Department of "Huh?!": What Obama Could Have Done Department

Ezra Klein:

What could Obama have done?: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about ways in which the past few years could have gone differently. I’ve even come up with a few. But none of them lead to dramatically better outcomes today. I can come up with scenarios in which President Obama accomplished somewhat less — perhaps by scaling back the health-care plan — and lost fewer seats in the midterm election. I can come up with scenarios in which the White House accomplished marginally more — perhaps by using the reconciliation process for an energy bill — but paid a greater political cost. I can come up with scenarios in which the stimulus was slightly more visible — perhaps it could have wiped out the payroll tax entirely — or slightly larger or included a long-term deficit reduction component.

But I’ve never been able to come up with a realistic scenario in which a lot more got done, the economy is in much better shape, and the president is dramatically more popular today.

1. Use Reconciliation to get a second stimulus through Congress in the fall of 2009.
2. Expand the PPIP to do $3 trillion of quantitative easing through the Treasury Department.
3. Have a real HAMP to refinance mortgages.
4. Use Fannie and Freddie to (temporarily) nationalize mortgage finance, refinance mortgages, and rebalance the housing market.
5. Announce that a weaker dollar is in America's interest.
6. Nominate a Fed Chair who takes the Fed's dual mandate seriously and pursues policies to stabilize the growth of nominal GDP.
7. Appoint Fed governors who take the Fed's dual mandate seriously and support policies to stabilize the growth of nominal GDP.
8. Take equity in the banks in January-March of 2009 and keep them from lobbying against financial reform.
9. Use Reconciliation to pass an infrastructure bank.
10. Use TARP money as a mezzanine tranche to fund large-scale additional aid to states and localities to reduce their fiscal contractions.

I think Ezra is simply wrong. There were a large number of things that Obama could have done--there are even things he could do now, if he wanted to.