For the first time in my political life, I am in agreement with the majority:
The numbers: Bank bailouts, 61 percent disapprove versus 37 percent approve; national health care, 56 percent disapprove versus 39 percent approve; auto bailouts, 56 percent disapprove versus 43 percent approve; stimulus, 52 percent disapprove versus 43 percent approve. Only financial reform, with 61 percent approve versus 37 percent disapprove, is a winner for the representatives and senators seeking re-election.
OK, not entirely. I think that the financial reform was a mess, and will prove disastrous as well.
I think the majority will catch-up once the interchange amendment kicks in.
Well, the bank bailout was in part needed to keep the financial system from freezing up. As Megan McArdle wrote at the time, the commercial paper market was about 1 business day from collapse. This would have caused all kinds of problems (i.e. some companies would have missed payrolls due to lack of cash, accounts payables going unpaid, rinse/repeat) that would have led to a 1928-style crash with bank runs. It may have been suboptimal, but something had to be done.
But there seems to be no doubt that the stimulus was pork stuffed with pork, stuffed with pork. And it didn’t work.
Well, the bank bailout was in part needed to keep the financial system from freezing up.
Yeah, this is why they had to arm twist banks to take the money. Total B.S.
Financial Reform is popular because it has a nice name that implies that Wall Street will be “reformed”. Unfortunately, just like the other “Hope and Change”, it does just the opposite.
I guess Obama is on track for reelection then.
If by reelection you mean a landslide defeat of Old Testament proportions, then yeah, he is going to be reelected as Barack Obama, private citizen in about 25 and a half months.
anon,
are you mental?
The “reform” means the very same jerks who caused the problem got bailed out by tapping people those very jerks wouldn’t have loaned money to, sold stocks to, etc, in the first damned place, because they were neither rich nor poor. I’m talking about working Americans in the middle-class, who were already strapped but keeping their heads above water!
And then, to prove they had “reformed”, they got to keep their jobs and got their bonuses for running their companies poorly. Well, good for them!
Is that how YOU have succeeded in life? By running head long, carrying on with foolish ideas and having the gov’t bail you out? Personally, when I make bad decisions, I have to deal with it. But it pisses me off when “they” make bad decisions and I have to deal with it.
BTW, I made some bad financial decisions earlier this year. I bet on the wrong horses, bought a big screen TV based on those bets, then I doubled down with lottery tickets…but I didn’t win. Is that my fault?! Send me a couple “thou”, will ya?
On second thought, you ARE mental.
In a market socialist country the state would have taken over the bank, kicked out the management, injected money to make the bank sane again, and then resold the bank in a public offering. In the US the state just injects money into the bank keeping the same management.
You could just let the bank fail. The reason states only seldom let the banks fail this time is because they feared a bank run would be triggered causing another Great Depression. Once people lost confidence in their deposits everyone would try to get their cash out at the same time.
My opinion is the problem was caused by the inflated money supply and cheap credit from Mr. Greenspan’s policies to artificially prop up growth in the economy.
The increased money supply caused inflated house prices. The inflation in house prices, combined with the lack of interest returns in low rate deposits, precipitated the housing bubble. People addicted to cheap credit eventually had debt they couldn’t pay back anymore and the whole scheme imploded.
A concurrent problem is the excessive state debt. Increased expenditures, done concurrently with lower taxes, caused the hole in the first place. The US convinced its allies to increase their own military expenditures supposedly so they could defend themselves and reduce US expenditure. Instead US military expenditure increased and the US got itself into two simultaneous wars on the other side of the globe.