While it may sound like a bad pickup line from a single’s bar, talking about astrological signs in the workplace may be gaining acceptance as more people look to develop communication beyond the hard data often continuously spit out by technology.

Steve Weiss, author of a new book on using astrology in business, says that he does believe astrology can be an important communication tool on the job.

“No way, no how, is astrology a substitute for everything else you need to know,” Weiss says. “But I think it can help create a language for us to understand one another better.”

That’s why he says he has written “Signs of Success: The Remarkable Power of Business Astrology,” (Amacom, $24).

Astrology – defined in the dictionary as “the study of positions and aspects of heavenly bodies with a view to predicting their influence on the course of human affairs” – is often only experienced by others through brief astrological predictions in the morning newspaper (Taurus: “Money will come your way this week”).

But Weiss says that by using the “terminology” of astrology for business trends, people can develop a greater ability to understand why people – such as bosses or co-workers – behave in certain ways.

He stresses, however, that astrology should not be regarded as something written in stone, and even goes so far as to say that some aspects of astrology – such a predicting specific events – is “a bit wacky for my tastes.”

“In the wrong hands, astrology is just another form of intolerance,” he says. “It’s not a science. It’s much more like an art – like art wrapped up in the science of math and astronomy.”

The book provides information about each of the 12 astrological signs, and gives examples of traits for those born under various signs. For example, “creative entrepreneurship is the true stamp of the Leo leader, frequently to the point of personality cult as well as to fortune and fame.” Weiss says those born under the sign of Leo include Martha Stewart, Magic Johnson and Mick Jagger.

Or, “a Capricorn is inclined to the more conservative position that a happy destiny is the result of a hard, well-managed, socially-sanctioned climb.” He says that 19th-century author Horatio Alger “was a Capricorn to his very soul,” while founding father Benjamin Franklin’s dedication to hard work and movie star Mel Gibson’s movies about family honor (“Braveheart,” “The Patriot”) show the Capricorn’s traits.

Weiss further points out that by understanding our astrological sign, we can better grasp how we react in today’s business climate, and have a clearer understanding of other individual’s strengths and weaknesses. (To join the blog discussion of astrology and business, check out www.anitabruzzese.com.)

For example, when dealing with an Aquarius: “Try not to take offense at their forgetfulness, which may even include the name of long-term associates. They are easily distracted by their own bullet-train of thoughts.”

Or, “Scorpio plays secrecy of intent as an advantage, so accept that you will rarely be granted a full confidence. But also know that loyalty and competence will be handsomely rewarded.”

Weiss says this ancient tradition of studying astrology has an important role to play in our modern society.

“We are clearly living in an era of metrics. In the last 20 years, it’s been the story of the personal computer and the Internet. We’re great data-sharers. And yet, that doesn’t always drive us to insight,” Weiss says. “Astrology reminds us that…we can’t write an equation for inspiration. Astrology creates those opportunities.”

Weiss says that by increasing our understanding of astrology, we can better develop interactive skills that improve communication and understanding. Still, he cautions that it’s only one tool that should be used by someone trying to survive in the business world.

“I see beauty and precision in astrology, but it’s a very complex craft,” he says. “It depends on the person interpreting it. It can’t make mean people not mean.”

Weiss also points out that as we all try to compete in a global economy, astrology may be another way to build a bridge between cultures.

“There are many places such as South America, India and China where astrology is not that foreign to them,” he says.

Anita Bruzzese is author of “45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy…and How to Avoid Them,” (www.45things.com). Write to her at: anita(AT)anitabruzzese.com or c/o: Business Editor, Gannett News Service, 7950 Jones Branch Dr., McLean, Va. 22107. For a reply, include a SASE.

The past starts looking pretty darn good and you forget how much you hated the first 15 years of your career and conclude with almighty certainty that you really did like purchasing. Or that being in information technology wasn’t so bad after all. Before you know it, you’ve convinced yourself that you should go back to your previous, lackluster career.

