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Many who backed Obama at the time of the financial crisis last Fall, are now, in private, expressing grave misgivings. (snip) I'm told that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers have both complained to senior Wall Street execs that they have almost no say in major policy decisions. Obama economic counselor Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman, is barely consulted at all on just about anything -- not even issues involving the banking system, of which he is among the world's leading authorities.(snip)(obama)is acting as if he has a blank check to do what he wants,...

A handful of high-ranking Obama administration officials this month delivered private briefings at the annual invitation-only conference held by an elite international organization known as the Bilderberg group. The closed meeting of some of the most powerful business , media and political leaders in North America and Western Europe heard from top Obama diplomats James Steinberg and Richard Holbrooke, who detailed the administration’s foreign policy, while economic adviser Paul Volcker, chairman of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, also gave a presentation at the heavily guarded seaside resort in Greece that hosted the event. The Bilderberg group, which takes its...

On Tax Day, Apr. 15, President Obama declared his belief in simplifying the tax code. His Economic Recovery Advisory Board, chaired by Paul Volcker, has been tasked with presenting recommendations by Dec. 4. Is the flat tax coming? No. Simpler code? Yes. Lower tax rates (plural)? Yes. The catch: The improved income tax code will come with a European-style value-added tax. Choke! Politicians love the VAT. First, because the levy applies to every transaction phase and includes services as well as products, it is difficult to avoid. It's no surprise, therefore, that the VAT was invented by the French. Second,...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The White House Wednesday announced a new task force headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker to reform the Byzantine US tax code in the hope of recouping billions in lost revenue. White House budget chief Peter Orszag said Volcker and four other top economists will report their recommendations back to President Barack Obama by December 4, and their review will cover three main areas. "One is tax simplification, the second is closing tax loopholes and reducing tax evasion, and the third is reducing corporate welfare," the director of the Office of Management and Budget told...

A top economic adviser to US President Barack Obama, along with nine former senior officials, is calling on the American leader to launch a dialogue with Hamas, the The Boston Globe reported Saturday. SLIDESHOW: Israel & Region | World According to the report, Paul A. Volcker and other members of the bipartisan group - including former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski - have sent a letter to Obama urging him to engage Hamas in order to coax the terrorist organization to disarm and join a peaceful Palestinian unity government.

As President Obama rolls out one of the most ambitious agendas in US history, federal agencies are struggling to administer hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of new projects and to enact sweeping policy changes with a mere handful of senior staff members in place... Only about 70 people have been formally nominated to fill the roughly 500 senior posts in the Defense, State, Treasury, and Education departments and dozens of other government agencies, according to White House records. Dozens of nominations are still pending as FBI and White House officials scrub potential nominees' tax returns, financial ties, and former...

This prescience article has never been more relevant than today. I urge to read it all. TIME TO BRING PAUL VOLCKER OUT OF RETIREMENT John Crudele May 4, 2008 SAVE the dollar! Fire Ber nanke! There have been a lot of folks attacking Ben Bernanke lately. Most are steamed that the chairman of the Federal Reserve isn't cutting interest rates fast enough to help the economy, even though he's been slashing borrowing costs since last summer. Oh, those misguided souls! Bernanke's problem is just the opposite - he's proving to be so easily manipulated by Wall Street and anxious politicians...

NEW YORK – "Even the experts don't quite know what's going on." Speaking to a number of those experts Friday, Paul Volcker, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, cited not only the lack of understanding of the global financial meltdown but the "shocking" speed with which it had spread across the world. "One year ago, we would have said things were tough in the United States, but the rest of the world was holding up," Volcker told a conference featuring Nobel laureates, economists and investors at Columbia University in New York. "The rest of the world has not...

