Question And Answer On American Economic Policy

Reading Stiglitz's The Price of Inequality, I came to the following realization:

Q: What does Superman have, that the Federal Reserve
     is in sore need of?
A: Supervision.

Here's how Stiglitz puts it:

... It is evident now [2012] that the Fed failed to maintain economic stability — and after the crisis, it failed to restore the economy to health; it is evident, too, that the economic doctrines on which its policies were based were badly flawed. No policy is without risk. But the policies chosen by the Fed forced the brunt of the risk to be borne by homeowners, workers, and taxpayers, while the upside was captured by the banks. There were other policies, with other risks, in which the rest of our society would have fared far better, and the banks worse. We need to recognize that a central bank's decisions are essentially political: they should not be delegated to technocrats, and they certainly can't be left to those who disproportionately represent one of the vested interests.

From The Price of Inequality, p.254.

Obama Knew He Had A Fed Chair Nominee Around Him Summers...

Larry Summers, former Treasury secretary and Obama's presumptive favorite for the position of chair of the Federal Reserve, withdrew his name from consideration today. Summers was a highly divisive choice even among Obama's supporters; some even say Summers was the person most responsible for the international financial crisis and thus for the five years (so far) of the Great Recession and painfully slow recovery that followed it. I tend to think of Summers as a banker's banker who has done little for ordinary individuals in financial trouble and far more for banks seeking bailouts, but YMMV.