MacroScope

“Sometimes it’s good to do these things in person,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said after meeting with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble to discuss what to do about Europe’s debt crisis.

But it’s not easy pulling off a 72-hour, five-city blitz of European officials to proffer advice and some discreet prodding. It involves crossing the Atlantic Ocean twice and darting between Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, Marseille and Milan, holding eight face-to-face meetings and three media sessions, as well as speaking with heads of state, finance ministers and central bankers.

Of course you need your own plane. Not a problem for the U.S. Treasury chief, who regularly has a blue-and-white military 737 at his disposal.

But the narrow, traffic-choked streets of European capitals and business centers could easily throw the schedule off. Geithner has far less influence over European drivers than he does over finance ministers.

The solution? Two words: motorcycle cops.

Escorting Geithner’s motorcades from airports to city center finance ministries and presidential palaces in Germany and France – and back again sometimes in the space of two hours – these fearless ninja riders fanned out across expressway lanes to block cars to let the motorcade pass quickly . When it did, they would scream to the front of the vehicle train on their BMW bikes and do it all over again.

To say former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is no fan of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York would be an understatement.

After arguing financial regulatory reform proposals being discussed in Washington fall short, he said:

“One institution needs to be completely overhauled: The New York Fed,” he said.

U.S. Representative Barney Frank has never been shy about expressing his opinions. His opening remarks at a hearing he chaired with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday was no exception. Frank poked fun at a political squabble over healthcare reform as he detailed his position on what to do about non-bank financial firms considered “too big to fail.”

    “There will be death panels enacted by this Congress, but they will be for non-bank financial institutions that will not be considered too big to die.
    I say that because we have this euphemism that we are going to be ‘resolving’ these institutions. It has not been my experience that when someone says they are going to resolve something, they kill it. We are talking about dissolution, not resolution. We are talking about making it unpleasant for the entities. This is not a fate people will want.”

The Obama Administration’s toxic asset plan got rave reviews from Wall Street yesterday, but not so much from a few Nobel-prize winning economists.

Economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman separately blasted the plan. Stiglitz told Reuters that the plan will rob taxpayers by exposing them to too much risk and is unlikely to work as long as the economy remains weak.

“The Geithner plan is very badly flawed,” Stiglitz said. “Quite frankly, this amounts to robbery of the American people. I don’t think it’s going to work because I think there’ll be a lot of anger about putting the losses so much on the shoulder of the American taxpayer.”