The Treasury Department Isn't Alone

Paul Volcker is worried about the understaffing of the Treasury Department in a time of crisis.

"The Secretary of the Treasury is sitting there without a deputy, without any undersecretaries, without any, as far as I know, assistant secretaries responsible in substantive areas at a time of very severe crisis. He shouldn't be sitting there alone."

Volcker is a former Federal Reserve chair under Carter and Reagan who is now working in the Obama administration as chair of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. So, he would have a special interest in the Treasury Department.

But there's little doubt that the Treasury Department is not the only department that was significantly weakened during the Bush years.