Monday, October 27, 2008

Quote of the Day

To alleviate the obvious hardships to both homeowners and banks, the government commits to buy mortgages and inject capital into banks, which on the face of it seems like a very nice thing to do. But unfortunately in this world there is no tooth fairy. And the government doesn't create anything; it just redistributes. Whenever the government bails someone out of trouble, they always put someone into trouble, plus of course a toll for the troll. Every $100 billion in bailout requires at least $130 billion in taxes, where the $30 billion extra is the cost of getting government involved.

If you don't believe me, just watch how Congress and Barney Frank run the banks. If you thought they did a bad job running the post office, Amtrak, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the military, just wait till you see what they'll do with Wall Street.


~Art Laffer in today's WSJ

3 Comments:

At 10/27/2008 11:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Could not leave this article with no comments.

The potential for public policy idiocy to set the scene for the next disaster seems almost inevitable.

It will be most interesting to see what happens 10 years out from this problem.

 
At 10/28/2008 3:51 AM, Blogger OBloodyHell said...

> The potential for public policy idiocy to set the scene for the next disaster seems almost inevitable.

Already been done. It's called "entitlements".

It's likely to hit around 2017 or shortly thereafter.

If McCain wins, we might see some effort to deal with it ahead of time, with a reference to the recent history and Fannie Mae to make people stop and actually think about dealing with it BEFORE it gets to crisis levels

If Obama wins, count on the Dems to keep on with their line of "There's nothing wrong with Social Security", just as they were saying for four-odd years about the FMs.

 
At 10/28/2008 12:38 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

OBH,

Even more Obama idiocy to look forward to here and here.

Nice to have you back.

 

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