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Thursday, January 15, 2009

Who is to blame for "financial crisis"?

Who is to blame for the current economic predicament?

We answered this question many months ago, but a new poll highlighted on the New York Times Economix Blog (HT Club for Growth) reveals that voters agree - our government did it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't know if the reporting in the Times included the entire poll or not, but it's unfortunate that the poll didn't attempt to include exactly which government actions contributed to its responsibility for the crisis. Simply pointing at government and declaring that they are the culprits glosses over the failure of the theories of and actions by government that produced the crisis.
We need to look at the problem of government interference in business and society comprehensively to see that Congress' blind promotion of home ownership, the cozying up of regulators to Wall Street, allowing exotic and artificial speculative products, and attempts to alleviate the crisis by spending our way out of it, have produced the storm in which we find ourselves.
(As an aside, we also need to know why our government passed the TARP plan in the face of overwhelming negative feedback from the citizens of this country).
If we don't make the case as a whole, rather than vaguely pointing at "the government" or "Wall Street," or, worse, picking apart one problem and ignoring the rest, we're doomed to repeat the well-intentioned mistakes that brought us to this point.