Thursday, September 25, 2008

Playing the numbers

I don't pretend to know the specifics or the mechanics of the economic crisis facing our nation. So I won't even bother trying to articulate some ill-informed opinion here about something so serious. I can learn more from reading and listening than yammering, you know?

But this link from Matt Y caught my attention. It's a response to the question of why $700 billion is the bailout figure being floated around:
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

WTF? Maybe I'm the idiot here - and that's entirely possible - but does that not seem to be specious logic? I didn't realize pulling numbers out of the ozone was acceptable in this sort of circumstance.

UPDATE: Saw President Bush's address to the nation tonight about said federal bailout package. Uh, let's just say that effort totally explains his approval rating over the past couple years.

3 comments:

Zen said...

Prez B was honest for the first 4 minutes of his speech, then it all started to fall apart. LMAO

John P. Araujo said...

I don't claim to be any economic expert either, but I'm always suspicious of a hard sell of anything. It makes me suspicious of why the seller's pushing so hard. In this instance, who's butt is being covered up by this bailout thing? The cynic in me smells a dirty diaper being hidden somewhere.

blackink said...

Prez Bush would do well to chill and let the grown folks handle this business. He can't do anything other than increase the level of anxiety in our country and in the markets.

And, yeah J.P., there's so much uncertainty around this bailout and the economy that I'm not so sure that prudence and caution aren't the best way to proceed.