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Railroaded?

by Robert Capozzi

With the Bailout from Hell, well, railroaded in as law, Free Liberals and free marketeers of all stripes might want to consider a post mortem of the event.

An equilibrium-disrupting disaster? Yes.

A case of the elites pummelling the popular will? Yes.

A shakedown operation? Yes.

A pathetic response from free marketeers? Frankly, yes.

Watch this interesting clip from the good people at Cato on their takes during this dark period of American history. While I agree with just about everything Cato's people said, there's a moment at the very end when a CNBC commenter calls Cato's approach, "The no-Methadone approach to kicking heroin."

Simply saying "no" to bad policy doesn't seem to work. While some ideas were floated in the fight to stop the Bailout, they seemed tinny and off-point.

Sometimes, you need to fight fire with fire. Most of the time, "first, do no harm" is wise counsel. But not always.

We can engage in the arena, or we can carp near the exits. In this particular game of chicken, our car went over the cliff.

-RC

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Comments

I am more sanguine abot the prospect of government cleaning up a problem of its own causing. Apparrently, the entire scenario is happening outside the appropriations process. We are essentially borrowing money from either the Chinese or the Federal Reserve to do this. The only fly in the ointment is that it might spark incredible inflation - which would of course put housing values into balance with other prices, since they cannot grow as fast. If they can put on the breaks in time things could work out.

# posted at by Xianleftist_Michael [TypeKey Profile Page]

In an anarcho-syndicalist world, this would not have happened, by the way. If employee-owned firms held the mortgage paper of their employees on their collective balance sheets and all stock holding was private there would not be a market to bail out. Companies would go right to the discount window of their regional reserve for extra capital for expansion or liquidity, thus allowing for the expansion of liquidity without speculation.

# posted at by Xianleftist_Michael [TypeKey Profile Page]

Yes, but Xian there's no evidence that it would work and besides . . . there's no unifying document that would allow it. We need a document that we can refer to and not use.

Until then, compromise and hope that people will become aware will reveal the best milquetoast injection for stylish angst.

The Cato approach is the "no Methadone" approach to kicking the government habit.

I saw a documentary on the Drug War, and it contended that Methadone is more addicting than Heroin. As a man-made substance, scientists have made Methadone even more effective than Heroin at bonding with the Human nervous system.

Bail-outs are the Methadone approach - specific to the needs of the beneficiaries, who probably won't be able to function when the Bail-out Methadone is withdrawn.