re: #100 EPR-radar

For the bank crisis, one did not have to choose between keeping things going and raising hell. Both should have been done.

In Oct 2016 it was one or the other, and therefore a much more difficult call to make.

I think we’ve suffered a bit of our own voter amnesia here, because I can remember in early 2009, the biggest concern on the nightly news wasn’t “HANG THE BANKERS!,” it was “I’ve lost my job/my home/my savings/my credit!” Thousands of layoffs weekly, tens to hundreds of thousands monthly. The stock market cratering, credit disappearing, mortgages deeper underwater than the Titanic, and people eating into their savings just to make basic purchases. The White House faced opposition almost from Day One and part of getting through the Stimulus was making concessions like tax cuts that ultimately did nothing.

Dodd-Frank got through by the 3 votes in the House and 4 in the Senate, and that still was not as successful as it could have been because the GOP worked as hard as possible to block the implementation of it. So the idea of dragging bankers before Congress in early 2009 and reading them the Riot Act publicly might have appeal in hindsight, but at the time we were in a very precarious position politically. It’s the same reason why the administration made the politically necessary but publicly frustrating decision to let the Bush admin’s actions go without even cursory review.