Bailout goal: move fiscal wreck off the road

[BigBearJohn]

The Associated Press Published: September 27th, 2008 11:46 AMWASHINGTON -- Lawmakers sometimes struggle to explain how the proposed $700 billion financial bailout would improve commercial activity and help revive the fragile economy.
Sen. Judd Gregg tried an automotive metaphor Saturday, attributing it to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.

"It's as if there was a massive car wreck in the middle of an eight-lane highway," with traffic backed up for miles, Gregg told reporters. "And on those cars and trucks were the loans for students, were the payrolls for people working their job, were the ability to buy a house through borrowing money, were the credit card account lending levels so people could go into a store and buy things, were the ability, basically, to go to the ATM."

"What the federal government is going to do," he said, is "to buy that accident, pick it up, move it out of the way. And then we're going to resell the cars we bought that were in the crash, hopefully for more than we paid for them. And we're going to allow the commerce to begin again."

http://www.thenewstribune.com/904/story/493682.html

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[BlooInBloo]

1. It'll be interesting to see people gerrymander the analogy beyond recognition.

[David Dunham]

2. The bailout will still leave us with many other economic problems

[Speck Tater]

3. Even after that crash scene is cleaned up, the road still leads off a cliff.

The very best the bail out can accomplish is to slightly soften the inevitable crash.

I think a better analogy is that the front bumper of the economy, going 70 miles and hour, has just made contact with the brick wall. The bailout is the air bag just now inflating. Airbags don't stop crashes from happening, they just give the passenger a little bit of a cushion to help him through the crash.