There seem to be a lot of underpants gnomes about these days.

William Harrison's Phase 2:

My advice is to pick a credible comprehensive solution quickly (there are many). Garner legislative approval and set up a bi-partisan, non-politicized process. And then stick to your game plan in each and every case - regardless of size or influence of the institution.

I'd recommend sticking with "????" for Phase 2 instead, especially since Harrison's putatively non-politicized process is disquietingly similar to the sort of recommendation that the banksters who want to loot Social Security have made -- and for good reason. Looting Social Security is the sort of "hard decision" that you can't get the victims, er, voters to accept in a political system where there's any sort of accountability at all.

The Moustache of Understanding's Phase 2:

I wake up every morning hoping to read this story: “President Obama announced today that he had invited the country’s 20 leading bankers, 20 leading industrialists, 20 top market economists and the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate to join him and his team at Camp David. ‘We will not come down from the mountain until we have forged a common, transparent strategy for getting us out of this banking crisis,’ the president said, as he boarded his helicopter.”

The man in the helicopter seems to have replaced the man on the white horse, eh?

Wistful thinking, Tommy, and sorry about the shopping malls. And I'd recommend that you stick with "????" for Phase 2 as well, since "a common, transparent strategy" is one of those things that would already have happened if it were going to happen (barring force majeure). Two years into the crisis, and we still don't know how big the Big Shitpile is. Transparency is not on the agenda at Versailles, and the Democrats wouldn't have written TARP I as they wrote it if it were.

It's interesting, and revealing, that both Harrison and Freidman both want to abandon the Democratic proceess (Freidman less overtly, though his devotion to, er, the principle of leadership is evident). The Social Security privatizers want to d the same thing. So did Daschle, who wanted health care to be run by something like the Federal Reserve.

Gee, think there's a democratic deficit in Versailles?

NOTE See here for clip. Haw.

UPDATE See Ruth Marcus. No helicopters forthcoming. And that "make him do it" is the order of the day is crystal clear. Crying "bold" doesn't make it so; and indeed, that which is genuinely bold doesn't need to be marketed that way.