I was watching Meet The Press and at one point during the roundtable segment, everyone is observing that thus far the economic crisis on Wall Street hasn’t had a particularly large impact in the “real” economy. But soon, they all said, it would.
People kind of just left that out there like something that we have to accept. But while I suppose we do have to accept some form of dislocation, it’s not at all necessary for us to stand aside passively and just wait for downturn to come. There’s no reason why the government couldn’t be moving with as much alacrity to inject stimulus as they are to float Wall Street by with bailouts. I’ll link again to the CAP green recovery proposal. When this came out on September 9, I think you might have looked at it and said “well, this sounds good, but perhaps it’s a bit too expensive.” But put in the perspective of a $700 billion bailout the idea of spending $100 billion over two years to ensure that the ordinary people who are getting stuck with the bill for Wall Street’s screwups don’t all lose their jobs is small change:
Now the alternative of letting the economy slip into severe recession would also, I suppose, reduce carbon emissions over the short run, but I’d rather do it my way.