The Treasury Department came out with a plan over the weekend: Give me $700 Billion to spend any way I like and nobody can review my decisions. Today Bernanke and Paulson were busy telling Congress that if this didn't happen RIGHT NOW then the sky would fall by Friday.
This is a complicated issue, but let's make it simple: If George Bush was your neighbor and he wanted to borrow $400 and said he needed it by the end of the week or he'd be evicted, but he needed it in cash and he didn't want you to give it to his landlord yourself and could you just give it to him right now thanks, would you trust him?
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Awesome Town) has a plan that's better here. Explanation by Paul Krugman here.
(Both links to Berkley Economics Professor Brad Delong's blog)
UPDATE: Dow closed down about 162 points, below 11,000 today. On the whole this doesn't mean much given the insane volatility over the last week. There's no point in worrying about the day-to-day but I take it generally as a good sign that it's below 11,000. Not that I think people deserve to lose money, but just that it feels like it should stabilize there for a bit. Yeah, that's as scientific as it sounds.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment