A Crisis Wasted: Barack Obama's Defining Decisions

by Reed Hundt

This book is the compelling story of the Obama domestic policy decisions which went wrong between September 2008 and his inauguration on January 20, 2009. Unlike all other presidents except Abraham Lincoln—who decided to fight the Civil War before he was sworn in—Barack Obama determined the fate of his presidency before he became president. The policy results ultimately led to the worst person Obama could have imagined taking his place eight years later.

During these four months, Obama chose neoliberal policies for restoring the economy, reforming health care, addressing the housing market collapse, and moving to clean power.

This book describes how these decisions were made. Obama found himself trapped by the Bush administration’s prioritization of bolstering wall street. Then he made Hillary Clinton’s economic advisors his own and took their counsel. Although the Great Recession could have been much worse, the neoliberal policies led to a drawn out and uneven recovery, unpopular and limited health care reform, and failed energy reform.

Based on dozens of interviews with actors in the Obama transition, as well as the author’s personal observations, this book provides unique commentary on the fateful decisions of the winter of 2008-2009. Among those interviewed: David Axelrod, Tom Daschle, Austan Goolsbee, Peter Orszag, Christy Romer, and Larry Summers.

The ramifications of the Great Recession are not behind us. The 2016 election has not ended. The same battle between progressivism and neoliberalism still rages in the Democratic Party. As many seek the Presidency in the November 2020 election, all candidates and of course the eventual winner will continue to face decisions similar to those confronted by Barack Obama.

Everyone should learn from this critical and little-understood history.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Economics, Finance, The United States Of America, American

400 pages, Hardcover

Published April 2, 2019

Reviews

[Mehrsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is by a Washington insider who ended up being an Obama fan and advisor. I agree with the thesis of the book and I think it's a necessary perspective--and the book comes out at a perfect time as a warning to future Dem candidates. Obama fumbled the response to the crisis. This has been my opinion from day 1 and nothing I have read has changed it. Though I still don't really blame Obama or think he did it with bad motives. I think he picked the wrong guys and focused on the wrong things. That's essentially what Hundt believes too. This book stands out from others in this genre in that Hundt articulates what could/should have been done and could still be done w/r/t stimulus and regulation, etc. He also shines a necessary light on a few people who were saying this stuff all along like Sheila Bair and Warren.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that confirms a gut feeling I have had since the 2016 presidential election. I have thought Trump's victory was the result of the disillusionment of the middle class after the bright promise of Obama's election. The country was looking for transitional change and it didn't get it. It is disappointing, but not surprising, to realize that the decisions made before the inauguration contributed so greatly to this situation. I can only hope that future leaders learn from this.
This is a rather dry read but does contain a lot of relevant information that gives food for thought.
I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway for this honest review.

[Philip Guzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the last few years I have participated in Goodreads giveaways but never had won a book. I soon started to sulk and wonder if ANYONE ever won one of these contests! . . . I finally did win a copy of "A Crisis Wasted" and I suddenly became a proponent of the old adage: "Careful what you wish for!". . . The book is a tour de force on national and international economic issues requiring your attention and concentration to its comprehensive details and conclusions. . . No "light reading" here! It was work to get through, but worth it.

"A Crisis Wasted" is indeed a challenging read. The author is a member of the transition teams for the Clinton and Obama presidencies and former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The book, in many ways, is like reading an economics textbook. However, it also contains a rapid paced "you are there" series of riveting narratives where we see members of the Obama transition team explore policy and political options (often in heated debate mode) as they move from simple policy discussions to the actual implementation faze. Indeed we note that "governing" is much harder than suggesting ideas in a "think tank" environment.

The book is the story of President Obama's domestic policy decisions made between September 2008 and his inauguration on January 20, 2009. It is the author's contention that the decisions made by the President-Elect and his policy makers were done hastily and were the product of the branch of the Democratic Party ("Clintonians" and their "neo-liberal" economic view) that did not reflect Barak Obama, nor did they express the progressive ideas that Mr. Obama had presented the country during his successful presidential run in 2008.

