After a slow rollout over the last few days, the administration’s bank rescue plan has been released, to very mixed reviews. And this time, skepticism if not hostility has spread pretty deeply into the progressive ranks.
Brad DeLong offers a pretty clear explanation, and a relatively positive take. Paul Krugman expresses “despair,” and says it’s just another rehash of the Paulson Plan.
(Meanwhile, international markets responded positively to advance reports over the weekend, and stocks–particularly for banks–rose sharply on Wall Street this morning.)
There’s an important anomaly to note in the freetings over progressives over this plan. Most of those reacting negatively favor a “temporary takeover” or “nationalization” of financial institutions. But even in this camp, there’s a widespread assumption that a failure of the current plan will drive Congress in the opposite direction, towards a neo-Hooverian obsession with deficit reduction and suspension of any further public investments. Since Republicans are already pretty much down with the Herbert Hoover approach, that means a significant faction of congressional Democrats would move not towards a more aggressive approach to freeing up credit, but towards the Republicans.
Indeed, some nationalization proponents seem to think the public will move that way too, out of anger towards never-ending public subsidies of banks and other failed enterprises. In other words, one highly influential progressive point of view is that the administration must move sharply “left” or its policies will likely produce a sharp move to the “right” in Congress and around the country–led by enough congressional Democrats to thwart the administration’s designs.
If nothing else, it seems to be clear that Democrats as a whole control their own destiny. The question is which Democrats will be in a position to lead one way or another once the dust has settled.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist