> This "somewhere, someone is losing money!" concern trolling fallacy is one "usefully idiotic" source of our repeated bailout follies, so I'd like never to see it again.
I had trouble parsing this, is there an idiom in here that I'm not familiar with?
Maybe more than one such idiom? I probably skipped some commas. Also, I'm a bit of a nut, so most people will disagree with at least part of that sentence. Piece by piece:
"somewhere, someone is losing money": Any functioning market in securities will have winners and losers, so it isn't automatically a problem that someone has lost in any particular situation.
"concern trolling": This is when e.g. I pretend that I'm worried about something bad that might happen to you, but in reality the advice I'm giving is meant to help myself instead. We see this typically when a consultant from one political party claims to be worried about consequences for the other political party.
"fallacy": Something lots of people believe, that isn't true.
"usefully idiotic": A "useful idiot" is someone who believes the bullshit peddled by class enemies to such an extent that she'll repeat that bullshit in all seriousness, to her own detriment.
"bailout follies": We've had lots of economic downturns, but somehow only those overseen by Goldman alumni as Treasury Secretaries have required the taxpayer to give Wall Street lots of money.
I had trouble parsing this, is there an idiom in here that I'm not familiar with?
Thanks!