There are times that I begin to despair a bit about all the crap going on all over. I can't do anything about earthquakes, tsunamis, and nuclear disasters (all in one) but I can address some of the reporting I've seen in the TradMed the last couple of days.
Apparently the Beltway Village Idiots Pundits are anxious to stop writing all those bummer articles about the un and underemployed and the destruction of the global economy. I guess it's just too Debbie Downer for them. So they've started the "Everything's Getting Better" articles. The NY Times and Floyd Norris started with this headline:
Crisis Is Over, but Where’s the Fix?Of course, without anything being fixed, it's rather difficult for the "crisis" to be over. And to be fair, Norris does address some of this in the article:
When the financial system began to crumble more than three years ago, the world rushed to rescue it. Country after country went deeply into debt to keep banks afloat and prevent a deep recession from turning into something worse.Norris goes on to point out that one of the problems is the lack of accountability. Imagine that?
...snip...
But the world has changed since then. The economic recovery in most developed countries is stuttering at best, and governments are struggling with their own finances. It is time for remorse and second-guessing.
A surprising citadel of that second-guessing is at the International Monetary Fund, where researchers this week concluded that the rescues “only treated the symptoms of the global financial meltdown.”
The researchers, Stijn Claessens and Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, warned that “a rare opportunity is being thrown away to tackle the underlying causes. Without restructuring financial institutions’ balance sheets and their operations, as well as their assets — loans to over-indebted households and enterprises — the economic recovery will suffer, and the seeds will be sown for the next crisis.”
...snip...
In retrospect, it is clear that the bailouts came with too little pain for those responsible. Bondholders who financed banks that failed largely escaped pain. That was true even in Ireland, where the bailout would have led to a default of government debt had Europe not stepped in. It is still not clear how Ireland will pay its national debt, but the bank bondholders did fine.
