Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Dodd Apologizes For Nationalization Comments

After seeing the resulting damage and recovering from his inexplicable shock at the reaction they elicited, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd apologized yesterday for his foolish and ill-timed comments suggesting that U.S. banks may be nationalized.

From the L.A. Times:
Sen. Chris Dodd is apologizing today for his comments Friday suggesting that it might be necessary to nationalize banks for a short time.

The Connecticut Democrat, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, told reporters in Washington that he was surprised by the market's reaction.

Dodd said his statement Friday "should have been better thought-out at the time. I didn't realize it was going to have the reaction it did," according to Bloomberg News.
I am still perplexed by Dodd's story that he was caught off guard by the market reaction. I suppose the truth is that he was not surprised at all, but figured that was a better excuse than "I screwed up." Since he went ahead and apologized anyway, he would have been better off falling on the sword to begin with rather than pleading ignorance of basic economic cause-and-effect.

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