Toasters? I Think Not

There's a cute bit of bailout fluff that's been drifting around lately: buy a toaster, get a free bank. I got it first about 10 days ago from my friend Margaret, and then a couple of days later from my friend John (but I think maybe he got it from Margaret). Now, here it comes from Paul Kedrosky tarted up with graphics (link).

Cute, but this joke is like, you know, recycled not so?I'm pretty sure I heard it back during the savings and loan crisis--and it was probably dated even then. How many toasters have been giving away banks banks have been giving away toasters lately? Not many,I think. Indeed, the free-toaster gimmick is an artifact of the old days of "regulated" savings and loans, when they couldn't compete on rates so they threw in lots of goodies--the kind of thing that vanished with the Garn-St.Germaine Acct, which is to say, vanished with the creation of the structural conditions necessary to create the savings and loan mess in the first place.

Hey, I don't mind old jokes. Use 'em all the time, yessiree bop. But they say that the curse of the generals is that they fight the last war. I hope the analytical thinking that goes onto the new round of economic relief is not as dated as the toaster joke.