Thursday, July 30, 2009

The News #17

Everybody like to win; everybody like to associate with a winner. It makes you feel good. I’m a Boston Celtics fan. Last year “we” won it all. This year “we” didn’t. Somehow it’s “we,” even though I don’t remember making a single free throw in any of the games. “We” win championships. “We” have a great economy (even when it’s bad it’s still great by world standards). So “we” get to feeling pretty good about ourselves.

In terms of the economy, “we” think we are part of the group of people who are smarter, the group of people who know how a country and an economy should be set up. “We” feel sorry for those less fortunate than ourselves, and without even being aware of it “we” have an unconscious pride in or dominant position at the top of the world’s economic hill. That’s pretty much what was going on inside of me. Until this whole TARP bill business.

Huge economic institutions were facing bankruptcy. The question was, if they went down would they take the entire financial system with them? Would it cause a great depression? Or if we let them go bankrupt would that ultimately be a good thing for the economy? What would you do if you were in charge? A trillion or so dollars and the fate of the economy are on the line. How would you make the call?

I’m here to tell you I have it all figured out. I honestly believe I know as much as can be known about the situation. Here is my conclusion. There isn’t one single human being on the planet who can tell you what the right thing to do was. Nobody knew. It was too complicated. Too much of it depended on those millions of free will decisions. Nobody knew what to do. And now that we have taken certain actions there isn’t one single person alive in the world who is smart enough to know weather or not we did the right thing.

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