…They understand that public opinion matters…they understand that it’s a little harder to criticize someone after you’ve met him and he’s given you free cookies…they couldn't possibly have expected to change anybody’s mind, they understand that it’s better to talk to your critics than to avoid them. Waldman talks about some of the techniques used to make the attendees [readers] feel like they were being treated as special guests.
Whoops! That's not advice for running a successful blog. Those are James Kwak's comments on how Treasury tries to trick visiting bloggers. We bloggers should know. We give away lots of free stuff too, more than cookies even if it is sometimes sour rather than sweet.
I would have taken the cookies
He was already the man when he was promoting the Paulson bailout plan as “better than nothing”. You know because the world would end if Goldman Sachs didn’t get paid for the CDSs it bought from AIG.
You can start by saying “Treasury met with bloggers…” and everything you say after that simply obscures the main point.
Isn’t it odd that we’d rather strangle babies in the crib than see how important they might become in adulthood?
The government has implicitly taken on the responsibility for bruised relationships. Wouldn’t it simply suffice to say caveat emptor?
Isn’t it as simple as the government defining a priority to derivatives in bankruptcy? Is it possible that people hate derivatives because they might eliminate the need for an AIG?
It’s fascinating to read the bloggers’ take on the meeting. Ultimately, everyone understood that the details of what Treasury said was unimportant–I don’t see much more than a cursory look at that. With that out of the way, the value of the meeting boils down to two simple questions:
1. Why did the meeting take place? What is the stated goal of the meeting, who was invited, who was not, and assuming that Teasury would know that these details were immaterial, does the event have the effect that was planned to be signaled?
2. How were the cookies?
Dale Carnegie 101.
OMG, the GMU Economics department should totally have “Meet Our Bloggers!” open houses with free cookies. That would rock.
Do you all not realize that not “recapitalizing” the banks would have led to the mother of all shadow bank runs?
Andrew,
You understand but you do not understand.
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