So after 2 years it has come to this: James Galbraith and the end of the Obama experiment?

James Galbraith* on the US election result:

"This election was lost in February-March 2009 by (a) the failure to take over, reform and restructure the failed banks and the failure to prosecute bank fraud; (b) Larry Summers' incredible assertion that unemployment would peak at 8 percent and the resulting too-small, too-short-term recovery act, and (c) the promotion of Geithner and (later) reappointment of Bernanke, which gave Obama ownership of every Bush policy on the crisis.

The result was a banker's carnival as unemployment went to 10 percent and stayed there, generating well-justified mass outrage. The Republicans, were, alas the only available outlet for this anger"

 *James Galbraith is Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. chair in government/business relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. His latest book is "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too."