President Obama announced a package of tax credits and minor changes to regulatory mandates designed to “restore security to the middle class”. Vice President Biden said they should not be dismissed as trivial.
Mr. Biden rejected criticism that the proposals Mr. Obama was unveiling were relatively small-bore compared with the vast and sweeping measures he pushed during his first year in office. “They’re big-deal things if you’re just able to give some respite for a husband and wife, both working, to give a little bit of help,” Mr. Biden said.
The net effect of these measures will be to let people keep a little more money in their pockets, but it will also increase the deficit by the same modest amount. The gap between what the government spends and what it earns has been increasing over decades. The debt dinosaur has grown to a Godzilla-like proportions. Whatever Biden says, the proposed measures are like a pea-shooter against it.
A friend told me a story that seemed to capture the whole problem with the events of the last decade, trends that have accelerated in Obama’s first year. My friend said that when he was single his apartment was in such a mess that it bred fruit flies. But it didn’t worry him and he continued as before. He figured he had better things to do than concentrate on niggling housekeeping issues. He would focus on the the big picture of his life. Sometime later, he noticed that in addition to the fruit flies, cockroaches had added themselves to his menagerie. Still he didn’t mind. Then one day he found mice running around the premises and that started him cleaning the place out. “It wasn’t the mice I was afraid of, it was what might come next.”
A person concentrating on the bigger issues sometimes concentrates on the mundane only with great reluctance. Eventually the problems accumulate and every visionary eventually acknowledges that he can’t leave the surly bonds of earth altogether. Practical things matter and require attention, like the deficit. Grand new programs can’t be launched in a vacuum. Before you can have the big party in the apartment, the vermin have to be driven out first.
The vermin in this case will take a long time clearing out. Bill Gates says it will take years for America to dig itself out of this mess. But visionaries often lack that patience and it eventually drags them down. Those who ignore this lesson wind up like Hugo Chavez, whose regime Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post describes as being on the verge of collapse. He has been forced to repeatedly devalue the currency, accept regular power outages and is facing the wrath of an increasingly impoverished people. Despite his constant grandstanding and attempts to blame someone else none of Chavez’s visions can save him from the defects he created in the here and now. Diehl writes:
Despite the recovery in oil prices, the Venezuelan economy is deep in recession and continues to sink even as the rest of Latin America recovers. Economists guess inflation could rise to 60 percent in the coming months. Meanwhile, due to a drought, the country is threatened with the shutdown of a hydroelectric plant that supplies 70 percent of its electricity. And Chávez’s failure to invest in new plants means there is no backup. …
The man himself is ranting about the U.S. “occupation” of Haiti; his state television even claimed that the U.S. Navy caused the earthquake using a new secret weapon. On Sunday his government ordered cable networks to drop an opposition-minded television channel.
But Chavez’s approval ratings are still sinking: They’ve dropped to below 50 percent in Venezuela and to 34 percent in the rest of the region. The caudillo has survived a lot of bad news before and may well survive this. But the turning point in the battle between authoritarian populism and liberal democracy in Latin America has passed — and Chávez has lost.
Chavez has lost; unfortunately so has Venezuela. And despite his failures the socialist vision will continue to survive in South America, under the heading ‘maybe next time’. Socialism is possessed by the idea that however many times it has failed in the past, one day it will succeed under the guidance of a more forceful, charismatic leader. You can fly, as Peter Pan taught, if only you think it hard enough.
Can anyone in Washington really believe that? Maybe some did up until the night Scott Brown was elected. Glenn Thrush of Politico quotes Marion Berry as saying that when President Obama was warned that he might provoke a backlash similar to that of 1994 Obama said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’
“I began to preach last January that we had already seen this movie and we didn’t want to see it again because we know how it comes out,” said Arkansas’ 1st District congressman, who worked in the Clinton administration before being elected to the House in 1996… “I just began to have flashbacks to 1993 and ’94. No one that was here in ’94, or at the day after the election felt like. It certainly wasn’t a good feeling.”…
“They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’ We’re going to see how much difference that makes now.”
After the debacle in Massachusetts, it will be interesting to see how much the Administration is content to tinker at the edges or whether it will make a fundamental shift in course.
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Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy. Couldn’t resist.
First link doesn’t point correctly, but it could point here
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/enemies_foreign_domestic/the_populist_twins_joe_an.php
which has got all the video and specifics you;d want,
“House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in response: ‘Americans are asking ‘Where are the jobs?’ But none of the proposals outlined by the White House today would, in fact, create jobs. . . .”
Boehner’s right.
Obama cannot take his fist out of the government funding monkey trap. Every proposal needs to be a give-away of some kind, or an unfunded mandate that someone else pays for (e.g., limits on how much people have to pay back on student loans, affecting banks, or taxpayers?)
Too little, too late. People want jobs, and the only way to get them is for government to get out of the way and let firms compete. But if government gets out of the way, there’s no need for more government, so . . .
Is this it? Is this the beginning of the end?
We are at the beginning (actually several years into) of a secular bear market. A secular bear market is defined by one lasting from 5 to twenty five years…I’m thinking we’re in the quarter century type.
