This comment reads like a hot-take based solely on the subject without reading the article because you don't really engage substantively with any of the nuances the article talks about. As such, I'm not sure it really contributes as much to the discussion as if you did engage substantively with the details of the article.
For example:
Even if there was no alternative, that doesn't mean a clear understanding of the costs & downstream consequences is a bad thing.
Even if some kind of bailout was necessary, bailouts can take many forms. Do you think the bailout chosen was the best form?
There wasn't, actually, one bailout. There were many ad hoc choices made along the way. Why was Lehman allowed to fail? It was purely an ideological choice; the Fed clearly had the ability to save it, they just underestimated the pain it would. Why were swaps extended to some countries but not others? Why didn't the ECB help out Hungary or even Austria?
For that matter, why was the Federal Reserve acting as a global lender of last resort without telling anyone, not even Congress. (It required a Freedom of Information lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court for the Federal Reserve to turn over details on the full scope of their swaps with other central banks.)
Maybe the bailouts should have happened exactly as they did but the optics & politics should have been done in a more transparent fashion?
But taking such a non-nuanced, instrumental view I feel like you make the discussion less interesting than it could otherwise have been. And because it was a "first comment", it then warped much of the entire discussion on the topic. This thread has 80 replies and 55 of them are to you.
> But taking such a non-nuanced, instrumental view I feel like you make the discussion less interesting than it could otherwise have been. And because it was a "first comment", it then warped much of the entire discussion on the topic. This thread has 80 replies and 55 of them are to you.
You are entirely correct, but unfortunately, I suspect that this is inevitable. Discussions of economic policy on Hacker News almost always end up in this same place.
For example:
Even if there was no alternative, that doesn't mean a clear understanding of the costs & downstream consequences is a bad thing.
Even if some kind of bailout was necessary, bailouts can take many forms. Do you think the bailout chosen was the best form?
There wasn't, actually, one bailout. There were many ad hoc choices made along the way. Why was Lehman allowed to fail? It was purely an ideological choice; the Fed clearly had the ability to save it, they just underestimated the pain it would. Why were swaps extended to some countries but not others? Why didn't the ECB help out Hungary or even Austria?
For that matter, why was the Federal Reserve acting as a global lender of last resort without telling anyone, not even Congress. (It required a Freedom of Information lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court for the Federal Reserve to turn over details on the full scope of their swaps with other central banks.)
Maybe the bailouts should have happened exactly as they did but the optics & politics should have been done in a more transparent fashion?
But taking such a non-nuanced, instrumental view I feel like you make the discussion less interesting than it could otherwise have been. And because it was a "first comment", it then warped much of the entire discussion on the topic. This thread has 80 replies and 55 of them are to you.