Collective Lunacy: Obama/Bernanke Can’t Learn Econ Lessons
If there has been a side benefit of having to endure and court the serious dangers of what has surely been the most radical first two years of an American presidency since Franklin Delano Roosevelt (possibly more so by the time the historical dust settles), it’s that so many leftist pundits and others who have made careers of attempting to pose as supposedly reasonable people have revealed that they are on the wrong side of the lunatic line.
One such person is Peter Beinart. He often tries to come across as levelheaded, as in this snippet from a Daily Beast critique of Jon Stewart’s late-October Washington rally:
The Tea Partiers, in other words, are making a serious argument, which the left too often tries to dismiss by calling them nuts.
Advertisement
Even in that column, though, Beinart gives off a heavy clue that he’s not too impressed with the origins of the country in which he lives:
They’re tapping into a deeply-rooted American fear of government power. … And in the process, they’re conjuring, once again, the myth that America was born free, and surrenders a smidgen of liberty every time Washington imposes another tax or establishes another government agency.
That’s no myth, as anyone who has dealt with employment law or existing health care regulations — let alone what’s impending if ObamaCare is allowed to kick in — would tell you.
Beinart went code red in the wake of Tuesday’s election results, which as of this writing had Republicans picking up six U.S. Senate seats, gaining 60-plus House seats and a congressional majority, and achieving historic domination in state capitals:
… rather than looking at what those other countries are doing right, the Republicans have taken refuge in an anti-government ideology premised on the lunatic notion that America is the only truly free and successful country in the world. That ideology won last night, and Keynesianism lost.
As tempting as it would be to do a riff on Beinart’s miscasting of the sensible conservative take on freedom and success, I’ll mostly resist, simply because nobody I know of or have read is claiming that the U.S. is the “only free and successful country.” They do correctly assert that it has historically been the most free and successful — well, at least until what I have been calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy took root in mid-2008.
Beinart has somehow missed the news that Keynesianism has suffered at least three big losses in the past 80 years. The first occurred in the 1930s, beginning under Herbert Hoover and then proceeding on steroids during FDR’s New Deal. This is an era appropriately characterized in retrospect as the “Stuck on Stupid” decade. UCLA professor Lee Ohanian notes: “[P]rivate-sector job growth did not come back under Roosevelt.” The unemployment rate was 17% at the end of the decade. Meanwhile, the jobless rate throughout Europe during the 1930s was consistently lower.
The second big loss for Keynesianism occurred in Japan during the 1990s. Government debt as a percentage of annual economic output soared with repeated attempts at stimulus, while economic growth was and has continued to be anemic. All that has resulted from this massive overindulgence was what many have referred to as a “zombie economy” and a populace that even the spend-happy New York Times described in mid-October as having gone “from dynamic to disheartened.”
Yes – it is madness. But madness with a method,and therefore “respectable” to those who can’t be disciplined by falsification.
It is impossible to reason or argue with die hard leftist progressives.They refuse to look squarely into the failed policies of regressive policies-one step forward, two steps backward.
Logic is NOT on their radars, this is why so many of them are mired in the social sciences,rarely venturing into the hard sciences.
In any case, it is up to the rational thinkers among us to save free societies from their collective lunacy.
We are desperately trying to do the same in Israel, as the retread leftists try once again ! to drag us down to the depths of hell-’peace’ process after ‘peace’ process……..digging Jewish graves as a result.
It should be noted that while the US has been tacking “left”, Israel has been tacking “right” – and the results speak for themselves. The US is becoming ever less friendly to business – piling on new regulations, restricting exploitation of both on-shore and off-shore energy resources, etc. – while Israel has enacted numerous reforms to free up venture capital, deal with pensions and, following recent discoveries, actively pursue gas and oil exploration off the coasts. Israel’s unemployment rate is currently around 7%, and the Bank of Israel is aggressively working to keep the shekel from getting too strong against the dollar.
“It hasn’t worked to this point. It historically hasn’t worked. As noted, it’s still being done, and it’s still not working. Countries like Germany, which resisted Obama’s clarion call to keep stimulating, are growing nicely. Yet our leaders and their apparatchiks want more.”
I’m always puzzled why liberls always want to follow economic policies that have never been proven to work. It would be one thing if they could point to an example where huge government spending did create tons of jobs and grew an economy into prosperity. But there isn’t a single example where this is true. Not one country the liberals can hang their hat on where people spent their way from huge debt into prosperity.
That’s because this massive spending and huge growth in the Federal Government has nothing to do with jobs or growth. It has to do with control. It has to do with the Federal Government controlling almost every aspect of your life so as to create their “perfect” social order, a worker’s utopia where everybody is the same and everybody gets the same, crappy, government services. It is socialism on steroids. This is what the American people rebelled against on election day and this is what liberals in the media just don’t get. They just can’t admit when they’re wrong and that massive government spending solves nothing and usually leads to only more spending.
Don’t believe me? Just look at the European countries and show me where it’s working. All of them have huge debt and huge economic problems. Obama is probably the first purely European president we’ve ever had. So how’s that state-run socialism working out for you now? Time to end the madness. Hopefully, the new Republican Congress can set a proper economic course for us that will end this nightmarish experiment with European socialism.
I’m always puzzled why liberls always want to follow economic policies that have never been proven to work.
Of course every socialist throughout history has assumed that, this time, they’ll be The Ones to get it right.
Liberals do and think everything from the perspective of the ideology, a predetermined narrative on any and all topics. Pesky facts or intrusive reality are treated simply as nuisances to be spun away with verbiage and a wave of the hand.
Modern liberalism has been described, correctly…
As a mental disorder
“The liberal agenda is the liberal neurosis made manifest. It is not a rational program for the organization of human action. It is instead an irrational conglomeration of neurotic defenses which the modern liberal uses for his mental and emotional equilibrium. By attacking the sovereignty of the individual and the institutions essential to ordered liberty, the agenda attacks the very foundations of a free society…(Modern liberalism) does not seek a society of sovereign citizens, but fosters instead a society of allegedly victimized dependents under the custodial care of the state.”
Beinart has somehow missed the news that Keynesianism has suffered at least three big losses in the past 80 years. The first occurred in the 1930s, beginning under Herbert Hoover and then proceeding on steroids during FDR’s New Deal. [...] Meanwhile, the jobless rate throughout Europe during the 1930s was consistently lower.
Perhaps Europe in the 1930s is not a good comparison, because some European governments back then had means to keep inflation and unemployment in check … means that few people would like to place in the hands of governments ever again.
But there are 2 other comparisons USA/Europe which are also of interest. Hoping that I don’t get any facts wrong:
* In the period 1945–1980, the USA and Britain pursued Keynesian policies (on and off); Germany did not. In the same period, German growth was stronger than American or British growth. Correlation does not imply causation, but the facts are suggestive.
* In the decade after reunification, Germany effectively pursued Keynesian policies: loose money (due to the 1:1 exchange of the East German currency) and increasing government debt (which almost prevented Germany [!] from qualifying to adopt the Euro). In the same period, Britain finally managed to tame inflation. The results speak for themselves, and probably convinced Merkel to avoid taking advice from Beinart, Fallows, and Krugman.
What did Einstein say about doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Excellent article Mr. Blumer, America is being hit with a double whammy of incompetence,Obama and Bernanke.
