Sense on Cents

The “pay to play” game in which municipal, state, or federal officials solicit or accept kickbacks in turn for directing government business is regrettably deeply embedded into our political and financial industries. As much as authorities and regulators talk about cleaning it up, without aggressive deterrents in place to truly punish parties on both ends of a transaction, these corrupt activities will continue.

As we follow the money once again, we see that it leads to a firm named Quadrangle, recently headed by Steven Rattner, the current car czar. Associates at Quadrangle have been implicated in providing kickbacks to individuals who manage the allocation of funds from the New York State pension.

This scenario has all the sordid details of a B-rated movie or a tawdry teenage novel. While the characters involved may be cheap in terms of character and integrity, the cost borne by taxpayers and society is very dear. If one allocation of funds from the pension is polluted by kickbacks, it would be naive to think that many dollars emanating from the New York State pension is not similarly polluted.

Why is it that President Obama selected Steven Rattner for the high profile position of car czar? To be perfectly honest, I would imagine that Secretary Geithner and Larry Summers selected Rattner. Geithner and Summers know how to play the Wall Street game and have benefitted from it. (more…)