bailout rhetoric

Submitted by Jim Brown on March 21, 2009 - 9:13am

So, yes...I am a Nate Silver fanboy. I'm willing to admit this. I got to see his keynote at SXSW Interactive, and it reminded me of how jealous I am of his career path (from baseball statistics to political analysis). Silver has the ability to make statistics not only understandable to the layman but also relevant.

Dissent, Hope, Dispair, Uncertainty

Submitted by Jim Brown on September 30, 2008 - 1:39pm

A Republican friend sent me this piece from Time magazine that argues for letting "the poorly managed, overly risk-taking financial institutions fail!"

This friend forwarded this along and compared the current discussion about the bailout to discussions about The Patriot Act. That is, if you are against the bailout, you hate America and you want the economy to collapse. I think this is exactly what is happening, and as much as I don't like the reasons for dissent ("you're being partisan"..."no, YOU'RE being partisan") I'm happy to see dissent. I don't know what the answer is, and I'm uncomfortable with the "let them fail" rhetoric because it seems to oversimplify things. What about the collateral damage? What about the people that will suffer because of the failure of such banks...people who didn't necessarily take any risks or make any bad decisions?