Specifically, Hundt believes that the amount of money suggested for the economic stimulus package was woefully inadequate and doled out without a proper consideration of our country's priorities. Moreover, Hundt indicates that -- even when the advisers realized that there projections were short of the mark --they compounded their initial errors by failing to alert the President-Elect of that fact, nor did they put other options before him for consideration. The advisers all appeared to be marching to the same drum with preconceived ideas not subject to change or modification. The President-Elect appeared to have no other choice but to follow down the only economic hole that they had recommended for him. It's sobering to realize that decisions made even before a president takes office can often have dire effects (and even sabotage) the hopes and plans of an incoming Administration.

It is Mr. Hundt's conclusion that the rush to package and put forth the stimulus package, along with Obama's subsequent decision to give full attention to healthcare reform with the construction and passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care), led to the squeezing of the middle class and precipitating their anger and frustration. Home values declined as did job prospects. These factors contributed to the Trump Revolution. --- a movement that the author conjectures would never have been possible but for the Obama Administration's failure to address the economic woes of the middle class.

Looking to the manner in which politicians should address future economic crises, the author writes:

"In the event of the next crisis again, government will have to choose between restoring the profitability of the financial industry or directly helping millions of families harmed by economic downturn."

The book moves at a rapid pace, even with its detailed economic emphasis, and includes a very thoughtful chapter on how Mr. Obama framed his January 20, 2009 Inaugural Address as compared to that of President Franklin Roosevelt in his ("nothing to fear but fear itself") Inaugural Address in March, 1932 during a time when he faced the economic crisis caused by the Depression and the fall of the stock market in 1929.. . . Mr. Hundt compares the similarities and differences in the times and the men themselves.

The book presents great insights into what our leaders need to think about in putting America's economic well being front and center moving forward. I would recommend that Mr. Hundt be at the table during any such discussions.

[Christopher Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this look behind the scenes. I don't often read books like this, so take that into consideration. Reading firsthand, how the Obama Administration made the decisions it did that effectively saved the elites first, the economy second, and the middle and working classes barely at all, was enlightening and at times frustrating.

Reed Hundt makes pretty clear arguments about what the better policies and decisions would have been but also discusses the trade-offs inherent. There was no obvious answer that would have been great with no downside... except to more significantly limit the number of people from high-up in Clinton's White House into the Obama West Wing.

I think Hundt is quite wrong about the benefits of building still more longer-distance high-voltage lines to move green power around (witness the blackouts in California as these towers are damaged and there is far too little local generation) but most of his ideas are pretty sound in my estimation.

He offers a good critique of Obama while reminding us how challenging the time was and trying to ground his criticism in reality rather than armchair quarterbacking. In that I thought he succeeded.

[Shu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a painful but rewarding read. It was necessarily painful to revisit many of the missed opportunities from the momentous executive decisions made during the 2008-2009 transition, which inevitably lead to the rise of the sentiments that created our current political woes. It was ultimately rewarding, though, to go through the exercise of contending all the incompatible schools of thought in both macroeconomics and public policy, clearly presented and poignantly argued by the author, to understand why progressivism must prevail over neoliberalism as the way forward. Extremely well researched: the illuminating charts and graphs alone deserve careful study; the detailed interview quotes allow readers to playback in the room where it happened.

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise—with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
--- Abraham Lincoln, December 1, 1862

Salus populi suprema lex esto (“The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law”).
--- Cicero

[Joni Haynes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will start off by saying this was a very difficult book for me to read...almost boring, in fact, because it was very academic, and very much about economics. I believe it was also a difficult book for the author to write, as he was an early Obama supporter and that his whole family campaigned for Obama...and still believes Obama to have been a graceful, well spoken, classy president. However, he gives much evidence that Obama and team did very poorly with the economic crisis that faced the nation at the time of his presidency...that the $800 billion stimulous infused into the economy did not do the job. (I particularly am reminded of Obama's statement that, "the shovel-ready jobs were not so shovel ready.) The author states that Obama (and team) chose an economic recovery plan that benefited educated, well off people much more than the middle class. Over the long haul, the author has proved to be correct.