In the beginning there was the word. And the word was ‘subprime.’ When investors spoke the word in 2007, markets quaked. By the autumn of 2008, Lehman Bros. had gone broke and stocks were falling all over the globe.
The end of the beginning came on March 9th, 2009. Stocks had lost about half of their value…a loss of about $25 trillion, worldwide. The first stage was over.
The next stage was the rebound…the bounce. It boosted stock prices everywhere – particularly in the emerging markets. Worldwide, stocks recovered about half of what they had lost in the first stage.
Now, we are either near the end of the middle stage or at the beginning of the final stage. Last week, it looked like the final stage had begun. The Dow fell 4 out of 5 sessions…with a big drop on Friday, of 216 points.
Fear is back. Oil is trading under $75. Gold dropped $13 on Friday. Proportionally, gold lost less than stocks. At least a few smart investors see gold as a refuge, rather than a threat.
Commentators are providing plenty of ‘reasons’ for the wobbles on Wall Street. The Chinese are tightening credit. Obama is getting tough on the banks. Take your pick. But the noise coming from the financial media merely provides a way for investors to understand what is going on without really understanding at all. On the surface, markets react to the news. But their primary direction is determined by deeper currents.
obama is losing the confidence of the nation. His health care reform plan is a rat’s nest of corruption and confusion. His handling of the wars against the Iraqis and the Afghans is a disgraceful mixture of claptrap and cupidity. And his treatment of the banks is one half publicity stunt and the other half relatively unimportant.
Too bad. He seems like a likeable fellow. He just didn’t realize that he came into the presidency on the downside of the credit cycle. Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. And credit cycles gotta correct . That’s why the stock market – at present – is unfinished business. It is a work in progress. A bear market began at the beginning of the ’00s. It was held off by a final, reckless increase in cash and credit from the feds, following the pseudo recession of 2001. Then, after a spectacular bubble in the financial industry and in residential real estate, the bear market resumed in 2007. In 2009, stock prices reached a temporary bottom and bounced. And now the end stage for the bear market may be beginning.
None of this is obama’s fault. He didn’t create the credit bubble. And he can’t be faulted for not fixing it. It’s not a fixable thing; at least, not by politicians. Markets have to do their work. They have to take prices down to levels where it makes sense – considering the risk of loss – to buy assets again. They have to get rid of the mistakes. They need to punish stupid…arrogant…and imprudent investors. They need to move money from weak hands to strong ones. All of that takes time. Offering the market more phony money only blurs the picture…making the decisions more difficult.
You can’t really fault obama for doing the silly things he has done, either. He’s been too busy to think deeply about how an economy works. That’s why he has advisors. Unfortunately, his financial team is made up of mostly jackasses, fools and opportunists – such as Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner, not necessarily in that order.
Only “Tall Paul” Volcker has any clue what is going on. To his credit, he’s made some brave critiques of the banking industry. He’s probably giving Mr. Obama some decent advice, here and there.
But what can he say? obama is president of all the Americans. He needs to “do something” to make the pain go away. His party is counting on it. The voters demand it.
Mr. Volcker knows you can’t really make the pain of a correction go away. It has to run its course. It has to do its job. All you can do is to try to control the banks so it doesn’t cost so much to bail them out.
Mr. Volcker may also realize that feds are only making things worse – with their bailouts, deficits, subsidies, and boondoggle spending. But so what? Fish gotta swim, remember. Democratic governments gotta play to the voters. And the voters want solutions! They want leadership! They’d rather have a bunkum, harmful solution than no solution at all.
And that’s what they’ve got.
Thanks Bill Bonner for the words.
Wrechard, your description of Chavez blaming the US until the bitter end reminds me of this latest piece by James Carville, blaming Bush until the bitter end…
Obama Needs to Blame Bush More
Come to think of it, Carville would fit right in as chancellor in the Chavez regime.
‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’
Yeah, and we’re so lucky, aren’t we?
How much more proof is needed that this man is a narcissist of the first order?
Scott Brown through a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch, or at least her husband, and now she is melting. Maybe somebody will throw a bucket at Chavez.
There was a medieval allegory I once read about a scholar who wrote advocating justification by works and disparaging faith. He worked assiduously and alone. One day he died but he did not notice it and continued to write just as he did before. Slowly his house crumbled and everything around him vanished and was replaced by a desert but he did not notice as he continued to write on the same theme. Eventually demons came and took him away.
Obama is like that lost soul. He has destroyed himself and does not know it. He will continue going through the motios until someone turns off the lights and leads him away. Perhaps a message will be fed onto his teleprompter, “It’s over.” Many of the Democrats seem disconnected from reality. They cannot tell the difference between the real world and the Model UN they once attended. Maybe back then the sex was better but now the food is.
One example of how life under an authoritarian regime can make life uncertain, brutish, and short.
The middle class is the ultimate killer of socialism. Something apparently not lost on Mr. Obama. Hugo Chavez has removed police protection from middle class neighborhoods in Caracas. One result is “express kidnappings.” You pull up to your house or apartment and gunmen drag you out of your car, call all the numbers on your cell phone and give your contact list a few hours to come up with $20,000 or so. If they don’t you get a bullet in the head and sometimes even when they do. Many suspect that the kidnappers/murderers are members of the police force.
Caracas has the highest murder rate in the world – more than 2x higher than second place city.
Obama is the tail of the snake. This article from City Journal has crystallized my thinking about the location of the head of the snake that threatens to swallow our Republic.
Trust in me
Hmmm,……
Habu,
None of this is Obama’s fault. He didn’t create the credit bubble.
Maybe not but he was present at the creation. One of the few things in his life that resembled the world of work was when he was listed as “of counsel” on behalf of Acorn when they sued Citicorp to force the issuance of subprime mortgages under the CRA.
Peter Boston,
Thank you for the City Journal link. That is why I advocate disqualifying most people who receive the majority of their income from either the State or Federal levels of government from voting at that level. BTW, did you leave out “nasty” from the list?
Come to think of it I may have gotten the medieval allegory backwards, faith and works. No edit offered to fix the typos there.
Obama’s student loan proposal is a perfect example of how something that sounds good and populist on paper will be catastrophic in practice.
Of course there is a real problem with student loans; many young people are saddled with ridiculous debts for degrees that for which the benefits were vastly overstated.
Obama’s proposal is to limit yearly payments to 10% of yearly income for all, and then to write off the debt completely after 10 years for those in public service and after 20 years for everyone else. Sounds good, right?
Here’s an example in practice, and one that is typical for a lot of young professionals: I know a recent graduate who has a student loan balance of approx. $180,000 – high, but not that unusual for law school and med school grads today.
He’s landed a pretty good job paying about $80k per year – not bad in this economy. Under this new proposal, his debt payments would be limitied to $8k per year. (10% of his income) Here’s the rub – assume a 5% rate of interest, and the accumulated interest on $180K is $9k per year! Which means that at the end of the year his balance will have increased, not decreased! And unless he gets a huge raise sometime soon (unlikely) then this will be true every year. Under the new plan, there’s no need to worry because after paying 10% of his income for 20 years (hey, it pays to take a year off and go surfing, doesn’t it?) then the balance, which by then will be well over $200k, will just be written off as a bad loan by the lender. (which by then will almost certainly be the US government)
That turns almost every loan into a guaranteed major loss at some point, while incentivising everyone to borrow as much as they possibly can. Since you can’t go over your 10% income limit in payments no matter what, and since you have a guaranteed write off date with no recourse to you, why not? After you hit a certain amount, all the money from then on will be essentially free.
Politically, it looks attractive. Financially, it’s a disaster. No one will loan money under those terms, so the business will become 100% government financed. And with the write off provisions, it will be transformed from a loan program into a vast entitlement program with universities as the biggest benificiaries of the largesse.
And despite his failures the socialist vision will continue to survive in South America, under the heading ‘maybe next time’. Socialism is possessed by the idea that however many times it has failed in the past, one day it will succeed under the guidance of a more forceful, charismatic leader. You can fly, as Peter Pan taught, if only you think it hard enough.
Socialism is the Chicago Cubs of political economic theories. The sometimes lovable loser, that makes squishy hearts and minds mewl “Wait til next year”, nobody is alive that last saw it succeed on a World serious level.
That doesn’t stop the Gramscian crowd from fiddling with yet another version and blaming it on tomorrow’s “Bartman”, when the hopes fade yet again, one more time….hoping beyond hope, wishing beyond wish, that THIS time…fate will smile upon them, luck will descend upon them, the gods will be kind.
So blindly they still keep coming, utopian daydreamers meld with anarchist provocateurs and authoritarian despots to build the double play combination of Tinker Forever to Chance.
The Economy IS quite fixable. We have plenty of evidence of what did not work (New Deal, WIN buttons, Wage-price controls, Malaise, sweaters, thermostats at 68, etc.) We have plenty of evidence of what did work (WWII, Reagan).
The following are required to fix a broken economy:
1. Lower taxes relating to business activity and job creation.
2. Lower regulation relating to business activity and job creation.
3. CHEAP OIL NOW!
4. Military Spending to pump up employment.
Even in the low-mechanized era of the New Deal, things like Hoover Dam, the TVA, etc. did not soak up much labor or stimulate capital investment in employment. By contrast, the Higgins Boat Factory in New Orleans ALONE had nearly the entire City employed by three factories running 24/7 (triple shifts). Along with on-site day care, schools, etc.
Reagan’s military spending meant that shipyards, airplane factories, and tank factories ran at full bore, employing direct and indirectly millions. In fact, in 1984 we hit the post-War record for new jobs created: 4.5 million! This is because military spending on ships, planes, tanks, etc is very labor intensive. With high paying jobs.
You have to have all four to make it work though. And cheap oil as a practical matter means short-term leaning on the Saudis to increase production, and likely invading Venezuela to topple Chavez and bring production back up in three years. From what it is now.
This means leveling with people. No fantasy of “green” energy, unicorns, rainbows, and what Ace of Spades calls “Captain BS” admiring himself some new Age god in the mirror. Instead, admitting that the US AND THE WORLD run on cheap oil, and that means intervening where the US can to increase world production, and the slow, decades long process of home production. It means being in bed with the Saudis, but leaning on them to, and making them need and fear us. It means intimidating or removing Iran’s regime to keep the Persian gulf oil flowing. It means a whacking HUGE navy, and air force, to intimidate where possible and destroy where required enemies to world cheap oil.
It means a foreign policy focused on generating reasonable fear and respect, not “love and approval” of neutral, allied, and enemy regimes. Fear that is measured, ala enemy/neutral regimes can avoid punishment by simply not threatening cheap oil or US national security.
It means no crusades for justice, peace in our time, transformation of either the democracy or trans-national UNtopia kind. Just honest and straightforward application of US military and economic power to get what it needs: CHEAP OIL.
Imagine Gas at $1 a gallon for a decade. How much money it will put in pockets. And yeah, it will spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and a lot else besides. Pick your poison — the politics of scarcity and a brutal struggle between identity and racial groups for the biggest slices of ever-declining pies (by excluding everyone else) or rising wealth that mitigates racial-identity tensions.
Already the NYT Liberals are calling for 3-4 million Haitians to be let into the US, saying they have a “right” to be here and get welfare, and to fail to do so means you are a “racist.” In a time when many White Male Americans are out of a job or afraid of losing theirs (Sam’s Club is laying off around 17K today), this is likely only to make things worse. Nobody will say, “No I’m not racist, etc.” The struggling/fearful White Male will say, “Yeah I’m a racist, the words mean nothing. I want MY GROUP to advance and hell with everyone else.”
In fact, the Obama line (let’s take about half of Haiti into the US) suggests he is doubling down on accusations of racism, color-line identity politics, and a “screw the White middle class” agenda.
In my neck of the woods there’s been talk recently about what is being called Coach Nick Saban’s ‘Process’. It’s just a buzz word for some to describe his style of coaching, but from what I understand, ‘Grind’ is a better description. The gist is simple: Be process oriented in your goals, not results oriented. If you follow the process, the results will take care of themselves.
Saban and Alabama’s success has caused a lot of people to look closer at what this means and how it works. (Even Bob Stoops spent some time in Tuscaloosa watching practices to learn more.) I’ve been trying to think of how Saban’s ‘Process’ or ‘Grind’ could be applied to politics in my very deep red state that still has a Democrat controlled House and Senate.
There’s good advice for conservatives in Washington in there somewhere. I think it has something to do with forgetting all about the 2010 elections. Focus on the small things and the specific issues. Individual members of Congress need to educate themselves about the issues, and particularly what is wrong (when applicable) with proposals coming from the White House or Democrat leadership. Then hammer away at it. Explain why they’re wrong. Get technical if you have to. Grind it out. The results will take care of themselves.
Oh… and Roll Tide!
“It wasn’t the mice I was afraid of, it was what might come next.”
I have personal experience with this; what comes next is black snakes. Seriously.
wws,
Nice description of the effects of the proposed student loan/delayed grant program. There will be a couple of other results that come to mind;
1. It is another disincentive to joining the military. Why bother when you get more money and faster promotions for just becoming a government civilian clerk? If you just wait the debt vanishes anyway.
2. Campuses will be littered with permanent students in their 40s or 50s. Young women will be pursued by them and young men will become very unhappy. We can ask whiskey to delve deeper into this topic. This will be another step on the path of europeanizing America.
Salt Lick,
what comes next is black snakes
Raaaaacist.
First of all – I do think that is good advice, Urban. One of the best grind-it-out political tactics is to build strong, local grass roots political organizations that can contest the local races – county sherrif, DA, county judge. Then move up to the higher offices.
But there’s also a flaw in Saban’s model which makes adapting it to any other venue dangerous. It only works when there is absolutely no doubt about what basic policies need to be followed, and also no doubt about the ability of the person in charge of implementing the program.
Now for a man like Saban working on his specific area of expertise, there certainly is no doubt that he knows what basics need to be applied and that he’s the man to do it.
But what about areas in which there’s no common agreement on how to approach the problem, and no one person of authority in charge? This is when you *have* to measure results or else you risk spending years on a completely wrong track. Businesses are as prone to this as anyone; the fastest way to go bankrupt is to set policies according to what someone *thinks* will succeed and stick to them rather than to what actually *does* succeed in the real world.
So some balance of the two methods is called for.
Whiskey
“4. Military Spending to pump up employment.”
that means you need to have remnent conflicts ignified somewhere on the planet to sell arms, it’s a never ending circus, that Eisenhower warned would happen
Urban B (14) wrote some very good advice.
It reminded me of when I was starting out in my profession. I began to concentrate on results, income distribution of such, etc. and found myself floundering. One of the greyer-haired veterans took me aside and advised me to concentrate on basics.
The gist of what he told me was ‘do this job well each day, concentrate on that and the money will take care of itself’. He was right. To the extent I have or not focused on the task at hand, so have my work related issues risen and fallen. When political events seemed threatening I now know that the right response was often to ignore that and focus on my craft.
I think the Obamans keep chasing the rainbow. Giving cheap perks to the middle class is the most crass and tawdry of political maneuvers. Give them all a new Buick. Bread and circuses.
We need a steady hand at the wheel and I have a strange feeling that we are seeing panic. I dont feel comfortable with a new initiative every day. These guys need to slow down and stop watching the polls. They dont need political advisors they need to get rid of them.
We are now in the hands of a hurt, rejected narcissist. Give him an Ambien and put him to bed for the next 3 years. Those of us still working can make what needs to happen if given the chance.
Spindok
Chavez in Venezuela should be able to survive on oil income, same as our friends the Saudis.
18) Marie,
Not at all – there is PLENTY of modernization that could be done for the U.S. military.
Cause and effect- I have heard many calls for term limits but no one coupled these with eliminating pensions for single terms. So you will actually go deeper in debt replacing all those “one hit wonders” and probably will not get better representation overall. One option is the military model: after 20 years you receive 50% of your highest salary. If you are convicted of any crimes, you lose your pension. I know, following a court martial, but you get the idea. It would certainly curb the corruption if they had a pension to lose, as long as they were not allowed to load the jury.
wretchard writes:
Socialism is possessed by the idea that however many times it has failed in the past, one day it will succeed under the guidance of a more forceful, charismatic leader.
Yes. And what they fail to consider is that even if that day does come, who will succeed that wonderful leader? If the proponents of socialism happen to win the lotto, what are the odds of them winning it two times in a row? Or three? Or four? They’ve spent their philosophical money on the lottery so many times before and they haven’t ever won. But they are sure that if they win that one single time they will win forever after.
They need to go to Las Vegas and test that theory with their own personal fortunes. After its done I would be happy to throw them any spare change I have when they’re begging on the street corners with their “Will Work for Food” signs.
Its like the notion that the best form of government is the wise philosopher king. That may well be, but what happens when he dies? The history of the Roman Emperors may give us a clue and the image is not pretty. And considering the number of communist regimes that have existed in the 20th century a very good case can be made that the odds of anyone fitting the “benign philosopher king” model is pretty low. And until it is done we don’t even know that it is possible at all; it may be like striving to build a perpetual motion machine.
5. ConfederateH writes:
Come to think of it, Carville would fit right in as chancellor in the Chavez regime.
Yes—they are identical mindsets reflected through different cultural prisms. At the core, without the prisms, they are the same.
8. Peter Boston writes:
The middle class is the ultimate killer of socialism.
Yes and no–an independent middle class is the ultimate killer of socialism. But today a lot of the middle class consists of what I call the “synthetic” middle class–government workers who are paid middle class wages for doing virtually nothing, and absent their status as government workers they would probably sink towards the bottom of the economic pile. If you’ve ever worked for the government you know who I’m talking about.
Unfortunately, the Republicans have been very remiss about this “grind it out” process in recent years … decades.
You have to grind out *something*, you can’t just say “no” even to the stupidest proposals, even if the real answer is just to let the markets take care of themselves.
(unfortunately, the greedheads on wall street have given “markets” a bad name for the next hundred years)
There is a secular “progressivism” that virtually everybody believes in (except for some greens who believe in negative progress back to the caveman), and it’s perfectly fine for Republicans to endorse it as increased productivity, American exceptionalism, etc.
Republicans need to “grind it out” on energy independence, on bringing jobs and manufacturing back to the US, on rationalizing the tax system down to a flat tax, and addressing health care with interestate policies and yes, I’m afraid, some new federal subsidies to cover preexisting conditions and the like.
14) Urban B,
The problem with that is that it’s very easy for people to fall in love with the process, though, and when the results don’t meet expectations, have the pre-determined mindset that it’s not the process that’s at fault. Think welfare and affirmative action as a couple of examples.
that means you need to have remnent conflicts ignified somewhere on the planet to sell arms, it’s a never ending circus, that Eisenhower warned would happen
Yeah, well, Eisenhower never had to worry about a long-term war against the jihadis, and that’s what we’ve got now.
He never really got into the technology ladder one has to keep running up faster than the rungs brake, either, that is an imperative to keep up military spending even in times of peace.
Plus, we’ve learned that developing bleeding edge technology for the military or space programs, spins off benefits for civilians, too. Y’know, like Tang!
@11 indentured servitude is in fashion in O!’s amerika
Marie Claude can always be counted on to retail some threadbare lie which anti-American European bigots love to spread.
American arms sales abroad don’t even exceed $40 billion. Domestic military spending, which excludes exports, is over 15 times that amount, and Obama has repeatedly acted to cut major programs. If America decided to stop exporting arms TODAY, it would cut down on some profits and some jobs, but that $40 billion loss represents less than a day of American production output.
The notion that American relies on fomenting wars abroad to support our economic well being is a wicked lie perpetrated by America’s enemies, and it’s purely designed to denigrate, defame, and misinform. Now why do you always do that, and repeat the sewage your media spoon feeds you, Marie Claude? What’s your goal here?
Name calling and general OT French raving insanity begins in 3… 2… 1…
Josh @24 advocated “bringing jobs and manufacturing back to the US”
Whiskey @13 advocated “Lower regulation relating to business activity and job creation.”
