Why Conservatives don't care if the bailout was a success
One of the best things I've written in the last year (if I may say so) is this post on John Haidt's Five Moral Dimensions. I keep coming back to that post, mentally at least, because it explains why people have such a hard time seeing eye to eye politically.
Take the TARP "bailout", often inaccurately characterized as a $700 billion giveway to ( Read more... )
Take the TARP "bailout", often inaccurately characterized as a $700 billion giveway to ( Read more... )
You have to click through a couple of menus. Volumes dip as much as 83% for one of the maturities at the nadir - so, still shy of "two tacos for a crowd". More like two tacos for someone who usually gets a super burrito and a plate of nachos.
What do I believe? I believe that someone who tells you that you have to spend $700b, RIGHT NOW, is not to be trusted. If he said everything was fine last week, that just makes his perspective less valuable. And when his peers work for some of the recipients of that cash, that should only heighten suspicion.
I also believe that too much debt can get a nation in deep souvlaki.
Against that, I find the evidence for possible collapse (precedented TED, not-frozen commercial paper) unpersuasive.
I notice that you've scaled back from total economic collapse to total financial sector collapse. I would further hope to convince you that the Schwabs of the world would have been fine without TARP. Per this, they didn't take TARP funds at least. I don't know of a way to look up who was issuing/buying what in September and October '08, so I don't know how much more evidence I could give.
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First, you're starting this analogy from a false point. Nobody but a complete glutton eats "a super burrito and a plate of nachos" for dinner. You're making the unfounded assumption that banks and businesses were writing commercial paper wastefully, which you're welcome to prove, but haven't. On its face this doesn't fit the facts though. Commercial paper is very liquid, very short-term. If you need to pig out on a ton of credit you go to bonds not paper. That's not what paper is for.
Second, if you take the FDA's recommendation of a 2000 calorie/day diet, an 83% dip would leave you with 340 calories. One can of Coke and one taco. Not to go Godwin, but that's half as many calories as the Jews got during the Holocaust. So assuming that your 83% figure is true, that level of decrease from normal is quite substantial.
What do I believe? I believe that someone who tells you that you have to spend $700b, RIGHT NOW, is not to be trusted.
What, *always*? No matter what the circumstances? Regardless of evidence? If so, there's our problem. You're immune to reason and evidence.
Does this apply in any other situation? If someone tells you that your house is on fire and you need 700 gallons of water RIGHT NOW do you tell him "but my house was perfectly fine last week"? If your dad's heart stops beating and someone tells you that they need to jolt him with 700 volts of electricity do you tell him "his heart was perfectly fine last week"? If someone tells you the Gulf Coast suddenly needs 700 miles of oil barrier do you say "the derrick was perfectly fine last week?" You can try an argument from incredulity but it's not very persuasive.
If I told you that your house was on fire and you said there was no smoke you'd have a point. Maybe there's no fire. If I said your dad was having a heart attack and his heart was beating normally, you'd have a point. Maybe there's no heart attack. If I said there was an oil spill and no oil was coming out of the derrick you'd have a point. Maybe I'm just making it up. What evidence is missing? What do you imagine that systemic failure looks like? What would you have to see that you don't already see in order to start taking this thing seriously?
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In fact, my position came from using reason and evidence. Yours, to judge by your links, came from listening to a very simplified version of things on NPR and then assuming you knew everything about it.
I think we're done here.
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Absolutely correct. I listened to very simplified versions of things on NPR and I assumed that I understood them. You've offered minor factual corrections, which has improved my undestanding, and for that I am thankful, but it doesn't change anything of significance.
For example I was 17% wrong about commercial paper volume. I thought it dropped 100%, but it only dropped 83%. That doesn't exactly change the overall picture. If this page was 17% wrong and the Jews actually received 702 calories per day would they not have been starving anymore? If the figures on Deepwater Horizon were 17% wrong and it only spilled 58000 barrels of oil instead of 70000 barrels would that mean it was no longer a disaster? Of course not.
My mistake about TED is also unfortunate ... for you. I admit I was totally wrong when I said that "the biggest spike ever" was on September 15 2008. There had been big spikes for months. Which completely torpeodes your point - that everything was fine, or that "the man" was saying everything was fine. The "biggest spike ever" actually happened non on the 15th but two days later on the 17th, three days before "the man" started talking about anything. How exactly does this prove that you're right about anything?
So far you've been wrong about confusing the stimulus bill and TARP, you've been wrong about the timeline of causality between TARP discussion and market panics, you've been wrong about "money holes" being de facto failures, you've been wrong about everything being "fine", you've been wrong about the Bernanke or Paulson claiming "everything's fine", you've been wrong about bankruptcy proceedings making debt "go away", you've been wrong about CAT's 10 year bonds being commercial paper, you've been wrong about proving that banks were robust by showing that CAT was, you've been wrong about commercial paper loans not being for companies like Servicemaster.
On the other hand you *haven't* been wrong about capitalization, or the potential of systemic risk, or the actuality of systemic failure, or whether the consequences of that failure were worse than what we suffered, because you won't actually take a stand on any of it to risk being wrong about it. We might be done, but only because you refuse to answer my question: What do you imagine that systemic failure looks like? What evidence is missing? What would you have to see that you don't already see in order to start taking this thing seriously? This isn't an argument with two sides, this is fact vs. FUD.
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And you're 0 for 0, because you've provided 0 actual positions to defend.
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First, your position didn't come from anywhere because you don't have a position. You're not actually saying that there was or wasn't underlying systemic risk, that the risk was or wasn't in the process of collapsing, to what extent the collapse would have occurred, and how damaging those consequences would have been.
The only meta-position you could be said to have - that I'm wrong about something - came from starting with that conclusion and working backward to see whether you could find anything to correct me on. And you've succeeded admirably by correcting a bunch of things that I got wrong. Which still doesn't bring support to your position, which you don't have.
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A few things. First, he didn't say "everything was fine last week". The TED spread was elevated for months. Bear, Fannie/Freddie, and Lehman had already collapsed and been bailed out. That was the whole point. "We can’t keep doing this" Bernanke told Paulson. TARP - and the collapse - had been happening for months. All that changed in mid September was Congress taking over.
You can keep referring to this as a "possible collapse", but the collapse was well under way before TARP, and continued afterward. AIG, Merrill, Wachovia, IndyMac, and many others. Honestly, what evidence is missing? If there *had* been an imminent collapse that TARP saved us from, what would you expect to see now that you don't see? You literally wouldn't know a collapse if it was staring you in the face, because one is, and you don't.
would further hope to convince you that the Schwabs of the world would have been fine without TARP.
I already agree. The Schwabs of the world would have been totally fine without TARP. The Schwabs weren't even holding any toxic assets. They were, however, the counterparties in contracts with companies that held those toxic assets. They didn't need TARP, their counterparties needed TARP, and the Schwabs needed their counterparties to get TARP. Without it, the Schwabs would have had to write down the losses caused by their counterparties bankruptcy and then they'd need TARP. But the Schwabs never needed TARP, because TARP worked.
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