The Costs of Ideological Correctness

In the United States, slavish adherence to “moderate” positions is often construed as exhibited “pragmatism” that’s in distinction to the more “ideological” views of people with less centrist views. In fact, moderation can reflect ideology ever bit as much as extremism can. I’ve had occasion to observe in the past that they best model for recapitalizing distressed financial institutions is provided by Sweden’s response to the early-1990s Nordic banking crisis. And nobody seems to seriously dispute that the Swedish model worked very well. But it’s too left-wing for the United States for basically reasons of ideological correctness.