In the fall of 2008, the U.S. economy was spinning out of control.

The housing crisis had sent the financial sector into a tailspin.

At Wall Street demanded that Congress pony up a $700 billion no strings attached bailout.

If they didn't, there would be financial armageddon.

With a gun to its head, Congress eventually passed the bailout bill.

Huge payouts were made to financial institutions with little accountability and the great recession

that followed.

Twelve years later, it's starting to feel a bit like deja vu, isn't it?

Some of my Republican friends still have not given up on the need to punish the poor and working people.

One of the largest corporate bailouts with as few strings as possible in American history.

Now is not the time to worry about the national debt.

Today on the show, we're going to talk to someone who made the right call when it counted 12 years ago.

Someone who predicted that the approach to the White House was taking was too weak to seriously address the banking and housing crises.

Because if we want to avoid the mistakes of 2008 and 2009, we might want to listen to them this time around.

I'm Ryan Grimm, DC Bureau Chief for the Intercept. Welcome to Deconstructed.

Back in 2008, when I was a Congressional reporter working for Politico, I spent hours in the hallways of the Capitol chasing lawmakers who felt huge pressure to deliver the ransom that Wall Street was demanding.

And one morning there, I ran into the economist James Galbraith.

He was on the hill to brief a group of Congressmen from both parties who were skeptical of what bank lobbyists were telling them.

He told me then that what was being proposed would not be enough to prevent a major recession.

A few months after that conversation on Capitol Hill, lawmakers were back at the drawing board. The financial crisis had sparked an economic collapse.

Congress was preparing to pass the famous $787 billion stimulus bill. So I reached back out to Galbraith and asked what advice he was now offering.

He used an analogy that has stuck with me since.

...