Facebook + Economic Discourse II: In which we pick up the thread wall-to-wall

#1 at 9:28pm yesterday

Are you still supportive of the next bailout? It just seems really expensive to me, compared to the impact it will have on the economy. I looked at that article you linked for me. There is no doubt there are good things included in the package, but we can't afford it, and all I hear from Obama is that we can't afford not to do it. What am I missing?

#4 at 8:33am

Let's begin by reframing the question and dropping the term 'bailout' for the moment. Under the circumstances it seems moralistic and not particularly helpful for this reason: There's been a bus crash and the lives of children are in danger. The person who drove them off the road is a bad driver and possibly a bad man. He should be held responsible for his failure. Perhaps upon investigation it will turn out the driver was an honest man, trying to keep a badly designed and dangerously broken bus on the roadway — maybe the bus company is the bad actor. But the 911 call from a motorist who saw the bus leave the pavement and disappear over the embankment came hours ago. The children are exposed and injured and the sun is going down and the temperature is dropping. We know how this ends. It's not a bailout for the children. It's a rescue. We'll deal with responsibility for the crash later; right now the rescue must be undertaken with energy and imagination and at any cost. more later...