Professor predicts Obama will win in 2012 because economy will be better.

His model forecasts real annualized growth in gross domestic product of 3.69 percent for the first three quarters of 2012. A survey of leading economists by Blue Chip Economic Indicators shows an average forecast of 3.2 percent growth in real G.D.P. in 2012, while the Congressional Budget Office estimates 3.4 percent. Plug either of these estimates into his election algorithm and the result is the same: President Obama wins.

He believes the Fed will keep policy stimulative.

Paul Barrett reviews "All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis." by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.

Others have illuminated facets of the crisis in more depth. John Cassidy’s "How Markets Fail" explained the economic history and theory with greater sophistication. Gillian Tett’s "Fool’s Gold" offered a journey into one investment bank, J. P. Morgan, and a close look at how it helped create a financial instrument, the credit derivative, that amplified risk rather than minimizing it. "In Fed We Trust," by David Wessel, took the reader behind the scenes in Washington, where politicians and regulators missed all the warning signs. For their part, McLean and Nocera concentrate on the basics and bring them together in brisk, well-organized chapters.

I've read Cassidy's book and Wessel's book, but need to get Tett's.

Barrett writes

Another public quarrel McLean and Nocera bring into focus is the esoteric debate about Federal Reserve monetary policy. Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has pushed interest rates practically to zero to try to stimulate growth and reduce an unemployment rate that currently hovers near 10 percent. Dissenters from this policy, like Thomas M. Hoenig, the president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, warn that Bernanke is repeating the mistake of his predecessor, Greenspan, who employed similar measures to combat the recession that followed the dot-com crash of 2000.

There are two different issues about Greenspan. His approach to regulation and his approach to interest rates. Hoenig and Barrett erroneously conflate the two.

Bernanke and Krugman point to the global savings glut rather than the Fed's policy of keeping rates low after the dot-com crash of 2000 as the source of the housing bubble which took on a life its own once it had momentum.