Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
— Dark Knight (2008)
Take your third deep breath in ten days. Because we stand at a precipice in U.S. markets. Congress is playing political brinkmanship with the biggest financial decision of our generation. We just had the largest bank failure in U.S. history. Credit spreads have widened to the point of gibbering meaninglessness. And some people are still nattering about what might be the perfect variant of the Paulson bailout plan.
Listen. There is no perfect. As Voltaire wrote, "Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien". The perfect is the enemy of the good. No plan is perfect; no plan will be static. But standing on the precipice and inching every closer to the abyss is stupid and suicidal. We need to ease the pressure in the system by moving to allow losses to be written off over longer periods, by getting bad paper out of institutions so counterparty trading can happen, and perhaps by some easing as well. Take preferred shares along the way, absolutely, but credit markets can’t be left like this for much longer.
Some people don’t care. A few just haven’t thought it through, but others are so wrapped in their anti-Wall Street vendettas, their ideological purity and their Calvinist moralizing that they would rather see everything come down around their ears — look at all the shiny creative destruction! — than worry that it’s their economy too. Fuck them. While some men want to watch the world burn, we don’t need to stand idly by while they set the fire.
I shouldn’t be posting things tonight as I’m too tired and frustrated, but in case you can’t tell, I’ve had it.
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