Not Bad For Government Work
Remember back in 2008, when the world nearly ended?
In September of that year, the economy came terrifyingly close to stopping. Not getting really bad, but plain old ceasing to function. It's stunning to think about it: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were collapsing, Lehman Brothers had imploded, Goldman Sachs and AIG were about to follow, Washington Mutual collapsed, and General Motors was teetering on the brink - all within a period of a few days. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae alone constituted an amount of debt that was larger than the entire economic output of Great Britain.
These days, people bitch about the bailout like it was some dumb thing the government did. Given our short memories and the difficulty people had in understanding just how close to cataclysm we were, it's good to see that Warren Buffet has penned a genuinely excellent thank-you note to our government. A quick excerpt:Well, Uncle Sam, you delivered. People will second-guess your specific decisions; you can always count on that. But just as there is a fog of war, there is a fog of panic - and, overall, your actions were remarkably effective.
I don’t know precisely how you orchestrated these. But I did have a pretty good seat as events unfolded, and I would like to commend a few of your troops. In the darkest of days, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and Sheila Bair grasped the gravity of the situation and acted with courage and dispatch. And though I never voted for George W. Bush, I give him great credit for leading, even as Congress postured and squabbled.
Government drives me nuts sometimes, but the wonder of a system of self government that enables the modern world should not be dismissed. If you are alive and reading this today, you can thank the actions taken back in September, 2008.
(For those of you who wonder: yes, I credit George W. Bush as well. I think his administration, like Clinton's before him, can be held responsible for the lax regulation that set us up for this, but whatever part he played in the extraordinary executive action that righted a collapsing economy saved our collective bacon.)
In September of that year, the economy came terrifyingly close to stopping. Not getting really bad, but plain old ceasing to function. It's stunning to think about it: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were collapsing, Lehman Brothers had imploded, Goldman Sachs and AIG were about to follow, Washington Mutual collapsed, and General Motors was teetering on the brink - all within a period of a few days. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae alone constituted an amount of debt that was larger than the entire economic output of Great Britain.
These days, people bitch about the bailout like it was some dumb thing the government did. Given our short memories and the difficulty people had in understanding just how close to cataclysm we were, it's good to see that Warren Buffet has penned a genuinely excellent thank-you note to our government. A quick excerpt:Well, Uncle Sam, you delivered. People will second-guess your specific decisions; you can always count on that. But just as there is a fog of war, there is a fog of panic - and, overall, your actions were remarkably effective.
I don’t know precisely how you orchestrated these. But I did have a pretty good seat as events unfolded, and I would like to commend a few of your troops. In the darkest of days, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and Sheila Bair grasped the gravity of the situation and acted with courage and dispatch. And though I never voted for George W. Bush, I give him great credit for leading, even as Congress postured and squabbled.
Government drives me nuts sometimes, but the wonder of a system of self government that enables the modern world should not be dismissed. If you are alive and reading this today, you can thank the actions taken back in September, 2008.
(For those of you who wonder: yes, I credit George W. Bush as well. I think his administration, like Clinton's before him, can be held responsible for the lax regulation that set us up for this, but whatever part he played in the extraordinary executive action that righted a collapsing economy saved our collective bacon.)