Joe Stiglitz is pretty hard on Geithner's plan here, calling it nothing short of "robbery of the American people." I think that may be going a bit far: The robbery came when Wall Street made countless bad bets that the taxpayer now needs to cover. The losses that Stiglitz fears will apportion to the taxpayer whether we use Geithner's approach or Krugman's ideas. The question is how much potential upside the Congress sees. I'll also echo Matt Yglesias, who says, "the most distressing thing about the criticism from folks like Krugman and Stiglitz is what you can infer reading between the lines from how ferocious it is. They, and other leading critics, are acting like people who’ve been totally shut out of the consultation/communication loop. And it’s distressing to see people of their stature and expertise getting shut out while the administration works harder on kissing Wall Street's ass to try to persuade the finance class to avoid deliberately sabotaging the economy." You could argue, I guess, that Stiglitz and Krugman have uniquely bad personal relationships with the administration, and so their experience shouldn't be generalized. (Stiglitz has a longtime feud with Summers and Krugman's war with the Obama team dates back to the primary, when they stupidly tried to release an attack document discrediting the good professor.) But it would be nice if some prominent expert dissenter were being given the access and respect that's apportioned to, say, David Brooks. I'd really like to read the ultimate conclusions of a knowledgeable skeptic who'd been able to test his arguments against the Obama administration's thinking on these questions. But instead it's just been a lot of opaque briefings that misrepresent the points of the critics. Which in turn pisses the critics off. Which in turn seems to compel the White House to freeze them out further. Which in turn...
