The NYT today on the failure of the bailout (must be nice to gamble with $700 billion): “But so far, the myriad efforts by government regulators to shore up confidence have seemed to yield little relief among investors, some of whom believed the actions have taken on a haphazard air. ‘People are slowly but surely coming to the realization that playing Whack-a-Mole with each of these issues as they arise, on an ad hoc basis, doesn’t get the job done,’ said Max Bublitz, chief strategist at SCM Advisors, an investment firm in San Francisco.”
There are two ways to take the “haphazard” critique: none of it works, or we need something more comprehensive. The NRA perhaps?
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New National Recovery Agency? It’s creazy! The Federal Reserve has already injected trillion dollors! We can’t cure inflation,by more inflation!
I couldn’t help but laugh yesterday when — as the Dow went into free-fall — the utterly hapless Bush issued a statement that, “The Recovery Plan will take some time.”
They generated a tsunami of (mostly phony) economic scare stories to spook the House of Representatives into passing the bailout bill — and now they are surprised that investors have lost confidence in the economy?
Here is a statement from that New York Times article that Jeffrey refrences:
“The Fed plan is intended to renew the flow of credit on which the economy depends. ”
There is the essence of the fallacy: the belief that the economy depends on the creation of endless credit, i.e. endless additional money.
Abolish the Federal Reserve Bank and the IRS!!
I play Whack-a-Mole with my nephew.
“Whack-a-Mole”–love the analogy! In other words, they’re trying to treat the symptoms, not the causes, of the problem.
I also noticed that Bush said he had talked to some small businessmen, and SURPRISE! They are being hurt by the lack of “easy credit” to invest and expand their business.
HELLO?? [knocking on his brain] Anybody in there? Exactly what is the point of expanding a business if people aren’t willing to pay for the expanded products or services??? They’ve got the cart before the horse…
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