Calming the Waters

Erin asked questions this morning. In an attempt to calm waters, let me observe:

• it's not true this is the biggest thing since..[whatever]. Memory is fallible. I can remember Truman seizing the steel companies (and strikes in wartime). And Sputnik. And Bay of Pigs. And riots in the cities. And Nixon taking us off the gold standard, which seemed maybe the end of the world. And the stagflation of the late 70's. And the S&L crisis. Maybe 100 years from now historians will see this month as the biggest pivot point since 1929, but probably not. After all, just over 7 years ago we were saying 9/11 "changed everything". Did it?
• 700 billion is a lot of money, but I'd bet the net cost is lots lower. It's my memory of the S&L, RTC mess that the net loss was much lower than the figures tossed around earlier. [Correction: looked up RTC on wikipedia which led to this report. Bottom line is people were way off in their estimates of the problem and costs. So it's probably correct to say today we are very uncertain of the size of the problem and the cost. Of course, I'm also making the mistake of assuming the S&L parallels the subprime problems, which it doesn't.]
• Everyone has their own axe to grind. Best to let them grind away.