This Is Why You're Issuing 14% Junk Bonds

So the Times published a list of questions for Timothy Geithner, Obama's nominee for Secretary of the Treasury. The questions were solicited from "experts in finance and economics." What I love is that the experts' pursuit of their own agendas hilariously undermines the exercise.

[UPDATE: I should add that Anna Schwartz seems to ask decent questions, except that I think she might be leaving out some relevant information about the Resolution Trust Corporation - namely the nationalization part. Most of the others are tendentious or ridiculously vague. Mitt Romney's first question is decent, but he remains the candidate I'd most like to get into a bar fight with, thanks to his second and third questions.]

So Mankiw asks, "President Obama supports the estate tax. Why should a person who leaves his money to his children pay more in taxes than another person with the same lifetime income who spends all his money on himself?"

And it's like, what the fuck? Is this really the information you want from the man who has been nominated to run the Treasury Department during the depression? Why not go ahead and ask him why it's safe and legal a day before the child is born, but murder a day after? Isn't it a fact that it's always murder, Mr. Geithner?

I also love this one from Roger Myerson, a Nobel-winning economist:

"Should debt securities that are held by regulated banks and pension funds be rated by multiple independent credit reports that have been commissioned by a federal agency, or should we continue to let the issuers of debts decide who will rate their risks?"

Myerson could be a law & econ superstar, because he has mastered the leading question. Give him credit, though, at least it's a live issue as we head into what will almost certainly be large-scale regulatory change.