Paul Volcker, the former US Federal Reserve Board chairman who is now a member of President Barack Obama's advisory team on the economy, spoke in Toronto recently as part of the Grano Speakers series.His topic, of course, was the extent of the crisis facing the US, and particularly what brought it about. (Solving it is another issue). He is the latest to suggest Canada is in far better shape, and has been far better served by the structure of its banking system, than the US, Europe and other regions."It’s interesting that what I’m arguing for looks more like the Canadian...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog_post/beyond_the_echo_chamber/ Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm Advice from "beyond the echo chamber" We just learned the economy lost another 600,000 jobs last month. It's a staggering number, and it underscores just how deep this crisis is – and, as the President pointed out this morning, it’s accelerating. That's why he created the Economic Recovery Advisory Board -- to solicit ideas from "beyond the echo chamber of Washington, DC." "I’m not interested in groupthink, which is why the Board reflects a broad cross-section of experience, expertise, and ideology," he said. "We’ve recruited...

NEW YORK -- A top economic adviser to the incoming Obama administration unveiled a plan today to radically rethink the global financial system, including a host of measures that would dramatically expand government control over banking and investment in the United States. The plan -- which recommends limiting the size of banks, setting guidelines for executive pay and regulating hedge funds -- offers the first hint of the kind of changes to the financial system President-elect Barack Obama might push for in the coming weeks and months. Obama has pledged to present a comprehensive series of changes to prevent a...

A presidentially appointed "car czar" to oversee the restructuring of struggling U.S. automakers could be named as soon as this week if Congress approves an industry bailout, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview aired on Tuesday. Pelosi told NBC's "Today Show" that she favored former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, recently appointed by President-elect Barack Obama as his top adviser on steering the economy out of recession, to oversee restructuring of the industry. Democrats and the White House are negotiating a bailout package of up to $15 billion in loans to rescue the Detroit Three companies....

<p>Fox news ran stories last night based on some of the things we were tracking right here in this post. Here is their on line story.</p> <p>As unfinished as my research is, I feel compelled to release what I've found so far as the story cannot wait any longer.  I am not looking for a scoop on anyone or anything, but at the same time I don't want anyone thinking I made this stuff up after the fact either.</p>

x-Fed Chief to Lead New Economic Panel of Outside Experts Who Will Brief Obama President-elect Barack Obama appointed former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker on Wednesday to be the chairman of a new White House advisory board tasked with helping to lift the nation from recession and stabilize financial markets. University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee, one of Mr. Obama's longest-serving policy advisers, will serve as the board's staff director, along with his duties as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Members of the panel will be drawn from a cross-section of citizens outside the government,...

The G-20’s Secret Debt Solution by Larry Edelson 11-13-08 If you think this weekend’s G-20 meetings in Washington are only about designing short-term fixes to the financial system and regulatory reforms for banks, hedge funds, brokers, mortgage companies and investment banks … think again. Behind the scenes, a far more fundamental fix is being discussed — the possible revaluation of gold and the birth of an entirely new monetary system. I’ve been studying this issue in great depth, all my life. And given the speed at which the financial crisis is unfolding, I would be very surprised if what I’m...

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is on the shortlist for the US secretary of the treasury position in the Obama administration, Ynet has learned. Should Volcker, 82, be passed for the position, he is likely to be named head of the US Financial Council. Volcker, who chaired the Federal Reserve for eight years, was appointed head of the committee which probed the liability of Swiss banks to holocaust victims, in 1995. The committee's effort yielded $1.5 billion in restitutions to Holocaust survivors. While spearheaded by Volcker, the committee met once a moth, usually in Zurich. The committee was made...

President-elect Obama is weighing an array of Washington insiders and outsiders, including some Republicans, for top administration posts, according to Democratic officials. Obama has signaled that he will make no Cabinet-level appointments immediately, and his deliberations are tightly held by his closest aides. But that hasn't stopped Democrats and interest groups from circulating lists and offering recommendations to the Obama transition team. Some are surprising, such as former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell as possible education secretary. Others are high profile governors or members of Congress. Yet many are also little known to the general public - and may...

