One of the things I find confounding about the Tea Party Movement is their hatred for the Bail Out. I don't know if they were paying attention, if they forgot, or don't care. The bail out was not a preferred action. The bail out occurred under Bush. The Bail out saved our asses. Now there can be constant debate about the particulars, but Buffet takes us back to the big picture and reminds us of what happened.
Nor was it just business that was in peril: 300 million Americans were in the domino line as well. Just days before, the jobs, income, 401(k)’s and money-market funds of these citizens had seemed secure. Then, virtually overnight, everything began to turn into pumpkins and mice. There was no hiding place. A destructive economic force unlike any seen for generations had been unleashed.Buffett continues
I don’t know precisely how you orchestrated these. But I did have a pretty good seat as events unfolded, and I would like to commend a few of your troops. In the darkest of days, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and Sheila Bair grasped the gravity of the situation and acted with courage and dispatch. And though I never voted for George W. Bush, I give him great credit for leading, even as Congress postured and squabbled.
It is good to see there are still grown ups out there. While I disagreed with the manner in which the Bush administration started the process, I never saw it as anything but necessary and I am happy with the manner in which the Obama administration did a course correction on some of the implementation. The bail out's very success is what allows for people to criticize it. The success is what minimized the catastrophic impacts. The lack of those catastrophic impacts is what many haters point to, in order to say the bail out was unnecessary.
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