I think I agree with your entire post. What irked me about that entire mess was the speed at which decisions were made and that so many of the moves were done in the name of averting what was akin to a meteor strike. Paulson just seemed absolutely not interested as things developed and when he did try to do something it just seemed like he wanted to get the hell out of there… Geitner to me has proven to be not much better. Perhaps it was a no win for no matter who would have taken the position.
I agree with you about not knowing the fix and perhaps one not being there. I keep thinking that letting the housing market dump harder was one of them. Maybe nationalizing banks (shudder) would have been another… I don’t know but I think that what we did wasn’t the right way to go. As you noted perhaps is the money was applied in a different manner then we could have seen better results.
