Lessons from Lehman

Jared Bernstein has a very interesting piece on the lessons we (did not) learn from the great crisis. He basically makes two points:

First, the attitude towards lenders, while somewhat schizophrenic (Bear Sterns, up; Lehman, down. Why? We still don’t know), was forgiving to say the least. in his words, ” Borrowers get austerity, joblessness, and poverty. Lenders get bailouts when credit is scarce and bribes not to lend when it’s too plentiful”. He then argues that both letting lenders fail and bailing them out has large costs, that should be avoided ex ante through better regulation (and we are not there, yet).

Bernstein is perfectly right, but he neglects mentioning a third option, that was advocated at the time, for example by Joe Stiglitz: temporary bank nationalization. The Swedish experience of 1992 proves, according to many (1, 2), that this would have been as effective, while the cost for the taxpayer would have been greatly reduced if not completely eliminated. Public control over the main financial institutions would have guaranteed that the necessary healing could happen without the rents and bonuses that actually went to the very same people who had caused the trouble in the first place. Temporary nationalization, in other words, would have avoided the “Heads I win Tail you lose” feature of financial sector bailouts.

The second point Bernstein makes is that regardless of the strategy chosen to save the financial sector, fiscal policy should have been much more aggressive in fighting the downturn. A quote, again:

But here’s what I do know. Neither bailouts nor allowing insolvent banks to fail will work if, when private sector demand is subsequently tanking, we undercut the use of fiscal policy to make up the difference. In this regard, the clearest lesson of Lehman is not simply that we must regulate financial markets, which is true, nor is it that we must always preserve private credit flows by fully bailing out irresponsible lenders, which contributes to inequality and economic unfairness.

It’s that it takes both monetary and fiscal policy working together to get back to full employment. Restored credit flows alone won’t get people back to work. That’s pure supply-side thinking.

Well, he says it all. What drives me nuts, is that the he complains about the US, THE US, where the Fed showed incredible activism, where the Obama administration voted and implemented a huge stimulus package (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) just weeks after been sworn in office, while it took us 7 years, to decide to adopt a cumbersome investment plan that will make little or no difference.

Without even mentioning the fact that the whole Greek crisis, since 2010, has been managed with an eye to (mostly German and French) lenders’ needs, rather than to the well-being of European (and in particular Greek) taxpayers.

I really would like to know what would Bernstein say, were he to comment the EMU lessons from the crisis…