- Dec 29, 2008
- 19,758
- 4,780
- 280
There is nothing Obama could have doen to make things much better, ease the misery a bit for now is all.
He also did nothing to make it any worse than what was already in motion.
If he had done what was needed to be done things would have gotten worse for most, but that is the price we need to pay for the longterm good of the USA.
There were several things Obama could have done to protect the real economy from the effects of the financial crisis, but they would have required a leader with the power and courage of an FDR or a Reagan, not just a slick politician who had nothing to offer but slogans. We had two recent examples of nations dealing with financial crises resulting from real estate bubbles, Japan and Sweden. Japan waited until the country fell into recession and then tried to fix the economy with massive stimulus spending; the result was a lost decade and huge national debt. Sweden took over the failing banks right away, supplying them with sufficient capital so that there was no credit crunch, such as we had and still have here; the result was no recession and when the Swedish government eventually sold the resuscitated banks back to the private sector, the government made a profit.
Loads of economists, some Nobel prize winners among them, urged Obama to choose some variation of the successful Swedish plan, but Obama chose the failed Japanese approach instead because he is a weak, dull, timid man incapable of taking bold steps and more concerned with politics than policy.
Obama inherited a terrible situation and lacked the competence and character to deal with it effectively.