That might be. Or you could be falling for the when-all-else-fails-go-back-to-the-past strategy.

I keep meeting more and more people banking on former careers they left years ago as a new and improved place to hang their hat for the next decade or so. Many reason that, “I just need something secure for the next 10 or so years.”

If that is what’s making you nostalgic for the past, better rethink your plan.

First, you don’t want to end up miserable again. Second, it’s not necessarily an easy sell. Obviously you will have to answer sticky questions from potential employers about your change of heart. They will also compare you to newly minted graduates eager to jump in. How can you beat that? If a return to the past is truly what you want, you need a three-pronged approach to be a serious contender:

-Anticipate employers’ objections.

It’s only natural for an employer to probe. So expect to hear questions like, why after ten or more years, do you want to go back to what you did before? Why did you leave the field in the first place? And, if you’ve held management or leadership positions, why do you want to give it up?

You can bring up their concerns before they do: “You might be wondering why I want to get back into accounting…” Then give your well-thought-out response that explains your new career objective.

One of my clients who had been in information technology ten years before becoming a teacher explained how, even as a teacher his focus had been on helping students understand and use technology — a subject he loved. Now he wanted to apply his teaching skills to help adults understand technology by working in a customer support role. It’s a logical step, and he also had a story to tell.

- Explain how you’re up to speed and will keep up to date.

If you’ve been out of the field for years, you need to be up on the latest and greatest processes, issues the industry faces, as well as required skills. So be ready to explain how you’ve done that. What training have you taken? What do you read to stay abreast? Be prepared to talk about how you’ll stay ahead of the curve.

- Explain what has reignited your interest and why you’re excited about the work.

Employers can smell it if your heart’s not in it. How will you explain your renewed interest in a field you haven’t worked in for years? What is it about the work that you can’t wait to do again? What has happened in the last ten years that might add to your value in this new direction? How do you see yourself developing in this field?

If you can’t seem to come up with a story that you believe with all your heart, how can you convince someone else? In that case, perhaps heading back to your past is not the best plan for moving forward.

—

Andrea Kay is the author of “Life’s a Bitch and Then You Change Careers: 9 Steps to Get Out of Your Funk and On To Your Future.” Send questions to her at 2692 Madison Road, No. 133, Cincinnati, Ohio 45208; www.andreakay.com. E-mail: andrea@andreakay.com

It’s worthwhile to begin with the broader picture. Americans used to buy about 17 million new cars and trucks a year. Now, we’re buying fewer than 10 million. That, of course, puts considerable stress on manufacturers with weaker products or financial structures.

How many new cars Americans will want to purchase in the future is unknown. But there can be a high degree of confidence in this: However many it is, someone will sell them to us.

Moreover, they are likely to be produced in the United States. A majority of cars sold by foreign manufacturers in the U.S. are actually built here.

So, why should the federal government care who it is that sells us our cars?

There are two rationales offered. First, to preserve an “American” auto industry. Second, to preserve “American” jobs.

The proposed Chrysler restructuring gives the lie to both rationales.

Under the Obama administration’s proposal, Chrysler would, in essence, be given to Fiat, an Italian company, to operate.

So, how is an Italian car maker operating in Michigan any more “American” than a Japanese manufacturer operating in Kentucky?

And why should the federal government give a market preference – through taxpayer financing and warrantee guarantees – to Italian cars produced by American workers in Michigan over Japanese cars produced by American workers in Kentucky?

The Obama administration’s proposed restructuring is more than just unjustified, however. It dangerously undermines the rule of law, as explicated so beneficially by Friedrich Hayek in his classic, “The Road to Serfdom.”

The essence of the rule of law, according to Hayek, is that what the government will do is known to all economic actors in advance. That government will not act arbitrarily in specific circumstances to favor some economic actors over others.

Chrysler has $6.9 billion in secured debt. Under the law, secured lenders have the first claim on the assets of the debtor in the event of nonpayment.

