An enormous, taxpayer-financed program to buy up bad mortgages and other distressed debt is necessary to protect the savings and aspirations of millions of Americans, President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said on Friday.I hereby propose that, from now on, any banker who disparages government arts funding as unfairly rewarding organizations that can't make it in the free market gets the business end of a broken beer bottle.
“We’re talking hundreds of billions” of dollars, Mr. Paulson said at a briefing in which he underscored the depth of the problem, pledged to work with Congress to address it quickly and voiced optimism that, in the end, the country would emerge from the financial chaos.
Seeking to dispel any impression that the bailout would amount to a rescue of greedy Wall Street executives by Main Street Americans, Mr. Paulson said the program would “cost Americans far less than the alternative.”The New York Times, September 19, 2008
Have I been talking a lot more economics in this space lately? Yes, actually—out of curiosity, I pulled up some of the more dismal-science-heavy posts on this blog, and sure enough, most of them are from this past year. When in Rome (circa 476 A.D.), &c. Here's a list, in case your Friday procrastination needs a lift. I haven't re-read through all of them in detail. I wonder how many of them I've changed my mind on.
Casino Royale
One way or another
Stimulus package
Greetings from Hooverville
Down a Country Lane
Bread and Roses
E pur si muove
Who Cares If You Save?
You'll Never Get Rich
Searching for Love
Get on Board
The bustle in a house
There's a hole in the bucket
"Oh, take your next vacation in a brand-new Frigidaire"
A chicken in every pot
I couldn't p now if I tried
2 comments:
I did propaganda for a major California bank for a couple of decades and somehow the idea of showing a banking executive the "business end of a broken beer bottle," for any purpose whatsoever, is enormously appealing. I'm a firm believer in non-violence but we're getting to a point in this country where we've got to stop passively taking these monsters' crap anymore.
I just posted something about the financial meltdown - which attention and appropriate regulation could have prevented.
Paul Krugman visited Google on his book tour last year, and instead of talking about the book, he gave himself a break and talked about the subprime crisis, which didn't look QUITE so bad last December as it does now. His talk is here, on YouTube.
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