Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Listen to the Experts

Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for Economics this week. He is also a Princeton economist and a New York Times columnist. (I'm curious, does anyone know how many Nobel Prize winners work for FOX?)

You might want to read his column from September 22, "Cash for Trash," in which Krugman wrote that Paulson was demanding extraordinary power for himself to deploy taxpayers’ money on behalf of a plan that, "as far as I can see, doesn’t make sense." Instead, he called for the government to provide capital to financial firms and get a share in ownership in return.

"Among the first to push the idea of injecting money into banks in exchange for an equity stake was Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), who proposed the idea at a Sept. 18 night meeting on Capitol Hill that included legislators as well as Paulson and Bernanke."

How much time was lost before Bush adopted the idea? Of course, Paulson had to help his former firm Goldman Sacks first.

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