Tuesday, April 28, 2009

wonder why the President and Treasury Secretary have never articulated their strategy as clearly as Jim Surowiecki has.

From:

The Curious Capitalist - TIME.com

Surowiecki gets bold in defense of Tim Geithner's non-boldness

Jim Surowiecki, riffing on my post from last week on possible reasons for Treasury's less-than-bold approach to the banking crisis, which was itself a riff on a Ryan Avent riff on a Gary Weiss profile of Tim Geithner (yes, we bloggers are news-gathering dynamoes), writes:

It's true that the administration's approach may not be bold in the sense of being radical, but no one believes that boldness is, in itself, a good thing or that the more radical a solution is, the better it must be. (The Bush Administration's decision to invade Iraq was certainly bold and radical. That didn't make it any less of a mistake.) More important, the boldness issue is really a red herring. Obama's critics' problem with the Administration isn't really that they think it should act more decisively: it's that they think the Administration should act differently.

That's not entirely right. At least some of the criticism of the Administration's approach to the banks comes from people like me who wonder why the President and Treasury Secretary have never articulated their strategy as clearly as Jim Surowiecki has."

Me:

  1. donthelibertariandemocrat Says:

    "wonder why the President and Treasury Secretary have never articulated their strategy as clearly as Jim Surowiecki has."

    It's a fair point, but, if I were in the govt, I would assume that only actual improvements are going to do any good at this point. In other words, it's no longer a matter of being convincing in words. Also, if you say, as I do, that the options are limited and ugly, you're likely to be considered a whiner. People will just tell you to shut up and get out then. Besides, Lincoln couldn't convince many people who are disinclined to accept the govt's approach.

    Finally, I've read Geithner make many of the points that people claim that he hasn't. We already have legislation to seize large financial concerns being put forward, and he's admitted plenty of mistakes. I would like Narrow Banking, and that isn't even gaining traction on blogs, but it's hardly only Geithner's fault that I'm not being listened to.

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