You left one or three thousand Democrats out.
Countries like Germany went to China to forge trade ties, instead of whining. Germany has held a trade surplus with China for many years, why cant the US..? Quality and engineering mean something in the world, it maintains value and fetches a high price.
Why does the US government insist on legislating failure.
America chose the path of mediocrity in goods, politics, banking, entertainment, and foreign policy, since the 1970′s. The chickens are coming home to roost. US govt will have no choice but to seize IRA and 401K, pension funds, and other retirement cash cows and leave IOU in the wake.
Then maybe the American Taxpayer will finally see the light.
No doubt about that at all in my mind.
Anybody notice that this 600 billion was announced the morning after the election? I was looking forward to seeing how the dollar would react after the Tea Party-led Republican blow-out, which might have repudiated Keynes. Think Bernanke wanted to quash any reflection of what could have been a dollar rebound in order to maintain the Keynesian fantasy?
Sorry, I meant my post above, “No doubt at all about that in my mind,” to apply to this post from Keith.
The Democrat Party is interested in lining their own pockets; Nothing more. Their policies display this fact since they’ve been in power the last three years.
They could not care less about any bankruptcies. They’re liars and thieves, plain and simple.
Beinert is one of those hot house flowers that is nurtured in the academy and blossoms in the left wing press. He is so reliably wrong on everything that it’s strange he hasn’t found a place yet in the Obama administration. Like everyone else there, he has never done anything but dwell on what-if theory and polemical bombast.
Barry calls it messagin’ He’s been so busy savin’ stuff that he just hasn’t been makin’ (gimme some G’s, Pat ) the argument that…
We the stupid peeps can understand
Has George (“the dollar should undergo a little destabilization”) Soros gotten to Bernanke ? Will Paul (“the government hasn’t spent enough”) Krugman ever crawl out of the hole called the inside of his head ?
Stay tuned.
Our system has a fatal error, but I do not have any idea how to fix it. Most business manipulations relate to a single stock issue or an area such as commodities. In the case of George(the Kapo) Soros, he has so much power that he can manipulate currencies, countries, world opinion, individual professions (reporters and editors) and other important people.
Usually there are laws that prevent surreptitious manipulation for profit, but we have not wrapped our heads around Soros yet. There needs to be a law about people who behave as though they are too big to fail.
There is nothing wrong with Keynesian stimulus if by that you mean expanding the money supply and pumping that new money into the market. But new money derives its value from the purchasable and usable wealth in the market, which is exactly what money is not. Wealth is the stuff we want, need and use. Money derives its value not from the paper, plastic or metal it consists of — it derives its value from the wealth in the market that people want to use that money to buy. Double the money supply and leave the wealth supply unchanged and the money bidding up the prices will cause each dollar to decline to half its worth from before, what we call inflation. Soooo, Keynesianism can work if the government uses the new money exclusively to create new capital and jobs that create — you guessed it, market wealth that will put new, and needed products onto the market shelves worth more than the cost of producing that wealth the difference being profit. Profit will make the new money more valuable than the old dollars, the progressive opposite of inflation — the good deflation with an expanding money supply, not the bad deflation with a shrinking money supply. It is the simple method for correctly and actually expanding the value of the money supply through Keynesianism. (Keynes knew it but didn’t harp on it, I wonder why). So to avoid laissez faire government had to make a profit with its stimulus spending, create new capital and directly fund alot of new private sector jobs. Governments to appease the monopolists have always resisted this and instead have used their new money for pure consumption and no production. Time to give laissez faire the boot, and start building a hell of lot more factories which of course should be privately owned by those who build them.
Great argument, falls flat on its face: factories producing … what? Or are we simply talking … post-Keynesian mercantilism? It is somehow hard to see a valid 21c political economy theory in this concoction.
Check China. They have thousands of factories making a profit by producing products which you can find on shelves in stores. Factories have been making things people want, and what even Native Americans wanted, for centuries. Check out capitalism. It is not that complicated and it really works. The key is the factories have to produce things that are marketable and that people want to buy for more money than it costs to produce.
Under Mao, said factories were producing junk. Back then every aspect of the operation and structuring of the factories were under Government control.
Currently, China is communist in name only. In fact they are more akin to Chile of Pinochet’s time: as long as you did not get involved politically and pay us a modest bribe once in a while, we will leave you alone. Most of the factories in China are built and run according to the standards of the likes of Wal-Mart, Apple, Nike, NOT the Chinese Government.
One saving grace (so far) of the current Chinese government is they have not woven a tangled web of regulations like the enviro-nutjobs of the US.
“Capitalism is not complicated” Chess has simple rules and yet it takes a lifetime to master it. Despite the simple rules of capitalism, government – in any form – cannot master it and history is full of sad stories of past government trying to master the simple game of Capitalism.
Alice in Wonderland, so no contest. I wonder whether you realize how dangerously close you are to marx-leninist economics pipe dreams. If there is a paradigm of what works, it is the U.S. in the past, not China. Ever.
Edmund that difference between China’s and the US’ situation is simply what you said, China’s factories are producing! even if China is keeping their currency low, there is an accompanying productivity growth with it. what the Feds are doing is simply devaluing the currency without any productivity growth and that is simply a path to aggressive inflation which the Fed has admitted to since they believe that deflation is a bigger risk than inflation.
The Deflation argument is quite a reach since the inflation formula being used by the Feds are totally skewed and has been wrong for decades (since Greenspan altered it). We see proof of that since commodities have been on a tear these past few years and the government has been touting little to no inflation during the same amount of time that commodities were posting big gains in the market. why is that relevant, since commodities dictate consumer prices, because commodities are the raw materials used in producing what us, the consumers, buy.
the Fed’s little to no inflation claim is ludicrous. My wife works in the largest grocery chain in the midwest and she has been telling me that the prices have been going up steadily for the past few years and one of the reasons why they are not getting a lot of complaints is that manufacturers are “hiding” their price increase. it’s the size of food servings that have been shrinking while the price remains the same, hence, consumers do not notice it but it’s direct inflation none-the-less!
what the Fed’s doing would result in a 20% to 25% drop in the dollar value that’s already in a 15 year low. 15 million unemployed people can not afford to lose 20 to 25% of their buying power, same with the senior citizens that are on fixed income.
our situation is totally different from China. China has productivity growth, hence their workers have income growth…the US on the other hand actually have income reduction and to slap a 20% inflation on that situation is a big mistake that will make those houses in foreclosure TOO EXPENSIVE to be bought. That is what the Fed wants to protect, the property prices, but if you make those foreclosed properties too expensive again who will buy them? if you intentionally boost inflation and force interest rates to go up, who would qualify for those hard to get mortgage and consumer loans?
devaluing the dollar isn’t the answer! if you want to sell properties their prices need to go down, keeping their prices high would only prolong the time that those properties stay on the market. if you want to promote consumer spending, give their currency more buying power instead of eroding it! I will not buy an item that I think is expensive, it is as simple as that.
Bernanke, a billionaire that would not be affected by a 20% drop in buying power, is totally clueless how an intentional devaluation would affect consumer purchasing decision. get ready for a big drop in the economy in the middle of next year once the devaluation takes effect, since consumers would further tighten their purse strings.
