David Leonhardt of the New York Times is generally recognised, I think, as one of the best and most credible economic commentators around. He thinks that the American government's economic interventions might just be working:
What if, amid all their missteps and all the harsh criticism, the people in charge of battling the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression — Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson and the rest — basically succeeded?
It
is clearly too soon to know for sure. But the evidence is now pointing
pretty strongly in one direction: history books may conclude that the
financial crisis of 2008 turned out to be far less bad than it could
have been and that Washington deserved much of the credit.
We certainly don't hear much criticism of the bank bailouts any more, and the apocalyptic scenarios predicted by left and right haven't materialised. Of course, Obama's team will only get the credit if the economy starts growing again and unemployment stabilises or declines. On this, Nate Silver does the math and concludes that the recent good news on jobs shouldn't be underestimated:
I think we've grown so accustomed to bad news that we've forgotten how to recognize good news when we see it; leading indicators have been turning upward for months now, both in the United States and in other countries, and now we finally have a jobs report that reflects that optimism.
The Obama administration (building, to be scrupulously fair, on the last days of the Bush administration) is in danger of giving government interventionism a good name. Here's Leonhardt again:
Washington’s early responses to the bubbles in real estate and stocks,
and then to the crisis that followed, were full of mistakes. But since
the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the record has started to change. The
government has undertaken one extraordinary effort after another to
revive the economy, and the economy has seemed to respond.
If voters start to think the same, they might start to wonder why government can't run healthcare too...
This American voter (who supported Clinton and then Obama) has no love for the financial industry bailout. The big banks and Wall Street got stimulus money. Where's the infrastructure dough? Our highways and bridges are crumbling, our parks are closing, etc. And what about the promises to help homebuyers who face foreclosure? Isn't it better to have those houses occupied? Oh, bring back the New Deal!
As for healthcare reform, I want a single-payer system. No chance of that for all Americans, it's clear. Fortunately, I'll be on Medicare in one year!
Posted by: Carol Anne | August 19, 2009 at 11:18 PM