Say it loud, gentlemen! Say it often!
Those two factors are the foundation of what needs to change. Excessive regulation creates delays & uncertainties -> drives investment overseas -> destroys jobs -> reduces tax revenues -> shakes all the government Ponzi schemes -> tears before bedtime.
Excessive regulation is the weak link in Big Government liberalism. That is where the constructive attack needs to be focused.
We needed that equipment to fight WWII. As for Reagan’s military buildup, I don’t think we needed as much. While we are still using it up in Iraq and Afghanistan, there hasn’t been much benefit gained other than the downfall of the Taliban and getting Hussein. Also the 20-30 year treasuries from that era still haven’t been paid off yet.
If needless spending is our problem we need to rate our national priorities. Like Defense. How much does it actually cost to defend America from foreign invaders? From air strikes? The number will be far lower than the $901b in the 2010 budget. What to do with all of Whiskey’s surplus munitions? I guess there will always be the temptation to use it.
Gov debt is a drop in the bucket compared to household debt. I think the root of our economic crisis is that we overleveraged ourselves with nothing to show for it. We bought tulips instead of building the internet, nanotech manufacturing, whatever. Fixing that, in part, means controlling the banks.
#11 wws: You forgot to mention that colleges and universities will see this as an opportunity to raise tuition and fees as students will become less price sensitive. Of course, anyone actually using their own money or planning to pay it off will get screwed.
Kinuachdrach:”Excessive regulation is the weak link in Big Government liberalism. That is where the constructive attack needs to be focused.”
Yup. But remember that much of the left derives it’s livelihood from the regulatory process in some way or another, and they will sceam bloody murder relentlessly if you try to cut their toys. Can’t be a pantywaist RINO and moderate those demands. Got to be tough, ready to be labeled as “mean spirited” and steely resolute. It ‘s a gonna tough row to hoe, but it’s gotta be done.
Morton
are the Americans on this board who say that save very thing are anti Americans too ?
you’re saying BS, just to rant against a French, but I know you, nothing fair can come out of your big head
Salt Lick,
“what comes next is black snakes…”
Raaaaacist.
LOTM — What do you take me for, a Copperhead?
Black Snakes and Copperheads are down right cuddly compared to
Saw-Scaled Vipers, which Vector Control will tell you are the real reason you don’t want pogie bait in your hooch.
#28 Morton Doodslag
Ah, it begins. Just to add to your ammunition [pun intended]; Right now [as of the latest figures (2008)], the leading arms exporters in the world are 1) the US, 2) the UK, 3) Russia, 4) France. China is in there somewhere under the US, we cannot tell for sure where because Chinese data is iffy at best. Trends are notable. The US and UK sales are trending downwards. In fact, if it was not for equipping the Iraqi Army, we might not be in first place. And Iraq is not going to be a regular thing. Russia, France, and China are taking over more of the worlds arms sales. France is in the midst of a major sales push into the Middle East, South America, and Asia. In 2008, France sold $9.5 billion in weapons overseas, up 13% over 2007.
Total French defense expenditures were on the order of € 35 billion [roughly $49.5 billion]in 2008. That figure is a total, and one has to assume that at least half of that budget is consumed by personnel and administrative costs. That leaves roughly $25 billion for all purchases of fuel, food, consumables, ammunition, and equipment. Doing a SWAG, let us make the very generous assumption that half of the $25 billion was for ammunition and equipment. $12.5 billion.
That means that French foreign arms sales are about 76% of what they buy for themselves. That would make me think that foreign sales are far more important to the survival of the French arms industry than they are for ours. Oh, one other thing. I believe that much of the French arms industry is owned in whole or in part by the French government. French companies certainly benefit from fairly massive budget subsidies from their government.
It comes out, however; for Europeans, that if the US or UK are selling weapons overseas it is a sin and a crime against humanity. If France, Russia, or China are selling weapons overseas, frequently to be used against the US and the UK; they consider it virtuous and an inalienable right. Something about whose ox is being gored.
#21 exhelodrvr
Agreed. Most of our airlift and aerial refueling assets are worn out and suffering from lack of maintenance and from metal fatigue. I assume our helicopter fleet is in the same shape. Same with the Army’s and Marine’s equipment. Our Navy has been scrapping ships wholesale to afford to keep the CVBG’s operating. We could have several times the economic effect of the $trillions Obama has micturated into the wind, by just bringing our military back up to maintenance and TO & E standards; for a small fraction of the cost. But it would not have helped build the modern American equivalent to the новый советский человек which is the primary goal of our regime.
Subotai Bahadur
Whiskey: In fact, the Obama line (let’s take about half of Haiti into the US) suggests he is doubling down on accusations of racism, color-line identity politics, and a “screw the White middle class” agenda.
