Stop Pretending

Many other equally fine shots of Sec. Paulson at the Reagan Library. Photo: Lucy Nicholson/REUTERSTo paraphrase whichever of Hitler's goons made the original statement, "When I hear the word 'economics,' I reach for my revolver." (Does comparing oneself to a Nazi invoke "Godwin's law?") Why our trigger finger itches:

"If we do not correctly diagnose the causes, and instead act in haste to implement more rather than better regulations, we can do long-term harm," Paulson said in a speech in Simi Valley, Calif.

[...]

Paulson on Thursday again defended his management, including his decision last week to officially abandon the original rescue strategy: buying rotten mortgages and other bad debts from banks to free up their balance sheets and get them to lend more freely.

"By proactively addressing the problems we saw coming and being pragmatic enough to change strategy in the face of changed facts and despite the inevitable criticism — we prevented a far worse financial crisis," Paulson insisted.

[...]

"There was no playbook for responding to a once or twice in a hundred year event," Paulson argued, saying he needed to shift strategy to respond to worsening financial and economic conditions.

Our suggestion on this: give it up already. Stop pretending that economics is even a soft science. You're dealing w/ human greed, envy & a thousand other animal instincts. You can't make a system like that work smoothly.

And we have a question. Why so many "once (or twice) in a 100 yrs." events recently? Is the Bush Administration itself such an event? Or is this period just randomly so?