FW: [Peace-discuss] Treas. Sec. Paulson on Lehrer Hour tonite

[Stuart Levy]

On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 01:31:21PM -0600, LAURIE SOLOMON wrote:
> 
> Of course the follow-up question to Paulson should have been, can you prove
> that?  It would have been interesting to see him attempt to demonstrate the
> counterfactual rather than letting his suggest undemonstratable assertion as
> factual.

The thing is, it's probably true that it would have been worse if nothing had been done.
Just as the Bush "stimulus"-via-tax-break package probably did some good on the average.
And just as military spending stimulates the economy.  They all do some of that.

But, of course, that's the wrong question.  Not "has committing $300 billion [or whatever it's
been so far] done *anything*", sure it did.   But better questions might be,
given that the nominal purpose is to melt frozen credit and prod a flagging economy,

   Was this an effective use of the money compared to other proposed uses?

   Across the population, how equitable can we expect the effects of this bailout to be,
	compared with other plans?

   How lasting can we expect the effects of this injection of money to be?
	(Given that it does little or nothing to prevent the coming millions
	 of foreclosures, which will drive housing prices further into the tank
	 than they'd otherwise need to go, it does poorly by this measure too.)

So "Has it worked?" was really a softball question.  We didn't need to know the answer to that.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
> [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Stuart Levy
> Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 10:35 AM
> To: Ricky Baldwin
> Cc: peace discuss
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Treas. Sec. Paulson on Lehrer Hour tonite
> 
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 06:20:38PM -0800, Ricky Baldwin wrote:
> > Lehrer: The bailout hasn't worked, has it?
> > 
> > Paulson: Yes it has.
> > 
> > Lehrer: But the economy has gotten worse here and around the world.
> > 
> > Paulson: But it would have gotten even worse ...
> 
> 
> Demonstrating the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer
> to the wrong question.
> 
> Grr.
> 
>    Stuart 
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