I have the questionable distinction of appearing on Larry Kudlow’s CNBC program several times a week, arguing with people whose positions under normal circumstances would get no serious attention, and defending policies I would have thought so clearly and obviously defensible they should need no…

It’s also maddening to me that they can howl about the moral hazard of unemployment benefits “enticing people to not seek jobs” but refuse to acknowledge the far larger moral hazard of giving billions to banks that lost billions on risky investment strategies. If some lazy guy blows an unemployment check on a new plasma, that’s not good…but it costs us all a lot less than Bank of America saying “you know, maybe credit default swaps of mortgage backed securities aren’t that bad…let’s see how many more we can buy now” and then asking for another bailout, the “too big too fail” gun pointed at the figurative head of the economy. Of course in that light, the big bank bailouts look less like a moral hazard and more like blackmail and racketeering writ large.