Andrew Leonard on the housing bailout bill that President Bush just signed:
Without any hoopla, President Bush signed the 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery Act at 7 a.m. Wednesday. The lack of celebration was understandable. The new bill puts taxpayers at so much potential risk that Congress had to simultaneously authorize raising the statutory ceiling on the national debt by $800 billion just to make sure it will have breathing room to make good on its new promises. The message from the White House: Big government just got a whole lot bigger.
And here, in one paragraph, is why libertarianism will never be a mainstream political movement in the United States:
In other words, it’s the kind of bill that the heirs of Ronald Reagan have been decrying for more than a quarter century. Too bad for them: The new bill is all the proof America needs to show that when push comes to shove, no American administration, even one as willfully stubborn and reality-challenged as the current White House, will keep its faith in letting the free market handle its own problems while all else fails.
July 30, 2008 at 11:13 pm
confused by the last line “while all else fails”
while government bailouts fail?
i guess we wont get into a situation where theres not capitalism isnt so interfered with until government collapses under its own hubris
the winners will definitely be the companies that dont rely on the government to create artificial scarcity (via FDA, FCC, patents).
the psychology of the ‘fear of failure’ is really interesting as it plays out on a huge scale