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Who Wants Another Bailout?
Friday, October 10th, 2008They’re talking $150 billion or so for state and local governments, plus extra for social welfare programs. They’re calling it an “economic stimulus package.” Because the last one worked so well.
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Good lord, will these people ever get it?
I believe the technical description of the position in which we find ourselves is “fucked.”
Our worthless governatress here in California is among the little girlie men vacillating over whether to beg the bankrupt federal government for a handout.
Maybe we need to refresh the idea of federal debtors’ prison. Let’s incarcerate each congressmoron who voted for the last bill (and who votes for this one) until they raise the money to pay for it. No additional borrowing allowed because they have no credit.
Okay, that’s silly, but don’t these suit-wearing chimps understand that they are broke? They don’t have this money they are being so magnanimous with. This proposal, of itself, is more than sufficient evidence that these people aren’t capable of making financial decisions. There is no way to know for sure, but I have the feeling that part of the upheaval on Wall Street this week is due to people unsure just how crazy Congress is going to go now that it is on a high from finding a new way to spend enormous amounts of money. The news last week that the government was going to be gobbling up a huge chunk of the available capital was bad enough news. Now, it looks like there may be no end in sight. Congress is giving people good reason to panic.
If each one of them who voted for the last scam were to die of a ruptured colon tomorrow (let’s be honest, they are too full of it), I wouldn’t shed a tear. Any net good they have done in their careers has more than been wiped out. Every stroke of their pens hurts this country.
Look at the entry above this one.
State and Local government need more money?
Looks like they could tighten their belts.
With several the states going broke, I wonder if some in the federal government will try to seize operational control over the state governments?
seriously … i feel like we need to do an intervention.
“put the pen down and step away from the spending bill …”
There’s no way the bill gets passed… well, not until there’s an additional 150 billion in pork added. I mean hell, if we’re going to spend THAT much money, why not a highway/park/bridge in every congresspersons honor?
I’ve been hearing numbers of 2 or 3 trillion before its over. My guess is we’ll see these small requests because they are easier to swallow than a horse pill.
Anyone catch Bill Maher last night on HBO? He had the comptroller for financial oversight on at the beginning of the show. Apparently, the debts clock which is over 10 trillion dollars is wrong. This guy says there is 40+ trillion off the books for a total of 50+ trillion dollars. He seemed abit upset and pissed at the same time?
Our president, our senators and our representatives are educated people. How is it that they cannot understand that no one can borrow themselves out of debt?
Every move by the federal government has further depressed the market and spread the depression world wide.
The very best thing the government can do is nothing.
The very worst thing the government can do is continue to interfere.
The free market cannot operate in captivity.
(Since someone else named Ben has posted comments, I’m changing my nom de blog.)
I know that Friedman’s the hero around here, but there was another guy named John Maynard Keynes who, I recall, wrote a bit about economics.
Here’s what one economic commentator for the Financial Times wrote:
Frankly, what we may need right now (or very soon) is deficit spending to keep the economy moving. The problem with the free-market religion (like most religions) is that it prevents one from accepting options outside the religion even when they are necessary.
Ben (too),
The problem with deficit spending to “keep the economy moving” is that it doesn’t really account for where the money comes from. That money is either borrowed or printed. The inflationary problems with printing so much money should be obvious, but people often ignore the borrowing side. When the government sells bonds so that it can spend more, it is diverting money that would be invested elsewhere. So, someone who might be looking to lend his money to a manufacturer or farmer or whomever is instead lending it to the government. Then the government turns around and gives it to someone else. In the first case, the lender decides who gets the money. In the second case, politics decides who gets the money. So, the money was going to be invested/loaned/spent in the economy either way. Arguing for deficit spending is essentially arguing that the government spends money in more productive ways than the private sector. I am unconvinced that politicians are really better at getting the most economic activity for our dollars.
And, of course, when money is routed through Washington, there is all sorts of what could charitably be called “overhead” in the form of bureaucracy and pork. And, at the end, instead of the people who got use of the loan paying the interest on it, as would happen if a business had borrowed it, the taxpayers pay the interest on the bonds and the principle as well.
…
In the broader picture, this is why the problem is overall government spending, more than just deficits. Whenever the government grabs money, either via bonds or via taxation, it is depriving one type of economic activity of the money and redistributing it to another. So, instead of people deciding directly where they want to spend their money or to whom they want to loan it, it is diverted through the government to something politicians prefer. I think the economy does better when people have a direct choice in which transactions are best, rather than when those choices are made indirectly through the political process.
The 2008 presidential election is all but over. Obama will be the winner over an opponent that found it difficult to even get out of bed in the morning. McCain bit off more than he could chew by opposing a much younger and more talented contender. The American public is soon going to get a rare treat as they watch a relatively unknown personality take the job as leader of the most powerful nation on Earth. The economy is in shambles and his task will be huge. But with his youthful vigour we will be watching a new and creative approach for getting our nation back on course. With the election of the most liberal senator in Congress we can expect positive changes in the way Americans view one another. An organization called Unity House will soon be lobbying for the job of bringing the nation under one roof. Once approved and funded by Congress one million educators will spread out with the task of unifying the nation under the flag of unity. This will be done by the knocking on every door by groups of socially diversified educators. They will be spreading the word that we are all brothers and sisters that must learn to love one another. There will be those that will be angry as he dismantles a cold war system that is costing the taxpayers over a trillion dollars each year, but he will succeed. Our nation will then see millions of new jobs created as our intra–structure and education system is rebuilt to meet the needs of the 21 century. Obama has not been harnessed by greedy insiders and will be free to pursue his childhood dream of making the world and the nation a better place to live in.
It is wrong to blame government deregulation policies for causing the recession when the government was responsible for making the laws that regulated the lending policies of the banking industry. They permitted banks to lend without a credit check or down payment on mortgages, and stood idly by as predatory lenders reaped a harvest. This was not letting free market forces rule but only giving special interests the freedom to rip off potential home owners.