People following the financial meltdown would be surprised to read in the New Yorker's profile of National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers that: "the banks with combined commercial and investment operations fared the best." Yeah, Citigroup is doing just great. There are other striking sins of omission/commission in this piece. We get no mention of the stock bubble when the piece extols the wonders of the economy in the Clinton years. Nor do we get any mention of the over-valued dollar, a direct outcome of the Rubin-Summers management of the East Asian financial crisis. The collapse of the stock bubble in 2000-2002, coupled with the over-valuation of the dollar, created the serious downturn from which the housing bubble arose. Summers role in ignoring financial bubbles and touting financial deregulation gives him a good share of the credit for the current crisis. Finally, we are told in conclusion that: "So far, none of the worst fears of those who believed that the stimulus was too small or that nationalization was the only option or that taking over car companies would destroy the fabric of capitalism have materialized." Sorry, but this is wrong, big time. The worst fears of some of us who said that the stimulus was too small were that we would be sitting around with 10 percent unemployment for a long period of time and that stimulus would be discredited. That pretty well describes the world we live in, even that may not be the case in New Yorker land. In terms of the bank bailout, some of us were worried that we were effectively taxing the whole country to support the rich bastards that put the economy in the toilet. Bank profits now stand at a record share of GDP and the bonuses at Goldman are as big as ever. What did the critics get wrong?
--Dean Baker
