Boo.

[prog]

We have now codified a national policy of private reward for socialized risk. Good job. Congress, I fart on you.

That said, this cartoon struck a nerve with me. I still stand by my actions, such as they are.

Comments

resist the sin-snark!

[kahuna_burger]

Do not let the old "how dare you be angry about that and not this?" cool your righteous indignation! (a line most commonly used in my experience by those who care about nothing and want to set up a false choice between their way and a level of activism unsustainable to the average citizen.)

Re: resist the sin-snark!

[prog]

The thing is, I am pretty dang angry about a lot of what's gone down over the last eight years, but I never got active to the point of Congress-writing about any of it, before now. I have no good explanation why, and so I see a fair-enough caricature of myself within the snark...

Re: resist the sin-snark!

[prog]

Eh, I suppose I do have some explanations. There's some fool-me-twice happening here, as well as the fact that the ball's being handled by a Democratic-majority congress, as opposed to an out-of-control president and his cronies.

Either way.

[mogaribue]

Funny, I see it as socialized reward for privatized risk.

[prog]

So someone takes a gamble, and if it works out, everyone wins? That's really not what it feels like.

My core frustration at the bailout comes from the fact that to me, it looks like banks in question made some astoundingly crappy decisions, and now everyone gets to help prop them up rather then let them fail as a consequence. That's what I mean with the privatized/socialized thing.

As dictator555 and others have pointed out, me and my fellow blog-grousers on this topic have only the slightest idea what's actually going on here, and there's no doubt layers of complication and danger I can't see. But that's definitely what the surface looks like.

[dougo]

Paul Krugman's take (more here) seems reasonable: the original Paulson plan was preposterously over-reaching, the Dodd-Frank amendments made it sane but not ideal, but a band-aid was needed to hold the economy together until the regime change in January when "an actually good plan" could be enacted.

[radtea]

My own unbelievably cynical take on the plan as passed is that the equity provisions for the government are so weak as to be nearly meaningless, and there is no commitment to acquire the bank's assets at anything like current market prices. So Paulson's claim that the plan will have the effect of price discovery is absurd: Paulson will pay whatever Paulson thinks is reasonable, and get the commissars oversight committee to accept.