Trillion Dollar Triage

During the 2008 global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve and the US government mounted a halting response that prolonged the economic agony. During the coronavirus downturn of 2020, by contrast, the Fed and the feds acted so decisively that they stabilized the economy in just a few months. As the chief economics correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Nick Timiraos had a front-row seat to the crisis. In this engrossing retelling, he paints Fed Chair Jerome Powell as a steady hand who made the right moves with minimal drama. Perhaps the only weak spot in this account is that it ends while Powell could still term inflation “transitory.”