Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz, in an interview with Chris and me in Paris on August 28, 2011.
The advisers that they had, economic advisers, partly because they were complicitous in the creation of the crisis, these were people who were involved in deregulation, wanted to believe that the economic downturn was more limited than it really was. So they were more optimistic about the economy so they thought less was needed than was really needed. And the President evidently wasn't willing to fight in a way that he might have had to fight for the kind of stimulus that the economy really needed.