Barack Obama called a summit of his senior economic advisers to help craft his response to the Wall Street financial crisis on Friday, as sparring intensified over which presidential candidate was best qualified to handle the turmoil. Mr Obama has assembled a stellar team of economists and financial leaders to advise him on the crisis, including Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and a trio of former Treasury secretaries. Several of them met Mr Obama for talks in Florida on Friday, with others joining by telephone as the Illinois senator sought to convince...

With not an insignificant amount of fanfare last week, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker endorsed Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy. His endorsement drew more attention than it normally might have in that while Volcker is a lifelong Democrat, his legend is inextricably linked to Ronald Reagan’s, and the ‘80s economic revolution that reversed the U.S.’s flagging economic fortunes. Given Volcker’s historical ties to Reagan, some Republicans logically took offense to his seeming apostasy. Their dismay is misplaced. Volcker was never on board with the Reagan economic plan in the way that modern history suggests, and rather than an essential driver of...

How did the U.S. financial crisis happen? A review of the road to ruin reveals a course littered with more villains than heroes. No, it’s not the Great Depression, but the United States is facing a nasty economy-wide retrenchment following the excesses of the 2000s, with no easy way to dance through it. Think 1979 to 1982, when then U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker exorcised consumer price inflation from the economy. The difference today is that the inflationary explosion has been absorbed by prices of assets—houses, stocks and bonds, office buildings—rather than by the prices of things you buy...

When Paul Volcker declared several weeks ago that the world was in a "dollar crisis," his successors at the Federal Reserve made their private disapproval very clear. This week current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke waved the white flag over Mr. Volcker's point by declaring his own public concern "that the dollar remains a strong and stable currency." Apologies accepted, provisionally. The tragedy is that this is big news. The Fed has monopoly power over dollar creation, and concern for its value ought to go without saying. Yet so great has been the Fed's dollar abdication in recent years, and especially...

...For those of you who are unfamiliar with Volcker, he served as Fed Chairman from 1979 to 1987. Volcker came in when the US was experiencing the worst inflation since the Civil war and left when the Fed experienced the worst protests and political backlash since the Great Depression. Simply put, Volcker kicked off a serious recession in order to slay inflation. From an objective standpoint, his decision made economic sense, but it was a political death knell. Volcker’s clearly aware of the fact, joking that the “greatest strategic error” in his life was not the recession, but taking his...

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, the latest big name to endorse Sen. Barack Obama, could give the Illinois Democrat a boost by lending his gravitas in the financial world to a presidential candidate whose biggest hurdle is to convince voters he is experienced enough. “After 30 years in government, serving under five Presidents of both parties and chairing two non-partisan commissions on the Public Service, I have been reluctant to engage in political campaigns. The time has come to overcome that reluctance,” Volcker, a Democrat, said in a statement today. “However, it is not the current turmoil in markets...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker thinks the U.S. central bank is to blame for allowing bubbles to inflate asset markets, and says that current Fed chief Ben Bernanke is in a tough spot. "I think Bernanke is in a very difficult situation," Volcker told the New York Times Magazine for a story it will run on Sunday. The Times made the text available to the media in advance of publication. "Too many bubbles have been going on for too long ... The Fed is not really in control of the situation," the Times quoted Volcker as...

UNITED NATIONS — The General Assembly is preparing to put an early end to an in-house panel that has exposed more than $600 million in tainted United Nations contracts and is currently investigating an additional $1 billion in suspect agreements. A budget committee of the General Assembly is scheduled to vote as early as Friday on a resolution that would force the panel to close down its operations in six months. The effort to scuttle the panel is not a budget matter so much as a political one, and it represents the continuing suspicion developing countries have about international intervention...

The United Nations' Cash for Kim Jong Il scandal is now six months old, so it's a good time to assess progress, if that's the right word. The evidence of misdeeds at the U.N. Development Program in North Korea continues to mount, but there's still no "urgent" and "external" inquiry, as ordered by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in January. Now the U.S. has uncovered evidence that in addition to transferring millions of dollars in cash that may have gone to help prop up Kim's grotesque regime, the UNDP also transferred dual-use technology. It did so without bothering to secure a U.S....

