Pick Your Own Reality

Matt Welch is forever a cynic:

The focus on political teams blurs one central, overriding truth: When it comes to bailout/stimulus/econ, there is no significant break in policy between George W. Bush and Barack Obama, no matter how much it benefits enthusiasts and detractors from pretending there's a sharp break between the two. The biggest...political event last fall was not the election, it was the bipartisan, unpopular, panic-driven bailout.

While Paul Ormerod defends the bailout:

People are generally right to be sceptical of policymakers.  But despite this, and all the current problems, the response of the authorities in September of last year was brilliant.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nationalised; AIG effectively taken into public ownership; money market funds guaranteed by the Fed; huge, failing retail banks forced into mergers; investment banks eliminated. (OK, letting Lehman go was one Darwinian experiment too many.) 

But without these measures, we would already be looking at a recession of 1930s proportions, with unemployment rising inexorably over the 20 percent mark.  The hotly disputed TARP programme was second-order compared to the measures actually carried.