, that said - If I didn't already have a background knowledge of the events and players from 2004-2010, I don't think I would have made it to 100 pages given that it is a mishmash of events bouncing from one person to another, one year to another and can be rather difficult to follow.

Anyone else working on this tome?

[eleny]

1. Thanks for the heads up

I'm on the waiting list at the library. Now I'll know what to expect. It sounds like a good idea to be near the computer so I can quickly look up names that are unfamiliar.

An aside - I quickly searched by the name of Suskind's book and Herman Melville's last book, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, showed up in the list. I thought that the first paragraph of Wiki's analysis section was interesting -

"The novel's title refers to its central character, an ambiguous figure who sneaks aboard a Mississippi steamboat on April Fool's Day. This stranger attempts to test the confidence of the passengers, whose varied reactions constitute the bulk of the text. In this work Melville is at his best illustrating the human masquerade. Each person including the reader is forced to confront that in which he places his trust."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confidence-Man

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. I am enjoying it so far, and hope you do as well!

Here is a snippet I liked:

(Obama on Geithner and Summers): "There is no doubt I brought in a bunch of folk who understand the financial markets, the same way, by the way, that FDR brought in a lot of folks who understood the financial markets after the crash, including Joe Kennedy, because my number-one job at that point was making sure that we did not have a full-fledged financial meltdown".

To compare Geithner and Summers to Kennedy is a reach. Kennedy was so instrumental for Roosevelt in setting up the SEC because he knew Wall Street from the inside as a master operator, had made all the money he could ever need, and crucially, was bursting with zeal to move into the public sector and never look back, even if it meant that his old colleagues from Wall Street wouldn't invite him to dinner ever again. There has been no one remotely like this in a position of real power under Obama - especially not Summers or Geithner. The irony of Obama's Joe Kennedy reference is that a comparable figure, in equal measures expert and unencumbered, is precisely what he needed, and lacked.

- Page 9

[mother earth]

3. Not reading it yet, but a great fan of Warren. High hopes

for that woman being the first female prez...she's just incredible and a great asset to this country. First Massachusetts, then the WH...that's my hope for her. I'll have to look for this book.