The Obama administration is attempting to muscle past this law. Under its proposal, the health care trust of the autoworkers union, an unsecured creditor, would forgive 57 percent of what Chrysler owes it, and receive 55 percent of the company’s equity in exchange.

The federal government would forgive about a third of what it would loan Chrysler and receive 8 percent of the company’s equity. Fiat would pay nothing for its 20 percent initial ownership.

The secured creditors, with the first claim on Chrysler’s assets, were asked to forgive 70 percent of what they are owed and receive nothing in equity. When they refused and forced the company into bankruptcy, they were excoriated by Obama – a shameful act by a president who pledged to uphold the law, not make it up as he went along.

The purposed GM restructuring is equally lopsided. The union trust would forgive half of what it is owed and receive 39 percent of the company. The government would forgive half of what it is owed and receive 50 percent of the company.

The other private lenders, in this case unsecured, would forgive 100 percent of what they are owed and receive just 10 percent of the company.

In his recent press conference, Obama said he had no interest in owning or operating car companies. Until this point, I was willing to accept Obama at his word, while fundamentally disagreeing with his economic policies.

Given his actions, however, it’s hard to credit his disclaimer in this instance.

These proposed restructurings are power grabs, pure and simple. The positions of lenders are eviscerated to give control to the union trust and the government.

The emergent companies are given market preference through taxpayer financing and government warrantee guarantees. All to serve no true national purpose.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Sunflower Electric Cooperative's coal-fired power plant churns out electricity in Holcomb, Kan. Coal-fired electricity is one of the country's primary contributors to greenhouse gases. But more than half the country's electricity is produced from coal.

The pending decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to designate greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, as a threat to human health and welfare probably marks a point of no return.

One way or another, the United States is going to regulate greenhouse gases.

To the extent human-caused global warming is a real problem, this can be a step forward. It will, however, expose the lie that a transition to a less carbon-intensive economy will be painless or even enriching.

Despite proclamations about the limited nature of its finding, EPA can hardly designate greenhouse gases as a threat under the Clean Air Act without regulating them under the act.

Nor can the agency, as a practical and legal matter, limit its regulation to automobile emissions.

The regulatory structure of the Clean Air Act is technology focused. EPA sets air quality standards. Areas that don’t meet them have to come up with plans that include all reasonable measures that could be taken to come into compliance.

Businesses that emit regulated pollutants have to obtain operating permits and get agency approval of the control technologies they will use.

There are several problems with using this approach to regulate greenhouse gases. In the first place, the problem they cause is global, not local. So, how does the agency set a local standard?

Second, they vastly exceed in volume any other pollutant the agency regulates. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that more than a million businesses would be subject to technology-focused regulation if greenhouse gases are regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The act’s regulatory structure would be simply overwhelmed.

Clearly the Obama administration wants to use the EPA’s finding to prod Congress into enacting a cap-and-trade program as an alternative to regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Under cap-and-trade, the government would set a limit on the total quantity of greenhouse gases that could be emitted. Pollution rights could then be traded.

President Obama has proposed that all pollution rights be sold at auction and the proceeds used to pay for making his payroll tax credit permanent and subsidizing alternative energy sources.

Now that it’s for real, however, Congress has discovered an inconvenient reality. If a price is put on carbon, someone has to pay it.

Coal-fired electricity is one of the country’s primary contributors to greenhouse gases. But more than half the country’s electricity is produced from coal.

The prospects of significantly higher electricity bills for average consumers and significantly higher operating costs for energy-intensive manufacturers have spooked even some Democratic members of Congress.

So, they are proposing that some of the pollution rights be given away for free, and proceeds from selling them be used to subsidize utility rates.

This, however, defeats the purpose of the exercise. If carbon doesn’t have a price that hurts, less of it won’t be emitted.

Simply put, if greenhouse gases are to be reduced, those who produce them have to be disadvantaged and those who don’t advantaged. This, however, will mean wrenching changes, within and between industrial sectors, and within and between geographic regions.

