SEPTEMBER 20, 2008
Government Bailouts: A U.S. Tradition Dating to Hamilton
The bubble pops. Lenders freeze. Depositors lose faith. Panic spreads. And the government steps in because nobody else will.
Today it is Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke putting together the rescue package for a financial system rocked by falling home prices and a wave of defaults on subprime mortgages.
[Bailouts throughout history at link]
But a short walk through U.S. history demonstrates the point made by Alex J. Pollock of the American Enterprise Institute: “If you would like an empirical law of government behavior, it is that in a panic or threatened financial collapse, governments intervene — every government, every party, every country, every time.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122186662036058787.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Yep......It’s a fact.
Fascinating- thanks for posting. All weekend I’ve been looking for perspective, comparisons and contrasts...this goes in the keep file.
It may be worth a separate thread.