"Wider Confidence Lifts Economy From Winter's Deep, Dark Freeze"

[Clio the Leo]

"Wider Confidence Lifts Economy From Winter's Deep, Dark Freeze"

By Neil Irwin and David Cho
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 21, 2009

The financial system, frozen solid for the past nine months, is in a spring thaw. And it's happening even though many of the Obama administration's major rescue programs have yet to get off the ground.

The improvement reflects the combined impact of a wide range of actions, many of them taken with little public attention, according to government officials and private economists. But more important than any single program, the sources say, is a deepening confidence from financial markets that the government is prepared to take aggressive action -- a confidence that Obama officials have repeatedly worked to cultivate in speeches and public appearances.

(More)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/20/AR2009052003816.html?hpid=topnews

[fugop]

1. ah

it's happening even though many of the Obama administration's major rescue programs have yet to get off the ground.

Got it. So .... it's better, but no thanks to Obama. But if it all tanks, it's all his fault. Got it. I keep forgetting that's how it works. Thank goodness I have the media to remind me.

[tavalon]

2. And remind us and remind us and remind us....................

[Clio the Leo]

3. Lol, didn't read the whole thing did you?

Here, I'll help ya out....

The improvement reflects the combined impact of a wide range of actions, many of them taken with little public attention, according to government officials and private economists. But more important than any single program, the sources say, is a deepening confidence from financial markets that the government is prepared to take aggressive action -- a confidence that Obama officials have repeatedly worked to cultivate in speeches and public appearances.

and

Still, government officials and private economists say, there's a sense that the government is attacking the crisis from all directions.

"They're doing a whole bunch of things in a lot of different markets to provide support," said Desmond Lachman, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. "And markets look forward, and to some degree improve in anticipation of measures that are to come."

The idea of trial-and-error, and rolling out many different policies before the details can be figured out, has been a guiding element of the Obama administration's strategy.


and

"I can't imagine we'd be in the shape we're in had there not been such active government policy," said Martin Neil Baily, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and economic adviser in the Clinton administration.

(all excerpted from the article linked to above)