Well, that’s probably the main point where we disagree.
I don’t believe that the nationalization plan, in and of itself, was a bad thing. I mean, it’s quite possible that a prepackaged Chapter 11 might’ve been a better plan for the entire industry. I’m not overly familiar with law, but an overnight bankruptcy was an intriguing idea thrown out there, to get them back on their feet immediately while avoiding the months and months of litigation which would’ve crashed the economy. A judge signs the order, and POOF! The financial sector is immediately free of debt at no taxpayer cost - the equity holders would have to pay for it instead. That really might have been a better plan. But there’s almost no precedent for that, and there is certainly no way we could’ve pushed that through Congress in time.
The nationalization plan was easily the least radical and most economically sound of the options on the table. It’s been successfully done on a smaller scale for previous crises. And as a practical sort of guy, I want to go with what can work. So I have to say: Yay temporarily nationalization!
This doesn’t please some people, but there’s nothing to be done about that. The anger is completely justified, but that doesn’t mean that what we’re doing is a bad thing. I’d rather have them pissed off with a good plan than satisfied as the entire ship slowly sinks. And so I have to say that my primary concern isn’t the fact of nationalization, but the manner in which it’s being implemented. We’re doing the right thing in a profoundly stupid fashion. I can only hope that soon we’ll be doing the right thing in an intelligent fashion in a couple months.
Nah, there was a lot of real gain under Clinton up until the dot-com bubble, even though the large increases in productivity largely weren’t shared across all segments of the population. It’s been the Bush years that have been totally built on lies. The stupid banks chose a new worthless bubble to inflate instead of trying to create real gains. Bush, of course, isn’t responsible for that, but if his administration had taxed responsibly we wouldn’t have the same debt problems. Lowering taxes before an invasion and occupation is just about the stupidest fucking fiscal policy I think I’ve ever heard of.
But we’re almost past that. We’ve got a fairly decent plan in place, at least in theory (it’s supported by a clear majority of professionals), even if it’s not being executed properly. It’s upsetting, sure. And I’m not saying your complaints are unreasonable here. I guess I’m just more confident about the chances of success. Or rather, I’m reasonably sure that we’ll manage at the very least to putter along instead of actively going down the shitter. In the meantime, though, I stand by what originally brought me to this thread: we should be more careful with the bailouts numbers that are being thrown around.
Your evaluation of Keynes’s theories, which form the foundation of modern macroeconomics, is entirely without evidence, merit, or even the slightest hint of intelligence.
Your baseless attack is refuted by the events of the Great Depression. It is refuted by Japan’s lost decade after the collapse of their own bubble economy. And more than that, it is directly contrary to the beliefs of the vast majority of economists, even former advisers to W. There is absolutely no evidence, neither in current economic theory nor in the history of our country and other developed nations, that says that Keynes is wrong about his fundamental beliefs. Every piece of information currently at our disposal indicates that Keynes was exactly fucking right.
Other economic theories aren’t faring so well. The evidence is stacking up quite clearly against the libertarian monetarists. Our aggressive expansion of the money supply is having no discernable effect, which is exactly what Keynes predicted. And former Randist Greenspan himself admitted that he made a mistake with respect to under-regulation. (To his credit, the great defender of unregulated markets had the integrity to state before Congress that he was wrong about regulation. I only wish that there were more people who could do the same.)
These are the facts. To refuse to accept them is to refuse to accept reality
Heh. Good catch.