Green jobs won’t make the pain go away or be all better.

I am not a global warming denier. I favor a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

A carbon tax eliminates the uncertainty and avoids the bureaucratic and equity problems inherent in the issue of distributing pollution rights under a cap-and-trade regimen. I would use the tax proceeds to reduce payroll and income taxes, so there is no net drain on the private sector economy.

The benefits, however, wouldn’t be distributed commensurate with the costs. They can’t be, if greenhouse gases are truly to be reduced.

If carbon is to be reduced by putting a price on it, someone has to pay the price and not be reimbursed for it.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has proposed what amounts to the confiscation of private property without compensation or due process.

During the campaign, I wrote a column saying that Barack Obama was not a socialist, when the accusation that he was became pervasive in certain conservative haunts.

To me, some distinctions are valuable to maintain. And there is a very important difference between even a heavily regulated and taxed system of democratic capitalism and socialism. Obama was proposing the former, not the latter.

Nevertheless, there are some highly critical lines that should not be crossed if the essential character of our system of democratic capitalism is to be maintained. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has proposed to cross one of them.

Geithner has proposed that the federal government be given the authority to take over financial institutions that, in its judgment, pose a systemic risk.

After taking over the company, the federal government would have unlimited power to do whatever it wants. It could override the rights of shareholders and abrogate obligations to and contracts with employees, creditors and customers. All the normal legal rights of these other parties would be extinguished.

This is basically the confiscation of private property without compensation or due process.

Companies which the federal government fingered for takeover could appeal to the courts for review. But since there are no normative standards to restrict such takeovers, it’s a subjective judgment of the regulators and there’s no real basis for appeal.

Moreover, there’s no point. A company so designated by the federal government is toast. There’s nothing a court can give it of any value at that point – except compensation, which isn’t a remedy permitted under the Geithner proposal.

Geithner says that his proposal is patterned after the resolution authority of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation over banks. But there is a critical difference.

The FDIC insures deposits at such banks. Such banks receive a competitive advantage in attracting capital in exchange for subjecting themselves to the FDIC’s resolution authority.

Geithner’s proposal is at least arguably unconstitutional. It would certainly be found to be so if we had judges who placed as much importance on protecting property rights as did the founders.

Regardless, the proposal puts too much power in the hands of fallible regulators. The handling of all the various bailouts to date hardly inspires much confidence.

Regulators have handed out hundreds of billions of dollars and shredded shareholder equity in several companies to stem a systemic risk they’ve never been able to coherently or cogently define. Moreover, what has been disclosed, for instance about AIG’s counterparties, severely undercuts some of the claims of systemic risk.

The proposal also is fundamentally unfair. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac didn’t want to be taken over by the federal government. They thought they could still make it.

Then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made the decision to take them over anyway, even though it wasn’t legally his decision to make.

Fannie and Freddie may have been wrong. But their shareholders and management should have had the chance to try.

My solution is to let big boys fail. The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy is claimed to be evidence against that approach. But in his recent book, “Getting Off Track,” Stanford economist John Taylor makes a convincing case that the Lehman bankruptcy did not, in fact, add significant stress to the credit markets.

If additional regulation is to be the response, then regulating behavior is in keeping with our system of democratic capitalism. If leverage is thought to pose excessive systemic risk, then limit leverage. If opaqueness is a risk, then increase disclosure requirements.

But allowing the federal government to preemptively confiscate private property and abrogate contracts without due process or compensation is a radical departure.

It may not be socialism, per se. But it’s a giant and dangerous stride away from being a civil society dedicated, in part, to the protection of private property rights.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

General Motors workers view President Obama's address in Detroit on Monday. Obama refused further long-term federal bailouts for GM and Chrysler, saying more concessions were needed from unions, creditors and others before they could be approved. He raised the possibility of controlled bankruptcy for one or both of the beleaguered auto giants.

Barack Obama promised that, if elected, he would create more jobs for Americans.