Can the Second Coming of Paul Volcker Save the Dollar? Thoughts on the eve of high level talks in Beijing by Antal E. Fekete, Professor, Intermountain Institute for Science and Applied Mathematics "Dismal Monetary Science" December 14, 2006 History replaying One of the most frequently asked questions from my readers is the title above. Conventional gold-bug wisdom holds that in 1979 the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, raised interest rates drastically, thereby putting an end to the galloping inflation then raging, and aborting the bull market in gold. Volcker’s high-interest policies are credited with the feat of...

The West’s need for Russia’s energy and cooperation regarding Iran, Iraq, China, and the “War on Terrorism” will likely lower the standard demanded for a full membership in the G8 group, to allow Moscow’s ascendance to the rich nations’ club, at the St. Petersburg meeting in July. “In the six years since he pledged to uphold democracy as a 'dictatorship of law,' President Vladimir Putin has increased the role of the police and security services in governing Russia and wielded the power of the courts for political ends,” says the Director of the London based Foreign Policy Centre, Stephen Twig....

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan lashed out at the media after a year of unrelenting attacks on the United Nations and criticism of his management of the $64 billion oil-for-food program in Iraq, calling one critic "an overgrown schoolboy." He criticized reporters Wednesday for what he said was unfair coverage of his role in the oil-for-food program and insisted reporters missed the big story. That, he said, was the more than 2,200 companies and invididuals from some 40 countries that paid kickbacks or illegal surcharges to Saddam Hussein's government to get contracts. An 18-month investigation led by former U.S....

PARIS - An anti-bribery panel urged governments Friday to do more to investigate evidence of kickbacks and corruption in the U.N.-commissioned report on Iraq's oil-for-food program. Only 11 of some 40 countries whose citizens or companies were implicated by the inquiry have requested the evidence unearthed with a view to possible prosecutions, said Mark Pieth, panel chairman at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. "The working group encourages its members to follow up by obtaining this information," said Pieth, who also was a member of the independent inquiry headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. The United...

NIGERGATE: Connections between members of the UN Inquiry Committee into the Oil-for-food program, the Rockefeller Group and the French. As promised some elements that the “radar missed”. Once again the Italian newspaper Il Giornale offers some fascinating insight into the less discussed aspects of the Nigergate affair. In addition I’ve posted a HIGHLY SIMPLIFIED chart mapping A PART of the links between members of the UN Oil-for-food Inquiry, the Rockefeller Group AND THE FRENCH. Is it perhaps because of these ties that France despite having been in possession of the false documents since the fall of 2000, despite only having...

New York, November 6: With his report on Iraqi oil deals creating a political storm in India, its author Paul Volcker, in a startling revelation, has said he agreed to change the language that referred to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's son Kojo's business dealings. Volcker, who investigated allegations of corruption in the UN's USD 64 billion Iraqi oil-for food programme, said he had no idea how much the 18-month probe would expose the vulnerabilities of the world body and how close he would come to toppling the Secretary-General as its leader. "It had that potential from the start," Volcker...

New York, November 6: With his report on Iraqi oil deals creating a political storm in India, its author Paul Volcker, in a startling revelation, has said he agreed to change the language that referred to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's son Kojo's business dealings. Volcker, who investigated allegations of corruption in the UN's USD 64 billion Iraqi oil-for food programme, said he had no idea how much the 18-month probe would expose the vulnerabilities of the world body and how close he would come to toppling the Secretary-General as its leader. "It had that potential from the start," Volcker...

London, November 6: Senior officials at the United Nations had disregarded the damning findings of the Volcker Commission's probe into the Iraqi Oil-For-Food programme, the US envoy to the global body has said. In the bubble on First Avenue, Volcker is just ignored. I talk about it, but it's a solitary conversation. Nobody else will be fired unless people are indicted by outside authorities," the Sunday Telegraph daily on Sunday quoted John Bolton, the American Ambassador to the UN, as saying at a private dinner in New York last week. "Corruption didn't arise out of thin air, it arose out...

