Brad DeLong lists three possible explanations for the Obama administration’s bank policy, and expresses angst that officials don’t seem to be clear about what they’re actually up to. Matthew Yglesias points out that the president seemed to offer a fourth narrative yesterday. I’d add that in the past we’ve heard yet another narrative — that we can’t imitate Sweden because we have too many banks — that happens to be all wrong.

Can I say that this very proliferation of narratives is disturbing? I don’t want to claim moral equivalence with the Bushies, who were utterly cynical about such things, but the ever-shifting rationales for an unchanging policy do bring back unhappy memories of the selling of the 2001 tax cut, and for that matter — again, no moral equivalence! — of the selling of the Iraq War.