“Soooo, Keynesianism can work if the government uses the new money exclusively to create new capital and jobs that create — you guessed it, market wealth that will put new, and needed products onto the market shelves…”
Soooo, if Government can behave exactly like Private Enterprize then Keynesianism will work. Incorrect in so many ways. First, Government has never behaved – and cannot behave – remotely like Private Enterprise. Second, the US Constitution gave limited powers to Government thus proper role of Government is to protect the liberty of individuals and thus foster a fertile environment for Private Enterprise. Government, quasi by definition, is Centralization; Private Enterprise, quasi by definition, is De-Centralization. Third, one big difference between Government and Private Enterprise is the use of FORCE: namely the POLICE and ARMY: this difference brings about intimidation and corruption when Government gets involved in private endeavors like science. Remember Eisenhower’s farewell speech. If one wants to get a Federal Grant, it is essential to cater to the biases of the bureaucrat: think Global Warming pseudoscience.
What other term fits … hmm … let me think.
How about treason?
The clowns in Washington are supposed to act in the national best interest. Not the best interest of this group or that at the expense of another. Not to buy votes with your hard earned dollars. Not to inflate their way out of crises of their own making, destroying the value of savings, all the while bitching and griping that Americans supposedly spend too much and save too little.
Gridlock is the best thing possible for the country right now. The more time they’re forced to spend sniping at one another is that much less time they can spend plundering the nation they are supposed to be repairing – which they couldn’t actually do if they wanted to. All persons in elected office and all employees and heads of various federal agencies must be made to sit quite still in empty rooms as they report to work each day for the next two years. Recovery will happen only when the government stands out of the way.
The “recession” – several quarters of economic contraction – is indeed over. Further years of miniscule or no growth at all is called a “depression.” Welcome back.
I propose the 18th century of tarring and feathering be reintroduced, beginning with the flagrantly and maliciously incompetent Fed chairman, followed by any other person who publicly endorses further spending, i.e. Krugman, Phelps, any elected official, etc.
If I recall, the traditional punishment for treason was considerably more stringent than mere tarring and feathering.
Treason. Yes. That is exactly what it is.
It is amazing to witness the depth and breadth of the supidity of our so-called economic experts. They cannot see what is staring them in the face: the epic failure of Keynesian economics.
We have enough history to determine which economic course to pursue. We can look back upon the booms and busts and see what worked and what didn’t. How is it that the layman knows that low taxes and limited governmental interference in the market is good for the economy, but the Krugmans of the world don’t?
Our service has not worked. When we tranferred our manufacturing base overseas, we lost the most innovative and dynamic portion of our economy, one that provided many opportunities for Americans regardless of education. Now look at what some are suggesting in its absence: increased gambling, legalizing formerly illegal drugs and some sort of increased trade when we are losing the knowledge base necessary to produce. What’s next, legalizing prostitution?
There is only one way to solve our money woes and that is to get the private sector of the economy going again. Yet all we hear from this administration is more government programs, which results in more interference in the markets. One only needs to look at the strings attached to the banking bailouts for proof.
When will we learn that government is a huge drag upon our economy that must be minimized if we are to recover?
Hey, you won’t believe what I heard! Obama’s spending $200 million PER DAY to take his circus to India. Yeah, he’s renting out the entire Taj Mahal! He has 34 warships off the coast to protect his wonderfulness! Yep, heard it from Rush. Heard it from Sean. Heard it from Michele Bachmann and Drudge and WorldNetDaily and Glenn Beck. You know, all very solid straight shooters. Sure, the libtards are saying, “what are you, nuts?” What else can they say, they’re libtards.
This is exactly the kid of selfish, misdirected runaway spending we have to stop. It’s time to restore truth and honesty to our society. We can’t let the Lame Stream Media runaway with our honor and drive this great country into the ground.Have fun on our dime, oh Anointed One, because it won’t last forever.
I thin we should investigate how this insane trip came to be, exactly how much it cost, and fire anyone who tried to pull the wool over America’s eyes.
I can’t quite tell if you’re serious. I THINK you’re joking … that first paragraph is obviously meant to be humorous. Bachmann? A straight shooter? No way. As a general rule, if you hear something from michelle backmann you should ASSUME it’s false until you hear otherwise. But I know you’re joking because you included beck in the list – and that guy’s basically a charlatan.
But after that, I get the impression that you actually believe the story. Yes, there’s a reason why libtards are saying “are you nuts”. Because the story IS nuts. Its source is an unnamed INDIAN state “official”. That’s the sum total of the basis for that story. How the heck can he (assuming he exists at all) possibly know what the US is spending? And are you seriously suggesting that 1/12 of the US’ entire fleet is steaming to india to provide … what, military support? Get a grip. And just for the record – the pentagon HAS officially described that as “absolutely absurd”, so don’t even bother.
No, they haven’t released the figures. They never do. But the whitehouse has stated that the cost is about the same as the cost of sending bush or clinton overseas. In any case, 800 million (it’s a four-day trip) is going to show up in somebody’s budget papers. It’s pretty hard to hide that. The GAO is going to see the numbers eventually.
The list of people who have covered themselves in stupid over this is, well, it’s the same list that always does. The story is ridiculous.
You guys really are incredibly gullible. In time you should feel very silly for believing this tripe … but you won’t.
And even o’reilly has declared that figure to be nuts. In a contest between beck and o’reilly, I know which one I’d believe. Assuming I had to believe either of them … which would a pretty desperate situation to begin with.
I think the difference between them is that o’reilly knows when he’s trying it on.
Matthew, you can agree with Bill O’Reilly because he is part of the establishment. I think Mr O’Reilly (whom I respect and like mostly as a political commentator) is part of the establishment because of where he has been (through an Ivy League school). And that is tangible to most leftists…your gods are high level education and a tightly controlled government by the similarly educated. But you haven’t actually learned to think something through for your own use, it’s just spitting back what the professor spits out…like two robots no real life hands-on learning, anywhere in sight.
My opinion, sir, is, that is as bad if not actually worse than the formerly noble born aristocrats and shameless abusive control of people, now we have techni-merit-ocrats…same system, different flavor, same sad results.
I can’t tell whether you agree with me or not, but if I hear Rush AND Sean AND Michelle AND Laura AND Drudge all report the truth of this embarrassment, there’s no way Im going to believe they’re not telling the truth. They ARE the truth. They don’t do what the LSM do – just make up stuff and not fact check stuff and just irresponsibly put stuff out through the paid weasels in their echo chamber just to serve their own selfish agenda, no matter how much it hurts the country.
That’s what libtards do. Conservatives s have principles that prevent them from doing that. Think about it logically for a second (if you are capable of doing logical things). Why would people who have spent so much of their careers telling us how forthright and credible they are risk all for that for a stupid lie like this that could be so easily disproved? How dumb would that be? It’s like you libtards think we believe everything they say whether it’s true or not.
“Why would people who have spent so much of their careers telling us how forthright and credible they are risk all for that for a stupid lie like this that could be so easily disproved?”
Because you don’t care, that’s why. Assuming you even ever HEAR the debunking, you’ll just ignore it and move on to the next concocted outrage. People who bother to check facts already KNOW these guys have no credibility. And yes, I agree, neither does olberman.
This story based entirely on one anonymous source who can’t possibly know the facts even if he DOES exist. That’s it. Nobody has any more evidence than that. And you’re buying it just because rush tells you to. THAT is why people like bachmann and beck don’t have to worry about their reputations – because people like you guys are the consumers, and you just don’t care.