[David Dayen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hundt flashes some extremely literary chops, but most of the book consists of blockquotes from everyone in the early planning stages of the Obama transition, making the case that what he determined before ever taking office defined the course of his presidency. And Hundt, or actually the insiders he talked to, make a compelling case. The places where Obama fell short or disappointed were locked in from November 2008 to January 2009. The top advisors couldn't break free of their own priors, couldn't stretch their imaginations, couldn't conceive of the proper responses to crisis. And the nation paid, and is paying, the price.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is underrated. I want politicians to read it so no promising president ever again fails to maximize the potential of opportunity born in crisis. This book is an insightful and sober look at specific reasons why the Obama administration’s response to the 2008 economic crisis was so insufficient that it prolonged the recovery to last a decade and sewed the discontent that made fertile ground for Donald Trump’s candidacy. The author, Reed Hundt, is an experienced insider who helped plan Obama’s transition, participated in much of what he writes about, and was personally familiar with most of the main players. It’s a privilege to read a piece like this by someone like that. I suspect its 3.5 star rating is due in part to the density of the material, particularly in middle sections on crafting the stimulus. It wasn’t always an easy read. But it’s well-written and worth the effort.

One quibble: Parts of the epilogue seemed weak. This is just the very end of the book, and it struck me as an exception. It seemed detached from, and in some cases contradictory to, the rest of the book. Maybe it was written later. For example, Hundt wrote there that he could think of no tactic that could have yielded congressional passage of a larger stimulus. But earlier, he pointed out how Obama’s key staff failed to convey the depth of the expected recession as new data came in. Similarly they failed to update their policy prescriptions in response to this new data. He also writes that legislative leaders, who lacked their own experts, relied on the these same Obama staff to diagnose and prescribe the solutions to the problem. Well then, *ahem*, how about trying accurate communication? Before you can win a really big solution, you need to be sure all the decision makers understand that you have a really, really big problem. But as told, it was mainly progressive economists like Krugman and Stieglitz making the case for a bigger stimulus and, although they turned out to be right in the end, they remained minorities in voicing that perspectives at the time. Obama’s staffers did seem to know it was going to be worse than they were saying and seemed to fail to adjust to new realities for less than ideal reasons. And Larry Summers should not have made his own political calculations that limited the scope of options his team presented to Obama. Obama should have made sure that wasn’t happening. You don’t let someone like Summers, an economist—no matter how great or not—decide what is politically possible. Our leaders then were trapped within the Clinton administration’s limited neo-liberal vision of the role of government. Ultimately, they succumbed to a classic failure mode which I have observed too many times in my years of legislative advocacy: they outsmarted themselves. They negotiated against themselves before even entering actual negotiations, and never pursued solutions equal in scale to the tragedy they were trying to prevent. Given these and other missteps well-documented here, it was jarring to read the author saying he couldn’t think of a tactic for making the stimulus bigger. It lets them off the hook too easily. Wasn’t the whole point of this book that wasting such crises can be avoided? I do think it could have been avoided—by avoiding missteps described earlier in the book. And except for here, that is what Hundt seems to think through the entire book What I’m discussing here was a single sentence at the end of the book. Maybe its mistake by the author. Or maybe I misunderstood him on this point. I don’t want to commit the fallacy of being a Monday morning quarterback. Surely there are few harder jobs than Obama’s economic team faced at that time. But it is so distressing to see them stumble catastrophically through failure modes we’ve seen many times before.

Overall, I’m really glad I read this. I have a richer picture of the Obama administration and a better way to evaluate our politics and leaders going forward. I’d probably give it 4.5 stars if I could, but since I can’t, I gave it 5. And that’s actually better, as I want to get its average review up to maximize the number of politicians, especially neoliberals (whose thinking was at the center of this mess), to read it.

The lesson here is probably useful to most of us as we stumble through life. As the author quotes Rahm Emanuel (a political actor whom I don’t always agree with) early in the book: Never let a good crisis go to waste.

Because it’s out of crisis that we grow. Because crisis yields rare opportunities for profound positive change. We must learn to take those opportunities. Thank you for this reminder, Mr. Hundt.

[Samarth Gupta · Rating 3 out of 5]

notes below:

“On February 11, 2008, President Bush signed a bipartisan stimulus bill adding up to $170 billion, mostly comprising tax cuts. It was a digit more than Summers had mentioned a month earlier. This bill anticipated the story of the Obama stimulus in three ways. It exemplified the Republican preference for tax cuts. It was too small for the situation. It misled the Obama advisers into thinking that Republicans in Congress might support a stimulus sought by Democrats.”

