Matthew Yglesias Defends Tim Geithner
MY:
Comparative Crisis Response | ThinkProgress: I’m on an email list one of whose members recently challenged the other members to produce a defense of “Geithnerism.” The best defense I can think of is suggested by Ezra Klein’s tweet this morning, “I’ve been critical of Bernanke lately, but compared to the European central bankers, the Fed has been vastly better.”
This is the case in general. If you don’t try to parcel out responsibility, but just look at the American government versus the governments of Japan, the United Kingdom, and the Eurozone, we’re doing better. We’re doing a lot better, in fact. That’s not nothing. Also note that if you compare the current situation to the Great Depression, unemployment fell to about 10 percent before rising again during FDR’s premature turn to austerity in 1937. I don’t, personally, feel inclined to spend a large share of my time handing out As for effort or congratulating American policymakers on succeeding at getting unemployment to stall out in the high single digits rather than the teens. But I do think that context is important and it’s relevant that the world is not full of examples of more successful crisis recovery efforts. It makes me mad when the Powers That Be cite the fact that screwups as common to excuse their own screwups but it is worth remembering that you’re better off with the team of Obama/Bernanke/Geither than Merkel/Trichet/Rehn or Cameron/King/Clegg.
The real champions here, however, have been the governments of smaller countries with good institutions — Sweden, Canada, Switzerland.
