Jonah Goldberg (who is not a creep – it’s a verb, people) stopped picking apples long enough to make the following observation on the bailout plan being rammed through Washington corridors. He says Count me Out of the Bailout.
Basically, I think the bad paper should stay with the people who bought it. If we need to further capitalize the banks, create short term rules or cobble together other backstops, fine. But Paulson’s plan basically says, “I am the Lord thy God,” and that’s crazy. But it seems to me that Newt and the editors of NR are right when they worry that the Paulson plan essentially opens the door to unending government control of capital markets, which is just crazy.
Well, it’s not crazy. It’s the definition of socialism, in my humble books, which is a step away from communism in the respect that the latter is the markets, not merely controlling them.
We’ve been drifting towards this point – careening at times – since The New Deal. I’m no economist, but such credentials are not needed to spot the dangers to the free market system.
In reading Jonah’s basic observations, I have to say that my opinion on the bailout is: Ibid.
