Preliminary thoughts on the tax bill:This has been the message from Krugman and others for nearly two months. Obviously Obama doesn't want to hear it or he is so "owned" by the Wall Streeet Lobby that he will never hear it. Sad.
1. It’s not the way you should make policy — it’s clumsy, and it will punish some innocent parties while letting the most guilty off scot-free
2. But — there wasn’t much alternative at this point. And for that I blame the Obama people.
I’ll leave to others the question of who knew or should have known that the bonus firestorm was coming; but it’s part of a pattern. At every stage, Geithner et al have made it clear that they still have faith in the people who created the financial crisis — that they believe that all we have is a liquidity crisis that can be undone with a bit of financial engineering, that “governments do a bad job of running banks” (as opposed, presumably, to the wonderful job the private bankers have done), that financial bailouts and guarantees should come with no strings attached.
This was bad analysis, bad policy, and terrible politics. This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers. And that leaves it with no ability to counter crude populism.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Krugman Slams Obama
You can't get much more honest than Krugman's assessment of Obama's administration and particularly of Geithner's performance. Here's Krugman's lastest blog entry from the NY Times:
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