For unrelated reasons (textbook!) I just reread Tim Geithner’s unfortunate August 2010 op-ed Welcome to the Recovery. Even at the time, it seemed tone-deaf to both the economic and the political realities; now, of course, it looks much worse.
But Zachary Goldfarb’s deeply depressing piece on Geithner’s role in the internal economic debate offers some context: it looks as if “Welcome to the Recovery” was aimed not at the nation at large but at the pro-stimulus camp within the administration. No need to do more, Geithner was saying; we’ve got this under control.
Except, of course, they didn’t.
Also, when I read this from the Goldfarb piece:
The economic team went round and round. Geithner would hold his views close, but occasionally he would get frustrated. Once, as Romer pressed for more stimulus spending, Geithner snapped. Stimulus, he told Romer, was “sugar,” and its effect was fleeting. The administration, he urged, needed to focus on long-term economic growth, and the first step was reining in the debt.
I get really depressed. Whether he knew it or not, Geithner was making the Mellon-Schumpeter-Hayek argument that any effort to push up demand was somehow artificial and unsound. Not what anyone should be saying in the modern world, least of all a top official in an allegedly progressive Democratic administration.
Link fixed.