>> Paulson is a moron? And Bernanke, who although theoretically, has spent a lifetime studying the causes and mistakes of the Great Depression. Bernanke is an idiot?
Here’s a FACT.
Both Bernanke and Paulson have told us multiple times in their tenure, including quite recently, that the economy was OK.
They never warned us about this supposed horrific event that was just down the pike.
Again, that is simply a FACT. You don’t get to spin it. It just IS.
Now, how would you prefer to explain this FACT?
I’ll grant you that calling either of them “stupid” is hyperbole on my part.
Having said that: is the reason they were so very, very WRONG about recent events — in spite of their experience, education, and access to essentially ALL the financial information there is to possess — because they aren’t quite the top-notch thinkers and executives that they were billed to be?
Or, did they in fact know about the train wreck, and they chose to lie to us?
Which answer do you prefer? If you don’t like “incompetent” we can go with “dishonest”. I chose “incompetent” because it seems more charitable. But it seems to me that it’s one or the other. Either they didn’t know, or they knew and they lied to us.
Issuing such a warning would only have led to an earlier crash.
I’m confident they were never wrong in their statements but rather lied through their teeth. I knew they were lying when they were lying, because I knew the scope of carnage in the financial system.
Look at Paulson’s Bazooka comment, “If you’ve got a bazooka, and people know you’ve got it, you may not have to take it out.” We knew he was lying then and that he wouldn’t have asked for $300 billion to save Phony and Fraudie, if he didn’t intend to spend $300 billion.
He is lying now when he says he won’t spend all $700 billion. Hell, he’ll spend a trillion dollars if he spends a penny. I don’t think that is the issue.
They lied to try to keep up the confidence game in the markets, which I personally think was stupid and would never work (see, even I think they can be stupid sometimes).
At the same time, I do believe this bailout has a chance to calm markets and pull us back from an out and out complete collapse where lenders just say, “screw it” and close their doors and everybody downstream of that money gets cut off and goes into cardiogenic shock.
Yes they are lying and they will continue to lie. Look how Bernanke refuses to publically reveal the expected consequences of a systemic financial collapse that stunned people like Schumer and Pelosi into 15 seconds of silence.
Of course he is lying. That doesn’t mean we don’t need the bailout. And I freely admit the obvious, I have no clue if the bailout will work and neither do Bush or Paulson or Bernanke. Nobody knows. They do think it has a chance to work, and damn it, I want that chance.
Good post!!!