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David Rodeback's Blog

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

More on the Financial Crisis

Links to two good, short explanations of what's going on with mortgages, banks, etc. A third about an Obama connection, and a fourth about the folly of worrying about executive compensation right now.

The moral to one current story, the failed bailout vote, may be that we should never try to have a financial crisis during a presidential election. I'd feel better about that moral in practical terms if I were confident that there still are times when we're not in a presidential election cycle.

In any case, if you're trying to understand what's going on in the financial world and the political world, where the present banking crisis is concerned -- I assume all conscientious citizens are trying to do this, and I'm not sure that includes Barack Obama or his campaign's public relations arm, the BMA, or most of either party in Capitol Hill -- and if you're not satisfied with Speaker Pelosi's version, in which everything was rosy and getting rosier under Bill Clinton, and then George W. Bush moved into the White House to destroy our financial universe with reckless abandon and an anything-goes party attitude . . .

Let's end that sentence right there, shall we? It's already much too long. If . . . all those things . . . here are some more short pieces that might help.

• Tom Purcell: "Government Failure as Usual" (about as simple and clear an explanation of this complex mess as I have encountered)
• Thomas Sowell: "Bailout politics" (a slightly more detailed explanation, including what some -- mostly Republicans -- tried to do over the past few years to avert the crisis)
• Mona Charen: "ACORN, Obama, and the mortgage mess" (an Obama connection you're not supposed to hear about)
• Thomas Sowell: "Penny-wise politics" (economic reasons why the concern with executive pay is frivolous and misguided)

If you think these are good, send your friends a link. They're not getting it from the nightly news.

Copyright 2008 by David Rodeback.
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