I listened to the President's speech today with dismay. So did every other market participant.
Clearly, the president is only interested in being re-elected, and has no interest in finance, mathematics, or economics (but he does seem to like to quote Warren Buffet... I am sick of Buffet-philes). The U.S. cannot tax its way out of this problem.
IF the U.S. were to increase the government's revenues as percentage of GDP, net revenues will decline.
Does anybody not get that? That is, besides the "professional Left"?
The U.S. government has become a parasite on the world economy according to Vladimir Putin, current Prime Minister of Russia... unfortunately, the U.S. government has become a parasite on its own people. The parasite has to be scaled back, one way or another...
The dereliction of duty by the professional Left is simply a disgrace. So many of our "best and brightest" have taken leave of their faculties and have taken refuge in the balkanization of the Web, associating only with those that tow the party line... and allowing a few very twisted "experts" to do their thinking for them.
Keynesianism has failed humanity and much of humanity refuses to do the math because it doesn't comport with their belief systems... data be damned.
I wish I could add something to this, but you seem to have covered everything quite succinctly.
ReplyDeleteThese people are insane Greg
ReplyDeleteAfter the Golfer in Chief started threatening to hold checks, even though it was a hollow threat, I noticed a dramatic turn in several anonymous internet posters on several different sites. People who had tag lines promoting the Constitution now scream for the rich to pay more. Those who proclaimed to be self sufficient a year ago are now crying about jet planes and capital gains like they even know what those are.
The government milk hose runs everywhere and turning it off is gonna cause bloodshed. I see it now more clearly than I ever guessed before.
Several other Facebook friends of mine castigate me any time I post anything that sounds anti-Keynesian in any way. All over the Web in the Boston area anyway, I see all kinds of people that simply think we can tax our way out of this. (Well, they also advise cutting and running from the wars too, so in that, they might enable the govt. to back away from the red ink *a little bit*, but of course, most of all that expenditure and debt is already water over the dam as well.)
ReplyDeleteIn general, however, there really isn't anything else to be done except stand back as far as possible. One only need watch every economic and political article published online in both major Boston newspapers. Said articles immediately generate hundreds of reader comments, half screaming from the left, the other screaming from the right. But really, at this late moment, what's the point?
Ten years ago, as I saw Peak Oil and in general, Peak Consumption, raise their ugly heads above the horizon, I held out some hope that the US citizenry still had some special quality in them, that would allow them to come together when things got tough. Then came 9/11 and I watched as we entered Afghanistan to get the evil OBL, and I supported that mission, in that I gave it a year or so. Then, in the mean time, Bush et al entered Iraq, the way they had been secretly planning to, ever since the 2000 election was over and on that, I stood with the best liberals such as Richard Heinberg, aghast at the useless expenditures and debt quickly piling up in a failed bid to keep oil prices down and copious amounts of oil flowing. (Yeah, maybe we haven't even seen the "peak" in production yet. But what's happened to prices and availability of abundant amounts of "cheap" oil has been enough to slay the US, coupled with the US' hearty appetite for spending and debt, just the same.)
Ever since 2003 it, of course, has been one travesty of errors and thievery after another, all while the populace slept walked from one crisis to another, electing one side to power, then the other, and back to the first side.
There is no hope really. Somebody recently told me we "can do it. - We put a man on the moon.....blah, blah..." ! Oh please! That nation exists only in history books at this point. A critical mass of us are as lazy and squishy soft as they come and they will hinder this country to the point of paralysis as we have just seen.
We (I!) must get over it. We had our chance and it is gone. America the Soft, Stupid, and Squishy, is falling flat on its butt (and flat on its empty wallet.)
I suppose it's because I've lived a pretty good life where the good guys always seemed to win, but I am having some trouble accepting the fact that - slowly - but surely it seems - all the worst prognostications for our country and society have slowly been materializing at least, so far. True, there are no zombies in the streets yet, and the grid power is still on, but until the momentum of the economic and social situation changes, these other, ugly manifestations seem to be only a matter of time.
Perhaps I'm a fool for saying this, and more so for speaking about it out loud, but it's scary how quickly it seems that we have become the wise, old men of our childhoods, when we were only the children a decade or two ago ourselves. - Only now we experience what it is like - what it was like - for the old men and women that came before us, to KNOW and understand the problems and situations at hand, and yet have nobody listen - or care.
Wow.
I hear you Pioneer.
ReplyDeleteLooking at it all unravel, it's just, wow.
Couldn't we have been right about something *else* other than the undoing of our economic order and country?
This all would have eventually come to pass without the World Trade Center attack, but really, could any of us have foreseen, that morning, how effective and efficient, OBL's deed would be, at hastening the bankrupting of this country (and shredding its Constitution as well?)
ReplyDeleteIt's like what Reagan did to hasten the end of the USSR.
kollapsnik too, was all over this.
Okay, I'm going to work up some wood. Enough of this.
We just had a crisis leading to legislation that increased the debt celing and simoutanously cut the deficit. Except no cuts got made. I think the whole crisis was manufactured to ram through the super Congress.
ReplyDelete