Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Too much too soon or too little too late?

To often and too early do we hear the talking heads on CNN, Bloomberg and pals utter the standard refrain 'too little too late'. As a self-confessed chronic skeptic I wonder how wrong the pundits are? And I wonder if, quite soon, they may be heard to admit that what today is thought of as too little too late may indeed have been too much too soon. I speak of course of the bailout packages rolled out over the past six months by governments - almost every government on the planet that could afford it - to banks, businesses and down-on-their-luck citizens across this globe of ours that we call home.

The markets and financial order will return soon enough - well, perhaps only soon; it will never be soon enough. And once the turn around happens what, one wonders, will the real reason for the turn around be attributed. Many may point to Obama; skeptics will say that without Bush there'd be no need for Obama's near-perfect leadership and timing.

Some will say that the turn around will be a result of simple gravity. That is to say the result of the dear old consumer and his family simply burning, albeit at a slower rate, through their perishables and non-perishables to the point where replenishment is order if not necessary and the consequence will be the need for more credit to replace old cars, computers , jeans, T-Shirts and PDAs.

Notwithstanding the rosy horizon it remains that several trillion dollars in debt will overhang the global financial system and the one wonders, as skeptics do, if the next big collapse may be the last. Has the leadership overacted? I'll bet my electric car from G(E)M that it has.

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