Sunday, November 23, 2008

Fear itself

Tom Friedman hits the panic button:
This is the real "Code Red." As one banker remarked to me: "We finally found the W.M.D." They were buried in our own backyard -- subprime mortgages and all the derivatives attached to them.
Yet, it is obvious that President Bush can't mobilize the tools to defuse them -- a massive stimulus program to improve infrastructure and create jobs, a broad-based homeowner initiative to limit foreclosures and stabilize housing prices, and therefore mortgage assets, more capital for bank balance sheets and, most importantly, a huge injection of optimism and confidence that we can and will pull out of this with a new economic team at the helm.
The last point is something only a new President Obama can inject. What ails us right now is as much a loss of confidence -- in our financial system and our leadership -- as anything else.
Again, the endorsement of more Keynesian "stimulus," like Theodorick of York prescribing another bloodletting.

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