It was just a week ago that Republicans tried to denigrate the Occupy Wall Street protesters as a “dangerous” “mob” who needed to “get a job” rather than “pit Americans against Americans.” Then they must have gotten the polling. So now, they’re changing their tune.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner forcefully denied the claim in a book by Ron Suskind that he ignored a request from the President to work up a plan to dissolve Citigroup. He further added that the entire theme of the book, about infighting in the White House over economic policy issues, bears “no resemblance to reality.”

Keep in mind that we have a letter signed by Larry Summers, during the transition, saying that the Administration will undertake “reforming our bankruptcy laws” to help keep homeowners in their homes. And we have assurances delivered in writing to lawmakers like Donna Edwards and Jeff Merkley that they would take this up. All of this has gone down the memory hole now, but this was a fundamental promise, and they broke it. As a result, we have a program to help homeowners that it entirely voluntary on the part of the servicer, with predictable results.

Larry Summers made his swan song yesterday, and he didn’t give an inch. Speaking at the Economic Policy Institute, where he didn’t have a very favorable audience, Summers insisted that the actions of the Obama Administration were necessary and positive, and that the country was spared the worst expected effects of the Great Recession. The best outcome of that speech would be if it were the last one Summers ever gave. Or at least, the last one any respectable human would bother listening to.

The President predicted that his tax plan would pass Congress, saying specifically that “nobody — Democrat or Republican — wants to see people’s paychecks smaller on Jan. 1 because Congress didn’t act.”

But if Congress does act, people’s paychecks will get smaller – a substantial amount, actually. And it will be a particular subset of people – the working poor, people who make under $20,000 a year, or families under $40,000.

Larry Summers just dusted off the bazooka, telling reporters that, if Obama’s tax deal doesn’t pass, the failure will “materially increase the risk” that the economy will stall out and we will experience a double dip recession. Summers added that without a bill, economic analysts will issue downward revisions in growth/employment.

I really think it’s time to engage with the economic impact of the deal.

Paul Krugman rightly gives Chris Christie hell for dropping out of the Hudson River rail tunnel project, the largest infrastructure project in the country. He explains that this is probably the worst possible time to cancel infrastructure projects, with unemployment in crisis and job growth stagnant. From not only a jobs standpoint but an economic development standpoint, this was a pathetically bad decision.

Tom Scocca had the best reaction to the Larry Summers resignation that I’ve seen, with the best headline: “Larry Summers Is Resigning to Spend More Time With His Money.” He’s leaving the Administration with accomplishments like low-balling the stimulus and protecting the banks, to go back to Harvard, where he gambled with the college’s endowment and lost. Summers got religion and started arguing for more stimulus after blowing the first one, but he put the Administration in the position to make such policies politically impossible. From failure to failure, ever upward.

What if we plowed that money from the tax cuts for the rich into a payroll tax cut for everyone, a “people’s tax cut,” if you will?

In fact, the banks essentially created HAMP. It was their counter-offer to cramdown, their attempt to put a foreclosure-mitigation scheme friendlier to their interests in place. Under the proposal, the banks would be allowed to work out their terms with borrowers first, before resorting to a bankruptcy judge. This is how it worked in the House version of cramdown, which passed in March 2009; the homeowner had to negotiate a voluntary loan mod with the lender before going to the bankruptcy judge. And this may have worked, but only because, for the servicers, cramdown would have loomed in the background as a big stick, forcing a negotiation with a level playing field for the borrower.

Instead, you ended up with a voluntary program that provided meager incentive payments to the servicers, but didn’t force them in any way to work out terms. You got all carrot but no stick.