Word: explaine
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...Bailing Out the Bailed Out Keeping the financial system fluid might explain why so many banks got paid in full, which strikes some as a scandal way bigger than the bonus payouts. Many experts wondered why AIG paid 100 cents on the dollar. Among the biggest beneficiaries of the AIG pass-through, at $12.9 billion, was Goldman Sachs, the investment-banking house that has been the single largest supplier of financial talent to the government. Critics have been quick to note - and not favorably - the almost uncanny influence of former Goldman executives. Initial phases of the rescue were orchestrated...
...lawmakers who may soon write new legislation to regulate it. But he has not been a strong public face for a government that needs to project confidence. He has been slow to staff his department, hampering the Administration's ability to react to the crisis - and possibly helping explain Treasury's leaden-footed reaction to the AIG bonuses, which were first reported in January. A former Treasury official blames Geithner for a "strategic hesitation that has really affected the confidence index, not just in the financial marketplace but in the political marketplace." A veteran Washington Democrat was more direct...
...Which helps explain why, at least for now, Geithner benefits from a rare bipartisan agreement. Republicans have largely been reluctant to scare away a Treasury chief who has roots in the Bush era and understands their benefactors' core businesses; Democrats are even more reluctant to publicly criticize the President's choice at a moment of economic peril. "I have complete confidence in Tim Geithner and my entire economic team," Barack Obama said. "He is making all the right moves in terms of playing a bad hand." Still, a longtime Treasury observer says, "his margin for error has been reduced...
...Gilbert and his co-authors from Harvard and the University of Virginia say the findings aren't altogether surprising. People all over the world share similar reactions to stimuli; common evolutionary "physiological mechanisms" would explain why people, regardless of culture or belief, generally prefer "warm to cold, satiety to hunger, friends to enemies, winning to losing and so on." The authors write, "An alien who knew all the likes and dislikes of a single human being would know a great deal about the entire species...
Such differing agendas help explain the unseemly bickering of the past couple weeks. Continental Europeans, with sounder banks and less fiscal room for maneuver, are rejecting U.S. calls to spend more; the U.S. and Britain, anxious not to kill off laissez-faire capitalism, are reluctant to cede to European demands for tougher global financial regulation. The old G7 countries are pushing to give the International Monetary Fund a financial boost; others distrust the IMF and want a much greater say in how it's run. Many complain that it's impossible to work with Washington because the new Administration...