They Don't Hand Out Those Nobel Prizes For Nothing ...

Maybe Team Obama should be listening (harder, more) to this guy;

Nobel Winner Krugman Sees U.S. Recession Ending Soon (Update1)

The U.S. economy probably will emerge from the recession by September, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said.

“I would not be surprised if the official end of the U.S. recession ends up being, in retrospect, dated sometime this summer,” he said in a lecture today at the London School of Economics. “Things seem to be getting worse more slowly. There’s some reason to think that we’re stabilizing.”

U.S. stocks erased an earlier decline after Krugman made his comments. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index was little changed at 939.14 at 4:07 p.m. in New York after slumping as much as 1.5 percent earlier, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.36 points to 8,764.49.

Krugman, a Princeton University economist, has warned recently that the U.S. government hasn’t done enough to help the country’s economy recover. Last month, at a conference in Abu Dhabi, he said the fiscal stimulus is “only enough to mitigate the slump, not induce recovery.”

[snip]

Even with a recovery, “almost surely unemployment will keep rising for a long time and there’s a lot of reason to think that the world economy is going to stay depressed for an extended period,” Krugman said.

The unemployment rate jumped to 9.4 percent in May, the highest since 1983, partly reflecting more people joining the labor force to look for work.

[snip]

The Fed’s swollen balance sheet is “a little alarming. In the long run you really don’t want the central banks to be so involved in the business of lending,” Krugman said. “But it’s arguably necessary” even if there are questions about “where does it stop?”

Dig "U.S. stocks erased an earlier decline after Krugman made his comments ..."

Hmmm ... I wonder if Secretary of the Treasury Timothy "What's that, Lassie? (Woof, woof!!) Timmy Geithner's in the well?!!" Geithner is already formulating a plan, to intravenously feed Krugman caffeine, and then have the FCC clear a channel for him to be speaking 24/7, if his comments are going to make Wall Street jump.


Bonus Krugman

Three Cheers For Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman!

A Tale of Two Gippers

We're All In The Dance

Gee, I guess I should be jumping for joy, ignoring the cumbersome day on the homefront experienced this day, because the Stock Market jumped 500-points.

And, all because Secretary of the Treasury Timothy "What's that, Lassie? (Woof, woof!!) Timmy Geithner's in the well?!!" Geithner announced his Public-Private Investment Scheme.

Emphasis added to "Public" and "Scheme".



About the only difference between the plan today, and the one Heistin' Hank Paulson was looking to run with last fall, is that Geithner has more hair on his head.

Tbogg, over on Firedoglake sums it up, pretty good;

Geithner isn't Michael Brown. He's Hurricane Katrina.

Reaction today (exempting the Stock Market, of course) was mixed, many still holding on to the point-of-view that this is garbage, and will do nothing, with nationalization of the diseased banks and companies inevitable, others in the middle, saying, ehh, we gotta do something, and maybe, just maybe (perhaps this is a hint, that we should be buying stock in the companies that manufacture "Lucky Rabbit Foot" charms) it will work, and a much smaller crowd openly heralding the Obama-Geithner plans as opening the skies, so the sun can shine, and the money rain down.



Evidence of that center crowd exemplified by quoting Mr. Wind, T. Boone Pickens;

My dad said a fool with a plan can beat a genius with no plan.

Paul Krugman was unwavering in his despair (and added to it with some 'rithmatic'), and gets defended by Digby, against the some in the Obama Administration, and the "noses-in-the-air" folks at MSNBC, who want to wish Krugman away to the cornfield.

Kevin Drum lays down that, perhaps, this is akin to a gauntlet we have to go through, on "The Road to Nationalization?"

Oh yes, there were a couple of reminders, one from Jane Hamsher, that Timothy "What's that, Lassie? (Woof, woof!!) Timmy Geithner's in the well?!!" Geithner is "Making Countrywide Executives Rich Again".

And, Dan Froomkin points out the "Basic questions Treasury still hasn’t answered"

Steve Clemons, on The Washington Note, points to "Simon Johnson's excellent blog, the Baseline Scenario, for "Finally, a Brilliant Idea on Toxic Assets"

And, finally, Henry Blodget, was about the only one out there, proverbially, doing the "lipstick-on-a-pig" thing, calling it like he sees it;

In short, because the plan is yet another massive, ineffective gift to banks and Wall Street. Taxpayers, of course, will take the hit.

Why does Tim Geithner keep repackaging the same trash-asset-removal plan that he has been trying to get approved since last fall?

