The Washington Post editorial board yesterday weighed in on the Ex-Im Bank’s controversial reauthorization. After listing quite comprehensively the bank’s many failings and the spurious grounds for its very existence, the WaPo courageously comes down on the side of “Everyone else does it” (yes, that is a direct quote). It all raises the question: if the Ex-Im bank is motivated by poor policy and poor economics, then why should we wait for other governments to stop subsidising export credits before we do the same? (Don Boudreaux comes to a similar, if more colourfully worded, conclusion here.)

In other news, and as the WaPo editorial alludes to, a Delta airlines subsidiary will benefit from a recently-approved loan guarantee from Ex-Im to a Brazilian airline, to finance the shipping of their aircraft engines to Atlanta for repair. Will this in any way affect Delta’s erstwhile opposition to Ex-Im activities (on the grounds they harm jobs in American airline services)? Time will tell, but Delta is unmollified, according to this recent article in Politico.