A Real Conservative Defends TARP... No, Really

Nov 19th, 2010

Writing in today's Frum Forum, there is, dare I say it, an important piece by Brad Schaeffer. Mr. Schaeffer is the kind of businessman I would have called a "hypercapitalist" twenty years ago. A devotee of traditionalist "free-market" principles, he has railed against any number of my own causes in the Age of Obama. 


In particular, he has trotted out the hand-ringing argument that we simply must double down on the disastrous "W" tax policies to lessen "uncertainty."

However, he has also demonstrated an increasingly uncommon characteristic amongst his contemporaries. He does not play to his own biases; he reacts to the situation on the ground. As such, he bluntly and soberly defends the bogeyman of the current Republican Party... TARP.

"Why would I defend such a policy even though it goes against every capitalistic inclination I have?  The simple reason is that, like it or not, it worked. Not perfectly, but it got the job done. One can argue the merits of letting the banks and AIG fail as a form of cleaning house and punishing bad behavior.  But to speculate about what would have been had we allowed free market forces to decimate the entire banking, insurance and auto industry, and the unquestionable pain it would have inflicted on the entire country in the following months and even years is moot."