Face it, the government saved us
Commentary: We owe a debt to Obama, Bernanke, Paulson, Bush
By Howard Gold
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Americans are good and angry -- and rightly so.
Unemployment remains painfully high at 9.7%, and the total "underemployment" rate approaches 17%. The country faces a monstrous deficit, with little sign of improvement ahead. Meanwhile, the people most responsible for this crisis, Wall Street bankers, are again making huge, undeserved bonuses.
No wonder every public opinion survey says voters want to "throw the bums out" in November. And indeed, Washington has much to answer for in this fiasco.
But the more I look at it, the more I conclude that the government actually did its job in saving the financial system and helping spur an economic recovery.
Policy makers certainly could have done some things a lot better. But without the moves they made, the financial system may have collapsed and unemployment would be far worse than it is now.
That's right: The people you love to hate -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner, and Presidents Bush and Obama -- may actually deserve a few words of praise.
The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the economic stimulus plan, and especially the Fed's many actions to cut interest rates and flood the system with liquidity worked together to prevent the apocalypse we all feared a year ago.
That's not just me talking (and for readers who may wonder, no, I don't work for the government); it was the finding of three reputable economic forecasting firms, loaded with PhDs and the most sophisticated economic models around.
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