I’ll don the nomex and say yes, I think it was. Every decision has to be evaluated in the context of the time, and just like a decision made in the heat of battle, not every one will look the same through the prism of history. I know, from a friend who has taken part in seminars with some of the same people who advised the Bush administration at the time, they honestly felt that TARP was essential to avoiding a full-scale economic collapse. In the end, I think the tax payers will get their money back out of TARP - not so with the porkulus and the rest of the crap. But TARP, as an emergency measure taken in the fog of economic war, was the right call at the time in my opinion.
We also didn’t have a good alternative to TARP. The leading House GOP alternative didn’t make much sense and TARP was the only viable alternative.
“Every decision has to be evaluated in the context of the time, and just like a decision made in the heat of battle, not every one will look the same through the prism of history.”
Which is a great argument for people not having the sort of power we’ve granted, willingly or not, to the president, Congress, the Fed, the treasury, and so on. Nevermind that there’s a direct line between their authority and the crisis in the first place. It’s insane to pretend something as big and nebulous as “the market” or “the economy” can be under control. It’s not a machine. There’s no engineering. No subtle manipulation of switches and keys. No failsafe button. It’s a big bundle of wires designed by no one without a manual.
The battlefield analogy is appropriate, with certain caveats. Dust, smoke, distance and delays prevent a general from seeing the entire field, let alone efficiently relaying orders and expecting them to be carried out exactly as commanded. And even if they could be carried out as commanded, conditions are always changing, so as to make a generals understanding constantly behind the times. Then there are the lower officers, commissioned and non-commissioned—from Czars all the way down to petty bureaucrats—who are equally ignorant.
All that, however, is not the point. The point is, like occassionally with real battles, there may not be any fighting going on at all. We assume the presence of an enemy, but what if we’re killing innocents? What if it’s friendly fire? What if everyone’s just milling about in the dust and haze without any intention, momentum, or motivation whatsoever? What if it’s all a mad general’s fever dream?