BusinessWeek Logo
Fantasy Bailout: Pick Your Team

illustration by Max Miceli

Fantasy Bailout: Pick Your Team

What do the first U.S. Treasury Secretary and the author of Charlotte’s Web have in common? Both would be handy to have around in the current financial crisis, according to four experts. We asked each to assemble an economic dream team—people from the past or the present who could help clean up the mess.

James Grant, editor, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer

▲ E.B. White (1899-1985), the great American essayist and children’s book writer, for the clarity of his prose. The trouble with high finance is that nobody speaks English. Jargon defeats clear thinking.

Thomson Hankey (1805-1893), a Bank of England governor who would drop dead all over again if he could see what the Fed is doing. Hankey opposed the idea that a central bank should lend unstintingly in a crisis. Let every bank look out for itself.

George Gilbert Williams (1826-1903), longtime president of the old Chemical Bank of New York, where Hetty Green, America’s first female tycoon, was a depositor. Asked the secret of his success, Williams replied: “The fear of God.” Just the right approach to risk management.

Richard Sylla, economist and business historian, NYU

Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, who used modern central banking techniques to stem the country’s earliest financial crisis in 1792.

J. Pierpont Morgan, who stepped up to end the Panic of 1907 by buying distressed assets and persuading other bankers to do likewise.

▲ Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the New Deal financial reforms that made Wall Street more transparent and accountable.

Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker and current chairman Ben Bernanke, the foremost academic authority on the breakdown of our financial system in the Great Depression.

Warren Buffett, whose recent investments in iconic companies are helping to restore confidence. As did Morgan, he demonstrates a self-interest that is consistent with financial statesmanship.

Frank Partnoy, ,corporate law professor, University of San Diego; former Morgan Stanley investment banker

Ivar Kreuger (1880-1932), the Swedish-born global financier and industrialist (the “match king”) who operated at the center of the 1920s boom and bust.

▲ John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), because he wrote the book on the 1929 crash.

Jim Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer,, because he’s fearless and understands the dangers of financial complexity.

Anyone who worked in Morgan Stanley’s derivatives group in the 1990s—because we saw it coming.

Alice Rivlin, senior fellow, Brookings Institution; first Congressional Budget Office director

Paul Volcker, because he is so sensible and has such credibility.
Lyndon Johnson, because he could make Congress do anything he wanted.

▲ Alexander Hamilton, because he would bring on board the people Johnson might fail to persuade.