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Nocera is one of the guilty parties in the prestige press who propounded the "too big to fail" mythology. But the quote you cite is of him observing the govern

• ramanujan 15y ago
  Read the full article. He's clearly positive on the bailout and explicitly says the government's first reaction about how to "save" the banks was the "right one". Case in point, it turns out, is the banking crisis. It sure looks like the government’s first impression about how to save the banks was the right one, after all And here is that quote in context: Thanks largely to actions taken by the Federal Reserve, the commercial paper market has thawed, and banks are lending to each other again — if not to the rest of us. Customers aren’t racing to pull their money out of the banking system and stuff it under a mattress. Most important, the government has made clear it will not allow a major bank to default, to avoid the replay of the Lehman catastrophe. (Though it would have been nice if Mr. Geithner, who had been involved as head of the New York Fed, had acknowledged that the Lehman default was a terrible mistake. Instead, he fell back on the old “there was nothing we could do” dodge. Not exactly confidence- inspiring.) The government showed its determination to stick by this thinking when it rushed in to shore up the faltering Bank of America. That is a highly supportive take on the bailout, at the time it was happening.