Having defended Obama's candidacy largely on his economic team, I'm having serious buyer's remorse. Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritized a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system. Unlike most fiscal conservatives, I'm not mad at him for trying to increase the size of the government; that's, after all, what he got elected promising to do. But he also promised to be non-partisan and accountable, and the size and composition stimulus package looks like just one more attempt to ram through his ideological agenda without much scrutiny, with the heaviest focus on programs that will be especially hard to cut.
I have a strong feeling that if it was that easy to fix the banking system, it would have been done already. I'm prepared to give them some time on this, Obama-shill that I am, and have come to see the cogency of some of the arguments against hasty and possibly foolish decisions. Bernanke is persuasive on this.
We had a crisis of similar proportions in a different area with a new president last time around. Looking back, do we really think Bush's failures after 9/11 came from too much circumspection or"
I agree with Sullivan. Thi is a historic moment and nothing useful is going to happen overnight. We need leaders who can plan months and years ahead.
As for partisanship, so far very few if any Repub;ocans have made constructive suggestions. In the ansence of that, frankly, they seem to me to be mor einterested in saving their seats then promoting our mutual welfare.
In fact, as I was writing, I cam across this amazing piece:
By John Poirier and Diane Bartz
Asked in an interview with Reuters whether Citigroup needed additional government capital injections, Parsons said: "No, I think actually, particularly with the latest conversion... Citi is actually one of the better capitalized banks in the world."
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