Thread by @matthewstoller

Still reading the Reed Hundt book "Crisis Wasted" on Obama. Hundt did the first major East Coast fundraiser for Obama. The book savages the whole team as a bunch of brilliant but incompetent deceptive neoliberals who couldn't see obvious problems in front of them.

David Axelrod encouraged Obama to mislead the public during the crisis, worrying "that explaining truthfully the severity of the economic problem will deepen despair, undercut Obama’s message of “hope and change.”

The economic team - Summers, Geithner, Orszag - "members of the School of Rubin" - saw no "evidence of inflation, but they continue to believe it is coming. Therefore, they will tell Obama that the deficit-increasing stimulus cannot be too big or last too long."

Carol Browner "agreed with Summers to discourage Obama from asking for a plan to build a national transmission network connecting Great Plains clean power to mid-western utility distribution grids."

"Treasury cared abt Wall Street, the Fed about independence, Geithner about getting $$$ for bailouts. Toward their separate ends, they collaborated on letting the Lehman bankruptcy cause the crisis that they used to arm-twist Congress into passing the legislation they wanted."

Barney Frank "wanted Paulson to preserve Wall Street from bank runs even by acting without clear legal authority if necessary." Meanwhile, "Pelosi did not insist on a reciprocal measure as part of the desperately hurried TARP process."

Bob Rubin told Henry Waxman that Democrats should dare put restrictions on bank CEO compensation because bankers would let the economy be destroyed rather than give up bonuses. Dem leaders accepted it. Rubin was Citi's Chairman. This is who was running the bailouts!

Democrats put a little money in the bailouts for housing and a few meaningless restrictions on exec compensation, which caused Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to have dry heaves. These were the people running policy. This is who Pelosi was obeying.

Alive Rivlin "thought Obama could ask for a much bigger stimulus if he coupled it with a “Social Security fix”—meaning some combination of reducing future benefits and raising revenues—“up front in a way that has no effect on the short term economy."

This is who runs the Dems.

"To meet Obama’s request, the electricity business would have to change. That was unthinkable. The advisers stuck to their precepts: no big changes in market structure or conduct, no important new legislative authority."

Hundt shows Obama as a callow if brilliant leader who turned his back on his initial suite of advisors in favor of the Clintonistas. As President, he was unable and unwilling to see outside a self-imposed bubble of bankers and neoliberal advisors.

And Hundt fingers @Austan_Goolsbee for the foreclosure failure. Goolsbee, in charge of housing, "recommended a plan to prevent 1.5 million foreclosures, asking Obama to “understand that even if it succeeds, there will still be five million foreclosures that we cannot prevent.”"

One of the points @adam_tooze makes is that the GOP got rid of their pro-bailout faction with the Tea Party, whereas the Democrats are still controlled by their pro-bailout faction (Pelosi, Hoyer, Clyburn were all pro-bailout). Dems have not rejected Wall Street control.

A lot of the content in A Crisis Wasted has already been reported, though not all of it. The difference is Hundt did interviews with virtually everyone involved and is an uber-Democratic insider. So it's more a confirmation and an acknowledgment that the Obama WH was a waste.