I agree. There should be an inquiry, because people who are dumb enough to believe a crock like this need to realise when they’ve been conned. Bring it on.
A good article but I have a few quibbles. Quantitative easing is not strictly Keynsian policy. I would argue that Bernecke is breaking new monetarist ground in attempting to use the Quantity Theory of money to stimulate the economy by inflation. It won’t work because everybody knows the Fed is deliberately raising the rate of inflation and will act accordingly. Inflation only [temporarily] stimulates real economic activity when it is unanticipated and econmic agents are fooled. Having announced his intentions Bernecke won’t be fooling anyone.
This is actually the fourth refutation of Keynsian economics. The Carter years were also marked by the use of Keynsian inspired monetary policy and the now discredted Philips curve to stimulate the economy. It was pure test of the quantity theory versus Keynsian econimics. Moneterism won the day on that one.
Collective Lunacy or “stuck on stupid”, either term works for me.
I have been amused by the (over)use of the question, “Does President Obama get IT?” with respect to the election, the economy, or his “enemies” (aka, people with other points of view). With his sensitivity to criticism, he should be thankful he is not a Republican because the question, and the assumption, would not be so polite.
I’ll tell you what else, the knowledge that it is already too late to turn the ship back on course. Their plan to destroy the nation via our economy has worked as well as Reagan’ plan to do the same to Soviet Russia worked to change their government. Although that one didn’t work as effectively.
You see in our country, we did it to our selves. Socialist liberals convinced big hearted GOP et al to ‘believe’ in them. And as fools do, they did.
Granted there is a significant number of GOP that truly are RINOs and are on the team either knowingly or as useful idiots as socialist operatives.
But the real point is that the damage has been done and now it’s time to pay the piper. If we survive, I suggest taking up McCarthy’s banner one more time and this time we complete the job.
Agreed. The idea behind Communism and Socialism and Fascism, and its Orwellean branding of “Progressivism” and “Liberalism,” or whatever else they try to call it, is fundamentally anti-liberty. It is not an accetpable (in the John Locke sense) idea, even when a majority or a super majority supports it. No more so than slavery was accetpable. We need not tolerate it. We shouldn’t be embarrased to expose and condemn it.
1. UCLA professor Lee Ohanian notes: “[P]rivate-sector job growth did not come back under Roosevelt.” The unemployment rate was 17% at the end of the decade. Meanwhile, the jobless rate throughout Europe during the 1930s was consistently lower.
Ahhh…the successor to 1930s Europe was 1940s Europe…
2. This piece is focused on how (not) to get out of the mess we’re in, but IMO how we got into it has a bearing on how we should get out; in particular, it has a bearing on what we should not do to get out. Who was the President that first appointed Bernanke to chair the Fed? Who was the President on whose watch the crisis began? Who was the President on whose watch the economy became vulnerable? I searched for “Bush” in the text and got no hits.
3. Afaic Obama is taking us quickly to where Bush was taking us not as quickly. As we criticize Obama, let’s not forget that Bush Republicans are lurking in the wings and hoping to resume business as usual.
Well of course! How could we have missed that, gs, it is clearly George Bush’s fault. Everything is. You are a wedge, gs. High school physics taught many of us that the wedge is the simplest of all tools. And you my fine idiot friend are a wedge.
1. The economic policies of 1930s Europe were not to blame for WWII.
2. The vulnerability of the US economy has roots going back to the New Deal, and the housing crisis occurred mainly because of policies put in place during the Clinton administration, I believe. (See Fannie and Freddie, for example.)
3. AFAIC, Obama has already taken us new and exciting places that Bush never even imagined. In two more years, I hope we, in turn, take Obama to a new, exciting place where he will have all the time in the world to write his memoirs.
Humorous cartoon titled “Riding in the Back” at http://drawfortruth.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/riding-in-the-back/
Hopefully the 2010 elections will help steer us in a better direction.
Shades of ‘Driving Miss Daisy’.
Very cute!
Nicely written article, but I disagree.
These guys are not lunatics.
These guys are fanatics, and they couldn’t care less about the results of this or that policy, what they care about are their internationalist subversive dreams of weakening America.
The left today keeps waging war against Freedom and economic Freedom in the same way it did for the last 60 years: the long march through the institutions.
They cannot subvert America with an armed revolution…they crash America’s dollar.
They cannot openly support international terrorists…they allow the mad mullahs to build the bomb
Etc. etc.
The subversives have simply reversed the famous sentence of Von Clausewitz (spelling not checked) and for them “politics is the continuation of war with other means”.
Well, at the risk of sounding like a broken record….a major part of the communist strategy has been to seed apparently reasonable people in academia, the media, and politicians.
The philosophy itself can’t sell in a free country, so they had to find another way to jam it down our throats.
The Beinhart types aren’t the only element of the overall strategy, but they are an important element. Obama is the ultimate example, but there are many more. Forget about the Olberman’s of the world….they are idiot hanger-ons, not part of the power structure. But this Beinhart tool is a commissar to the bone.
Trying to understand them from an American perspective is impossible. It’s like trying to understand gorillas from a human perspective. A lot of things seem to make sense, but ultimately, it’s a fruitless exercise.
If you hear somebody who seems to makes occasional sense but you just can’t tie the arguments together into a coherant whole, you may be dealing with a committed marxist.
In constrast, note that Olberman is highly consistent in everything he says. There is no subterguge there. He is simply an idiot zealot, and certainly not the one the marxists would like in a high communication position.
This piece is focused on how (not) to get out of the mess we’re in, but IMO how we got into it has a bearing on how we should get out; in particular, it has a bearing on what we should not do to get out.
Fund, Fund, Fund Now That Daddy Took the T-Bills Away
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke defended the central bank’s decision this week to buy an additional $600 billion dollars in Treasuries, saying, “We are showing insufficient stimulus,” and “The unemployment rate, if at all, is coming down very, very slowly”.
So, let me get this straight, the stimulus is not very stimulating and the unemployment rate is stagnating, so the best thing to do is add a huge dose of inflation to the utter failure of the policies of the past few years? Since the Democrats took the house on January 3, 2007, this is where the economy was and then we can look at where it went.
• Our Economy Had Created More Than 7.2 Million Jobs Between August 2003 and December, 2006. Payroll jobs increased 167,000 in December alone, and increased by more than 600,000 jobs in the prior four months.
• The Unemployment Rate Was 4.5 Percent In December, 2006. This is well below the 5.1 percent average rate for 2005, and below the average of each of the past four decades.
• Real Wages Rose 1.7 Percent During 2006. This rate of growth is substantially faster than the average rate of the 1990s, meaning an extra $1,030 last year for the typical family of four with two wage earners.
• Real After-Tax Personal Income Per Person Had Increased Over $2,800 – Or 9.6 Percent – During The Bush Administration before the Democrats took over Congress.
The brilliant and very prescient Peter Ferrara outlined precisely what had gone wrong, what was the likely response and how horribly wrong it was all going to turn out.
In his article at the American Spectator he said the following
“ because the government inefficiently allocates its spending based on politics, rather than efficiently as in a market, and because taxes discourage economic growth, the net result is a drag on the economy, rather than a stimulus, as the Obama experience shows once again for all the slow learners in that 45% still supporting him. This Keynesian economics failed thoroughly in the Great Depression, failed thoroughly in the 1970s, and failed just as thoroughly in Japan for the last 20 years, for just these reasons. Why it is an inevitable, illogical failure was explained for decades by such all time great economists as Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, and Milton Friedman.
