Interconnected Crises? Independently Urgent Emergencies? Whatever It Takes!

I think that the plan is to buy up bad assets, provide direct cash infusions to attempt to unfreeze the credit markets, and then change regulations to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future

Prevent what "kind of thing"? The inevitable results of direct cash infusions to credit markets - that is to say, wildly unlikely investments and bubble profits?

I mean, chasing benzedrine with a couple 'luudes is great fun in college but I expect better of the designated driver.

(I know you're not advancing this argument yourself, Freddie, but I had to comment)

In fairness, I think the idea is that you combine the cash infusion needed to open up traditional credit markets with a much more rigorous set of regulations that prevent all of those byzantine financial "products"-- credit default swaps, collateralized/securitized mortgages, etc. Of course, easier said than done.

Well, while I'm clearly unqualified to say, I think that the plan is to buy up bad assets, provide direct cash infusions to attempt to unfreeze the credit markets, and then change regulations to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, by limiting the amount of leveraging banks and insurers can do, and putting strict limitations on securitization and similar tomfoolery.

The Keynesians would say that the additional investments into health care, transportation, infrastructure, energy and other places are the necessary kind of stimulative practices that you need in any recession, as well as satisfying genuine public needs as well.

I think that the plan is to buy up bad assets, provide direct cash infusions to attempt to unfreeze the credit markets,

I rather think the plan is to muddle along for a while until nationalizing The Big Four Banks (Citi, JP Morgan, Bank of America and AIG) becomes politically palatable. Or perhaps - until we've thought through, in considerable detail, what is to be the design of the next great regulatory era.

Yes, I also note as the internet's official holder of the Michael Bérubé Honorary Chair of the Department of Being the Son of a Medical CEO™, when a patient has "cancer and heart disease" the doctor does not simultaneously split open his sternum and irradiate him.

Catastrophe we can believe in!

Obama is nothing but a two-bit huckster and this is his dog-and-pony show to screw over America.

Bill Clinton's last budget was about $1.9 trillion.

Bush's last budget was $3.1 trillion.

So alphie, you're saying Obama's done in one year what it took Bush 5/12 of what it took Bush to do in eight? It's not a one year stimulus thing, either-- the 10 year budget puts us on a permanently higher spending plateau.

Although technically, Bush's last budget (passed) was only his seventh. After the Democrats took Congress, he suddenly developed concern about spending and starting vetoing farm bills and refusing to go along with the spending increases proposed. So the budget recently signed is a delayed one, as they had to do a continuing resolution for the first half of the year because Bush refused to increase spending.

Where have Brooks and the rest of the delicate fiscal "conservatives" who are suddenly unable to multi-task been the past 8 years?

Six of the past 8 years, I've been complaining about the Republican propensity to spend. (The Republicans suddenly got better when they lost Congress and didn't matter so much. Funny that.)

But the other choice, the Democrats, has not even consistently been "the same." They've been even worse. Significantly so.

Granted, there was a reasonable argument that the Democrats "had to" propose even more spending than Bush when in opposition, because that's their role, but once in power they would be "responsible." However, that idea seems to have comprehensively failed.

Divided government still looks like the best hope.

I'd take Brooks more seriously if his opinions were based on facts and logic, John.

As it is, he's just saying he has a simple mind that can't grasp more than one or two big ideas at once.

What purpose does this kind of criticism serve?

It's like he'd declared he's against vanilla ice cream and asks who's with him.

"It's like he'd declared he's against vanilla ice cream and asks who's with him."

*applause*!

"So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. "

Bill Clinton's last budget was about $1.9 trillion.

Bush's last budget was $3.1 trillion.

Where have Brooks and the rest of the delicate fiscal "conservatives" who are suddenly unable to multi-task been the past 8 years?

Alphie, I agree that it's a bit rich for Brooks, the big-government conservative, to start bitching now. Indeed, I think conservatives like him have made Obama's spending spree possible. But some of us have been bitching the whole time.

Back in our salad days, the likes of Matt and Ezra mocked this very metaphor when it was rolled out to compare the immesne fiscal imbalance of Social Security to the even immenser imbalance of Medicare because Social Security was just fine, and so didn’t even count as a scratch. Of course now we have imminently terminal cancer and heart disease and rickets and gout and apparently also Alzheimers.

True, but then, that comes from a genuine disagreement about the relative importance of each set of problems.

Very true. Do you think there is a current crisis to which socialized health care, free money for college kids (and the loyal Democrats who instruct them), and "green" energy industrial policy is an answer?

So what's the Treasury's plan for dealing with failing banks again?

Um, yes, are you insane? There are multiple current crises - 14 million people without insurance, the ravages of climate change, and the fact that US is absolutely abysmal on virtually all health care or education indices - that demand those specific sets of policies.

Your objection in the original post doesn't even make sense. Matt and Ezra weren't mocking the metaphor; they were mocking the facts underlying it. If Social Security were a problem on the scale of Medicare - and it manifestly isn't, even in psychotic libertarian fantasy land where facts are irrelevant to truth - there would be nothing to mock.