Hard to say what would have happened but IMHO had Bush done nothing we would now be at the bottom and putting things back together. I am with Denninger and Zero Hedge in that we are still going to end up at that same bottom but all we have done with TARP and the bailouts is delay that landing and by pulling money back from the future made the road out steeper. Just sayin'...
I think Bush panicked when Paulson came to him and forgot that (apparently) some had warned him against Paulson previously.
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Much of this remains in the realm of the unknowable unless some players come forward. For example Paulson could say "I consciously exaggerated everything." Soros could have the Damascus Road experience and confess that he is the Goldfinger behind the crash. Barring these unlikely revelations, we will remain in the dark for a long time about the real need for the Bush intervention.
However, I regard the Bush intervention as small potatoes next to the trillions squandered by Obama and that in a fraudulent cause. We could have survived very well and digested the Bush invention and I think we tend to conflate the few hundred billion that Bush used against Obama's literally uncounted trillions.
There is a difference in moral character as well. Bush was confronted with an emergency situation and he was told he must act within hours or the world would crash. Obama was not confronted with an emergency situation but he told the world that if they did not act it would crash.
