the trouble with tribbles

Here's a post with a lot of zeros in it.

I should preface my response by saying that it does hurt my heart to see government money fly out the door (though apparently not fast enough) to accomplish nothing more than maybe kinda sorta keeping Amurika open for bidness. But you fight with the Army you have, not . . . .

Fundamentally, though, I have trouble with the knee-jerk certitude that this is a Bad Idea. After all, most of the smart money seemed to be on the downside-of-no-bailout being a swift and terrible credit contraction followed by East German levels of unemployment and a generally deep and prolonged recession. Which we may be seeing the first act of anyway, by the by. Let's game it out: we'd only know for sure that it's a bad idea if it hadn't passed, and then nothing happened, more or less. It's worth remembering, though, that more wealth has been destroyed today than the whole thing will cost, under the worst and direst assumptions.

Perhaps equally, if all that government money doesn't forestall the big recession, then it wasn't worth it. Fundamentally, the real fun starts when credit gets so tight that big businesses can't meet payroll. If we get to that point, I don't think arguments along the lines of "think how much worse it'd be without the bailout . . . " will have any force.

Much more likely outcomes: 3) no bailout/contraction-recession, or 4) bailout/less clear outcome, especially in the near term. My money's on this last. If all the charnel-house scenarios outlined by prominent economists are headed off, it's true--we can never know if the bailout was totally necessary. But it would seem that there's a better than even chance that it was. Problem with advanced-opinion is that an argument wasn't made one way or another on this question. It was, "Ohmigod, look at all those zeros."

A-O then pivots and gets in some 3rd party hacks. I'm just not convinced that there's anything necessarily inimical to my generally Democratic Party-type principles in this package. Given a choice between shoring up the savings and investments of millions of people and sticking it to some CEOs, I know which way my commie blood flows. So, no, I'm not "disappointed" in myself for not being full-throatedly against this thing, nor am I shocked at the flawed bill that ended up being passed. I'm reserving judgment and waiting to see what comes of it.

I don't think most Republicans should have a big problem with it, either. Once everybody gets the Lou Dobbs moment out of their system, unless you believe 1) the mass of expert opinion on this was just wrong, and you and your Internets were right, or 2) small government and fiscal probity are principles that can't be sacrificed for anything at all ever, you are at worst taking a wait-and-see attitude on this bailout.

You're definitely not voting for Cynthia McKinney, for God's sake.