I’ve been refraining from commenting further on the current economic meltdown because I don’t know enough about the actual issues to know whether what the US Treasury is doing will fix them or not, and I have no desire to add to the mass of uninformed comment already out there. On the other hand, I’m not exactly how well informed the Treasury folks are either. Most of you probably don’t read Forbes.com, so you won’t have seen this:
In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
Never mind, John McCain is apparently off to Washington to sort things out, presumably with a six gun and some well-aimed fisticuffs. I gather that the elitist intellectuals are upset (The Economist described it as “ridiculous”), but the rest of the electorate thinks it is a great idea because who cares about boring old debates anyway, right? On the other hand, it has given Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber a chance to resurrect a famous moment from my favorite TV quiz.
Nope. All the polls are saying that McCain’s approach is wrong and scary.
We’re seeing a very strong, consistent move toward Obama over this very topic.
We’ll have to see what happens in the long run — but 6-Gun-McCain hasn’t won over any new votes recently.
Thank the gods.
That’s not necessarily the story we are getting told over here. See this, for example. Then again, that could just be the traditional Guardian anti-Americanism.
My imression from CNN.com is that most (of their readers) want the debates to happen.
Also, while I’m not sure I believe in polls (do they ever give the same info?), this Washington Post poll seems to indicate McCain hurt himself with this stunt.