Yet for the most part, all President Obama has created so far is confusion over his stance on the jobs Americans already have – and the ones they’ve lost.

In fact, you could say it’s a full-time job keeping up with all of the president’s incarnations on the employment issue.

There is Obama the pragmatist who, during a recent online town hall meeting, dished out some straight talk.

In fielding a question about when outsourced jobs would return to the United States, Obama acknowledged that “not all of these jobs are going to come back” because there are so many countries that pay workers much lower wages than Americans would want to do the same jobs.

The goal, he said, was to “go after the high-skill, high-wage jobs of the future” and create positions that can’t be outsourced to the lowest bidder.

But then there is Obama the protectionist who, during a primary election debate last year with Hillary Clinton, tried to sweet-talk displaced workers and organized labor.

In that exchange, Obama demanded that the United States take steps to discourage outsourcing of jobs. Obama said the government should “stop providing tax breaks for companies that are shipping jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that are investing here in the United States of America.”

How you see all this – either a shameful flip-flop or a commendable evolution – depends on where you stand on the Obama presidency.

I am willing to give the chief executive the benefit of the doubt and go with the latter. And, as such, I like the new Obama much better than the old one. I just hope he doesn’t regress.

With rising unemployment, and many Americans either out of work or worried about losing their jobs, now is the perfect time for Obama to show real leadership by telling U.S. workers the hard truth about globalization – about how it is here to stay, even if many jobs aren’t.

More often, politicians take the easy way out and try to coddle the American laborer with protectionist rhetoric while offering up countries such as China and India as convenient scapegoats.

So what if Americans are in no mood to compete with foreign workers or even with one another? The contest has been long under way, whether we like it or not. We can lace up our sneakers, or we can forfeit the race.

No matter what candidate Obama said during the campaign, I think President Obama understands that basic principle.

He surely understands now that American workers can’t survive in the international job market as long as they’re in a defensive position demanding that the government cordon them off from the rest of the world. That said, hopefully, we’ve heard the last echo of protectionism from this administration.

Instead, we could use more of the accountability we saw this week in how the Obama administration handled the fate of General Motors Chief Executive Rick Wagoner.

In an extraordinary but easily justifiable move, it forced Wagoner’s resignation as part of the bailout plan for the ailing automaker. In a statement posted on the GM Web site, Wagoner acknowledged that Obama administration officials had asked that he “step aside” as CEO and that he complied.

The government has loaned GM a staggering $13.4 billion, and it plans to dish out billions more. Yet, the automaker hasn’t improved.

The Obama administration this week gave GM – and Chrysler – failing grades for their efforts to turn themselves around and threatened extensive overhauls of both companies.

Don’t feel bad for Wagoner, who still could walk away with a retirement package worth more than $20 million, although some officials are trying to block that compensation. If Wagoner ends up with the money, you can expect more public outrage from American taxpayers. What happened to reserving the rewards for those who succeed?

Meanwhile, what some Americans are most worried about is the government taking the unusual step of pushing out the CEO of a private company.

But GM stopped being purely private when it accepted billions in bailout money. With taxpayer funding comes the strings. You can’t have one without the other.

That’s another important message that Americans need to hear right about now. And who better to convey it than the president of the United States?

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a columnist and editorial board member of The San Diego Union-Tribune. E-mail: ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com

It is, nevertheless, a bad idea and shouldn’t be necessary.

This plan by the Treasury secretary, and much of the frenzied monetary expansion being conducted by the Fed, is based upon a dubious premise: that the credit markets are frozen and need to be unclogged.

This assumes that there is a significant excessive of demand for credit compared to its supply. While there are undoubtedly companies that want credit that are having difficulty obtaining it, if this were generally true, interest rates would be rising sharply.

They aren’t. In fact, they are at historically low levels.

The economic slowdown has reduced the demand for credit. Nevertheless, business debt increased 4.8 percent last year, indicating that credit markets are not truly frozen.

