Last Sunday, my son asked me what I thought about the WaPo article “Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tackles five myths about TARP.” Here’s my reply.

There’s a lot of truth to the specifics, but his overall evaluation is way off because he looks at it by cherry-picking specific points, and also restricting his evaluation to the bank situation alone, and assuming that the proper goal was to save the big banks at low cost rather than to save the economy. So here are things the Administration and Geithner could have done if they had ended TARP and taken a different course.

Nobel prize winner Joe Stieglitz recently called for a second stimulus to reduce unemployment and get the economy working well again. But the Administration seems uninterested in pushing the idea or making it an issue in the election, because it has been unsuccessful in setting the necessary frame for persuading the public that its first inadequate stimulus was only a political compromise that has done some good, but left much more yet to do. Yet we badly need that second stimulus, and if the Democrats could get their act together, get people back to work this month, and were willing to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, we could have it quickly, and they probably could even avoid catastrophic losses in November.

ABC This Week’s Amanpour came armed with videos and quotes to show Mitch McConnell how embarrassed any rational person would be by the nutty positions expressed by Republican candidates like Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Joe Miller, and Christine O’Donnell. But McConnell dodged every question; Amanpour simply gave up trying to get honest answers.

In early 2009, the Administration proposed to put the banks through “stress tests” to see how they’d survive more adverse scenarios. So why didn’t the economic team also have a test in case their own recovery plans proved to be insufficient?

The White House just released a statement that the President’s Chief Economic Adviser, Larry Summers, will leave the Administration and return to Harvard University by the end of the year

If there are any progressives left, it’s time for them to acknowledge that the Obama Administration is systematically destroying their brand.

Three (sorta) “positive” stories about economic stimulus all came together in the last couple of days. They suggest that even when the forces of darkness are trying their hardest to make us stupid, it’s possible we can actually sort out the truth.

Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report, National Edition
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg

Former OMB Director Peter Orszag gives us an absurd argument for why we should extend Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans for another two years but end the Bush tax cuts for everyone by 2013. To get there, Orszag has to ignore both economics and fairness and use logic and political arguments only when convenient.

Despite at least $3 trillion in government spending aimed at stimulating the economy, a multitude of economic indicators now show that the economy is poised to slip into a double dip recession. In order to stave off another dip into further recession Congress and the Obama Administration need to direct federal funds to small businesses.