Spitzer blasts Obama's economic policies

A debate between six policy experts was organized this week by Intelligence Squared in New York regarding the Obama administration's economic policies, and if they are working. Obama's thus far economic record was defended by Mark Zandi, co-founder and chief economist of Moody's Economy.com, Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, and Steven Rattner, investor and former "Car Czar". Those who argued the contrary were former governor of New York Eliot Spitzer, the University of Texas' James Galbraith, and Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon.

Those who defended Obama said that the economy was brought back from the brink last year through the administration's policies, and that patience was needed in order for those policies to have their full effect. Mark Zandi referred to the measures as "successful, and cautioned against hasty financial regulatory reform:

The proposition is, "Obama's Economic Policies Are Working Effectively." It's not, they have worked. This is not a mission accomplished, no one is arguing that this is over and done with, we have more work to do, and the administration is still working...And more importantly and perhaps most importantly, we are working through some of the structural problems in our economy, working on the hard, difficult issues, the most obvious would be financial regulatory reform. Now this is something you don't want to do quickly, you don't want to make a mistake. Our financial regulatory structure has been in place since the Great Depression. It feels like it, and we have got to take time to make it right. So, in my view, what the administration has done has been highly successful.

Lawrence Mishel defended Obama by pointing out that deregulation played a very significant role in the financial meltdown and current economic climate:

But the question is, are you going to judge the Obama administration policy ineffective, because it hasn't corrected what I think is 30 years of generating inequality, false-hearted, silly deregulation and worshipping of markets where we shouldn't have done it that got us into this darn mess? I don't think that's quite appropriate.

Spitzer however pulled no punches and pointed out that Obama has not embraced the wide-ranging and thorough reform which is desperately required. He then added that there are similarities between the Bush and Obama administrations:

The fundamental error of this administration is that it is continuity. They have embraced the Bush Administration view that if you solve the problem of big banks everything else flows from that. They are wrong. Too big to fail is too big. They don't get it. The only two people I know who don't appreciate that are Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, Henry Kaufman, Mervyn King -- every major academic has said, We must get rid of too big to fail.

Spitzer interviewed on the Rachel Maddow Show: