Krugman on the Financial Crisis

Paul Krugman published a very strong opinion piece in the New York Times today that outlines the reasons for the economic crisis and comments on the appropriate response. I'm usually hesitant to promote Krugman in this blog because (despite his strong reputation as an economist) I feel that his essays are often a little less objective than they should be. That being said, I'm with him this time.

The article takes less than 5 minutes to read and it will give you both a good overview of what got us into this mess and what we should (and should not) do about it.

You can read it here.

Voters should pay extremely close attention to the $700 BILLION bailout plan that is currently being negotiated in Congress. The Bush Administration's current proposal wants to give the Treasury Secretary extraordinary and absolutely unprecedented powers to administer the plan without review "by any court of law or any administrative agency".

This is a horrible idea in my opinion.

No one should be given that kind of power and not have it at least subject to retroactive review - regardless of whether they were appointed by George W. Bush, Barack Obama, John McCain - or heck even one of the Founding Fathers. (They would have known better).

We're in the middle of some truly historic economic events right now and, as scary as it is, we are relying on our politicians to craft a $700 billion dollar plan to address them in a matter of days. Be skeptical of anyone who says we need to rush to judgement on this. The decisions being made today and over the next week or two could have economic repercussions for a generation.