End of the Beginning?

So stocks seem to have stabilized, and as the government moves to buy parts of all the largest banks in the US (whether they need it or not, to avoid giving investors a clear idea of who is in how much trouble), we have also taken to ordering those banks to lend out the money rather than hoarding it to improve their asset ratios. It's unclear where the government acquired the authority to give that order, but when Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman suggests that Gordon Brown may have saved the world with his financial planning (and Gordo could certainly benefit from something going right with his administration), things might be stabilizing. As is the usual refrain at this point, it remains unclear how credit markets will respond. Although, as this RCP story points out, the administration have done it at the cost of deeply alienating some fiscal conservatives. I don't really believe that George Bush was ever an adherent to Ayn Rand's political theories, or that he has traded in what he does believe for Marxism. I do believe that he's moved a very long way from the economic model informing his policy eight years ago.

In addition, I would refer readers to this WaPo article by Robert Skidelsky. My first project in graduate school was an evaluation of Skidelsky's biographies of John Maynard Keynes, and he has forgotten more about economic history than I will ever know. To see Dr. Skidelsky in the world of journalism is a rare treat.