Michael Grunwald at Time Magazine does some first class apologetics for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in his latest column. He repeats the line that we should be thankful to Geithner and company that we didn't have another Great Depression. While we all should be happy that we didn't get another Great Depression, the only reason why anyone is talking about a Great Depression is because of the incredible economic mismanagement of Greenspan/Bernanke/Geithner. Remarkably, they either could not see or did not care about the growth of an $8 trillion housing bubble. It was totally predictable that the collapse of this bubble would throw the economy into a severe downturn. It is also important to remember that no other country has fallen into a Great Depression (apparently Mr. Grunwald's missed this fact) therefore there was nothing unique about Mr. Geithner's skills in this regard. It also is worth noting that almost every major financial institution would have been bankrupt in the fall of 2008 without government support. This means that all the multi-million dollar bonus babies at Goldman Sachs and the rest would now be walking the streets looking for jobs without handouts from the government. The government could have put any conditions it chose on this money. The Geithner, Bernanke, Paulson crew opted to put no real conditions on the money given to the banks. As a result, they are richer than ever and the rest of the country has every right to be outraged.
--Dean Baker
