Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson just got on the tube to explain the latest twist in the bailout “plan” and the stock market started tanking big-time. Has he become addicted to cameras?
I think it was Tibor who first pointed this out to me, but I concur. If you listen carefully to Paulson trying to extract some actual meaning from his remarks, it’s hard not to conclude that he’s saying nothing and really doesn’t know much (successful businesspeople seldom have anything resembling a coherent theory of the economy, which might be why they are successful businessmen). He knows some bigger, more obscure words, but when it comes down to it, he doesn’t seem to know much more than Sarah Palin. And this is supposed to be his area of expertise.
Perhaps we should have some sympathy. Pumping too much funny-money into the economy is one of the chief causes of the housing bubble, and all Paulson is doing is pumping more funny-money, which is more likely to make things worse than better. So no wonder he has trouble explaining himself. He should stop trying.
We should take this opportunity to drop old g.w. an email amd thank him for keeping the fundamentals of our economy so strong while he was president and pray the the president elect wont screw things up. I love the money I am making now, hey $700.00 a month less than I used to and I work an easy 11 hours a day to get it, my creditors are hoping that I can get some bailout money from the feds so I can catch up. I am really looking forward to the 10% unemployment that is around the corner, sounds so fundamentaly fun and maveriky.
I’ve noticed down through the years when in the past I used to do temp office work that it seemed that when they started talking about the economy being bad, the more they talked about it the worse it got.
Bush, Paulsen, and so came up with their bailout proposal which basically seemed to say the sky is falling. So then in addition to where there were already job and business losses, more people have it called to their attention. So those additional people decide to curtail spending and businesses decide to at least curtail hiring and it may push them to also let people go.
Plus it seems that a big part of the whole mess was too much debt all the way around. Individuals and families were putting life on a credit card rather than waiting until they could afford stuff.
Business and govt essentially were doing the same thing, with financial “experts” urging people to leverage so they could make more money. it worked for awhile but when things go bad, those with a lot of debt can’t last through the downturn, while those who didn’t follow the advise to leverage, whether individuals, businesses or governments are better able to keep going until things turn around.
So what was the bailout? Oh, credit is too tight so they thought they had to loosen it up so that people, businesses and governments keep spending rather than allowing a needed, but painful correction.
And financial giant Citigroup is down about 2/3 since the bailout push, a lot of it probably because of fears spurred by all the talk of how bad things are.