Found this gem on Amazon that somehow eluded my attention until today, The System Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression
In The System Worked, Drezner, a renowned political scientist and international relations expert, contends that despite the massive scale and reverberations of this latest crisis (larger, arguably, than those that precipitated the Great Depression), the global economy has bounced back remarkably well. Examining the major resuscitation efforts by the G-20 IMF, WTO, and other institutions, he shows that, thanks to the efforts of central bankers and other policymakers, the international response was sufficiently coordinated to prevent the crisis from becoming a full-fledged depression. Yet the narrative about the failure of multilateral economic institutions persists, both because the Great Recession affected powerful nations whose governments managed their own economies poorly, and because the most influential policy analysts who write the books and articles on the crisis hail from those nations. Nevertheless, Drezner argues, while it’s true that the global economy is still fragile, these institutions survived the “stress test” of the financial crisis, and may have even become more resilient and valuable in the process.
Agree. Despite all the whining from the left about moral hazard and printing money, economic policy during the 2008 financial problem – and after – has been a resounding success. And don’t think for a second that I’m giving Obama credit for it – this is still the Bush boom because his policies (along with Bernanke and Paulson), not Obama’s, saved the economy. But not only thank the ‘four musketeers‘, thank the cognitive elite who create innovative companies like Facebook, Tesla, Uber and Snaphap, as well as the spendthrift US consumer. The evidence of America’s economic comeback is overwhelming: stocks keep making new highs, profits & earnings, exports, and consumer spending – all at record highs. Given all these positives, in retrospect, TARP was a bargain and succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. The left, including Peter Schiff, Taleb, Roubini, and Shiller all got it wrong – there was no relapse of 2008, no double dip, no bear market, no hyperinflation, no dollar collapse, an no ‘Greece-like’ collapse of the system. Even Krugman was wrong in that the sequester and cutting entitlement spending didn’t lead to a double dip recession; the economy and stock market just laughed it off. Other libs, such as Joseph Stiglitz and the vertically challenged Robert Reich intimated, incorrectly, that widening wealth inequality would lead to a crisis – wrong again. What gets lost in the partisan finger pointing is that policy makers are better at solving economic problem’s than predicting them, and Drezner writes, whether it’s TARP, QE, or the maligned but necessary bailouts an austerity in Europe, they, the global central banks, did indeed rise to the occasion.
This review is better than my own:
“If you find yourself disagreeing with Drezner, you need to take a good hard look at yourself and what you are doing with your life… this detailed, knowledgeable and cogent book is required reading for everyone in the global governance field — and anyone who wants to know how, bad though things have been since the global financial crisis, they might have been a hell of a lot worse.” –Alan Beattie, Financial Times
Agree..instead of being a liberal who whines about things like too big to fail, the fed, wealth inequality and the debt being too high, you need to take as look at your own life an ask yourself, ‘Am I projecting my own personal failings, frustrations, and cognitive shortcomings on the otherwise strong economy?’ No one forced these losers to sell their stocks at the bottom in 2008 or buy a crappy overpriced home in the exurbs in 2006, nor is it the fault of Wall St. bankers, the Fed, and Washington that millions of Americans are simply not smart enough to participate in the strong economic recovery and the post-2008 wealth creation boom. If you have a room temperature IQ or you majored in ‘stupid shit’ in college and cannot find a job with your worthless degree, tough luck. There’s always going to be winners (cognitive elite) and losers (the left side of the Bell Curve); makers (the cognitive elite, the creative class) and takers (the growing underclass that Charles Murray writes about in Coming Apart and The Bell Curve).
The events of 2008 could have been worse, and the left wanted things to get worse to, first, get Obama elected and, second, destroy the wealth of the rich. That’s why you have the Schiff-tards allying with Barrack Sanders in attacking Wall St., web 2.0, and the fed. Their approach is different (the welfare left wants higher taxes and more regulation, the other left wants high interest rates and to somehow eliminate the national debt), but the end result is the same: the destruction of wealth that mainly hurts the 1%. If the fed were to come out and heed Schiff’s advice to raise rates to 4%, the stock and bond market would be annihilated, and although things would probably recover, there is no need raise rates when virtually every economic indicator is signaling low inflation. It’s just bad policy that would hurt millions of Americans who have equity in stock and real estate. Prematurely raising interest rates would also push the economy into a recession, hurting business owners and causing all sorts of problems. Despite being a proponent of Reaganomics, my only criticism is Volker’s unnecessary and economically deleterious crusade on inflation, which pushed the economy into a severe recession.