The TARP as a masterpiece

Huge bonuses ($120bln just for the top 5 WS firms in the last 5 years) for people who were destroying the American (and world) economy was only a draft. The real masterpiece from a moral standpoint is phase 2: the TARP.

Will he?

Will Obama try to tackle the causes of the crisis during his inauguration speech? Will he say what must be obvious to any candid observer of politics in the United States: that the crisis is the result of the corruption of the political system? Will he incriminate the power structure?

He probably won't and he will thus miss the opportunity of making his presidency an important one from the get go. Or at least, by postponing this obvious diagnostic, he will lose a couple of years before starting real reform.

Why not?

From a reader in New York, I learn a blogger was sent to jail because he got too critical of the state of the economy there. I would have argued that there were strong pressures in all countries to foster positive economic punditry but I had just never thought that people could be sent to jail. That may be less stupid than lowering the rates to zero or less corrupt than the bailout plan. Indeed. Why not?