Incoming!

Pyrrho @ 10:14 writes:

"You're right: not all debt is the same. However, I could present a strong, airtight case that most of the debt we've incurred over the past 15 years is unproductive consumer debt."

It would be interesting to see exactly how closely our speculations match the facts. Any sources you can cite would be a useful starting point for my own investigation. (On top of the other 6,229 things we each have to do today, right ?)

" Even corporations have been issuing bonds to buy back stock rather than invest in capital improvements. And of course the unofficial motto of Congress today is buy now, pay later."

I'm not disputing any of your points, my friend, not in the least. I was simply trying to make one point: details matter. Which may be why the actions of some of the Wonderful Gang of Happy Monkeys (Throne City Division) in slowing down and talking out this bailout business may actually make sense.

Somebody contact His Holiness the Pope; we may be witnessing a miracle in progress.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

"The people who sold a war of choice as a war of necessity are now telling us that yet another emergency measure is absolutely necessary, which makes me think that it is distinctly possible that it is not."

This is your basic Boy Who Cried Wolf set-up. The government did lose a lot of credibility when it insisted that the consequences of not going to Iraq were dire.

But did anyone thinking clearly (and I understand some people were rattled from 9/11 directly impacting them) really believe that our nation would in severe danger if we didn't invade Iraq? That they themselves faced any danger of being killed by a terrorist? I didn't believe it for a minute. It seemed unlikely that Iraq would be aligned with the likes of Al Qaeda, except maybe indirectly and at a remove. And even if they WERE supporting terrorists, what good does it do to target an organized nation-state, when it is a supranational non-state organization which threatens you? It's one thing if said organization is physically based in the sovereign state, as was the case in Afghanistan. Or even if Iraq paid some terrorists to attack the U.S., it was unlikely at the time that they would succeed nearly as well as they did on 9/11.

Well, maybe some of that is hindsight. I expected at the time that Colin Powell's statements at the UN were true and accurate. I thought we'd rattle some sabers for another month or two, and then maybe have us a nice airstrike. Instead, it's five years later and I'm on my second tour in Iraq. Where there are actually are guys running around who'd like to me dead. Kind of makes me laugh. Fortunately, the terrorist tactics are fading here now.

But I guess my point is, does anyone seriously believe that things will be as bad as the experts say, if this bail out plan does not go through? My analysis is a big fat WE DON'T KNOW. We just don't have a way of predicting what would happen. There is not enough data. There aren't many past precedents, certainly not enough to suggest a pattern. The risks on the losing side of deciding wrongly are pretty severe. If we get it right, things might end up the same as before, in the long run. Which is to say, okay, but unsustainable. There's a lot at stake here.