“Everyone in government should understand that the leaders of the majority party in Congress and the president usually want the heads of departments and agencies to do what’s necessary to keep their segments of the system from crashing. In a crisis, the executive branch officers are supposed to adopt an elastic interpretation of their legal authority. This hard, fast, and unwritten rule applied to issues like Katrina, the BP oil rig explosion, and the looming collapse of Lehman.”

“That meant the GDP would drop sharply, then rise rapidly. To them, the big risk was that excessive deficit spending might cause the private sector to demand higher interest rates out of fear of inflation. Therefore, the new administration should quickly inject a stimulus, but then cut back spending. In fact, from 2008 until 2016, the GDP drew more of an L than a V—the recovery was protracted and lackluster. The Clintonites proceeded on the wrong assumption.”

“Goolsbee went on, “You can see how things could be different if you looked at the one part of TARP where the new administration could make the conditions—autos. The Bush administration gave the automobile companies $18 billion with virtually no conditions in 2008. When that money ran out and they seek more from Obama in 2009, he provides money but only with a series of wrenching restructuring conditions. Half the management is fired. They go through bankruptcy. They restructure and end up succeeding. We could only impose those things because they needed more money. In the case of the banks, they were given the money in 2008. To get them to do something in 2009, they had to be induced. They already had their money.”

“the Democrats would lose the majority in the House in the midterm election. Emanuel’s Thanksgiving obscenities should not have been taken as the final word on the upper limit of the stimulus, but Obama, his people, and the Democratic Party struggled to imagine the dimensions of necessity and opportunity that the unprecedented crisis presented.
By contrast, neither in 2001 nor in 2017 did the Republican Congress Party scruple about crafting stimulus packages in the form of tax cuts that added much more than a trillion dollars to the federal deficit. In those initial years of Republican presidencies, the incoming administration favored supply-side stimulus. Summers had spent two decades opposing tax breaks”

“The economists thought of aggregate demand as a swimming pool that needed more water. The government would put a hose of money in one corner and the level of demand for goods and services would rise everywhere. Then swimmers (the supply side) would jump in with new investment. However, the swimming pool level did not in fact quickly rise everywhere evenly. As a result of the design principle, the stimulus would produce a geographically uneven recovery.”

“Orszag did not favor government loans. As a budget-scoring expert, Orszag knew that a congressional appropriation to a governmental unit could permit the recipient agency to loan many times the scored amount. For example, by appropriating $10 billion to the Department of Energy for loans, Congress could enable DOE to loan $100 billion at the rock-bottom rates set by sales of treasury bonds. Using this technique, if a stimulus capped at $500 billion consisted of loan authorization, it could cause $5 trillion to be loaned to private-sector firms.
Despite this advantage, the advisers disliked government loans for at least four reasons. First, government can borrow more cheaply than any other lender (because it has the power to print money and tax in order to pay interest on debt). Therefore, it can lend at a cheaper rate than any commercial entity. ...Second, if borrowers face difficulty in paying back loans, they ask the lender to help them out in some way. ...Third, in order to expand private-sector lending to small businesses, students, exporters, and many other kinds of borrowers, the government commonly guarantees that the borrower will repay....Fourth, the advisers did not believe the federal government had the acumen or flexibility to drive the hard bargains that commercial lenders do. ”

“I say political malpractice, not economic malpractice, because first of all there’s no statistic that was thrown back in our face more than that one. That was a self-inflicted wound. You could make your case without it. You could say instead that the economy is in free fall. ‘We frankly don’t know how fast it’s falling. What we do know is that we need an emergency intervention. We need to do at least this much. We can’t predict exactly what unemployment will be. But we know that if we don’t do this, things will be a lot worse.’ By defining success in the way they did, it set us up for failure on the political argument.”

“The best way we could have done this would have been to link many of the payments to the unemployment rate or some other indicator, in a sense temporarily boosting the automatic stabilizers; since CBO projected a short recession, it would have scored the cost as minimal ”

“Obama’s advisers believed that at some point the ratio between total public debt and the size of the economy becomes so high that the economy will not grow fast enough to create the potential for government to extract taxes sufficient to pay the interest on its debts. When the perception of reaching that point becomes widespread, investors take their money to another country, and an economic collapse ensues.”

