Katrina Again? US Gets Poor Grades For Credit Crisis
By: Isaac, who ran the FDIC in the 1980s when the so-called Latin American debt crisis threatened major US banks, says, "there has been too much talk by everyone involved in the crisis, including the president. I think we need to just chill out a bit. We're not going to talk our way out of this crisis."
Or, as Rubenstein says of government officials. "Sometimes they get into a pickle and they don't know how to get out of it, so they keep having news conferences. I'm not in favor of over-stating your position."
Rubenstein says the current government now has a better grasp of the facts, has learned some important lessons along the way and is becoming better at managing the crisis.
But he and others say it will be the next government and president—which will have a popular mandate to fix the problem, as was partly the case with the S&L crisis of the late 1980s—that will have an impact.
"No matter what happens in the next 19 days, it isn't going to do much," says Smith.
