About the Plan

The Timothy Geithner financial rescue plan has been released. I’ve been cruising around look for people who understand the financial sector for comments.

Consensus: Yeah, right.

The most optimistic analysis is Brad DeLong’s, here updated in a post titled “I Think Paul Krugman Is Wrong.” Professor DeLong admits he is uncomfortable disagreeing with Professor Krugman, however. Professor Krugman’s column today was written before all the details were released, but he is opposed to the parts of the plan released earlier. Economist’s View has a roundup of reactions from economists, most of them pessimistic.

No one on the blogophere, Left or Right, is happy about it. Of course, the Right wouldn’t like anything Obama does, meritorious or not, so there’s no point reading them. But the Left generally is in agreement with James K. Galbraith at Washington Monthly, who writes, “Geithner’s banking plan would prolong the state of denial.”

The big concern, expressed by many, is that when Geithner’s plan flops (as most predict it will) President Obama will have lost the political capital necessary to do what really needs to be done, which is nationalize the bleepers.