@John I don’t think Obama did what the public wanted managing the financial crisis. He didn’t think so either. In his own words, he stood athwart the pitchforks. If by democracy you include plutocracy, the monied interests putting pressure on him, explaining to him in pseudotechnical terms what he had to do or else, sure, but i see little exoneration in that. He had the power to make different choices. He seriously considered making different choices. He did what he did.

@John Congress had nothing at all to do with it. This wasn’t ACA.

The choices Obama made surrounding the financial crisis were purely executive. It was purely an executive decision not to take banks into receivership. He had the power. (There was a hooha over maybe not “bank holding companies”, but they had no negotiating power to resist if he played hardball with bank subsidiaries.) 1/

@John Congress, in TARP, had insisted on programs intended to help struggling homeowners. That law was passed, and funded. The Obama administration never spent the money! Instead, they used those programs to, in Geithner’s words, “foam the runway” for the banks. What that meant in practice is they encouraged borrowers to apply, which slowed banks’ recognition of bad loans. 2/

@John But the banks preferred that the principal relief those programs were intended to provide never was provided. They did not want to render malleable mortgage principal, on the theory of “moral hazard”, that would invite borrowers who could pay to seek relief. Ironically, they harmed homeowners by advising them to do just that, to fall into delinquency, jacking up penalties and late fees, to apply for the programs. 3/

@John But Geithner went along with the banks, and the programs basically denied all the relief, just slowed the process. Congress allocated the money, Obama didn’t spend it because “financial stability”, the banks thought it would harm them. Instead homeowners were made often worse off through the Obama Administration’s management of programs designed to help them. Obama *defied* Congress to be bad on this stuff. /fin