The possibility of limits on executive compensation for the financial institutions that participate in the buyout dominated much of the conversation, but when the topic shifted to exactly what would happen to the mortgages at the heart of the financial crisis, Cuyahoga County Treasurer Jim Rokakis raised a concern that few have voiced.
ROKAKIS: Right now HUD properties and VA properties are exempt from local housing and building codes. So, these catastrophic conditions we see in some of these houses--they're the Fed! You can't cite them. If we're not in a position to enforce building standards, I think they're going to be a real drag.
One listener, Ted, a graduate student in Public Administration at Cleveland State raised a concern about the precedent this sets. In an email he writes, There are certain tenets of Public Administration that have been seemingly overlooked here: ONE, There has been very little time for legislative oversight. TWO, No judicial review. And THREE No citizen participation in the decision-making process, in other words, a lack of transparency.
The question arose, too, whether this bailout is nothing more than window dressing meant to maintain foreign confidence in US securities.Case Western Reserve University finance professor Bill Mahnic says it's more than that.
MAHNIC: It's important that the asian markets--depending on where you look, the asians, the chinese, the japs indians, own somewhere anywhere between 28 and 32 percent of US Treasury debt obligations--it's importan that we keep them as active and interested buyers.
Perhaps the succinct comment came from Alex, a local attorney, concerned with the philosophical premise the bailout itself: "Capitalism without failure," he writes "is like religion without hell."
DM, 90.3