Well Mr. Niceguy... Mayhaps I misunderstood your meaning?
Could it be that your railing was less against the fact of spending... and more against the "objects" of the spending?
If so I couldn't agree more. Paulson has used the same methodology in dealing with this crisis as was employed to generate the crisis in the first place. Others have seen the folly of that methodology:
“Right now we do not have the courage to invest in financial institutions because we do not know what problems they may have,” Mr. Lou said as part of a panel discussion on the second and final day of the Clinton Global Initiative conference here.
Asked whether China might pursue economic policies aimed at saving the world, Mr. Lou said that the country’s leaders had a narrower focus. “China can only save herself because the scale of China is still rather small,” he said, adding that while China has more people than any other country, economic output is still low enough that the Chinese economy is not yet big enough to have a big effect on the global economy.
“If China can do a good job domestically, that is the best thing it can do for the world,” he said.
Mr. Lou’s comments represent the clearest statement yet that as global financial markets have plunged this year and economies have slowed, the attention of China’s leaders is turning inward.
For several months, there has been a noticeable difference between East and West in expectations of China. Financiers in the United States and Europe have frequently talked of ways to use China’s $1.9 trillion in foreign exchange reserves to rescue Western banks, most recently with speculation that the China Investment Corporation might invest more money in Morgan Stanley, which ended up turning to Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group of Japan instead.
But financial leaders in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, with closer links to decision makers in Beijing, have consistently maintained that having been burned on their initial financial sector investments, the Chinese are very leery of buying more. Mr. Lou confirmed this.
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Mr. Lou said that the sheer pace of new initiatives and new rules issued by Western regulatory agencies was disconcerting and made it even harder for him to choose worthwhile investments. “If it is changing every week, how can you expect me to have confidence?” he asked.
nytimes.com
The US hasn't even "owned up" to either the practical or theoretical deficits in the US financial sector, nor have we made any headway in creating a Post-Bushwarus framework for the regulation of financial institutions. Anybody "buying" into the US financial sector at the present time is part of the problem... not the solution.
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