The Paulson Bailout Plan Has Been Tried Twice Before...And Failed

People are Asking the Wrong Question


All discussion about the proposed taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street banks is centered around the idea of, If we don't bail them out, they will fail.

It seems no one is asking a much more important question of, "Will this bailout do any good?" Or to take this one step further, "Will this bailout do more harm than good?"

We badly need to consider what history teaches us before we repeat the same mistakes all over again.

...

There is a term for this: throwing good money after bad.

The choices we face today aren't between bailing out the banks and not bailing out the banks. The choices we face are to uselessly waste taxpayer money trying to bail out banksters, and failing, or to try an entirely different tactic of repairing the balance sheets of the taxpayer instead.

Unfortunately no one in Washington is offering to do the latter.

- rest at www.economicpopulist.org/?q=content/people-are-asking-wrong-question

 

This morning on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" even Senator Coburn, who is as conservative as anyone, said that he will reluctantly go along with a bailout package.