What is U.S. Secretary of Treasury doing hobnobbing in Davos Switzerland? He's being interviewed on stage by Charlie Rose of PBS fame. Can't they do that right here at home? How does it look to Americans that a high ranking U.S. official and an employee of PBS - BTW, both funded by tax payer money - are going to a meeting which is essentially limited to rich and powerful people? Not sure this is what the framers of our constitution had in mind when they set out to create the new nation.
By the way if you want to read what Mr. Geithner had to say, here's a link. It's not pretty. He essentially doesn't have much to say about how to generate jobs though he's very optimistic about U.S. growth.
Showing posts with label Tim Geithner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tim Geithner. Show all posts
Friday, January 28, 2011
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Krugman was Right
When President Obama came to office in January 2009, the U.S. ecnonomy that he inherited from his Republican predecessor was headed into collapse. The jobs report and the stock
market indices were shedding big numbers. As the president considered what to do he turned to this economic team of Larry Summers (the Treasury Secretary under Clinton who championed allowing banks to gamble with credit default swaps and went on to earn tens of millions at hedge fund DE Shaw) and Tim Geither (former NY Fed Reserve boss who signed off on allowing Goldman and JP Morgan to get away with billions in US tax payers money by paying them 100% on their insurance contracts with the failed insurance giant AIG).

The advise he got from Larry and Tim was not only bad for Americans out of work, it was also bad for the president's future.
What Larry and Tim advised the president to do was to go easy on the banks saying that if he did so they would start lending money, everyone would just forget about what the banks had done to cripple the economy and the who scary story could just go away.
Paul Krugman at the time wrote that this was folly. He said that the president needed to inject significantly more money directly into the real economy to create jobs not give it to the banks. Krugman also said that if the president didn't take this direct course of action that he would lose political support.
The election of Republican Brown to the seat held by the late Teddy Kennedy shows how prescient Mr. Krugman was.
market indices were shedding big numbers. As the president considered what to do he turned to this economic team of Larry Summers (the Treasury Secretary under Clinton who championed allowing banks to gamble with credit default swaps and went on to earn tens of millions at hedge fund DE Shaw) and Tim Geither (former NY Fed Reserve boss who signed off on allowing Goldman and JP Morgan to get away with billions in US tax payers money by paying them 100% on their insurance contracts with the failed insurance giant AIG).
The advise he got from Larry and Tim was not only bad for Americans out of work, it was also bad for the president's future.
What Larry and Tim advised the president to do was to go easy on the banks saying that if he did so they would start lending money, everyone would just forget about what the banks had done to cripple the economy and the who scary story could just go away.
Paul Krugman at the time wrote that this was folly. He said that the president needed to inject significantly more money directly into the real economy to create jobs not give it to the banks. Krugman also said that if the president didn't take this direct course of action that he would lose political support.
The election of Republican Brown to the seat held by the late Teddy Kennedy shows how prescient Mr. Krugman was.
Labels:
jobs,
Larry Summers,
Paul Krugman,
Tim Geithner
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