From Stark
In the Washington Post, Ezra Klein has a thought-provoking column today reminding us that governments can have only limited impact on the state of the economy.
That has become painfully obvious this week, after the U.S. government more or less resolved the “crisis” that resulted from its own debt ceiling rules. Stock markets responded with a scary selloff that is continuing today, Aug. 4.
Governments here and abroad have no quick fixes for the fundamental problem of this economy: The prosperity that peaked in 2006-2007 was based on borrowed money. Money was borrowed and lent on the assumption that there was no limit to the rise in real estate prices. When that foolish assumption became demostrably false, there was a crash. Household mortgages were under water, banks had books full of bad loans, and the big financial firms were stuck with all kinds of complex instruments that multiplied their losses.
Now everyone is retrenching. Lenders have less to lend and are more cautious with what they do have. Consumers are (rightly) cautious about borrowing and spending.
The economy needs some real productivity to replace the collapsed economy based on borrowing and consumption. Eventually, we hope, entrepreneurs will provide that. But it won’t happen fast.
Here’s another good summary of the current situation from Fox.
Over at the Seattle Times, Jon Talton is always worth a read too.
Here, prominent conservative David Frum, on his blog FrumForum, suggests that events are proving that Paul Krugman, not the Wall Street Journal editorial page, has been proved right about the economy.
Wow – when even a former speechwriter for GW Bush who helped concoct the lies that got us into the wars that wrecked the economy comes out for a liberal economist, then the Tea Party cannot be far behind.
A quote from Frum’s biography on Wikipedia: “Frum was “one of the most vociferous voices . . . calling for war in Iraq,” and “wrote in 2003 about the Iraqis ‘welcoming their liberators.”
“When liberal economist/Princeton professor/New York Times columnist Paul Krugman speaks, his words are immediately incorporated into the left-wing body politick. Liberals use Krugman to fashion phony talking points by the dozens, and the bigger the Krugman lie, the better. Here are a few of the latest Krugman lies being consumed and regurgiated whole by liberals:
Obama is a conservative.
It’s hard to stop laughing long enough to take this Krugman argument seriously…
Obama is pursuing a path of fiscal austerity.
…One would have to be almost mentally challenged to believe we have entered a period of fiscal austerity…
http://www.ohiomm.com/blogs/da_kings_men/2011/08/04/the-big-lies-of-paul-krugman/
Frum can’t be right about everything, don’t ya know!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“Treasury bond yields are plunging to levels seen in the 1950s on concern the two-year recovery in the world’s largest economy is stalling.
Yields on benchmark 10-year U.S. notes are about 4.3 percentage points below the average over the past 49 years and almost where they were when President Dwight D. Eisenhower began his administration in 1953….
“To a great extent this is all a function of weak dollar policy and also a function of slowing U.S. fundamentals,” Schlossberg said in a telephone interview. “The market needs to perceive that the U.S. has an inkling of growth.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-04/treasury-yields-evoke-eisenhower-era-on-concern-global-economy-is-stalling.html
There is a way out of this and it’s starts with private sector growth that creates (tax paying) jobs!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Don’t trouble your little head, AFY. You’ll never understand. It’s “nuanced.”
Unlike that unfathomable conundrum, which came first, the chicken or the egg; economics is a little simpler.
Demand comes first.
When they quit taking peoples jobs, homes and savings, maybe they’ll have some money and entrepreneurs will have a reason to hire people and make stuff.
As long as they can get a permit and still have any $$ left to pay the impact fees too!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“Why the Jobs Situation Is Worse Than It Looks
We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression….
The Great Recession has now earned the dubious right of being compared to the Great Depression. In the face of the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policies in our history, we have experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000….
Gluskin Sheff’s Rosenberg captured it perfectly: We may well be in the midst of a “modern depression.”
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2011/06/20/why-the-jobs-situation-is-worse-than-it-looks?PageNr=1
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Our political leadership in both Congress and the White House will surely bear the political costs of a failure to work out short- and long-term programs to fix the job shortage. The stakes are too high to play political games.
This nails it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdn3O6aaMNc&feature=player_embedded
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Did anyone feel like this today?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4hfdaC7eL4&feature=player_embedded
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
What’s your tax rate AFY? Do you even pay any income tax? This country is being taken down by greedy elites who contribute nothing and the tea banging fools who enable them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/irs-incomes_n_918458.html
I’s be in the 53.6% who pay income tax, I’s have skin in the game, do you?
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/federal-taxes-households.cfm
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Krugman isn’t the only person who thinks Obama has turned out to be a moderate conservative republican in sheep’s clothing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sklC__x3BI0
I’m with AFY! If you aren’t payin’ income taxes, stay out of the political debate.
Does that mean the boys at GE and elsewhere will shut up now, Joe?