After wasted, failed stimulus packages 1, 2, 3, and more, federal deficits over the first two years of Obamanomics now total a record smashing $2.7 trillion.”
Of course, Paul Krugman the calm, rational, open-minded, voice of far leftist economic ideology thinks that the Fed is “too timid”. He attacks Jim Rogers because, well…because that’s what rabid defenders of a crumbling economic house of cards do.
Krugman and his fellow travelers suffer from “Keynesial-amnesia”, a form of economic dementia that forces them to forget each and every time this colossal blunder, this enormous clusterfunk has left an economy in total devastation, 100% of the time it has been tried previously.
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/11/krugman-attacks-jim-rogers.html
So let us return to the land of the living brain cells for a moment. Peter Ferrara goes on to put it all straight when he says this:
“I have also argued in this column for almost two years now that Obama’s Rip Van Winkle approach to economics, bringing back the policies of the 1970s while doggedly ignoring everything that has happened since 1980, was going to bring back the economic results of the 1970s. Now the Federal Reserve has confirmed that. The latest word is that it has decided that bringing back inflation is the key to restoring economic growth.
For those paying attention, the Obama Administration is serving as a history lesson, sort of a historical reenactment, of exactly what went wrong in the 1970s, and the 1930s. As the Keynesian stimuli of the 1970s regularly failed, the Fed felt it had to gun the money supply further to pick up the slack. Then when inflation arose, it quickly reversed course to fight that, throwing the economy back into recession. To get out of that, the Fed felt compelled to return to reflation.
This is exactly what is going to happen now. The Fed will regenerate inflation, creating new asset and commodity bubbles in the process. When it turns to fighting the inflation, as it has long assured us it will, those bubbles will again burst, restoring recession. That is how America fell into a continuing cycle of ever worsening recession and inflation in the 1970s, which almost irredeemably trashed our economy then, almost losing the Cold War in the process.
This is all why a growing majority of Americans has decided that President Obama has already had long enough on the economy. But if you just read the New York Times or watch NBC to get your news, then you are willfully ignorant, and manipulated”
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/10/13/so-much-worse-than-carter
So, what do we do with all this? The only thing we can do. The banks have to take this money and begin doling it out, put their toxic assets on the market and have all the investor pools take a market correction beating, (one that has been looming and is the elephant in the room), hope beyond hope that uncharted waters strategy doesn’t completely tank the housing market and crush the recovery…and pray.
In other words, Fund, fund, fund, now that daddy took the T-bills away.
Since the Democrats took the house on January 3, 2007, this is where the economy was and then we can look at where it went.
Reason Magazine took a closer look at where the economy was; they linked to this: …seven years into his presidency, George W. Bush is in line to be the first president since World War II to preside over an economy in which federal government employment rose more rapidly than employment in the private sector.
Obama is making a bad situation greatly worse, but the bad situation arose on Bush’s watch.
Bush 43 was not as steady at the helm on fiscal conservatism as those on the center, center-right and right would like, but if we are going to peel the onion, then let’s peel the onion.
Seven years into his Presidency coincides with just about when the Democrats took over both Houses. If you try to do something and it gets blocked that is different than “having it happen on your watch, BECAUSE of you”.
The decline in manufacturing coincides with the thuggery of the unions. And the percentage loss of jobs due to the decline in manufacturing has many fathers. Most of them Democrats.
The growth in government positions came on the heels of necessity in large part, due to a little thing that took place on 9/11. We beefed up Homeland Security and an array of other security-related ranks swelled.
To suggest that Bush 43 is on a relatively level playing field with what just took place in the past two years is an unsustainable argument. The intent is different, the methods were different, the size and magnitude were different. The breadth and depth of the invasion into the people’s pockets were different. Sorry, I just believe the “blame Bush” dog won’t hunt.
“after 8 years of this Administration we’ve just as much unemploymnt as when we started -And an enormous debt to boot!” http://bit.ly/9169Lh
Looking at the last Bush administration wouldn’t you have to add them to the Keynsian team roster? If I was a Republican politician I would be overjoyed that Republicans did not win the Senate because the GOP is not yet competent to govern. One reason for this incompetence is the Keynsian vapours that suffuse their brains. I think they know that and are happy to have a two-year period of gridlock in which renovate their party. The tea party movement got the GOP out from under Bush and is reminding them that the Republicans replaced a party called the Whigs and that the GOP can also be replaced.
The mid term vote was specifically anti-Keynsian. It was meant to stop Obama in his tracks. If the way to do that was to vote Republican then so be it. Having secured the Obama loose cannon, the question is how to replace it?
That depends on what actions the GOP takes and what plausible, practical ideas it presents about government, about allowing the economy to recover, about government budgetary and cash flow problems, about unfunded entitlements, about soon to be bankrupt States (California, Illinois), about improving public education, about illegal immigration, about foreign policy and about reforming the healthcare system.
That’s a lot of homework to get done and I don’t see Keynes in there, anywhere. If the GOP do the homework then in 2012 they’ll nominate the next President. If they fail they may be replaced in 2016 by a small c conservative third party.
If the GOP do the homework then in 2012 they’ll nominate the next President. If they fail they may be replaced in 2016 by a small c conservative third party.
The danger is that the replacement of the Bush/Rove/DeLay/Lott GOP by a ‘small c’ conservative party would involve a split in the conservative vote that the Left would take advantage of. IMO the transient–maybe a decade or so–effects would be far more drastic than the Perot candidacy that cost GHW Bush the 1992 election, but if there’s no alternative, there’s no alternative.
The hopeful news is that many in the GOP and Tea Parties realize that a return to business as usual is not a viable option.
“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. After 8 years of this Administration we’ve just as much unemploymnt as when we started -And an enormous debt to boot!” – Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt and one of FDR’s closest advisers. http://bit.ly/9169Lh
It’s a waste of time to argue with radicals.
BTW, Keynesianism is dead, has been dead since J.M. Keynes died in 1946; Kenyanism lost last Tuesday.
Default is the only solution. Solution?! Yes, solution, because only after our bloated monstrosity of a federal government defaults on its obligations will the United States be able to reorganize itself (after much chaos and possibly bloodshed) as a modest Republic.
I continue to be incredulous that that decadent dilettante and street hustler, Obama, was elected to be the President of the United States. A city councilman in Harlem or Detroit maybe, but the President of the United States??? Geezez!!!
It’s no wonder that this administration condescends to Americans, sneering contemptuously that Americans are stupid. Americans ARE stupid, incredibly stupid to have elected that pompous madman who now resides in our White House, imagining that he has become royalty, even though he hasn’t demonstrated that he has ANY executive skills or ANY managerial skills or ANY leadership skills whatsoever. He and Michelle must be incredulous that peole were stupid enough to have put THEM in the White House, high-fiving each other with glee …, while wondering how much of the silverware and other household items they will be able to steal before they leave.
