Quotes of the day

"It's not a bailout, its a loan." (Not if you never pay it back it isn't. And if all you need is a loan, issue more debt. Oh, wait, no one will lend to you? Right. That's why we call it a "bail out.")--Equity Private

... the bailout's end result may be towering tax rates, drastic spending cuts or serious inflation -- or all three.--Holman Jenkins

There is no doubt that private miscalculation and imprudence made matters worse for more than a few lending institutions and individual borrowers. (One can’t explain an unusual cluster of errors by citing greed, which is always around, just as one can’t explain a cluster of airplane crashes by citing gravity. Anyway, the greedy aim at profits, not losses.)--Lawrence White

We can only hope that news of the FDIC program doesn't encourage more people to stop paying their mortgages as they await rescue from Sheila Bair.--WSJ Editorial Board

The administrative cost of loan modifications is much higher than the cost of just paying these people's moving expenses and holding the door for them so that it does not hit them on the way out. There probably is a worse idea for dealing with the crisis than loan modification, but right now I cannot think of one.--Arnold Kling

Left to its own devices, no economy ever behaves in such a self-destructive manner. The root of the problem lies in Washington with a political class that long ago recognized the power of the engine and used that power to further their own ambitions. The question we now face is whether those same men and women can recognize the damage they have done and right it.--Tom Lindmark

The standard procedure for most members of Congress is to ignore everything public choice economists teach us about the incentives of bureaucrats, give the bureaucrats enormous power, and then complain when they use that power badly, fail to achieve their goals, create other problems, and transfer wealth to their political allies.--David Henderson

This year will be remembered not just for one of the worst financial crises in American history, but also as the moment when economists abandoned their principles. There used to be a consensus that selective intervention in the economy was bad. In the last 12 months this belief has been shattered.--OLIVER HART and LUIGI ZINGALES

Forget that a murderer does not stop for stop signs and would not obey a gun law either. Forget that it leaves the victim unarmed, but leaves the victimizer free to operate. Forget that it makes self-protection a crime, but leaves the criminal better off than he was before. Forget that an assassin can make a gun or steal a gun or even use another type of weapon. Forget all that.--Lanny Friedlander

Sometimes the kindest, best, most useful six words one man can say to another, whether brother, father, friend or whatever are:

She's crazy, get rid of her.--Tom Smith

The bottom line is that the Red Sox have paid less (on an annual average basis) for Pedroia than the Yankees paid for Cano, and we’re willing to bet that all 30 major league teams would choose the former over the latter if they had their druthers today.--Tony Massarotti

Years ago, when players like Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens and Mo Vaughn departed, the Red Sox were left looking like the bad guys. ... Now Ramirez gets shipped off and he is the one with the damaged reputation.--Tony Massarotti

After all, it wasn't too long ago that a teacher said she had given my daughter a low grade in her first quarter of work in the sixth grade to encourage her to work harder. "If I gave her an A, she wouldn't be motivated to work harder, would she?" the teacher asked me, when I questioned the methodology behind her grading policy.--Jo McIntyre