I’ll take half of Haiti into the country, so long as for every Haitian I also get one Cuban to balance them. There’s nothing like living under Communist rule to turn you into a good conservative voter.
ah Subotai, good boy, though specify that our arms were/are mostly planes, thus the cost is inherently higher
but you forget to say that since you created Nato for good reasons, Nato countries were obliged to buy american arms, even you pushed the paranoia until to Georgia and the eastern EU republics
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174925 check the links too
Good news. We can now economize by firing all the shrinks in the Belmont Club. I just finished studying an unimpeachable source and learned that there is a fool proof test for sociopathy that uses an MRI of the brain conducted while the patient babbles about their ostensible love life. The display lights up like a pinball machine revealing that none of the emotional centers are in use. A half hour in Bethesda and we should be able to ship Obama off to the happy farm, along with half a dozen from his Cabinet and a quarter of the members of Congress. Who says that time spent watching House, MD is wasted? Now I better get back to 24. Imagine the useful tips on all sorts of topics that may be there.
To be blogged under the title “Tilt.”
http://www.globalissues.org/article/74/the-arms-trade-is-big-business
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R40796.pdf
uh we are at the 6th rank
#39 Marie Claude
Yes, it was mostly planes. They are more expensive, and it one is complaining in the mode of the old “Merchants of Death” mode, how arms sales provoke wars that kill innocent people; the planes are more efficient killing machines.
NATO was created a half century ago, for good reasons at the time. I was citing figures from today [ok, a couple of years ago, which are the latest available]. Tell pray, how much in the way of US weaponry did NATO buy in 2008? Or for that matter in the preceeding decade or two?
We managed to inherit a few nasty things from Europe in the name of interoperability and NATO standardization. I would gladly give back our adoption of your 9mm pistol round, and 5.56mm rifle round. However, as NATO goes into that long night, we will hopefully adopt more effective rounds.
I would not worry overmuch anymore about NATO, or paranoia, however. NATO is on its last legs. Afghanistan is probably going to be the very last time US forces operate in combat alongside forces under a NATO banner before it folds forever. And I expect it is not going to end well, if only because our current regime here does not want to win.
However, I have no doubt that the EU will be able to defend itself from any threats in the world to a level exactly commeasurate with its will to sacrifice to do so.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai, you can turn your words and or sentences in whatever ways you want, there are still facts with numbers, and we aren’t the ones that have their whole economy based on arms manufactures
BTW, how many tones of bombs have dropped your planes ?
Nato ain’t going to disappear completely, only its actual form, a bet Nato Europe will survive as EU army
your 9mm pistol round, uh ??? it ain’t french but rather german idem for the rifle
Don’t worry for us, better watch your back, your own fellows, China… will take care of you
All used to pay pay some, now few pay all – How far can this go?
The table above shows that the top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $62,068) earned 67.5 percent of nation’s income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (86 percent). The top 1 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $364,657) earned approximately 21.2 percent of the nation’s income (as defined by AGI), yet paid 39.4 percent of all federal income taxes. That means the top 1 percent of tax returns paid about the same amount of federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95 percent of tax returns.
@44 Marie Le French: we aren’t the ones that have their whole economy based on arms manufactures
US GDP 2008: $14.4 trillion
US Defense Spending 2008: $607 billion
US arms exports, 2007 (latest on Wiki): $7.4 billion
Total defense = $614.4 billion / 14.4 trillion = 4.2% of US economy (and this includes personnel costs, not just “arms,” so the number is much higher than reality)
“Whole economy based on arms manufactures.”
Uh huh.
US GDP by sector: agriculture (0.9%), industry (20.6%), services (78.5%)
Hell, I wish our economy WAS based more on arms manufactures!
wws @11: Financially, it’s a disaster. No one will loan money under those terms, so the business will become 100% government financed.
This seems to be the MO of the Obamatrons. Don’t bother actually nationalizing industries through legislation, because that’s too obvious and the peasants will get angry. Instead, pass a bunch of rules that make non-government competition effectively impossible, and backdoor your way to socialism.
This is just what they are trying to do to the health insurance industry, creating a single payer government system by driving out everybody else. Same ploy now with student loans. What’s next?
Bribery with money that is not only borrowed, but that will never exist.
It would be a neat trick if the Chinese weren’t going to kick that chair once he’s got the rope tight around his neck.
Reminder:
He’s not here to make anything work. He’s here to bring down the system.
Nothing else makes any sense at all.
Whiskey is right. The correct set of fiscal, tax and monetary policies would make a huge difference. Keynesian economics, as practiced by Txhe Joker and his clowns, has been proven not to work. Reagan proved that good policies do work – reduce taxes, reduce regulation, get govt out of the way, increase military spending, massively increase domestic oil exploration, production and refining. Since Clinton, the govt has become increasingly involved in more and more of the economy, ultimately causing the subprime and related housing mess. The FED has been complicit in the expansion of govt involvement in the economy, supplying too much money too cheaply as the primary lubricant for the social policy of expanding home ownership beyond its natural level.
Remove the govt from the economy and remove the uncertainty RISK PREMIUM for new investment introduced by Obama’s direct intervention during the last twelve months in industries comprising almost 60% of US GDP (finance/real estate [30%], healthcare [16%], energy [7%]automotive [4%]). The latter alone severely retards risk capital undertakings by small businesses.
BUT, none of those policies, which are all fundamentally oriented towards facilitating wealth creation, are compatible with the Obama’s wealth REDISTRIBUTION agenda.