In our opinion, because Tim Geithner formed his view of this crisis last fall, while sitting across the table from his constituents at the New York Fed: The CEOs of the big Wall Street firms. He views the crisis the same way Wall Street does--as a temporary liquidity problem--and his plans to fix it are designed with the best interests of Wall Street in mind.

If Geithner's plan to fix the banks would also fix the economy, this would be tolerable. But no smart economist we know of thinks that it will.

Something tells me that either President Obama, or Sectretary of the Treasury Timothy "What's that, Lassie? (Woof, woof!!) Timmy Geithner's in the well?!!" Geithner will turn towards each other in the coming weeks, summoning up the best spirit of Laurel and Hardy, and one will say to the other;

"Well, that's another fine mess you've gotten me into."

FEIST - La Meme Histoire - We're all in the dance

Start Cutting The Squares For The Office Pool On Geithner Exit?

If there is such a trophy, or award, the headline-of-the-day goes to Will Bunch, over on his Attytood blog;

What's that, Lassie? (Woof, woof!!) Timmy Geithner's in the well?!!

There's a lot of ways to measure a good-to-great president. We tend to focus on both their policies and their skill in communicating with the American people, but another key task is the ability to admit mistakes, especially when it was a doozy. Remember JFK and the Bay of Pigs early in his presidency?

And Timothy Geithner as President Obama's Treasury Secretary is looking like another one of these.

The New York Times has a comparable, but more reserved story today, as well;

Geithner, With Few Aides, Is Scrambling

Rarely have so few people had so little time to prop up so many pillars of the economy as those in the Treasury Department under Timothy F. Geithner.

In the six weeks since Mr. Geithner took over as Treasury secretary, he and a skeleton crew of unofficial senior advisers have been racing to make decisions that will shape the future of the banking, insurance, housing and automobile industries. 

But even as he maintains a frenetic pace — unveiling plans, testifying before Congress and negotiating new bailouts with the likes of Citigroup, General Motors and the American International Group — there are signs that events are getting ahead of him.

And, here's some recent headlines on our new Secretary of the Treasury.

Former Australian Prime Minister Savages Geithner's Performance in the Asian Crisis

Geithner goes for a laundry list, not a dramatic gesture

Geithner Backs The Elites

Lawmakers laughed at Geithner plan

Geithner Bank Bailout Plan: Fiasco

Add to this, one big-byline blogger has directly called for Geithner to go;

Henry Blodget - Time To Fire Tim Geithner

We don't mean to sound impatient, but we've seen enough. The country is in the middle of the worst financial crisis in 75 years, and the second-most-important person in charge clearly isn't the right man for the job.

When both engines on US Air Flight 1549 quit after takeoff, Capt. Sullenberger did not cling stubbornly to his preconceived view of the situation. He did not float endless versions of the same bad plan to air traffic controllers to see what they thought of them. He did not spend months preparing for a moment just like this only to be seized by indecision when it arrived.

Instead, he just took the controls and landed the plane in the Hudson.

[Snip]

We don't mean to sound impatient, but we've seen enough. The country is in the middle of the worst financial crisis in 75 years, and the second-most-important person in charge clearly isn't the right man for the job.

When both engines on US Air Flight 1549 quit after takeoff, Capt. Sullenberger did not cling stubbornly to his preconceived view of the situation. He did not float endless versions of the same bad plan to air traffic controllers to see what they thought of them. He did not spend months preparing for a moment just like this only to be seized by indecision when it arrived.

Instead, he just took the controls and landed the plane in the Hudson.

After detailing Geithner's "Timmy in the Well" exploits, Blodget continues;

With a few years of seasoning in a normal environment, Tim Geithner might turn out to be a fine Treasury Secretary. But this isn't a normal environment, and we don't have a few years.

The engines of the US economy just quit. We're losing altitude rapidly. And the co-pilot flying the plane clearly doesn't know what to do.

So it's time for the captain to take over again, before Geithner takes him and the rest of us down with him.

Megan McArdle comes, somewhat tepidly, to Geithner's defense ("Should Geithner go?"), however, we probably can predict, there will be more-and-more of these type of posts, articles and headlines coming in the days ahead.

Not to mention what the PartyofNoican will throw out there.

But, hey, it's March, and that means "March Madness", the time of year where anything can happen.

Anyone can win, or anyone can lose.

Hang in there Timmy, maybe you do have a buzzer-beater in you.