Simple Answers to Difficult Questions

More of the Oborg are getting the feeling something's amiss in the Prime Directive.

Billmon:

...My inexpert guess is that full nationalization still would be less expensive and messy than creating the kind of Potemkin markets the Geither plan seems to envision – even if the unintended consequences may be more difficult to control.

At the very least, it would be a more honest solution. One of the things that creeps me out about the political system’s response to the crisis so far – the insolvency of the banking system in particular – are the increasingly desperate attempts to maintain a phony façade of free markets and private enterprise, in an economy now utterly dependent on the federal safety net. I totally expected that from Hank Paulson and the Cheney Administration, but is Obama’s financial team really pressed from exactly the same Wall Street mold?

Yes.