http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/40758/Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner uses the Washington Post’s op-ed page to tell us How to prevent America’s next financial crisis.
I’m not an economist, but I think his answer boils down to "trust the not-really bipartisan Senate bill to give not-even-close-to-credible regulators like him the authority to get it right next time." That should be enough to get everyone to move their money from Citi and Bank of America to their mattresses.
Frankly, Tim lost me at hello; his first sentence declares:
"America is close to turning the page on this economic crisis. . . .
In fact, we are repairing our financial system at much lower cost than anyone anticipated and expet to return hundreds of billions of dollars in available but unuese TARP resources to the American people. That is a rare achievement."
Actually, whoppers that huge are not that rare. But Tim isn’t finished bragging:
" . . .we estimate the overall cost of this crisis will be a fraction of what was originally feared and much less than what was required to resolve the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s."
Then he caveats this proud achievement by noting it doesn’t count what really matters:
" The true cost of this crisis, however, will always be measured by the millions of lost jobs, the trillions in lost savings and the thousands of failed businesses. No future generation should have to pay such a price."
More at the link --