Steve Forbes argues in the latest Forbes magazine that conditions leading to the 2008 economic downturn have not been resolved adequately.
COUNTLESS COMMENTARIES and articles are marking the tenth anniversary of the panic of 2008. Yet almost all ignore the root cause of the crisis: a weak dollar. A wobbly, volatile currency always begets economic upheavals. If we don’t grasp that fundamental lesson, we will inevitably get into trouble again, big time, in the future.
Moreover, these retrospectives overlook or downplay two other major blunders by the federal government. Here are the three.
–Damaging the dollar. Precipitated by the popping of the high-tech bubble, the economy weakened in 2000 and went into a formal recession the following year. In response, the Federal Reserve started to cut interest rates. Then it and the Treasury Department (which by law is in charge of the dollar) began to undermine the value of the greenback.
That was a catastrophic mistake. …
… –Washington’s inconsistency brings on financial market paralysis. The inevitable reckoning turned into a panic that nearly brought the financial system into catastrophic cardiac arrest. …
… –An accounting rule became a weapon of mass destruction. In 2007 regulators resurrected an accounting rule, dubbed “mark-to-market accounting,” that had been abolished during the Great Depression. Its effect was to constantly and relentlessly artificially depress the value of bank capital at a time when these institutions were in precarious condition.
The Bush administration was obstinately oblivious to the perniciousness of this decree. Finally, in early March 2009, thanks to the efforts of a handful of enlightened individuals, the House of Representatives held a hearing that made it sharply clear that this edict had to go.
