In reading the commentary about the Paulson-Bernanke proposal both in the professional media and the blogosphere I’m beginning to think that Aesop’s fables ought to be taught in the schools (as they were in my dad’s time). Maybe at the college level.
The point of the story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, attributed to Aesop, is emphatically neither that there are no wolves nor that the danger of wolves is exaggerated. It is a caution against warning of a real and pressing danger when there is no imminent threat.
I recognize that for many the Bush Administation has poisoned the well (although I think that’s a misreading of history) but even if the claims made by the Bush Administration about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq were false and the Administration knew they were false it has little bearing on the financial crisis. Does anyone really doubt that something very serious is going on in the financial sector?
There are reasonable questions: whether the crisis in the financial sector will translate into the general economy, what the time frame for that translation might be, whether there is a more effective way of intervening than the Paulson-Bernanke proposal, and so on. The “Boy Who Cried Wolf” casts no light on any of those questions.
In the fable (or at least the version I heard) the boy is devoured when the wolf eventually appears and the villagers, fooled by his previous lies, won’t come to his aid. In this case we’re all in danger of being devoured.