The money that runs our community isn’t from the progressive income tax,
it’s from the regressive property, sales and vehicle taxes.
Name a citizen whose epidermis is exempt from that game.
Actually some of the corporate guys (and gals) are saying the gov needs to raise more revenue. Heard Carly Fiorina say just that on CNBC this morning. First she said the gov needs to simplify the tax code, and then she said in doing so, they need to close loopholes and raise more revenue. Cut corporate rates, she said, but also close the loopholes to enable the gov to have more, not less money at the end of the day.
And Rubie, if you were to measure “skin” as a percentage of take home earnings, AFY and his pals have a lot less in the game than most.
I agree on simplifying the tax code, we don’t need over 70,000 pages of loopholes.
What we need is equality and fairness, a fair flat tax for all and no loopholes, no special treatment for those who are the favorites of those in power who think their favorites will keep those in power in power. And we can’t forget a safety net in the mix for those who truly need it.
This will generate more tax revenue today because everyone pays taxes.
This is one step that will help jump start our economy.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
GHK, anytime you want to compare %’s(I’m bettin mine’s bigger than yours) let me know, but we will need a side bet, don’t ya know!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
You, again, miss the point, Joe. Or maybe you prefer to avoid it.
Okay. I think we have reached a political turning point. AFY has come out in favor of “more tax revenue today.”
Fairness it’s me middle name!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“Social democracy is a kind of piñata politics, a system where special interests seek like-minded politicians who will cater to a host of creative dependencies. Few distinctions are made between real needs and simple cupidity. Once established, most federal programs quickly outlive their usefulness. Results become immaterial.
Once funded, the legislature might be lobbied by bureaucrats from within and beneficiaries from without. Social democracy is a perpetual motion machine where the prime function of government is spare parts — spare parts for itself. Mission statements for most social agencies are adorned with adjectival admonitions like “better” or “improved,” yet few if any measures of effectiveness are ever established or enforced. The “wars” on poverty, illiteracy, drugs, and terrorism and their associated federal departments are all examples of dismal, yet expensive failures. The only function that most federal agencies do well is write checks — checks against funds which must be borrowed from folks that may not have our best interests at heart…
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/the_american_animal_farm.html
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Charles speak-it!
….True tax reform that removes loopholes while lowering tax rates is the holy grail of social policy. It appeals equally to left and right because, almost uniquely, it promotes both economic efficiency and fairness. Economic efficiency — because it removes tax dodges that distort capital flows (and thereby diminish productivity) while cutting marginal tax rates (thereby spurring growth). Fairness — because a corrupted tax code with myriad breaks grants deeply unfair advantage to the rich, who buy the lobbyists who create the loopholes and buy the lawyers who exploit them….
http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinion/26659031-47/tax-reform-rates-revenue-breaks.html.csp
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said Tuesday there is “no risk” the U.S. will lose its top credit rating amid a new analysis that revised its outlook on American debt to “negative.”…
There is no chance that the U.S. will lose its top credit rating, Geithner said, forcefully disputing the notion that S&P or other ratings services might downgrade U.S. bonds from their current AAA rating.
“No risk of that, no risk,” Geithner said on the Fox Business Network.
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/156747-geithner-no-risk-that-us-loses-its-top-credit-rating
Is it just me or does anyone else think we might be able to improve at Treasury Sec?
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
I hear their grooming Jamie Dimon.
It seems there wasn’t enough lipstick on all of Wall Street to make Lloyd Blankfein look like anything but a greedy pig.
But what does it matter if it’s Geithner, Dimon, of any other of those crooks?
One thing’s for sure. It won’t be Elizabeth Warren !
GHK at least there is some good news!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“The left-wing blogosphere has applauded Warren’s aggressive questioning of policymakers and emboldened her to become a crusader. Whenever I see someone waging a self-righteous holy war, it gives me pause. Popular myths about the Crusades paint a vision of great Christian leaders raising armies and leading them to triumph against pagans and heretics. But as the Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades describes it:
The triumphs of the Crusades were the triumphs of faith. But faith without wisdom is a dangerous thing….
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/21/congressional-oversight-panel-tarp-opinions-columnists-elizabeth-warren.html
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Thomas Jefferson recognized this flaw immediately.
“No man is more ardently intent to see the public debt soon and sacredly paid off than I am,” he wrote to President Washington in 1792. “This exactly marks the difference between Colonel Hamilton’s views and mine, that I would wish the debt paid to-morrow; he wishes it never to be paid, but always to be a thing wherewith to corrupt and manage the Legislature…
To Senator, and former House Speaker, Nathaniel Macon, Jefferson wrote in 1821, “There does not exist an engine so demoralizing of the nation as a public debt. It will bring on us more ruin at home than all the enemies from abroad against whom this army and navy are to protect us.”
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/08/05/thomas-jefferson-warned-us
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!