The Geithner plan involves the federal government creating joint ventures with private companies to buy bank loans and collateralized debt obligations, mostly mortgage-backed securities.

Private investors will put up some capital, the government will put up some capital, and the government will provide additional capital through subsidized loans. The joint ventures will then buy loans and securities the banks want to sell.

These are favorable enough terms that some private investors will probably be willing to play.

But step back a minute and consider this: The only reason they will be willing to play is if they have a high degree of confidence that they will be buying bank assets that are worth more than they will pay. And on the other side of the transaction, the banks will be giving up something worth more than they are getting.

The banks may be willing to do so, because what they will be getting will be of more certain value than what they are giving, and that may be advantageous to meet their regulatory requirements.

But a regulatory scheme that assumes that banks are healthier when they give up something everyone assumes is of more value for something that everyone assumes is of lesser value is self-evidently perverse.

There is, of course, nothing that legally prevents these loans and securities from being traded today. This, however, is a market that has been frozen because of uncertainty about what the federal government would do. No one wants to go into competition with the big gorilla that sets the rules.

On the securities side, the Geithner plan limits competition for bank CDOs, which will further depress their value.

The government will choose a limited number of private partners to create joint ventures to purchase these securities. Treasury’s white paper suggests probably around five.

These favored partners will then get access to government capital and favorable financing not available to other potential purchasers.

The Treasury will provide capital for both the loan and securities purchase programs. For the loan purchase program, FDIC will provide financing guarantees. For the securities program, private partners will be able to borrow from the Fed.

Of course, none of these governmental entities actually have any money. So, all the money the federal government is throwing in will either be borrowed or, in the case of the Fed, created out of thin air.

A better approach would be for the federal government to create a better environment for recapitalizing banks with purely private funds.

Banks are a bargain right now. If the federal government provided more certainty to the value of bank-owned CDOs, either through more realistic regulatory treatment or a direct guarantee of a portion of their worth, and exempted new bank investments from the capital gains tax for a while, private capital could probably do the job.

But the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, apparently thinks markets are incapable of sorting through these things without the guidance and extensive participation of the government.

The Geithner plan, while far from optimal, is less ham-fisted than the efforts that have preceded it.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Congress, especially the House of Representatives, is often a useful pressure valve for public outrage. It certainly lived up to its billing when members of a House subcommittee seemingly tried to outdo one another in expressing their outrage over “Bonusgate.”

At one point, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas – opposed to the massive federal bailouts of Wall Street from the beginning – mocked the reaction to the bonuses as “the outrage of the week.”

President Barack Obama told a California audience they were “rightfully” outraged.

“I’m outraged, too,” Obama said, and then went on to declare the bonuses an offense against “what’s fair and what’s right” and “our values.”

Obama’s administration knew the bonuses were coming, anticipated the rightful outrage their discovery would provoke, and yet could not or would not stop them. Bonusgate smacked both of business-as-usual and ineffectual oversight, not the change that Obama said was coming to Washington.

We get it that people are angry, that the president is outraged, and that he inherited a lot of these problems. Now, what are you going to do about it?

When the bonuses first became public, the president and some of his top financial advisers differed on whether they could be stopped. Democrats in power scrambled to get them revoked.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, already under fire for an allegedly favorable loan from Countrywide Mortgage, acknowledged he helped write an amendment that allowed the bonuses, although he said he did not know of the $165 million in AIG plums when he was writing it.

Taxpayers have roughly an 80 percent stake – about $170 billion in aid and loans – in AIG. The bonuses were peanuts, relatively speaking, but symbolically huge, and that effect was vastly underestimated by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Obama stood by his man, saying Geithner faces a “multiplicity of problems” faced by no Treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton in the formative years of the republic.

“Nobody is working harder than this guy. He is making all the right moves in terms of playing a bad hand,” Obama told reporters before heading off to California and an appearance on the “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

Looking back, we may well conclude that Bonusgate marked the moment when the Obama administration owned the nation’s financial crisis. Outrage is useless from this point on. So is blaming the predecessor.

