Bezos was on air this morning. He made a good point with a simple analogy. When the kids are sitting there striking matches in the bedroom, setting the bedroom on fire, you need to put the fire out and save the moral hazard debate for the time when the house has not burned down. If this is indeed the situation we are in, he could very well be right. My concern? What if the fire in the bedroom is extinguished, but the house still burns to the ground? Meaning, no one really knows if government intervention will work as the fires are moving too fast and coming from too many angles. It’s all a big gamble to think the government can douse this fire out.
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February 23rd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
When your child sets his bedroom on fire, it is certainly no time for a lecture about playing with matches. Instead, it’s imperative that you dump as much gasoline all over the fire as quickly as you possibly can. Oh, and anyone who wants to stop and think about the consequences or long-term damage the gasoline may cause is a washed-up, intellectually-dishonest idealogue who must be ingnored at all cost.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Hell hath no fury . . .
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:54 pm
I like how Ken qualified his question by saying 2004 to 2008. People forget that there was a President Clinton. Even when it comes to Iraq.
Here’s an analogy for you. Ever see the HBO show, Oz? These guys who worked in the kitchen wanted to kill this other guy. So they ground up glass into tiny bits and put it in his food day after day.
Weeks later it killed the guy. Whoever the cook was at the time of his death got the blame. But who really killed him?
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:27 pm
I don’t recall Bill Clinton ever invading Iraq. Perhaps you can enlighten us. The cost of Bush’s attack on Iraq is going to be staggering. All Clinton did was some minor air strikes.
I assume our grand children will be the ones paying for the nation building we are doing in Iraq.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Clinton bombed Sudan (WMD’s), Somalia (so we could feed them), Bosnia (along with the Chinese embassy there)
bombed Iraq which Saddam used as justification not to negotiate with Bush, according to his interrogation. He figured Bush would only do what Clinton did. And he could simply wait it out like he did with Clinton. (moral hazard)
FYI - Clinton’s justification was WMD’s. There were no protests. Also, ‘minor airstrikes’ kill innocent people too.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:51 am
This is moral hazard week at Covel’s.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Again, Clinton never made Bush’s incredible mistake of invading Iraq.
Some Republicans have problems with the stimulus package since it will increase our budget deficit by almost 800 billion dollars. Fair argument. However, it is interesting that these same Republicans did not blink when it came to spending the SAME amount of money for Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
So, 800 billion dollars worth of nation building in Iraq - Go for it!
800 billion dollars for a stimulus package with spending to stay in the US. Hell no.
The utter hypocrisy of some people never ceases to amaze me…
February 24th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
To Jingo;
Just an FYI for you. It was George HW Bush who invaded Somalia, not Bill Clinton.
I don’t get the rest of your post. Saddam Hussein had no WMD’s, thus there was no reason invade. And we could have saved the same amount as we are now spending on the idiotic stimulus package.
February 25th, 2009 at 12:47 am
Yeah . . . what Domesh said.
And I don’t recall saying ‘go for it’ in Iraq. I voted for a Republican named Ron Paul.
Clinton claimed WMD’s in both Iraq and Sudan to justify dropping bombs. If thats not true, why did he bomb them?
February 25th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Clinton also said, during his admin., that the sanctions were working. Working to do what?
February 25th, 2009 at 3:10 am
Clinton’s adventure in Somalia (Black Hawk Down) led him to the policy of NEVER PUTTING TROOPS ON THE GROUND. The charred bodies of American soldiers being dragged through the streets is bad PR.
That is why Clinton chose the strategy of bombing the hell out of countries from way up in the air. That’s how an aspirin factory in Sudan got destroyed and the Chinese embassy in Serbia. Or Bosnia or whatever it’s called now.
A quote from Clinton from a state of the union speech:
“Together we must also confront the new hazards of chemical and biological weapons, and the outlaw states, terrorists and organized criminals seeking to acquire them. Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade, and much of his nation’s wealth, not on providing for the Iraqi people, but on developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them”
If I remember correctly, Clinton coined the term WMD.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:18 am
Also, according to my good friends at wikipedia, Clinton signed H.R. 4655 into law which was a policy of regime change in Iraq.
Again, the point of this blog posting was moral hazard. Clinton showed Saddam that there would be no consequences for failing to disarm and comply with the cease fire.
The invasion was the result. If you don’t like the invasion, look at its roots. We need to understand moral hazard.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:37 am
For an uplifting example of moral hazard, look up the ‘Velvet Revolution.’ So named because not a single shot had to be fired.
Why? Because the nation of Georgia would’ve FACED CONSEQUENCES. This is how you resolve conflicts peacefully. CONSEQUENCES.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:44 am
So the question was asked What does a perfect political system look like to you? I would like to see a system where all the issues are put on the web and people simply vote on them. In this modern tech era the whole concept of politcal parties, electoral college, etc. seems primitive to me…like something out of the stone age.
February 27th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Domesh, how come the bankers never complained that CRA was a socialist policy? Why didn’t capitalists (like me!) complain that it was socialist? I don’t see CRA as socialist. I see it as a simple business deal that enabled bankers to increase loan volume with not much additional risk (when the proper documentation and other requirements were followed).