Maybe we could just stop printing all these new colorful Third World-style Monopoly-money bills, take it all out of circulation, and start over with money that's solid green, like real money ought to be?
Uh, I realize I'm no economist....
Lord Eschaton is right, of course. The Wise Men suck, so the only reason to set up some fucking commission, even if it's only on housing, is to fix the blame on them, which is righteous, but not enough.
On the other hand, the people who are panicking now have confidence in the Wise Men precisely because of their suckitude. What to do?
What we have is an unregulated and insolvent shadow banking system ("the Big Shitpile") that's going to take us all down with it, if it hasn't already, and we just don't know it yet.
So I hope somebody in either campaign is reading Krugman's column this morning, because somebody in our extremely functional ruling class needs to ask this question:
Could it be that compared to the insolvency of the shadow banking system, the housing crisis is mere froth?
Do Our Betters in the Village
even have the language to ask this question, let alone answer it?
Perhaps they do.
Perhaps their answer is "Yes, we do" and "I've got mine."
In that case, how useful a system of total surveillance--especially of banking transactions, eh?--and a Federalized National Guard will be, and how wise in retrospect the Bush administration will be seen to have been, to have taken these extremely appropriate precautions.
Those signing statements? Life savers that enabled the executive branch to take the decisive measures the country demanded. Even if those measures weren't the popular thing to do...
"Incompetent"? Haw.
NOTE See Paradox at the Left Coaster via Avedon:
I went to the Hillary Hub and the Obama Town Hall this morning and there is nothing, nada, crickets, the sounds of silence, ay curumba zero on the collapse and bailout of Bear Stearns and the $200 billion unsecured revolving fund the Fed set up for the banking industry. Seriously, how is this possible?
In the last four months two immediate family members have been hospitalized, I started a new job, paid off credit cards’n filed taxes, cooked and cleaned and shopped, performed public service, I washed the cars yesterday after feeding and mowing the lawns, I’m ready for Easter dinner with a great menu plus two dozen fresh tulips on the table for the total Jesus holiday and what is my morning consumed with?
Waiting. Waiting eternally for Democratic leadership to stand up and fight for our people when they’ve been abused, to get angry like they’re supposed to when our people have been ripped off by sleazy crooks and fight, fight for the love of baby Jesus for our people, total silence isn’t my idea of defending and advocating Democratic principles! Arrrrrrrrrgh!
There's an opportunity for leadership, here, guys. You slide into Depression with the candidates you have, i.e., the candidates that our famously free press and the Village chose for us....
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As John Stewart says
It is not that Bush is dumb, it is that we are dumb.
I'm Not an Economist Either
The problem here - as with so many areas of American policy and discourse - is that we have a lot of stupid wise men. The media has rewarded their stupidity by continuing to fluff them and put them forward as wise men (probably a coincidence that some of them are married to members of the media or not).
So what do you do? Do you include them in any conference to show how very serious it is and make the Village
happy, so that the Village
will tell the people that you're on top of the problem. And confidence in leaders is important in this kind of crisis. Or do you use it as a teaching moment to assign blame and elevate new, better wise men and women?
I tend to prefer the latter, but recognize that may not be the best course politically, especially for a candidate who is constantly being labeled "polarizing" by her opponent and is hated by the Village
.
The more important question to me is not who gets invited to a conference, but who will be listened to. And as with so many things in politics, that's a difficult thing to know because when someone like Greenspan is invited, you can't tell if it's purely for political spin (look at me, I'm bipartisan and reaching out to the "wise men" on the other side even if I don't have any intention of listening to the doddering idiot) or if the invite is a sign that the politician is interested not just in appearances, but in what the idiot actually thinks.
I know nothing about economists, are there any on the list that are a good sign? Or is it entirely more of the same, which would be extremely depressing and perhaps an indication that we are not about to usher in an era of new wise men.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt