Thank You Uncle Sam

How soon we forget.

Just two years after a near total economic collapse, the media is rife with complaints about how government intervention failed us and will always fail us. Right now, the topic of the hour is the Fed's very intelligent efforts to inject liquidity into the economy. Only its not described as intelligent. Rather its attacked through internet cartoons and by the likes of Sarah Palin as reckless.

The mood seems to be that if everything isn't good, then we've failed. This is absurd. Yes, unemployment is high and will be for years to come. But an unemployment rate of 9.6% is not an unemployment rate of 20% and GDP growth of 2% is not a contraction of 5%. Things are so much, much better than they would have been without the heroic interventions of 2008.

So it was with a smile on my face that I read Warren Buffett's thank you note to Uncle Sam this morning. Its worth reading to remember and give thanks for a catastrophe averted and for the brave individuals who rose to the challenge.