Tuesday, November 4, 2008

"People familiar with the matter say Treasury may scrap part of that early plan -- purchasing assets through an auction process -"

Justin Fox cuts Paulson some slack:

"I don't know that I've ever seen a case where criticisms from outside government (and probably a lot of nudging from the Federal Reserve) have caused such a quick U-turn in a major government policy.

Now I'm not sure that the current buy-stakes-in-every-last-financial-institution-that-asks is really the right approach either. But at least Paulson has set an encouraging precedent: When the facts change, he changes his mind."

Read the whole post. Here's my comment:

donthelibertariandemocrat Says:
  1. "Now I'm not sure that the current buy-stakes-in-every-last-financial-institution-that-asks is really the right approach either. But at least Paulson has set an encouraging precedent: When the facts change, he changes his mind."

    I haven't agreed with his positions, but I don't envy him his position. I've had to make huge compromises with my own beliefs to try and understand this mess and how it should best play out, but I don't matter.

    My understanding was simply that going in with a Swedish type plan right from the beginning was a better way of biting the bullet, and eventually getting back out. It was cleaner. Maybe he's seeing that, especially since he's finding that, as the WSJ says, jawboning doesn't do much.

    I'm not happy with the expansion of TARP recipients, but, again, where you have a messy plan with lots of lobbying, this was expected.

    I'd like to hear his positions on all this when he's out of it. But you're right. I've had enough of government officials with no learning curve. He might end up being one of the better people in the administration in the last eight years. Of course, that's even fainter praise.

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