Le taux de chômage est en baisse pour la première fois depuis 15 mois. Le Dow Jones a franchi, fin juillet, la barre des 9 000 points pour la première fois depuis janvier. Et si les décisions de Washington avaient eu un impact positif sur la santé économique et financière des États-Unis? C'est la question que soulève le journaliste David Leonhardt dans cette analyse publiée aujourd'hui à la une du New York Times. J'en cite un extrait dans le texte :
What if in the end they got it right?
What if, amid all their missteps and all the harsh criticism, the people in charge of battling the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression - Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson and the rest - basically succeeded?
It is clearly too soon to know for sure. But the evidence is now pointing pretty strongly in one direction: history books may conclude that the financial crisis of 2008 turned out to be far less bad than it could have been and that Washington deserved much of the credit.
The Labor Department announced Friday that the economy lost fewer jobs in July than in any month since before Lehman Brothers collapsed last fall. Credit markets no longer look anything like they did after Lehman's collapse and are in considerably better shape than just a few months ago. Stocks are up almost 50 percent from their March low. "It's over," the economists at Barclays Capital declared Friday, referring to the Great Recession.
The news has been good enough that the Obama administration spent Friday trumpeting its record. More telling, however, is the fact that even Nouriel Roubini, the prophetically pessimistic economist who saw the crisis coming (and doesn't think the recession has yet ended), is now praising policy makers. He recently urged that Mr. Bernanke be reappointed as Federal Reserve chairman, saying he helped avert a "near depression that seemed highly likely after the financial collapse last fall."