Guillaume’s blog

The crisis and scaling problems to an understandable level

October 12th, 2008

Very picturesque comment over here at Naked Capitalism.

Congress has Constitutional authority to resolve all the issues involved in the crisis, it just hasn’t had the political will to decide whose oxen get gored to feed the village. But if the village gets hungry enough, Congress will be pressured into deciding how people share the losses, be it directly through default, or indirectly through taxes or inflation.

I can’t judge for the validity of this statement, but it reminds me that scaling these global problems to a level that normal types can comprehend and relate to would be a great way for our government to communicate about the crisis we are facing (and ideally before we face it). How can someone figure what $700B or $10T is?

After all, this is all about confidence and the less people understand, the more they will shoot first and ask later.