Krugman
Finally, there was Geithnerâs position, which was that despite its scale the financial crisis should be treated more or less as an ordinary lender-of-last-resort problemâthat temporary nationalization would hurt confidence and was unnecessary, that once the panic subsided banks would be OK. A principal part of Geithnerâs argument against nationalization was the belief that a âstress testâ of banks would show them to be in fairly decent shape, and that publishing the results of such a test would, in conjunction with promises to shore up banks when necessary, end the crisis. And so it proved. He was right; I was wrong; and the triumph of the stress test gave him the title for his book.
And, a couple of years earlier.
Felix Salmon
In hindsight, Summers was right and those urging nationalization were wrong. (Which group includes Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini, as well as me.) What Iâm particularly happy about is that the debate took place, in a lot of detail, within the White House, between people who had no ideological axe to grind and who were intent on working out the objectively right thing to do, given the uncertainty surrounding the banking system and the economy.