Obama now will be measured on action and results. Bonusgate may have made that task much harder. Congress was already balking at his $3.65 trillion budget and the possibility of billions more in stimulus and bailout spending.

Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., a member of the subcommittee that grilled AIG’s overseer, said Congress needed to “put a pause button” on future bailouts while striving to win back the confidence of the public.

“As we point fingers in Congress,” Scott said, “we have got to recall that there are three fingers pointing right back at us.”

As political spectacle, it doesn’t get much more ironic than the AIG hearing. Elected representatives of a government that has put its people $11 trillion in debt took turns expressing outrage over immoral business decisions and lecturing on fiscal responsibility.

The man appointed to fix AIG, Edward M. Liddy, had nothing to do with the company’s problems. He is working for a dollar a year and has had death threats to him and his family.

And yet Liddy went to Capitol Hill to become a piñata for the latest dose of politicians’ outrage. Liddy told committee members that he’d asked bonus recipients to voluntarily return them, and that some had. Most members of the oversight panel were unsympathetic.

Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., says AIG should stand for “arrogance, incompetence and greed.”

Some might add, “An Incompetent Government.”

Chuck Raasch is political editor for Gannett News Service. E-mail: craasch@gns.gannett.com.

Raasch’s blog: Get more behind-the-scenes reports, context and analysis about politicians and the political process in Raasch’s Furthermore blog. Look for it at http://gns.gannettonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS03.

President Obama gestures while speaking at Dobson High School in Mesa on Wednesday regarding the housing foreclosure problem.

From the political notebook:

• President Obama and congressional Democrats seem intent on permitting bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages on primary residences. They can probably garner enough Republican support to get it through.

There has never been a case, however, in which the unintended consequences have been clearer in advance.

The Democratic pitch is basically this: bankruptcy judges can modify other credit agreements, including for second homes and other luxury goods purchased by the rich. Why not for the only home of average Jacks and Jills?

Primary residences are treated differently in bankruptcies in a number of ways. Other creditors cannot go after your home; as long as you remain current, you get to keep it. Your home mortgage lender cannot go after your other assets for payment.

The Democratic narrative is also misleading about what goes on in bankruptcies regarding luxury goods, such as second homes. Bankruptcy petitioners don’t get to keep them and just pay less for them. They are disposed of to partially pay the claims of creditors.

Current bankruptcy laws do provide some leeway on primary residences. A Chapter 13 filing stays any foreclosure, and the homeowner is given three to five years to make up any arrears.

In an ordinary market, in which home values are rising, home lending is a low-risk business, given existing bankruptcy laws. In the event of default, the lender can get back the home, which is usually worth more than what is owed. No loss.

If lenders, however, have to assume the risk that a bankruptcy judge can impose a loss, they will charge for that additional risk.

This will be reflected partly in higher mortgage rates. The Mortgage Bankers Association projects that mortgage rates would increase 1.5 percentage points.

The larger impact will be much tighter underwriting: much larger down payments, sharper limits on payment-to-income ratios, and rigorous verification of income.

Now, the result might be good for the economy. Lax mortgage underwriting is a proximate cause of the current economic difficulties. Putting lenders at greater risk might be beneficial.

But the result will be that buying a home will be more difficult and take more time. Fewer people will be able to buy homes. Those who can buy will pay more for less.

The consequences will fall particularly on young people, who will probably have to remain renters longer.

This isn’t what Democrats intend. But it is what will happen.

• In a mostly bleak world, there are some hopeful signs regarding governance in Muslim countries.

One of the sources of global tension is the lack of secular, democratic governance and pluralism in Muslim countries. Islam has not been reconciled to the separation of mosque and state.

Such reconciliation did not come easily nor peacefully in the Christian world.

The assumption of many has been that the introduction of democracy in Muslim countries would lead to the rise of Islamist parties and theocratic rule. That risk remains large.