Subotai,
I’ve been meaning to ask. How can one obtain the newsletter you once mentioned that you publish?
preterike
that’s an old biquerring, and I got some old archive for your service !
Today the National Security Archive publishes on the World Wide Web sixteen declassified US government documents detailing how US policymakers chose to be “bystanders” during the genocide that decimated Rwanda in 1994.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/press.html (check the different links)
http://www.france24.com/fr/20080926-reporters-rdc-congo-rwanda-rebelles-hutus-massacre-genocide-1994-tutsis-monuc-foret-viols
Remember, your army was there too and did nothing, but the Clinton forbid your army to interven while the UN was indecise and delayed its decisons, the Frenchs, with no precise requests from the UN, stand for protecting the white population. But naturally the Bush administration had obviously interests to put the blame on us, there we go rumors !
So difficult to dicern to who to attribuate the fault, Tutsis were the firt to attack the Hutus and vice versa, and your CIA guis instructed the Tutsis with arms manipulation and supplies, Mr Kagane followed your policy, he was also the first to initiate the genocide by destroying the plane with which the president perished
Subotai @ 43:
Best laugh all day! I used to help run the Reforger and NATO co-exercises in West Germany in the 70′s. The US Nat’l Guard – not too bad, once they got the idea that even war games can kill people. Germans – efficient and fairly deadly. Netherlanders – usually too stoned to be effective. The rest of NATO was ……. dangerous to be around they were so ….. ineffectual.
The Zero is doubling down, but we knew that. The rest of this year is going to be .. interesting. Watching the Dhimmicrats get down and dirty, destroying themselves in the process. It has already started – see this – Rep. Marion Berry’s parting shot.
“It’s all about ME!”
Marie @ 44:
Wrong as usual. Made by Luger for his pistols. 9x19mm Parabellum – parabellum means prepare for war.
so what ?
is ” Luger” french ? never heard of it !
http://www.ima-usa.com/index.php/cPath/14_118
check if the Nato EU are nuts
http://mysoupis.blogspot.com/2009/01/tigers-inthe-sky-nato-comrades-are.html
uh ya don’t need to inflate your ego !
#50 jwillie
My GLEANINGS has been on formal hiatus since last May. I am caring for one of my daughters who is recovering from multiple surgeries [Thankfully, they happened in this country (she saw the Brit NHS while a student in Britain. Think euthanasia.) before Obama and the Democrats destroy our medical system. She would have died under Obamacare.] and I blog instead of doing my email newsletter to handle my “writing Jones”. She is learning to walk again, so there is some hope I will be able to start it up again in a few months.
When I start it up again, I will find some way to let people know and get a throwaway email to contact me to sign up.
Thanks
Subotai Bahadur
54/Subotai. Wish your daughter luck from me. I had to relearn how to walk in my 20′s and my dad was amazing in his ability to comfort me, motivate me, and keep me looking forward.
Did y’all see the photoshop of that mirror photo over at Ace of Spades? Yikes!
Teresita — I think most White middle class voters having a hard time of it fail to see why they should take ANYONE else.
I mean, really, why? Do poor Haitians have a God-given, constitutional right to be in the US?
That’s a debate worth having. If the US is obliged to take in every catastrophically dysfunctional and poor people, while not taking care of its own.
Subotai,
I hope your daughter’s recovery continues to progress. Thanks for your reply.
As a followup to my earlier comment abt the “right” economic policies, this WSJ opinion piece quotes Art Laffer as saying pretty much the same thing, “we “cannot have a prosperous economy when government is overspending, raising tax rates, printing too much money, over-regulating and restricting the free flow of goods and services across national boundaries.” We are, in his words, simply “moving in the wrong direction.”
He goes on to say that due to the tax increases that will occur in 2011 due to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, 2010 will likely borrow 3-4% of GDP growth from 2011. See the link for more.
47, 48, amen!
it’s like your bank signed a security service contract with Willie Sutton and then you learn that not only is Sutton a bank robber but also he happens to personally hate your guts
Le Marie: Remember, your army was there [in Rwanda] too and did nothing, but the Clinton forbid your army to interven while the UN was indecise and delayed its decisons
I don’t recall having brought this up, but since you mention it, let me note that I am not in the least swayed by your attempt to make me feel guilty. I’ll never win any nice guy awards, because my take on Africans killing one other is “who cares.” They can have at each other all they like, it bothers me not one bit.
peterike
but you did try to put the whole mess on us though, I am amazed how lots of people on your side aren’t curious and easily swallow what the MSM tell t’em, especially if it is to demonise the ever concurrent of republic models like we embody one, naturally that african minerals and or oils were are the interest of any western and or chinese involvments there
“4. Military Spending to pump up employment.”
This is just another form of the broken window fallacy. Spend on the military for national security reasons, not as a jobs program. There is too much “jobs programs” pork in the military part of the budget as it is, there are plenty of valid military expenditures to fund.
The other three I agree with.
I’d add, cut total government spending (partially implied by 1 & 2) so the government doesn’t need to either keep increasing the national debt or print excess new money.