Where there are $700 billion of funds to manage, there will be fund managers. And whether because of the ideological (small-government) preferences of the administration, or because mortgage-backed securities really are hard to analyze and value, or because of the speed required, it is highly likely that those fund managers will be working as contractors, not as employees of the Treasury Department.
Simon and I wrote our first op-ed last week on the challenges of aligning fund managers’ incentives with those of investors (in this case, taxpayers), but with all of the events of the last week this topic has not received a lot of attention. Christopher Dodd did add language addressing the problem of conflicts of interest, but it’s not clear how conflicts will be avoided in practice. Fortunately, Philip Mattera at Dirt Diggers Digest has been focused on just this issue for the past week. His prediction? The big winner could be the bond specialists at Pimco – who boast a special advisor named Alan Greenspan.
The Baseline Scenario 