From Plan A to Plan G
We are live in the Guardian:
J Bradford DeLong: Will partially nationalising US banks stave off a depression?: From Plan A to Plan G: The US has tried to stave off depression in half a dozen ways. Will partially nationalising America's banks do the trick?
The Bush administration, having entered office as social conservatives, leaves office as conservative socialists, proprietors of the most sudden large expansion of the state's role in the US economy since mobilisation for the second world war. Why did they decide to partially and quasi-nationalise America's banks - to invest $250bn in preferred stock plus warrants and tell the banks that it wanted them to use the capital to expand their loan base rather than contract it via deleveraging? It is certainly not what Henry Paulson signed up as Treasury secretary to do.
am an economic historian. An occupational disease of being an economic historian is to insist that the answers to all questions lie in the Great Depression that started in 1929. When the financial crisis hit in a sudden squall in August 2007, in the back of the Federal Reserve's mind was that it should not repeat any of the mistakes that led to the Depression. Hence Ben Bernanke and his Fed loaned extraordinarily freely to banks and near-banks and non-banks in order to avoid what Milton Friedman said was the key mistake that made the Depression Great: that the Fed had triggered or allowed a liquidity squeeze that made cash hard to get. Call this Plan A...
http://delong.typepad.com/writings/2008/10/2008-10-6-delon.html