Sanity On Geithner

As right and left continue to posture, I found Christopher Carroll persuasive:

When fuller details emerge, it would be useful if the economics profession and the financial community could have a mature conversation about whether the plan could be improved before it goes into operation. For example, it may be necessary to make any bank that participates agree to the sale of all their toxic assets, to prevent the kind of cherry picking that has contributed to the shutdown of these markets so far. And there is good reason to be very careful to minimize the possibility of “heads-I-win, tails-the-government-loses” kinds of bets.

But broad-brush denunciations are unhelpful, whether they derive from preconceived prejudices of the left (which needs to recognise the important distinction between the greedy people who got us here and the wise captains of finance who can help us get out), or the right (which espouses a destructive ideology according to which all government action of any kind is a mistake).