[prennert]

There is a concept in the armed forces for making decisions in a given timeframe (struggling to find a source for this). Essentially you do the best you can in the time you are given. Then you move on and iterate. If you dither too much you probably don't have to make a decision anymore as the enemy has made it for you. In that framework it is accepted that a solution is not perfect.

I think about these crises the same way. They had 48h to sort it out and they had to make a decision. The decision has side-effect-like consequences. Should she now lie about this?

So now, why did they only have 48h to make a decision? I don't know. I doubt nobody has thought about this before. But I assume that regulating banks is particularly hard, because of lobby pushback and the banks ability to exploit any loop hole quickly. They are literally organisations that look out for how to make money by exploiting asymmetries. These organisations work against the slow democratic decision making that involves non-aligned actors (who are also often not trained in this particular issue) in the upper and lower houses of parliaments of different countries.

Another question is. Why are small banks treated differently than big banks. I have read somewhere that small banks have less regulatory oversight. Maybe the decision is much more to support heavily regulated banks and not so much those which are for various reasons not as much regulated. Why would the government want to hold the bag that it was not allowed to look into?

[throwaway049]

They had 48h in this case, but who gets bailed out and on what terms is a massive strategic decision that should not be made on the hoof. I must be naive because I thought planning for this kind of problem was part of her job.

[prennert]

First up, I do not have any particular insights what happened behind the doors and how government planning _really_ works. But if business / engineering management is in any way similar, there would have been a huge amount of uncertainty at the moment the hand was forced.

One would hope that there were some specialists at hand that know parts of the system, laws, implications on the overall economy etc.

There are likely a couple of plans available how to deal with this kind of situation. But likely not for this exact situation. Plans that exist but have not been implemented as policy likely are too rough around the edges or have significant opposition for different reasons.

On top of this, at this level of complexity and abstraction everything is kind of an opinion until tested and proven (but no time for that). Because no one truly understands all details and system connections.

On top of this in government you never know 100% what the motivations behind all these suggestions and plans is. What is factual, and what is politically tainted.

So all of the sudden things turn from certain to probabilistic. The leader has to figure out how to weigh the opinions and how to make a coherent enough decision (remember this is a system, and individually good decisions can be bad when taken together) to be net positive until the structured decision making can catch up.

Hopefully this is what is happening now and a general policy is decided on based on structured analysis. And hopefully it is quick enough to be ready before the next crisis hits.

[scrlk]

> There is a concept in the armed forces for making decisions in a given timeframe (struggling to find a source for this).

OODA loop? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

[samus]

I was thinking the same. But it sounds more like how to prevent being OODAed by someone else.

[AnimalMuppet]

Why did they only have 48 hours to make a decision? Because the banks (and the financial markets) were going to re-open on Monday morning.