Economic Policy by Metaphor

When it comes to mixed metaphors, I am the bull in the china shop who doesn't feel the water. But even my barely functioning metaphordar hit Code Red when reading this PBS interview with the left's favorite rich-guy economics commentator, Warren Buffett. A sampling:

[Y]ou don't want to get into Superman-type expectations. On the other hand, I don't think there's anybody better than you could have had; have in the presidency than Barack Obama at this time. He understands economics. He's a very smart guy. He's a cool rational-type thinker. He will work with the right kind of people. So you've got the right person in the operating room, but it doesn't mean the patient is going to leave the hospital tomorrow. […]

But there's no magic bullet on this. They're going to throw everything from the government they can in. As I said, the Treasury is going all in, the Fed and they have to and that isn't necessarily going to produce anything dramatic in the short term at all. […]

SG: There is considerable debate as you know about whether President Obama is taking the right steps so we don't get in this kind of economic mess again, where do you stand on that debate?

WB: Well I don't think the worry right now should be about the next one, the worry should be about the present one. Let's get this fire out and then we'll figure out fire prevention for the future. […]

All you know is you throw everything at it and whether it's more effective if you're fighting a fire to be concentrating the water flow on this part or that part. You're going to use every weapon you have in fighting it. And people, they do not know exactly what the effects are. Economists like to talk about it, but in the end they've been very, very wrong and most of them in recent years on this. We don't know the perfect answers on it. What we do know is to stand by and do nothing is a terrible mistake or to follow Hoover-like policies would be a mistake and we don't know how effective in the short run we don't know how effective this will be and how quickly things will right themselves. We do know over time the American machine works wonderfully and it will work wonderfully again. […]

And there is no free lunch so if you pour money at this problem you do have after effects. You create certain problems. I mean you are giving a medicine dosage to the patient on a scale that we haven't seen in this country. And there will be after effects and they can't be predicted exactly.

Shorter Warren Buffett: We've got the right doctor, but there's no magic bullet for Pearl Harbor, which is why you have to bet all your chips on putting out the fire with every weapon at your disposal, so that the machine again works wonderfully. But since there's no free lunch, watch out for dosage levels!

J.P. Freire on "The billionaire apparatchik" here