Thank you, Megan...

Hypocrisy, or rationality?

"I have a theory of government which says that the government should make these kinds of interventions only where they benefit society as a whole, not when they almost exclusively benefit the interests to whom the money is given. (I make exceptions for those who are, temporarily or permanently, unable to care for themselves. But that doesn't describe the autoworkers, except insofar as I think they should get unemployment insurance and relocation help. And anyway, I digress.)

Now, I may be wrong about my judgement that the collapse of the financial industry will destroy the economy in a way that the collapse of Detroit will not. But it's not some belief that I just cooked up yesterday to justify giving outrageous amounts of money to my friends on Wall Street while sticking it to the UAW--indeed, a year ago any left-wing development economist could have happily and easily enumerated all the countries where a financial crisis had far, far worse results than, say, the collapse of the national automaker."