You know, although Democrats regarded Bush as just a useless, spoiled kid from a rich family, and although Democrats regarded Obama as a man of the people, it turned out that Bush was the man of the people, and Obama is just a useless, decadent dilettante, which just goes to show why the vast majority of Democrats spend their lives as such losers: Life is a matter of making the right choices, and what defines Democrats is that they are so immoral that they have HORRIBLE judgment, too frequently making all of the wrong choices, much to the detriment of the rest of us, who have to clean up their messes.
But I digress.
The point that I want to make is that, as far as I can tell, Obama doesn’t have ANY morals or ANY principles, and he certainly doesn’t have any intention of striving to accomplish what is in the best interests of all Americans.
In his sick hatred of what he considers to have been colonialists, that madman’s only purpose, his singular purpose is to redistribute wealth and power from white people to people of color everywhere, conveniently overlooking the fact that until white peop0le colonized the countries of colored people, they were living in a stone age, suffering much more horrible privations than they experienced during the period that it took them to adapt to a civilized culture. (To be continued …)
I agree that this news of the Fed sending another $600 Billion into the Obama’s meatgrinder “Battle of the Somme” will now transition our economy from ‘stagnation’ to ‘stagFLATION’.
Over the last three weeks, my IRA has gone up another $20,000 due to the gold and silver mining stocks that like an F-18 are climbing up.
It is absolutely bizarre how 2012 will be like 1980. Stagflation is coming, an unpopular incumbent POTUS, and a Reaganite who is likely to run against him.
Let me ask here, paranthetically …
In recognizing that Barack and Michelle Obama hate America and white people especially, have any of you considered the very real possibility that the purpose of their trip to India, to Indonesia, to Japan and to Korea with a bunch of industrys’ leaders is NOT to develop markets for exports, but rather to arrange for more OUTSOURCING of American jobs to those four countries …, you know, as part of their evil plan to redistribute wealth and power from white people to people of color in those four countries, and to other countries around the world, also? After all, we’ve already seen more than ample evidence that, in their sick hatred, (Progressive) Democrats are determined to betray and to destroy this country, cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Just a few thoughts for you to ponder, now that the election is over, and we can get back to thwarting the agenda of this incredibly evil administration and their equally immoral shills in Congress.
I get your point. I trusted Bush. I don’t trust Obama’s motives for anything that he does.
It is a sad state of affairs. If people reelect Obama, this country will be doomed.
Doomed I say. DOOMED!!!
The purpose of the Mumbai Extravaganza is to show the world how magnificent he is, and to rub it in the eye of Americans. He certainly won’t be doing any more negotiations about trade with India than he ever does negotiations with anybody. In other words, zero.
An American icon/institution is now going to be build some of their products in India – Harley Davidson! A couple of months back Harley Davidson was trying to negotiate with their unions for concessions since cost of production has been going up. no concessions from the union and Harley Davidson is forced to find cheaper alternatives.
Welcome to the effects of Socialism where unions dictate business rules and force jobs overseas.
Massive government controlled stimulus allows the government power and allows those in charge to give money to their friends and allies. Just like a Banana Republic!
The only people that QEII will help would be George Soros and Warren Bufett, who have been shorting the dollar since 2003 and 2005 respectively.
Couple QEII with the flawed inflation index formula that the government’s been using (Greenspan’s) and you will see low inflation numbers from the government, but runaway gold/precious metals and commodities prices in the markets. Commodities have been spiking at lest 10% since QEII has been announced. Golds is close to $1400 (record high at $1338). these are signs of aggressive inflation just around the corner.
the commodities and gold price spike has been occurring the past 4 years, yet the inflation numbers from the government remains very low (that’s why there’s no COLA increase for SS recipients). Consumer prices have spiked following the commodities price spikes and the government’s inflation numbers are still low.
we will see REAL inflation in high double digits starting next year, yet government inflation numbers will always reflect a low range…then Bernanke will declare – “see, no inflation!” while all of us pay higher prices for everything we buy.
this insanity need to stop. Congress need to take back control of monetary policy, abolish the fed, and scrap Greenspan’s inflation index formula!
The Federal Reserve, a body comprised of non-elected egghead with their collective heads in a place where the sun don’t shine doesn’t have the right to make decisions that affects the lives of ALL citizens.
Congress has is the branch of government given the Constitutional authority to manage monetary policy, not the Federal Reserve.
In Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution (Powers of Congress) it says “To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.”
if the so called Conservative Ascendancy is to be a complete awakening of the country to the conservative principles with which it was founded, then it is only fitting that monetary policy is given back to an elected body empowered by the Constitution of the United States – US Congress!
The country took back Congress this past election, now let’s take back our currency and give back the strength it deserves!
William Greider’s book, “Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country”, examines how this unelected entity evaluates the various domestic economic players and arrives at decisions. Once Act 2 (2012) is accomplished, attention will surely turn to what to do about the Fed and its impact both domestically and internationally. And let’s not forget Niall Ferguson’s argument (“The Cash Nexus”) that globalization (a critical element of capitalism) demands a more active, dominant role from the US.
Just wanted to let Mr. Blumer know that opening para. has allowed grin reaping from everyone I know on the correct side of the line and not a few on the lunatic side as well.
Oh, and the rest of the article is pretty good too.
After reading about people on the wrong side of the lunacy line, it encouraged me to dish a bit about lunacy with regard to a certifiable, in my mind,
President who is of lunacy a growing example, one who serves it up with a huge side dish of hypocrisy. Here’s my postulation.
If Obama insists on soaking the rich, he deserves to be waterboarded.
The happy hypocrite, now taking his form of split personality delusionality on the first Obama I’m a laughingstock world tour. Around and around he goes where his spending stops nobody knows. Same could be said for his foot in the mouth disease (not covered under ObamaCare I might add).
“They’re enemies who deserve to be punished. No, they’re just opponents who need to be punished. No, our opponents don’t need to be punished, they need to compromise. We all do. But I’ve decided not to compromise. The rich get taxed. It’s called income distribution 101.”
But, ProfessorBama, Constitutionality 101 makes no mention of “Redistribution of Wealth.” Marxism does.
O’Both-Sides-of-yourMouth, I thought you said we needed to compromise.
“Look, I won. I want Republicans to talk less.”
WrongBama, you lost. Regardless, Republicans don’t really care how much you talk just so you make some sense. And soaking the job providers with taxes, who are in large part the small businesses with money to hire, makes no sense.
Neither does spending millions of dollars a day flying around the world watching Michelle bang her head on the overhead luggage bins make much sense. In fact, Obama, if you plan on begging China to keep buying our bonds, with your powers of persuasion, you might think twice about opening the mouth, except perhaps to laugh at Michelle yelling, “ouch.”
“But I won.”
No, LocoBama, you didn’t win. Reid and Boxer won. The rest of the Democrats pretty much got a shellacking (your words). “Did I say that?” Yes, SlowBama, you said shellacking. It means thrashing. It’s on video tape. You said it the day after the Republicans thrashed the Democrats in the national election. MegalOBama, perhaps you should make an unscheduled stop in Austria where they boast excellent teams of psychiatrists who might understand PsychoBama, and make you a more effective President, one who actually understands that part of his job is listening to the people. I bet they’d help you remember what happened on Nov. 2.
“What did happen on November 2? Did it have something to do with my lack of powers of persuasion?” NoBama. The vote was against things called ObamaPolicies. Like ObamaCare.
“Golly, I feel lately like my head has gone into a tailspin. But I don’t think mental problems are covered by ObamaCare.”