However, there are some counter-indications. In the first elections in Iraq, voting was along sectarian lines and mostly for religiously-oriented parties. In the recent provincial elections, voter sentiment shifted to secularists promising good governance.

Voter sentiment seems to have similarly shifted in Indonesia, where Islamist parties are polling at about half the support they received in the 2004 election, and currently at below 10 percent.

The most hopeful development is occurring in Turkey, where a democratically-elected, Islamist party has ruled for six years.

The only religiously-oriented moves it has made have been in favor of things we would regard as exercising the right of religious expression, such as permitting women to wear head scarves in government buildings. It has instituted more free-market and liberal reforms than its ardently secularist predecessors.

What’s happening in Iraq, Indonesia and Turkey may be the beginning of something extraordinarily important.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Assuming government officials can fix housing assumes that they know how many homes should be bought and built and what they should cost. They don't. No one does. That's why there are markets.

Well, at least President Obama’s housing plan isn’t as bad as his stimulus plan.

It is, nevertheless, unnecessarily costly and cumbersome.

The common refrain that the economy won’t be fixed until housing is fixed has some validity. But it doesn’t offer much useful guidance for policymakers.

Assuming government officials can fix housing assumes that they know how many homes should be bought and built and what they should cost. They don’t. No one does. That’s why there are markets.

Instead, federal policy regarding housing is best seen as a welfare program, using the term descriptively, not pejoratively. The question is what government should do to help people cope with the stress the burst of the housing bubble and the economic contraction have put on mortgages.

There are three categories of people who could use assistance:

• Those who bought more home than they could afford, assuming that rising values would permit a later refinancing;

• Those who are having trouble making payments due to a loss of family income;

• And those who want to sell their homes but can’t because their homes are now worth less than they owe and they cannot afford the loss.

Obama spoke, as did President Bush before him, about separating the deserving from the undeserving in any assistance program.

But that’s impossible. An assistance program can, and should, be limited to primary residences. But beyond that, aid will fall on the just and the unjust alike.

Obama proposes that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refinance loans they own or guarantee up to 105 percent of current value.

He also proposes that other lenders write down the loans of borrowers who cannot afford their mortgages. Lenders would eat whatever reduction would get mortgage payments down to 38 percent of the borrower’s income. The federal government would then subsidize a further write down to 31 percent of income.

This is very costly. The program would require another $275 billion federal outlay to provide Fannie and Freddie additional public capital and subsidize loan write downs.

It’s also of limited reach and relief. Underwater mortgages not owned or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie would be ineligible for refinancing under that part of the program.

And the write-down relief is good for only five years. After that, payments can pop back up. Unless home values or family incomes have sharply rebounded, the same affordability problem reappears.

There’s a better solution that’s both broader and less costly. It’s grounded in two realities: (1) the default rate on mortgages that are underwritten for income is very small; and (2) the market power of a government guarantee.

Here’s the proposal: For a short period of time, say two years, the federal government will guarantee the refinancing of any mortgage on any primary residence so long as the monthly payments don’t exceed 31 percent of family income. It doesn’t matter what the home is worth or how long the payment term has to be, even if it exceeds 30 years.

This would be at the option of the homeowner. Existing lenders don’t have to take a hair cut or consent. They are paid off.

The guarantees would work the same way as the existing Fannie and Freddie guarantees work. They would buy qualifying refinanced mortgages and then resell them with a guarantee, for a fee.

This part of the Fannie and Freddie business model was working fine. They were brought down by the subprime mortgage-backed securities generated by others that they bought for investment.

A federal guarantee should lubricate the private market to originate such loans and buy them in the secondary market. Federal losses, given the income underwriting, should be minimal and covered by the fees.

Since September, the federal government has been guaranteeing, for a fee, money-market funds. There have been no losses and the government has collected over $800 million in fees.

A housing plan based upon refinancing guarantees, not outlays and hair cuts, would do more and cost less.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com