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Return to Article: FEATURES Untangling the Recovery

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  Lets be sure the credit card companies get their bail-out. With intress rates of up to 30% until next year sometime they need all the help they can get. Their C.E.O. need a raise. They may have to borrow from T.P.S. to fund it but that's just par for the course.

  Michael Posted June 27, 2009 5:35 AM
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  Wait - one more shot? Trillions of dollars at stake in tax payer money and our elected officials and the lobbyists don't have it right the first time? OMG...there goes my belief in the Easter Bunny, Santy Claus and that they are from the government and here to help me.

  Bob Posted June 15, 2009 10:07 AM
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  What I find interesting is the debacles mentioned are the reconstruction in Iraq and responding to Katrina. In both instances there were far too few contracting professionals within the respective organization to do the jobs set before them. (For Katrina FEMA had 34 at the time.) Now when everyone agrees that the government still has far too few contracting professionals to do the everyday work we have before us, Congress hands us several years worth of work with a mandate to complete it by September 2010. Come on now, what do you really expect? Without resources that simply do not exist, this debacle, as currently set up, is going to dwarf anything you saw in Iraq or Katrina. If there every was a time for loosening up the bureaucracy and thinking in some creative ways, it is now. Or does anyone really think that doing more with less means that a team of overworked professionals can produce five years worth of work in 18 months?

  Just Listening Posted June 2, 2009 4:11 PM
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  I find this article interesting in that many of the regulatory review and internal review is designed to slow down and make government interaction slow and deliberate. There should be no fraud, waste and abuse, but it's kind of hard to be agile and nimble when GAO and the IG find huge fault requiring corrective actions from not following bureaucratic guidelines.

  Can the government be as agile and effective as a private enterprise?

  In a word...No. If the risk reward is take a chance and if you fail, you fail, if you suceed, you might get a 1% of your pay bonus, assuming not to many others are in your award pool. Who would risk their job on such little reward.

  Don't get me wrong, it is great that there are restrictions on governemnt action. Where would we be with independent agents taking us down a road with unintended consequences at 120 MPH? By it's very nature large organizations are not nimble, have inefficencies, whether it be AIG, Ma Bell, Wal-Mart or the US Gov't.

  Joe Posted June 2, 2009 1:00 PM