They’re covered, but they’re at a premium. And don’t go into effect until 2016.
“Oh, rats. But while I was LucidBama, I did shock the nation, didn’t I?”
You sure did, Obama. We certainly were shocked to have elected a sociopath for a President.
“ That’s an insult. I resemble that remark.”
I bet you do, EatingcrowBama. I bet you do.
“Losing is torture.” Nobama, your people say torture is waterboarding.
“That’s silly, I went waterboarding at Disney World with the girls.”
NoBama, those were called water slides. But we can arrange a waterboarding vacation if you like.
“Mmmm. Maybe I’ll give it a try. It can’t be as hard as golf.”
After reading about people on the wrong side of the lunacy line, it encouraged me to dish a bit about lunacy with regard to a certifiable, in my mind,
President who is of lunacy a growing example, one who serves it up with a huge side dish of hypocrisy. Here’s my postulation.
If Obama insists on soaking the rich, he deserves to be waterboarded.
The happy hypocrite, now taking his form of split personality delusionality on the first Obama I’m a laughingstock world tour. Around and around he goes where his spending stops nobody knows. Same could be said for his foot in the mouth disease (not covered under ObamaCare I might add).
“They’re enemies who deserve to be punished. No, they’re just opponents who need to be punished. No, our opponents don’t need to be punished, they need to compromise. We all do. But I’ve decided not to compromise. The rich get taxed. It’s called income distribution 101.”
But, ProfessorBama, Constitutionality 101 makes no mention of “Redistribution of Wealth.” Marxism does.
O’Both-Sides-of-yourMouth, I thought you said we needed to compromise.
“Look, I won. I want Republicans to talk less.”
WrongBama, you lost. Regardless, Republicans don’t really care how much you talk just so you make some sense. And soaking the job providers with taxes, who are in large part the small businesses with money to hire, makes no sense.
Neither does spending millions of dollars a day flying around the world watching Michelle bang her head on the overhead luggage bins make much sense. In fact, Obama, if you plan on begging China to keep buying our bonds, with your powers of persuasion, you might think twice about opening the mouth, except perhaps to laugh at Michelle yelling, “ouch.”
“But I won.”
No, LocoBama, you didn’t win. Reid and Boxer won. The rest of the Democrats pretty much got a shellacking (your words). “Did I say that?” Yes, SlowBama, you said shellacking. It means thrashing. It’s on video tape. You said it the day after the Republicans thrashed the Democrats in the national election. MegalOBama, perhaps you should make an unscheduled stop in Austria where they boast excellent teams of psychiatrists who might understand PsychoBama, and make you a more effective President, one who actually understands that part of his job is listening to the people. I bet they’d help you remember what happened on Nov. 2.
“What did happen on November 2? Did it have something to do with my lack of powers of persuasion?” NoBama. The vote was against things called ObamaPolicies. Like ObamaCare.
“Golly, I feel lately like my head has gone into a tailspin. But I don’t think mental problems are covered by ObamaCare.”
They’re covered, but they’re at a premium. And don’t go into effect until 2016.
“Oh, rats. But while I was LucidBama, I did shock the nation, didn’t I?”
You sure did, Obama. We certainly were shocked to have elected a sociopath for a President.
“ That’s an insult. I resemble that remark.”
I bet you do, EatingcrowBama. I bet you do.
“Losing is torture.” Nobama, your people say torture is waterboarding.
“That’s silly, I went waterboarding at Disney World with the girls.”
NoBama, those were called water slides. But we can arrange a waterboarding vacation if you like.
“Mmmm. Maybe I’ll give it a try. It can’t be as hard as golf.”
Am still trying to find a hill tall enough to spy “recovery” through my long-range binoculars. Now, we get to deal with inflation, too?! Say it ain’t so!
Keynes never advocated annual budget deficits and an accumulating debt, much less one whose debt approaches annual GDP in a country with a $14,000,000,000,000 economy. So those who call what’s been going on for the past several decades ‘Keynesian’ are engaging in simple misdirection. This includes Krugman, Summers, Geitner and everyone else that calls on Keynes to justify pretending that so basic a concept as a budget constraint does not exist.
Yes we had a debacle, over the decades, we’ve had several. Had we leaders that simply managed responsibly, pulled the Keynes’ card when needed and repaid the debt when the storm passed, that would be Keynesian.
What we have is something entirely different labeled Keynesian by its practicioners so that it has the patina of academic respectability. It is a perversion of Keynes.
I was not a Reagan fan, especially his public finance. But his quote about Washington being “like a baby with a loud noise at one end and no reponsibility at the other” is the most accurate description ever offered about what goes on inside the Beltway.
Robert Fuller
Hopewell, NJ
Keynes prescription for economic crisis management just does not work. FDR bought into the concept of Stimulus and pushed it for years. The result, the economy bounced along the bottom, and unemployment remained high. Obama is and is getting the same result. The effect of taxation was demonstrated by FDR. In 1937 the economy was showing signs of life, when the Payroll TAX was imposed. At that point the economy went comatose and remained so until after the Japanese attack. There are positive examples from JFK, Reagan, Bush Jr. to name just three.
If you take crisis management out of Keynesian theory it becomes pretty standard fare. Keynes is misused and abused because the failure part of his theory is still being applied without regard to the necessity for fiscal integrity.
Spending didn’t work. I know, since spending doesn’t work, printing money will?
The Federal Reserve Board Open Markets Committee is meeting on November 2-3, and is widely expected to announce a second round of “quantitative easing,” dubbed “QE2.” Another term for what the Fed is expected to do is “monetize the debt.” The Fed will buy government debt—primarily Treasury bonds, but possibly also mortgage-backed securities owned by the government—with new money it simply “prints.” There are two major effects of printing more money:
Banks now have cash on their books instead of debt instruments, which allows them to loan more money out.
By printing more money, the Fed lowers the value of the U.S. dollar, causing prices to rise, i.e. inflation.
My suggestion: It’s too late too buy gold. Buy ammo. Call me psychic or clairvoyant?
The FED (Federal Reserve Bank) is neither federal, nor do they harbor any reserves. It is a private corporation that “lends” money to our government
at an interest rate. Which is where all your income tax money goes…to service the INTEREST on the national debt. Nowhere else. Not for roads or bridges or anything that would benefit We The People. GET IT? Oh. you don’t? Read some more.
The value of the dollar has declined by over 90 percent since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Did the Fed really cause this loss of savings, insurance policies, retirement funds, and purchasing power? The answer, emphatically, is that with the cooperation of government, the Fed has indeed destroyed the dollar’s value.
In January 1993, National Geographic magazine published an article entitled “The Power of Money.” Written by Associated Editor Peter T. White, it presented a very clear explanation of how the Fed operates. White asked a Fed official where the organization had obtained $100 million it had just used to purchase some securities. “We created it,” said the Fed employee. “It’s money that didn’t exist before.” He matter-of-factly admitted that no limit existed on the Fed’s ability to create money out of nothing. In 2006, China and Hong Kong accounted for more than 50 percent of the increase in the amount of Treasury debt sold to the public.
In 2008, their share had fallen to 22 percent as the U.S. government increased its public debt by a record $1.2 trillion. In the first half of 2009, China and Hong Kong acquired only 9 percent of the more than $800 billion worth of Treasury bonds that were sold.And in June 2009, China became a net SELLER of U.S. Treasury notes and bonds! Today, China won’t buy anymore of our Treasury notes and bonds. That’s why we have to.
