Comments on: Interconnected Crises? Independently Urgent Emergencies? Whatever It Takes!

By: Freddie

Freddie — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:05:27 +0000

In fairness, I think the idea is that you combine the cash infusion needed to open up traditional credit markets with a much more rigorous set of regulations that prevent all of those byzantine financial “products”– credit default swaps, collateralized/securitized mortgages, etc. Of course, easier said than done.

By: Paul G. Brown

Paul G. Brown — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:50:14 +0000

I think that the plan is to buy up bad assets, provide direct cash infusions to attempt to unfreeze the credit markets,

I rather think the plan is to muddle along for a while until nationalizing The Big Four Banks (Citi, JP Morgan, Bank of America and AIG) becomes politically palatable. Or perhaps – until we've thought through, in considerable detail, what is to be the design of the next great regulatory era.

By: Professor Coldheart

Professor Coldheart — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:18:37 +0000

I think that the plan is to buy up bad assets, provide direct cash infusions to attempt to unfreeze the credit markets, and then change regulations to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future

Prevent what "kind of thing"? The inevitable results of direct cash infusions to credit markets - that is to say, wildly unlikely investments and bubble profits?

I mean, chasing benzedrine with a couple 'luudes is great fun in college but I expect better of the designated driver.

(I know you're not advancing this argument yourself, Freddie, but I had to comment)

By: Freddie

Freddie — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:27:43 +0000

Well, while I'm clearly unqualified to say, I think that the plan is to buy up bad assets, provide direct cash infusions to attempt to unfreeze the credit markets, and then change regulations to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, by limiting the amount of leveraging banks and insurers can do, and putting strict limitations on securitization and similar tomfoolery.

The Keynesians would say that the additional investments into health care, transportation, infrastructure, energy and other places are the necessary kind of stimulative practices that you need in any recession, as well as satisfying genuine public needs as well.

By: IOZ

IOZ — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:43:48 +0000

Yes, I also note as the internet's official holder of the Michael Bérubé Honorary Chair of the Department of Being the Son of a Medical CEO™, when a patient has “cancer and heart disease” the doctor does not simultaneously split open his sternum and irradiate him.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:21:53 +0000

Um, yes, are you insane? There are multiple current crises – 14 million people without insurance, the ravages of climate change, and the fact that US is absolutely abysmal on virtually all health care or education indices – that demand those specific sets of policies.

Your objection in the original post doesn't even make sense. Matt and Ezra weren't mocking the metaphor; they were mocking the facts underlying it. If Social Security were a problem on the scale of Medicare – and it manifestly isn't, even in psychotic libertarian fantasy land where facts are irrelevant to truth – there would be nothing to mock.

By: Freddie

Freddie — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:05:27 +0000

By: Paul G. Brown

Paul G. Brown — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:50:14 +0000

I think that the plan is to buy up bad assets, provide direct cash infusions to attempt to unfreeze the credit markets,

By: Professor Coldheart

Professor Coldheart — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:18:37 +0000

By: Freddie

Freddie — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:27:43 +0000