“Kabaker explained further, “If you lent money to GM, you’re a sophisticated investor and the bankruptcy court will decide if you get paid. And your bond can still trade. You understand that. Your money is at risk. Your bond is not worth the face value. It is worth the trading value. Banks are different. If you lent money to Bank of America by making a deposit there, you think that’s money. A dollar is a dollar. Other institutions that lend to each other overnight in a way similar to a deposit think that’s money. If you put one of those organizations into bankruptcy, then you suddenly discover that what you thought was currency is not. Money vanishes. That can create major problems throughout a system. Deposits have to be guaranteed.”

[David Hollingsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who happily voted for Obama in both the primaries and general election in 2008 (my first election!), I was deeply disappointed by his embrace of neoliberal politics (even if my 21 year old self couldn't have articulated that in 2011). Since then I've always wondered what the behind the scenes stories were that led to his wholehearted embrace of neoliberalism. This book, then, was exactly what I'd been waiting for.

Perspective wise, Reed Hundt is someone who supported and worked with Obama, despite having served as the head of the FCC under Bill Clinton from 1993-1997. He criticizes neoliberalism from slightly to its left. The book features a positive review from Robert Reich, Clinton's secretary of labor and another former Clintonite who rejects neoliberal dogma. This is the general orientation Hundt is coming from.

Hundt's account is quite detailed, whether it's describing the events as they took place or the policy nuances of various issues. Be warned, even if you're no stranger to reading political non-fiction, some of this stuff can be heady. I was able to read the parts about the general stimulus, healthcare, and energy pretty easily, but the parts about housing were challenging and the parts about banking largely went over my head. And I'm someone with a BA in International Studies, which included taking statistics and economics courses, so I'm not exactly a stranger to some of these concepts.

Still, aside from getting a little too deep into the weeds sometimes, the book does a good job laying out the full story of how Obama's response to the Great Recession (as well as his desired legislative pet projects) played out. I learned a lot. Overall, if the topic interests, I'd recommend this book.

[Steve Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would give this 3 1/2 stars if I could. It’s as tight and dry as a lawyer’s brief arguing arcane points of banking law. Hundt is, in fact, a gifted lawyer and he explains difficult concepts clearly. This is an excellent review of the challenges and choices Obama faced at the time he assumed the office of President. The book is true to Obama’s moniker, No Drama Obama. The book’s discussion of America’s greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression is as dry as Grape Nuts without milk. And, depressingly, one of the book’s principal conclusions is that Obama’s selection of Clinton retreads as staff dictated his policies. Of these, the imperious Larry Summers stands out as first among equals. The contrast between Obama and what we know of Trump could hardly be more stark. Where per Hundt Obama followed staff advice to a fault Trump follows no one’s advice consistently (other than possibly Mark Meadows). While there is much to admire in Obama, if anything, this well-reasoned treatise makes me long for someone somewhat less disciplined and more imaginative than was Obama. But that personality carries with it greater risk of failure. Maybe, in the end, Obama’s consistency and discipline was the best we could have hoped for in a time of crisis where there was very little margin for error. However, as Hundt argues, Obama arguably squandered the opportunity to advocate for bolder policies that could have been of far more benefit to the middle class and left no opening for a disruptive Donald Trump.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obama chose an economic recovery plan that benefited educated well off people much more than the middle class. It helped the finance and technology sectors much more than construction, manufacturing or retail. residents of the coastal states did much better than the rest of the country.

Obama followed the advice of his economic advisers which was used by his advisers to obtain rapid assent to their political preferences.

Obama's delegation and people staffing choices limited his access to information about what was happening in the economy.

Obama counted on a small group to tell him the truth about situations. They did not know what they did not know.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Less than two years after assembling, Obama's advisory team began disbanding.

Corrections can make advisers appear wrong. They have to admit their inability to guess accurately. That asks a lot of them.

The advice given to Obama was regrettable. The economists spoke to soon on many occasions. They urged inadequate government help for financial firms. In the importance of urgency they rejected programs that would have required more time consuming political advocacy. They aimed at a very modest economic recovery. When the situation was much worse than they thought, they chose to change the topic rather than explain reality to Congress and the country.

White middle class Americans who voted for Trump tended to believe that the Democratic policies of the previous decade did not benefit them.

