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Send out for more dragons


Obama slew the last one. Remember the Recession? And what people thought about his handling of it?

Here's John Authers in today's  FT

This rally ..is now arguably the biggest such turnaround in the past hundred years.

The common assumption ...was that the crisis could not end until the biggest US banks were nationalized......Many were unimpressed by the Obama administrations debut

Then the government's much derided "stress tests" .....restored confidence.

 And not only the capitalist press  but , I sort of remember, even in this  TPM  non- bastion of capitalism,Obama's selection of Geithner and Summers was greeted with muted applause.

Guess what? Obama succeeded. He didn't do what was wanted by  the Authers of the world or by a sizeable TPM contingent. But it worked.He was smart enough not to do what a lot of us wanted.To see that what he needed at that time , to deal with that problem ,was Geithner and Summers. Horses for courses.

So since he got that right, what makes us think he's not also smart enough to see that when it's time to deal with the next problem, say income inequality, he won't see that what he needs is some else?

Two months ago Dragon #2 was breathing fire according to media's health experts and political bloviators. Guess what ?. The reports of  the death of Health Care Reform seem to have been much exaggerated .Can't say the same for Dragon #2  last seen emitting tepid puffs.

And when it comes to Afghanistan what makes us think that because he knew that McChrystal was the Geithner of an anti insurgent campaign he'll fail to see that he needs a non- McChrystal for the non- anti- insurgent  campaign to which I expect/hope he's going to shift ?I forsee four scaly legs in the air and a cold droopy tail switching its last.

Hey, it's fun winning a few. Relay and enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


3 Comments

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Wish I had some of what you're drinkin'. Or else you're living in some realtively safe economic coccoon the rest of us aren't.

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Hey, I've read this before!!!

But seriously we stepped away from the edge and so that is something. However it wasn't the 'stress tests'. It was the Fed pumping mad cash and buying a few trillion of dud assets with the banks dumping mark to market accounting. Confidence was restored when everyone realized the FED/Gov would cover everything. Sure 573 billion of our taxes (so far) just handed over with no strings attached helped to. But the debt is still there, and so are the structural problems.

I count 20 condo towers in my town that are empty. Plus tens of thousands of foreclosed homes and a whole bunch of empty subdivisions. I can't even count how many 'for lease' signs I see as the commercial RE bubble is about to pop. But hey we didn't die. so that's something. YEah!

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Of course it wasn't the stress test. That was synecdoche( you know, next to Albany)


Of all the words of tongue and pen
The saddest are these
It might have been...
To this we add just one more verse
It might have been
A good deal worse.

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