Originally Posted by Wee Weasley Welshman
The Free Market can sort it all out in short order IF its left to work. The $700B Bailout is an interference in the Free Market and its works and as such I oppose it on both practical and ideological grounds.
The quicker the bust the shorter the recession the sooner the recovery the better for Wannabes.
I disagree strongly that the free market should be allowed to sort this. Its the free market + our own excesses that got us into this mess in the first place. We are not talking about recession, but about the collapse of the banking and economic system. Recession will be, or is, a result. The $700 billion bail out is not a fix either, but more of a cushion for the inevitable crash landing. It was that same free market that was happy to loan money, way, way in excess of asset value and money they did not have, and we were stupid enough to sign for it. This continued until the system could sustain itself no longer, finally pushed over the edge by defaults on loans that people could not service. The US bailout is not to avoid recession, but to stabilise a broken money system. For the future, regulation and supervision will be required, and any bank or institution that does not like it, can pack up, and ship out.