Volcker changed language of report November 06, 2005 22:42 IST Last Updated: November 06, 2005 22:52 IST With his report on Iraqi oil deals creating a political storm in India, Paul Volcker, in a startling revelation, has said he agreed to change the language that referred to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's son Kojo's business dealings. Complete Coverage: The Volcker Report Volcker, who investigated allegations of corruption in the UN's $64 billion Iraqi oil-for food programme, said he had no idea how much the 18-month probe would expose the vulnerabilities of the world body and how close he would...

UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations faces a crisis of reputation in the wake of the oil-for-food scandal, but the 191 member states and Secretary-General Kofi Annan are determined to reform the world body, the top U.N. management official said Wednesday. Key elements of that reform include a new, strengthened whistleblower policy and new financial disclosure rules that, among other things, will require that staff report gifts of more than $250 rather than $10,000 as the rules currently demand, said Undersecretary-General Christopher Burnham. Burnham is an American and former official in the administration of President Bush. He was hired five...

MOSCOW (AP) - 1027dv-oil-for-food A scathing report on corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program for Saddam Hussein's Iraq drew widespread denials, terse dismissals and protestations of innocence Friday. But there were also pledges to investigate from some of the 2,200 companies cited and countries with citizens named. Russian officials angrily alleged that documents accusing companies and officials in that country were fake, and the head of the nation's electricity monopoly called for the report's writers to be punished. But in a rare partial admission, Sweden's Volvo AB acknowledged making payments through an agent to Iraqi authorities but said it did...

MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) - Russia could demand that the Paul Volcker commission, probing into the scandal around the Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, disclose the sources of fake documents it had received, the Russian foreign minister said Saturday. Sergei Lavrov said the commission's report was being thoroughly studied. In a number of instances, the commission presented Russia with "rather dubious or clearly falsified documents" concerning Russia's participation in the Oil-for-Food program, he said. "If more fakes are discovered now or in the foreseeable future, we will urge the commission to explain how it came into possession of these so-called...

Many of these companies are little known, and some are probably fronts. But others are giants: The construction equipment division of Sweden's Volvo is alleged to have "knowingly" paid $535,000 in kickbacks to push $11.8 million in construction equipment, while various subsidiaries of Germany's Siemens paid a total of $1.6 million out of $124.3 million in sales of electrical equipment. (For the record, Volvo denies the allegation and Siemens "cannot confirm" it.) Other major companies named in the report for paying kickbacks include Daewoo, Australian food exporter AWB and Scottish engineering giant Weir. The report also provides a list, which...

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein manipulated the United Nations oil-for-food program so that his regime received $1.8 billion in illicit payments, a U.N.-backed independent report said Thursday. The investigation, led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, said kickbacks came from some 66 member states and illicit surcharges came from 40 member states. The report also said Marc Rich & Co. financed 4 million barrels of oil under a 9.5-million-barrel contract awarded to the European Oil and Trading Co. (EOTC), a French-based shell company. "Surcharges were imposed on the oil," the report said, and "Marc Rich & Co. directed BNP...

UNITED NATIONS - More than 2,000 companies made about $1.8 billion in illicit payments to Saddam Hussein's government through extensive manipulation of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, according to key findings of a U.N.-backed investigation. The report — to be released in full Thursday by the committee probing claims of wrongdoing in the $64 billion program — indicates that about half the 4,500 companies doing business with Iraq paid illegal surcharges on oil purchases or kickbacks on contracts to supply humanitarian goods. The investigators reported that companies and individuals from 66 countries paid illegal kickbacks through a variety of...

In reviewing the career of French diplomat Jean-Bernard Mérimée, two key moments stand out. In June 1995, Mr. Mérimée, then France's ambassador to the U.N., announced he was largely satisfied with the progress Iraq had made on disarmament and wanted sanctions lifted sooner rather than later. And this week, a French investigative magistrate brought Mr. Mérimée in for questioning on an allegation that he took a bribe from Saddam in the form of 11 million barrels of oil. So now we know what French officialdom means by the word "multilateralism": One part involves speechifying about the need for international "consensus"...

