... what’s truly scary is that we’re entering a period of severe crisis with weak, confused leadership. ... the people who should be steering us away from that abyss are out to lunch. ... One thing’s for sure: The next administration’s economic team had better be ready to hit the ground running, because from day one it will find itself dealing with the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Holy... crap. This is not Thomas Friedman or some other such hack. This is Paul Krugman. As in, has been right about pretty much damn well *everything* for these past eight years.
And oh, what if McCain wins?
I’m not a fan of Mr. Paulson’s, but I’d rather have him at the Treasury than, say, Phil “nation of whiners” Gramm.Then we're fucked up every orifice, Krugman seems to be saying. Phil Gramm is a Andrew W. Mellon figure. Mellon, Herbert Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury, had the same basic attitude -- that the common people should just shut up and take their medicine rather than whining about how the fat cats were reaming them up every orifice. Paulson's plan reams us only up one orifice. Gramm's plan, if McCain wins... [shudder].
-- Badtux the Nervous Penguin
I have got to get over to The Gun Exchange and buy a shotgun... You assholes aren't getting my dried goods!
ReplyDeleteWhat, you don't have one already?
ReplyDelete-- Badtux the Well-armed Penguin
I've been following the reactions on bubblevision (CNN International) as best as I can, between sightseeing. (Met up with an Italian punkish rocker who styles his band after an Aussie group named Radio Birdman. I had been swapping CDs by mail with him even when I lived in S.F. and finally got to his town in the hills above the Adriatic. His family lives on a small farm that's been theirs for generations. They'll weather any disaster short of a barbarian invasion without major trouble.) Back to bubblevision -- commentators now seem to be realising "OK, we got that bailout ("rescue" is now the PC term). So what do we do next? It's still all going to hell." Krugs is right. The morons in charge haven't a clue. To paraphrase the late crustacean Buckley, "I'd rather be governed by the first 100 names in the phone book than the 100 names in the U.S. Senate."
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