Some commenters have asked for my views. I'm reluctant to go into much detail, since financial institutions aren't something I have any expertise in. But I did come across a comment on the present situation that I wrote, and posted, almost a year and a half ago:
Someone had asked another Usenet poster:
"How do you feel about the line, "I want you to vote for me, because I support smaller government"?
I replied:
1. It gives me very little information about what he will do if elected.
2. But it does mean that, since he is pretending to be one of us, we will get blamed for what he does, even if it has nothing to do with the views we support.
That's why, on the whole, I thought it would be better if Bush had lost the most recent election--not that his opponent would have been any better but that at least we wouldn't have gotten blamed for what he did.
6 comments:
Gary Becker and Richard Posner express some interesting views in their blog:
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/
I'm starting to think along the same lines for the coming election. The next year will see a lot of bad regulations and controls, regardless of who wins the election. But if McCain is in office when economic troubles deepen, the 'free-market' will get blamed.
The fight for smaller government has been over since the Reagan years, and we lost. Remember all those articles about the deficit, about how the stack of dollar bills could stretch to the moon and back? So long as the federal budget is created as "last year + X%", it'll never go down.
Wall Street firms made a fortune by concentrating and amplifying risk. Taking on risk is much more lucrative than merely acting as a sales agent for stocks and bonds. The crazy thing is that now that the bets have turned sour, we are told that losses are unacceptable and the taxpayer must pay the price. This is a travesty of capitalism.
My vote is for allowing a lot of creative destruction. This bailout, along with the SS and Medicare crises, is going to increase inter-generational conflict. A young person who wants a freer society with smaller government and no empire, where he can easily buy a house and safely rear his kids, needs to seriously consider seeking his fortune in New Zealand.
Do you really come across people who associate you with President Bush or his policies? There ain't no justice...
I'm reminded of an otherwise intelligent woman I once knew, who believed that there exist only two political teams in the game of life, and if you don't support one team you must necessarily be a supporter of the other (even if you refuse to admit it).
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