Bailouts, Then and Now | On Point with Tom Ashbrook

Bailouts, Then and Now | WBUR and NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook 100608:

On Friday, it was exhausted smiles and relief in Washington as the massive bailout package finally went through.

By Monday, today, it was cold sweat time again. Markets way down in Asia and beyond. Europe scrambling for stability. It’s one thing to pass a rescue package. Whether it will work is another issue.

In some ways this is not new terrain. Since the earliest years of the Republic, U.S. governments have intervened in financial crises. Results? Mixed.

And this time, the whole world is tied in like never before.

This hour, On Point: Bailout hopes, bailout history, as the crisis rolls on.

You can join the conversation. Are you feeling confident that this bailout will work? Are you reading up on the Depression, Japan, Sweden, to assess how we’re coping, this time, with a meltdown?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Zanny Minton Beddoes, the economics editor for The Economist. She’s been watching the U.S. and Europe face this storm.

Joining us from Philadelphia is Robert Wright, professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business and author of “One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe.” His forthcoming book is “Born in Debt: America’s First National Debt and Its Lessons for Today.”

And with us from Charlottesville, Virginia, is Robert Bruner, dean at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. He is co-author of “The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market’s Perfect Storm.”