Immune to hypocrisy, history and anti-trust: the Government
It's hilarious that Tim Geithner can get up and say that some business like AIG is "too big to fail" and convince lawmakers to bail out the preferred business/industry of the day. Businesses becoming too big to fail used to be called control of the market, and subject to the anti-trust laws that mandated their separation. Not central banks of course, but those 'other industries'
such as telephones in 1982. That these companies got so large that they became 'too big to fail' seems, as well, like a failure on the part of government to adequately enforce the already existing anti-trust laws. The government's monopoly over the money supply is beyond question, but when other countries point out the obvious and don't want to keep financing Uncle Sam's perpetual debts, Geithner can talk about a global currency in one breath, saying both that he'd oppose it
but telling others he'd support it.
Such is the madness, the Washington circus.
Labels: bailout, Economics, fiat money, obama
Why Bush is a failure
This small little drudge snippet says so much by saying so little. I wonder whether the White House has the courage to ask why its own party defected on an issue critical to Bush by a 2-1 majority? I doubt they do. And yet, never could it be clearer that the priorities of this President are irrelevant even to those who are his 'friends.' Indeed, I wonder whether this lame-duck President has any chits to cash with this Congress, whom he strong-armed into a bogus Prescription Drug Benefit, has drug through a now unpopular occupation and has demonstrated almost zero leadership in sustaining public support for, and has directly gone against the interests of most of his own caucus in proposing amnesty for illegal aliens. The Democrats since 2004 have been exceptionally well disciplined and well-organized, but that's only half of this President's problems, for his biggest problem is himself. And the lack of leadership from Bush, especially on any issue important to his base, is critical to this. Would that Bush extended half the energy he has to this bailout to gut the millions of federal dollars given to Planned Parenthood. Or an iota of this effort to real border security. If only his administration had a tenth of the attention to an exploding federal budget as he does to a bailout that helps such a fraction of the American people. No, we couldn't get any of that kind of leadership from George no matter how much we, his supposed friends, and even those who consider themselves "Republicans" begged. I don't know what else to say with a man who treats his 'friends' and his party like this, whose priorities are so out of line. Maybe history, time and an awful McCain/Obama presidency will leave us longing for Bush, but I doubt it.
Labels: bailout, Bush, history, policy, politics
How to win friends and influence enemies: Nancy Pelosi-style
Nancy Pelosi's speech during the bailout is being partially blamed for its defeat. Her speech is idiotic, it's irresponsible. It demonstrates absolutely zero understanding of budgeting, of monetary policy and of economics in general. She launches into these broad statements, never mentioning the real causes of the crisis, nor real solutions. She talks about Clinton surpluses, as though they were indicative of anything but the tech bubble. And in many ways that false wealth created during that time, which later got dumped into the housing market after the tech bubble burst, which later got dumped into commodities after the housing bubble burst, is the real cause of this crisis. We have an inflationary time-bomb of fiat money floating in the system consuming chunks of our economy as we try to keep the lid on inflation by just moving it around and not taking the several years to just cook it off through a painful recovery. It'll either come out through a recession, inflation or both, and yet there's no one willing to admit that there's an appropriate amount of reckoning we need to accept. Possible, real, solutions would include cutting spending/entitlements, lowering corporate and/or capital gains taxes to promote growth or some other pro-growth agenda rather than trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Nothing coming from Washington and the Pelosi crowd even comes close to these two basic principles, and so we're in for quite a ride as this slow-motion train wreck continues. The worst thing they could do is enact some "baulout" or "reforms" that further encourage bad behavior on both the part of lenders and borrowers, and yet that's all they seem intent on doing. Punish the good and reward the bad? As someone else mentioned, welcome to Washington.
Labels: bailout, Economics, policy, politics
Government: Where's the money really going?
Again, government math doesn't add up. A $300 billion dollar bailout of 400,000 homes at risk of foreclosure works out to an average of $750,000 per foreclosure. It just doesn't add up, so where's the extra going? Is it spent on secret defense projects, is it being funneled to prop up other social services? This is the main story of the day on Drudge, and yet the media seems to ignore the most basic question: where's the money really going?
Labels: bailout, budget, fiat money, USG
