Obama's Economic Saviour (Geithner) Savaged as Keating lets rip

[leftchick]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=114&topic_id=60211&mesg_id=60211

In the Syndney Herald




Reporter, Peter Hatcher

LINK HERE:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/obamas-economic-saviour-s...

"When Barack Obama announced his champion to rescue the world from economic

ruin, it was the first time most Americans had ever heard the name Tim Geithner.

The initial impression was good."

<snip>

"...at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Thursday, Paul Keating gave a starkly different account of Geithner's record in handling the Asian crisis: "Tim Geithner was the Treasury line officer who wrote the IMF program for Indonesia in 1997-98, which was to apply current account solutions to a capital account crisis." In other words, Geithner fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. And his misdiagnosis led to a dreadfully wrong prescription.

Geithner thought Asia's problem was the same as the ones that had shattered Latin
America in the 1980s and Mexico in 1994, a classic current account crisis. In this kind
of crisis, the central cause is that the government has run impossibly big debts.
The solution? The IMF, the Washington-based emergency lender of last resort, will
make loans to keep the country solvent, but on condition the government hacks back its
spending. The cure addresses the ailment."

So Geithner applies the exact wrong set of macro economic monetary restrictions, and the Asian economies sink further. Oh, well. Perhaps the man has learned from his past mistakes of 1997 to 1998.

Or maybe not. Meanwhile the economy here tanks - and like a patient severely hemorrhaging, but not offered a tourniquet, the seepage continues, while we the taxpayers are asked to supply our monies to the needed transfusion. That sound of dripping on the floor - don't worry, anything leaking out, will surely be absorbed by those at the top of the banking system.

[babylonsister]

1. And you're giving credence to Keating because?

I did a search on him yesterday-the guy was a failure and has a really bad habit of blaming everyone but himself.

Plus, he had a grand friendship with Indonesia's Suharto who was a huge criminal crook and bully; that gives me great pause that Keating has very bad instincts to begin with.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Keating

Other than that, have at it.

But do tell why this guy was confirmed by so many if he's so inept, because I think Obama's instincts are better than that.

And pls. try to see Charlie Rose's interview with Geithner recently. You might come away with a different opinion.

[Belial]

2. Depends on what "his instincts" are at this point..

Geitner is pretty much the babling idiot at this point and I don't think Pres. Obama has had that much to do with the picks. At least I would HOPE that he hasn't. Its all been about political favors at this point.

[Sebass1271]

3. it is not geithner.. it is the republicans who want to bring down

geithner along with obama. They never worry about deficits before, i don't believe on flying shit what republicans say now.. it is time for geithner and obama to clean up their mess..