A Promised Land

by Barack Obama

but in exchange for emergency financing and continued access to global capital markets, folks like Bob Rubin and Alan Greenspan (not to mention Rubin’s aides at the time, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner) had pushed ailing countries to accept tough medicine, including currency devaluations, deep cuts in public spending, and a number of other austerity measures that shored up their international credit ratings but visited enormous hardship on their people. Imagine, then, the consternation of these same countries when they learned that even as America lectured them on prudential regulations and responsible fiscal stewardship, our own high priests of finance had been asleep at the switch, tolerating asset bubbles and speculative frenzies on Wall Street that were as reckless as anything happening in Latin America or Asia.