ON SEPTEMBER 7, PAUL Volcker's inquiry into the Oil-for-Food program issued its "definitive report" on the biggest relief program--also the biggest scandal--in the history of the United Nations. The investigation alone cost $34 million, took over 16 months, and employed some 75 staff from 28 countries. Running to four volumes and totaling 847 pages, the report is hefty. But definitive it is not.Volcker's report is at best a beginning, and a skewed and incomplete one at that. To be fair, credit is due to some of the investigators on Volcker's staff, who have conducted many interviews and toiled down many...

The United Nations world summit... seems to have done no real harm: It has not further extended the authority and reach of the U.N., it has not foisted another "protocol" or "convention" for the Senate to consider... [or] fund. That may be a negative accomplishment, but it is certainly a real one, especially as Secretary General Kofi Annan had envisioned the summit as an opportunity to expand membership in the Security Council, expand his own powers and require rich countries to pony up additional billions in foreign aid, among other brainstorms. It took new U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John...

This week, more than 170 world leaders will gather at the United Nations to discuss ways to expand human rights, reduce world poverty, diminish violence and generally make the planet a better place. It also would be an opportune time to discuss ways to make the United Nations a more efficient, less corrupt place. After a yearlong investigation into the corruption and mismanagement in the U.N.'s oil-for-food program, a committee chaired by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker has concluded that the administration of the entire United Nations needs to be extensively overhauled. The committee has recommended a series of...

...So it was that the largest fraud ever recorded in history came about. Press reports often cite the overall size of Oil for Food at $60 billion, but Mr. Volcker's report makes clear that the real figure was in excess of $100 billion. From this, Saddam was able to derive $10.2 billion from illicit transactions. But the important point is he was able to steer 10 times that sum toward his preferred clients in the service of his political aims. ...Volcker's report is replete with examples of incompetent UN oversight and tales of political wrangling among the permanent members of...

IT'S RARE THAT doorstop-size reports appear just days before an opportunity to act on them, but that is what's just happened at the United Nations. The commission headed by Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has delivered a massive indictment of the United Nations' handling of Iraq's oil-for-food program just ahead of next week's summit at which U.N. reform will be on the agenda. When Mr. Volcker delivered his report to the Security Council yesterday, his call for change was echoed both by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and by ambassadors representing the United States and other member...

BERN, Switzerland (AP) - Four people are being investigated by Switzerland for illegal activity in the former U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, authorities said Wednesday. The four - all of non-Swiss citizenship - are suspected of money laundering and bribery in connection with the U.N. program and have had their assets in Switzerland frozen, said Andrea Sadecky, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office. Sadecky declined to reveal the identities of the suspects, but told The Associated Press that more investigations were under way and authorities in Geneva also have started a probe of their own. She declined to say...

As Paul Volcker put the finishing touches last week on his final report on the U.N.'s role in the oil-for-food scandal, investigators continue to uncover details about Kojo Annan's links with Cotecna, the company at the center of the influence-peddling inquiry. In late 1998, U.N. sources say, Kojo, son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, got a $3,000 loan from a friend for a down payment on a sporty green Mercedes ML 320 in Geneva, Switzerland. The friend was Michael Wilson, then a vice president of Cotecna, the firm that not only employed Kojo but also won millions of dollars in...

The UN’s leadership needs comprehensive and urgent reform following a failure of management in Iraq’s oil-for-food programme, the Volcker inquiry is expected to say this week. “The main conclusions are unambiguous,” says a copy of the committee’s summary, seen in advance by the Financial Times. “The organisation requires stronger executive leadership, thoroughgoing administrative reform, and more reliable controls and auditing.” The report says “ethical lapses” and weakness in the programme’s management were “symptomatic of systematic problems in the UN administration generally”. It warns that the UN’s ability to do its job depends on its maintaining an image of competence, honesty...