What do General Motors and the Veterans Administration have in common? Both are huge and politically well connected. We now know that both kill people and try to cover it up. The fact that one is "private" and the other "public" does not matter.
They are not "too big to fail," but simply too big. Both organizations' agency problems are monumental. Their failures have been well known for many years. "Reform" has been on-going. Operating at this scale should be nothing more than the default if nothing else is possible. In that better world, do not bail out large corporations; try orderly liquidation. In that better world, give veterans vouchers and let them shop for medical care.
But no chance. Hope-and-change has come to mean that there is no hope for any change that would address the real problem: bigness mixed with evil-twin politicization.
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A blog exploring the intersection of economic thinking and urban planning/real estate development and related big-think themes.
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