Until today, I’ve hesitated to include Tim Geithner as part of the financial problem, incapable of leading us to a solution (although I’ve long believed that Larry Summers is the Donald Rumsfeld of Finance). After Geithner’s talk yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute, I know that he is an inseparable part of the problem. Both he and Larry Summers have to be dumped… they are too cozy with Wall Street and have proven to be unable to see the need for financial regulation from a system perspective.
The financial system is like the transportation system. Deregulating it has been as idiotic as it would be to turn off traffic lights, remove lane markers and stop signs, eliminate the Highway Patrol, tickets, traffic courts, driver education, etc. and tell everyone to let the “free market” decide what happens on the highways. Only a few big, well armed tanks would travel freely, total traffic would be a fraction of what it now is, and most people would use the roads with fear and trembling. Welcome to the deregulated financial system!
People who can’t understand the tragic magnitude and scope of the “deregulation myth” shouldn’t be involved. Unfortunately this includes a significant part of Congress and the Executive Branch. “Deregulation” has been a religious myth for unthinking people, not an evidence based theory. Apparently Geithner is among the unthinking believers, as was Greenspan until his recent evidence-motivated apostasy. Let Paul Volker and Elizabeth Warren replace the Wall Street stand-ins; they know how to think and what to do based on evidence and system’s thinking.
I too had been unwilling to add him and Sumner to the list, but have never been very comfortable with them either. Your post summarizes my discomfort brilliantly and why I can support them…