After the Music Stopped

Regarding the Financial Crisis of 2008, Alan Blinder, a Princeton University economist and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, judges the government itself to be at fault. He writes in his latest book, “The two secretaries of the Treasury during the crisis period, Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, have between them barely given a single coherent speech explaining what happened and – perhaps more important – why they did what they did.”

And he is concerned that the resulting combination of public ignorance and outrage will impede the government’s response the next time that a bubble pops.