On Fri, 25 Jul 2008, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Wow. Check out the comments. Egads.
Good god. This is just crazy making. The people writing the comments seem to have no idea that the bailouts that we've seen so far didn't save a single homeowner. They have superstrong opinions about something they don't know the first thing about. And Landsburg seems to think he's against bailouts because he's against bailing out *equityholders.* (He isn't even that, but let's leave that to one side.) It's as if he doesn't understand the literal first thing about this, that the systemic threat -- and the necessity of the bailout -- revolves entirely around the *debt.* He thus gives the impression that his blithe, oracular intoning that Fannie and Freddie could go belly up with no problem is based a black-hole like ignorance of the problem being addressed.
Your stuff was just great. I love the format -- it suits you to a tee. It's like a formalized, extended version of you on LBO talk with your own personal troll to knock down. I wish you had a column where you could do this all the time and take on all comers. But jeez, it'd be nice to have an opponent or audience who understood the first thing about something.
Well actually I guess you do have an audience who understands a lot. It's just that they publish their comments here rather than there. I guess that's why the comments to published articles are usually so dumb. It's a forum for people who have no cooler forum.
Well, if this ever becomes a regular gig, I guess we'll all have to direct our discussion there to raise the tone.
Michael