"Perhaps the most important, but least understood, asset Janet Yellen would bring to the table is an ability to manage the fractious F.O.M.C.," he wrote, referring to the Fed's policy-making Federal Open Market Committee.
After underlining her talents and arguing that Fed minutes show she was among the first to foresee the extent of the financial crisis, Blinder delivered the killer blow: "Perhaps the most important, but least understood, asset Janet Yellen would bring to the table is an ability to manage the fractious FOMC [the rate-setting Federal open market committee].
But I think we can also say that even beforehand, writing this much insurance — $63 billion worth — on illiquid, poorly understood assets was a questionable decision.
"I simply did not understand the asset forms.
Many of those perceptions have since evaporated, but members of the task force say there is still a need to better understand the assets that often do not appear on balance sheets.
Their obliviousness is half credible; they may not have understood, or wanted to understand, the assets and the risks that lurked on (and off) their firms' balance sheets; but the potential for catastrophe was clear to see, for all who had eyes to see it, and men like Fuld and Sullivan were paid tens of millions of dollars to have or hire such eyes.
It is hard enough to understand how assets and revenues are transferred and allocated within Mr Li's empire as a whole; harder still to evaluate an acquisition in which Cheung Kong, Hutch and other bits of the group each end up with stakes in the target business.
"Throwing a thousand engineers at the problem won't solve it — it relies on domain expertise, a long history of people who have seen long cycles, and understand how assets perform," he said.
Scaling up the peacemaking approach doesn't necessarily mean making bigger centers; instead, it requires looking holistically at neighborhoods and entire cities to understand local assets, challenges, and opportunities.
