Bankruptcies, Bailouts and the Banking Bureaucracy: The Bush Agenda and the Capacity for Crisis

Abstract

True crises, such as the recent failure of the financial markets, test the capacity of the permanent bureaucracy. Leadership, responsiveness, and creativity, as well as stability and practicality, were put to the test in the intense summer and fall months of 2008. Major financial institutions failed or sat on the brink of failure, liquidity froze, the credit market vanished, foreclosure rates soared, and the government struggled to prevent further economic collapse. Just as critically, the capacities of regulatory foresight and independence, along with long-standing regulatory procedures, had in effect been tested in the decade leading up to the crisis. What was the impact of the Bush Administration's management of the financial regulatory bureaucracy over his eight-year presidency? What was its impact in the midst of the crisis at the close of his last term? This paper examines the longer-term capacity of foresight—the expertise and independence to see a crisis on the horizon and to speak truth to power in the midst of economic boom time—and the short-term capacities of responsive competence in the form of policy and administrative answers to the immediate challenges of the crisis itself.