Some leaders (including both candidates and elected officials) are now advocating state nullification as a constitutional solution – that a state has the right to declare a federal law unconstitutional, thereby nullifying that law. State nullification certainly sounds like a silver bullet – a proverbial wooden stake that can be driven through the heart of what many see as a growing federal monster.
But did the Founding Fathers – the Framers of our government – give states the constitutional power to nullify federal laws? Several elected officials have asked us that very question, and it is certainly one that is within our purview of research. After all, our Constitution exists to “present Americans forgotten heroes and history, with an emphasis on our religious, moral, and constitutional heritage.”
this website is very good, you can go and see it===ashops.us===
Worst of all is that we know what does work and they won’t do it. The bone from 1920 on the Marxhal plan for post-WWII Europe. the Kennady tax cuts and the Reagan recovery from Carter to kname but a few. That rock solid money is the first step is the the thimg that seems to send liberals fleeing like vampires before sunlight.
Worst of all is that we know what does work and they won’t do it. The boom from 1920 on. the Marshal plan for post-WWII Europe, the Kennidy tax cuts and the Reagan recovery from Carter to kname but a few. That rock solid money is the first step is the the thing that seems to send liberals fleeing like vampires before sunlight.
Worst of all is that we know what does work and they won’t do it. The boom from 1920 on, the Marshal plan for post-WWII Europe, the Kennidy tax cuts and the Reagan recovery from Carter to name but a few. That rock solid money is the first step is the the thing that seems to send liberals fleeing like vampires before sunlight.
I have a better ‘description’: Marxism.
Or better understood as “non representative government/”
Let me add one piece of information: Why is Germany doing better than the US at the moment?
Our Governement does nothing. By doing nothing, they do not harm the economy. The growth could be even stronger if the governement would cut taxes and regulations, but by the simple virtue of doing nothing they do not harm business, which can grow.
The US Governement created a lot of new regulations and costs to business which does a lot of harm and hinders business, and prevents new jobs from being created.
No stimulus, no printing of money can change that. You want jobs? Cut taxes, cut regulations, cut the costs of doing business. Its as simple as that. Or at least, do no harm.
“Collective Lunacy: Obama/Bernanke Can’t Learn Econ Lessons
What other description fits when our leaders insist on doing more of what hasn’t worked?”
Very poignant question—and a naive, uneducated answer. That ‘what hasn’t worked’, indeed has caused untold damage, is *precisely* why they want to do it more. I have pointed this out before. It doesn’t take a great level of IQ beyond that of ‘moron’ level to understand that Keynesian/Socialist economics does not work, and can *not* possibly work. My guess is that if you become a President by tricking an entire nation into believing you are what you are not, you have to have at least an ‘average’ level of IQ. Does Obama and even Barnanke *know* that what they have been consistently doing is actively *destructive* to the economy and the Republic in general? You BETCH’YA. Why they are doing it? You think there is a contradiction there? NO. Obama (i don’t know much about Barnanke’s background) is a classical Leftist whose primary concern is to enslave the masses and NOT lift them out of misery and set them free to live and prosper, for the latter would be counter-productive to the former. Ergo, he, and every Leftist in the history of mankind has done *precisely* what Obama is doing. And they have been doing it knowingly. And given their goal, there is no contradiction. Evidence speaks oodles in favor of this theory, *and* there have been several ocassions when Leftists of all stripes and colors have let it slip what exactly it is that they are after. Not paying attention to the evidence, not paying attention to historical testimony, *and* not paying attention to simple rules of reasoning has been the forte of the observers from the Right, instead. In the strict sense of the words, it is *these* who are exhibiting the primary sign of lunacy —inability reach inescapable conclusions starting from real evidence. Obama is not a lunatic — he is a trained and seasoned Leftist sociopath. And so has been every single Leftist leader and/or intellectual in history. If we fail to recognize it, it is our own heads that we should have treated.
Well I for one am interested in seeing examples of the “slips” to which you refer.
Obviously, the longer this goes on, the more likely it is that they’re screwing up on purpose.
Their liberal college history classes say that it has worked in the past.
Millions, Billions, Trillions? Oh, My!
What comes next after trillions? Quadrillions? Humungozillions?
Does it matter?
Good old Everett Dirksen, Republican senator and minority leader from Illinois in the 1960′s, is most remembered and credited today for his semi-tongue-in-cheek reflection that, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
That cynical reference to the uninhibited spending of LBJ’s Democrats during the “Great Society,” which proved to be not so great and which in fact devolved into an economic disaster, is today fiscally as antiquated as high-button shoes have been for a century. In 2010, Dirksen would probably scratch his hoary, grey head and gasp, “Trillions?”
That’s the number politicians speak of today as if it’s simply the logical, economic extension of millions and Dirksen’s billions. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published an article under Real Time Economics titled, “Number of the Week: 10.2 Trillion in Global Borrowing” which, in gross understatement, concluded, ”It’s easy to see that the risk of serious financial trouble is growing:” http://tiny.cc/rmda9
Excuse me? “Serious financial trouble?” Ya think?
Is that in any way translatable for the ignorant masses, us hoi polloi, as meaning, “We’re in deep sh*t?” That the WSJ is well aware of that deep sh*t . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=2560)
the way i see it, we are in deep doodoo. trying to play around the kenyan will only cause
us to sink deeper, which i have come to believe was the plan all along.
however, there is a trump card that can be played, if the American people have the guts
to really save their country. it’s called a subpoena. call him out. find out what he is hiding
in all those millions of our tax $$$ of hidden deceit.
expect to be called names. that’s part of their game. you will be called crazy, and a million other names.
if you listen, then you deserve what is coming.
this african is not our president. if this was a doctor who refused to show his credentials, would he be allowed to practice? or a lawyer? or a dentist?
he is a fraud. folks don’t have fake papers when they have the real deal. if we let him continue,
he will destroy us all. all it takes to turn this around is a subpoena, and the guts to follow through.
what will it cost, being called names? yeah, i’m in. are you?
In Florida, Even P.T. Barnum Would Be Ashamed Of Our “Big” Banks
http://www.practicalstate.com/?p=3229
Cheers
It’s a SERIOUS mistake to attribute government policies (of the left or right, progressives, conservatives, whatever labels you choose) to ‘lack of learning ability’.
US government policies at present are achieving EXACTLY what is intended… by those who control the visible operations of government. It doesn’t matter what rationale is mouthed (or even believed) by the puppets. Some understand, some are just useful idiots. Here is the ultimate purpose, in the words of the Elites:
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” – Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” – Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.” – Professor Maurice King
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.” – Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit
“Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.” – Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.” – Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” – Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
“The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.” – Sir James Lovelock, BBC Interview
“My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.” -Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” – Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor
“… the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion.” – Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind
“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” – Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund
“I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.” – John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.” – Christopher Manes, Earth First!
Forget about Republican vs Democrats, Left vs Right, Conservatives vs Democrats, etc. Those are all artificially constructed distractions, maintained in order to obscure the single question of any importance.
Which is- are you going to let them kill you, or are you going to do whatever it takes to stop them, now and for ever?
It’s the People vs Elites. Freedom vs Serfdom. Always has been and always will be, until the world has an economic system that disconnects political power from the vastly wealthy.