Kevin Duffy on the financial press begging for bailouts

The financial press is back begging for bailouts, just as they did when the first cracks in the credit bubble appeared in 2007, well over a year before the 2008 meltdown.  The weekend issue of Barron’s shamelessly promotes a massive government response to fight the coronavirus and its spillover effects:

This isn’t 2008, when deep problems were rooted in the financial system.  Covid-19 is a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a financial crisis rolled into one – and policy makers will need to get creative to keep panic at bay…  [P]oliticians from both sides of the aisle must find a way to work together – or risk something worse than the financial crisis. 

Investors are like spoiled children who go crying to daddy every time they get into trouble.  After decades of moral hazard conditioned a whole host of economic actors to believe any downturn would be painless and brief, they’ve become devoid of critical thinking and prone to emotional reactions.

~ Kevin Duffy, "March Madness," LewRockwell.com, March 16, 2020