[Dayna · Rating 4 out of 5]

By awarding Obama the 2009 Peace Prize ‘on credit’- before any substantial achievements - the Nobel Committee put forth the core of his presidency: hope that would never effect true change. This book suggests that Obama may have been too inexperienced to handle the situation he had inherited. By relying on self-serving members of former regimes, the former president allowed his - rather their - policies to continue benefitting the wealthy & well-connected & banks (ie friends of the. Treasury Secretary & the Fed chairman). The ordinary people whom he had claimed to champion were left in the lurch. Yet because there was still a desire to believe in him & a greater future, the common citizens were reluctant to criticize him outright; he basically got a pass for the 1st few years. Voters tend to ask themselves, “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?” The answer being a resounding ‘no,’ it was not too surprising that traditional supporters of the Democratic Party would shift allegiances. If only people remember to ask that same question come 2020.
I received a copy from a Goodreads giveaway. The author provided key information only an insider would know.

[Michelle Lutz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. Hundt is well-connected in the Democratic party, he makes a really compelling case that the failure of the Obama's two terms, was the failure to formulate and then work through a plan to benefit the middle class first of all. This book is full of advice for leaders navigating times of crisis, whether in business or government.
The story is well-written and informative to anyone who wants to understand what happened in November 2008 through January 2009, and why.

[Russell Howen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reed Hundt's "A Crisis Wasted"(Barack Obama's Defining Decisions) gives the reader an inside look at the beginning of Obama's presidency. The book provides facts and opinions for the reader's knowledge and understanding of the difficulties the Obama administration faced from the before day one of his taking office.

[Steve Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Man, they done fucked up good. I wish it had a bit more like, "what if?" sort of alternate history stuff in it, if only because it's nice to have hopes and dreams actually come true some times, if only in books.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book as a Goodreads Giveaway.

I found the topic and the view from within the transition to be fascinating. Unfortunately for me, I found the author's writing style to be dry and boring. But let's begin with the positives.

There doesn't seem to be very many books about what happens during the presidential transition, and so I appreciate the unique insight this provides in that regard. To really appreciate this book, you need to be a bit of a DC insider in my opinion. The author assumes you, as the reader, have some baseline level of knowledge about the players and the issues. While it allows him to go into more depth to discuss the issues and the decision making, it does lose the reader if they are not familiar with the various government machinations during this rather tumultuous time. So if you're not tuned into the happenings of DC, you might find yourself having to look up some of the people or issues to get the basics. I would've appreciated having a bit more character background on some of these players, like what their past was, their motivations, and their outlooks. But overall, I really enjoyed the perspective and vantage point the author provided.

What I didn't like about the book was the writing style. Overall, it felt unnecessarily stuffy and academic, with the author using large words for seemingly the sake of doing so. Like the word syzygy. Not really necessary to use it in the book. Also, the author seems to have an aversion to using the word and in his writing. Instead, the author likes to cut it out, move on to next word. It makes reading the book a bit challenging, awkward. Like those last two sentences. If you can power through the writing, there's some good insight to gain from this book.

Overall, I recommend this for DC insiders, policy wonks, and anyone interested in politics in general.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book free in exchange for a fair and honest review. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It describes how president elect Obama dealt with the financial crisis before he was in the white house and how the amount of the economic stimulus package was settled on. The belief now is that if he had waited until in the white house he could have had the situation analyzed better and perhaps gotten the money needed for the stimulus, unfortunately this did not happen. This may not sound particularly interesting and I am not a political or economics person at all. But it is fascinating to think of how the country went from having president Obama, who by all accounts is truly an compassionate, honest man with impeccable integrity who was trying to do what was best for all Americans to president Trump who, except by his own words, has never been accused of such virtues and has been accused of much worse. An excerpt from the epilogue that I think is indicative is:
"Obama did slide into the Bush administration's embrace of the Wall Street plutocracy. Eight years later he delivered, like an obstetrician handling a baby to a feckless parent, a spanking good economy that Trump fed with candy. In the long gestation of Obama's tenure, the middle class stewed, fumed, and then erupted at the ballot box in November 2016."

[Bryan McMahon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes the fight over the fiscal stimulus Obama developed in response to the Great Financial Crisis read like a thriller. The book is a careful appraisal of Obama’s defining decisions between 2008-2010 to restart the US economy and avoid a second Great Depression. Although Obama the candidate campaigned against Washington’s “old and tired dogmas,” President Obama largely followed the Clinton-Gore neoliberalism of the 90s, positioning government as a tinkerer of the free market rather than an active spender or operator in it. Faced with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Obama and his team of ex-Clinton advisers delivered a stimulus that was too small, relied too heavily on private capital jumpstarting the economy, which never materialized, and abandoned 10 million Americans to foreclosure while bailing out their creditors, the big banks and mortgage lenders, with $16 trillion in 0% loans. Neoliberal reasoning led the Obama administration to favor private capital and the banking system over the middle class, which took until 2017 to recover to pre-2009 wealth and home value. In 2016, the middle class revolted and elected Trump. This book lays out the structural consequences of the too-small stimulus that explains part of the middle class’s defection to Trump in 2016.

[Pat Hearps · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting insights, but could have been a long form article. Learned mostly what I wanted in the first couple of chapters, the rest was in the weeds and I stopped 2/3rds of the way through.

TL;DR - Obama's lightning rise from nobody to senator to president meant he didn't have strong connections and networks to draw on for staffing his administration. That, along with feeling bad for smoking Hillary, meant he ended up filling his staff with a whole bunch of Clinton neoliberals, who came up with crap policies. Also, the people in charge of the Fed and Treasury genuinely didn't care / didn't think it was their job to help with the general economic recovery, just to keep the banks afloat.

Plus an element of a whole lot of people trying to muddle their way through a mess, and some opinions not stated loudly enough or not communicated to the right people, is an interesting insight into how in a somewhat amorphous web of different institutions, finite attention spans and differing goals, it's very easy for stuff to not get done well without it being obvious why.

[Celina · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Very dry reading, and infuriating at times, but this account from someone who was present at the creation of Obama’s economic response to the Great Recession will be useful to historians. There are a few narrative quirks, above all the author’s obsession with “platforms” as an engine of economic growth (by which he means broadband and clean energy, but also mechanisms to ensure political transparency), but it is as readable as possible. Tim Geithner comes across as the worst of a middling bunch here, with his obsession to recapitalize banks without imposing any penalties on them or otherwise make any moves to “scare the market”. He’s the Dick Cheney of the Great Recession here. Obama, having picked him for his boyish congeniality or basketball skills or whatever, is dented a little by the association. But I also think too many of Obama’s critics write off the lock-jawed intransigence of the opposition. Between this book and A Promised Land, I’ve read enough about political machinations and negotiations to last me the rest of the year.

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reed Hundt, as an insider, had plenty of access to powerful officials for this book. He manages to squander it anyway. A lazy writer, he fills chapters with long quotes while supplying little in the way of context. To underscore his insider status, he constantly name-drops. This book reads like a first draft, given its digressions and incoherent structure, and the lack of careful editing is apparent.

Hundt, though he loves to throw around the word “neoliberal” (I’m not sure he really understands the term), is a liberal too. Still, he flatters himself with the moniker of “progressive.” In another mark of his pompousness, Hundt, when criticizing the Obama administration’s policies on mortgage bailouts and the environment, regales us with his own fantasy policies. Too bad no one cares.

[Elizabeth White · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book in a giveaway. Since I am relatively ignorant about both politics and economics and never read this type of book, I was a little out of my comfort zone as far as reading goes. But it is good to stretch one's mind and I am glad I read it. I have always liked Obama, but have wondered why he was not as effective as I thought he should have been. I have a better understanding of that now.

[Liam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hot garbage. There are a couple interesting ideas in the book, but overall poorly written. Essentially just a bureaucrat whining that Obama listened to someone else's poorly thought out ideas instead of his poorly thought out ideas.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This analysis of Obama's response to the economic crisis he faced is a bit detailed and dry for the non-expert, but it is reasoned and important given the current political situation.

[Des · Rating 4 out of 5]

All hope, no change.

[Mike Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting but a self-serving POV undermines much of what was written.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well covered and deep in the weeds review on the Obama administration we could have gotten and a good explanation of the one we got.

[Joseph Dubey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not too bad of a book. I liked finding out about what went on behind the scenes.

[Nate Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

In depth look at Obama response to the Great Recession and missed opportunities. Author worked in Obama Administration