Even though I know that the Obama administration really does spend a lot of time looking at blogs, I agree with what he told the New York Times about economic blogging.
Mr. Obama rode to the White House partly on his savvy use of new technology, and he has a staff-written blog on his presidential Web site. Even so, he said he did not find blogs to be reliable, citing the economy as one example.
“Part of the reason we don’t spend a lot of time looking at blogs,” he said, “is because if you haven’t looked at it very carefully, then you may be under the impression that somehow there’s a clean answer one way or another — well, you just nationalize all the banks, or you just leave them alone and they’ll be fine.”
Most of the economic blogging I’ve seen has amounted to little more than advocating for bank nationalization. I don’t disagree with that analysis, but I don’t think most analysis takes into account the size of the problem and the unlikelihood of nationalization solving our problems without destroying a lot more wealth.
The truth is that nationalizing huge banks like CitiGroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo is completely different from nationalizing little regional banks. You’re wiping out a ton of shareholder wealth, you’re still on the hook for all their bad debt, and where are you ever going to find buyers when it comes time to denationalize the banks?
There are no simple answers to this economic crisis.
