Mixed Metaphors
Driving back from BWI last night, Faiz and I were listening to C-SPAN radio’s rebroadcast of Fox News Sunday where the panel had a heated back-and-forth about the propriety of giving Hank Paulson a “$700 billion blank check.” Now, obviously, I understand what people mean by this. But it doesn’t work as a metaphor. The essence of the “blank check” concept is that the check doesn’t specify how much it’s a check for. It’s blank. A $700 billion check is, by definition, not blank.
This does, however, raise the point that I don’t see any way, in practice, that you could actually limit the Bush/Paulson bailout to $700 billion. If $700 billion manages to solve everything, of course, that’s good. But if it doesn’t really work then I feel like the pressure to throw several hundred billion dollars worth of additional good money after bad would be hard to resist.
33 Responses to “Mixed Metaphors”
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September 23rd, 2008 at 8:24 am
I don’t think a blank check from Washington Mutual is much of a gift.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:25 am
As many have pointed out, it appears to be an ‘outstanding’ account, so I don’t think there is anything in Lord Chancellor Paulson’s 2.5 page Post-It-Note ™ which limits it to a total of $700 billion.
Nor is there any sort of evidence or even argument prevented as to how this $700 billion rotating account in unmarked bills would actually solve the problems which (a) these same people caused, and (b) right wingers are currently trying to pin on poor people, minorities, and Frannie Macae.
Because if they get 3/4 of a trillion this easy, they will be coming back in 3 or 5 or 7 months and saying, “Yeah, thanks for the $700 billion, but we need another $3 trillion by sundown or else everyone dies, thanks!”
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:27 am
1) Every con artist –every businessman, really –knows the trick. You lure the mark in, have him make an initial investment –and that initial investment keeps him in the game because most people can bear to accept a loss.
There’s probably thousands of people who rode AIG down from 50 to 2, checking the price every day and praying to God.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:28 am
Driving back from BWI last night,
Blogging while intoxicated??
That’s IMMORAL!
Plus, that’s MY specialty!!
…
Did the CLINTONS!!!1!!1! put you up to it, in order to persecute me??
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:37 am
1) Yesterday afternoon, Kos came to the same conclusion that I did –that this Bush Bailout is a major Poison Pill for the Democrats in the Election if the Democratic Congress approves it.
2) Kos, in fact, had some quotes from a Republican site showing how some Republicans are ,in fact, counting on that.
From http://www.thenextright.com/patrick-ruffini/republicans-should-vote-against-the-bailout
“Republican incumbents in close races have the easiest vote of their lives coming up this week: No on the Bush-Pelosi Wall Street bailout.
God Himself couldn’t have given rank-and-file Republicans a better opportunity to create political space between themselves and the Administration. That’s why I want to see 40 Republican No votes in the Senate, and 150+ in the House. If a bailout is to pass, let it be with Democratic votes. Let this be the political establishment (Bush Republicans in the White House + Democrats in Congress) saddling the taxpayers with hundreds of billions in debt (more than the Iraq War, conjured up in a single weekend, and enabled by Pelosi, btw), while principled Republicans say “No” and go to the country with a stinging indictment of the majority in Congress.
This creates pressure on the “change” message. If this issue is made controversial, and Obama is not the first to make it an issue, how exactly is a Washington deal backed by Bush’s Treasury Secretary “change?”
But for this to be actionable, it has to be controversial. So this can’t be a few lonely voices like Coburn and DeMint. It needs to be the bulk of the Republican conference. In an ideal world, McCain opposes this because of all the Democratic add-ons and shows up to vote Nay while Obama punts.
History has shown us that “inevitable” “emergency” legislation like the Patriot Act or Sarbanes-Oxley is never more popular than on the day it is passed — and this isn’t all that popular to begin with. All the upside comes with voting against it.”
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:40 am
Matt- After recently experiencing Vegas, the “chasing your money” practice while gambling must be fresh in your mind
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:50 am
1) Here’s Kos’s post discussing the problems with the Bailout –and recommending that it be postponed into the new Administration:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/22/15256/2632/465/606678
A short excerpt:
“If Democrats want to throw away this election, there’s no better way to do it than to join Bush in his “Chicken Little” act, and raid the treasury to bail out those incompetent and greedy Wall Street assholes.”
——
Er..you get the idea.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:55 am
Kos notes Ed Kilgore’s comments over at the Democratic Strategist:
———-
“For McCain and other Republicans, voting “no” on Paulson without accepting the consequences of that vote is the political equivalent of a bottomless crack pipe: it will please the conservative “base,” distance them from both Bush and “Washington,” and let them indulge in both anti-government and anti-corporate demagoguery, even as Democrats bail out their Wall Street friends and big investors generally. You simply can’t imagine a better way for McCain to decisively reinforce his simultaneous efforts to pander to the “base” while posing as a “maverick.”
http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2008/09/the_gops_bottomless_crack_pipe.php
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:58 am
Correction to 3 above: “most people can NOT bear to accept a loss”
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:08 am
Mixed metaphors are great. How about “the $700 billion blank bridge to nowhere … with ghosts in the gas tank!““
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
This drives me nuts, so thanks for pointing it out. That said, hwen most people imagine a blank check being filled out, they are thinking of numbers much, much smaller than $700 Billion.
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:43 am
It’s not at all limited to $700 bil even in Paulson’s draft- that is a serious misconception. That’s only how much Treasury can have tied up in garbage at any given time. Sell any of it- even at a huge loss- and more can be bought. There is no effective limit at all on the total that can be pissed away over the 2 years envisioned in the Paulson proposal. A blank check is a highly appropriate metaphor.
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:54 am
In this case I think the blank part is the name of the party to which the check is made out. It may not be the traditional metaphor, but it is still appropriate.
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:06 am
i think matt is missing the metaphor here. the plan is to give paulson the unfettered (and unreviewable) right to write checks of any amount to any financial entity he wants. those checks, the checks paulson will write are blank. congress may give paulson a total maximum amount of $700 bil, but for the purposes of the metaphor, that’s the amount in the bank account, not the amount on the check.
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:06 am
Matt–
You are too young! A blank check, back in the days when people used such things, was made out for a specific sum but without any payee. One might give a gift this way, for instance. And thus the metaphor is actually quite precise.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:17 pm
No, the $700B figure means that it’s not literally a blank check. Metaphorically, giving someone a blank check means giving him complete control with the likelihood that he’ll abuse it. It’s an entirely appropriate metaphor for the Paulson plan — and not a mixed metaphor under any traditional sense of that expression.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Sounds more like Carte Blanche.
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:06 pm
A historic note: In 1931, Herbert Hoover arranged for a similar bailout to the biggest banks and the richest people. It didn’t work. The democrats need to get up off their knees and Obama needs to say No thanks to the bailout of some of the most notorious adventurers in the financial markets. We can handle a credit crunch caused by uncertainty and continuing losses better than this ‘rescue’, unlikely to make any difference. Remember, there are a thousand TRILLION dollars floating in the derivatives bubble, and not enough money on the planet to ’save’ the ‘investors’. I agree that this is the October surprise, and if the Dems go for it we are sunk.
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