Obama Owns This Economy - Page 4

Might as well forget the rest.

There you go again. You're begging the question and you don't even realize it.

The problem with your analogy, SDW, is that you believe government intervention = "slamming on the breaks".

History shows that government intervention in just about anything = hitting the accelerator, locking the steering wheel, and unfastening the seat belts.

Fair enough. To me, the "free market" includes access to judicial remedies for dispute resolution, including those arising from bankruptcy - access denied to millions of Americans who were summarily raped "for our own good".

Such institutions and remedies are a proper function of government. I do not advocate anarchy.

I had addressed his comment on this earlier but you make a very important point here that I think is worth highlighting.

I think it is a mistake to assume free market = anarchy.

While I personally do consider anarchy something worthy of discussion and debate and I'm also a strong advocate of the free market, it would be a gross error to assume these two things are one and the same.

I think you can reasonably say you have a free market and have a handful of government functions that are limited to their proper role (protecting the basic rights of life, liberty of property of its citizens).

I think it's also important to note that "free market" isn't a binary, black and white thing. The US as a whole is, economically speaking, a mixed system of socialism (both corporate and non-corporate), fascism (a.k.a. corporatism, state capitalism) and free market. Some parts of the economy are more or less of each one of these. For example:

- Education (at least primary education) is mostly socialist, economically speaking, as are the roads, police, fire protection, space exploration, etc.

- Banking and monetary system are mostly fascist/corporatist. The banking system in general and the The Fed in particular is a government protected cartel. The insurance industries fall into this category too.

- Things like food, clothing, consumer electronics, automobiles, etc. are mostly free-market. But even some of these have a socialist or fascist taint to them, economically and the first two examples have some aspects of free market in them too but are largely dominated by these other economic models.

Finally, the healthcare system is pretty much all fucked up. I'd argue it is mostly socialist with some aspects being free market. Mostly it is a completely muddled mess in which all the bad things are blamed on free-marketism and the government's involvement is typically completely ignored or assumed to be entirely beneficial.

Good points, MJ1970.

I, too, think anarchy is worthy of consideration and discussion, but I do not advocate it as the ideal.

I currently consider myself a minarchist in the classical liberal tradition.

But yes, free markets != anarchy. In fact, free markets actually prosper when there are agreed upon standards and policies for commerce.

The technology industry has proven that businesses can collaborate and agree upon uniform standards for their customers' benefit (as well as their own) without government coercion or intervention.

Sure, that's what I intended to clarify.

The "free market" describes the business world I'm accustomed to. Until the era of Bailout USA, that is.

I see what you're getting at. But there is a difference between free-market capitalists and libertarians.

It could be argued that there is a difference between Capitalism and the free market, too.

The problem is that people often have different meanings for these terms that aren't always readily apparent. For example Michael Moore creates a "documentary" critical of capitalism that refers mostly to crony capitalism and/or corporate socialism. These are things I opposed as a free-market-ist.

Additionally, things are so muddled today that it's often hard to separate the issues.

There is but they overlap a lot.

Part of that problem is that capitalism and free markets haven't existed, legally anyway, for nearly 100 years.

Well, I'd say it is more than simply a vague notion that government is bad and more about taking advice from known liars with a vested interest in scaring the shit out of people in order to get them to hand over a ton of power and money.

This is a common theme in politics and we've seen in repeatedly in the past several years. Bush did it wrt terrorism. Bush and Obama did it in the fall of 2008 wrt the 2008 financial situation. Obama did it again in January 2009 wrt to the economy in general and then a few months later wrt healthcare. It's happening again now wrt the debt ceiling.

This is a recurring theme and political tactic. It happens in big and small ways. Scare the shit out of people over some thing. Sell them on the idea that handing more power and money over to them (the politicians) is the key to abating this impending disaster. Rinse. Repeat.

In the end though, you're still begging the question.

P.S. There actually was evidence and talk at that time that the "frozen credit markets" line was a line of bullshit. Here. Here.

Look around you. The disaster is taking place. It's unfolding before our eyes. And it's not in spite of government intervention, but because of it.

This "vague" notion that government intervention is "bad" is well chronicled in historical records.

Obama really might have made it worse

You think?

From Reuters:

Republicans under GWB expanded government, regulation, and Constitution-trampling intrusions into private affairs. No argument there. But the Democrats under GWB and now BHO have wrought full-bore destruction upon the United States.


About 14 million unemployed, millions more under-employed, and who knows how many millions who've simply stopped looking aren't laughing Mr. President.


Wait for it...


Lots of good stuff Government is doing for us


That chapter has yet to be written. But judging from the previews... it's ugly.


Some of us have been saying that for oh, 2 years, 5 months, and 16 days now

Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, the CEOs of AIG, Goldman, Lehman, Merrill, Bear, etc.



No, but just because they say the threat exists doesn't mean it does.



Nor as you make it out.



No.



Yes.



I don't answer loaded questions or respond to straw men.



And there you go again.

I get it, you're absolutely convinced that the nation faced impending disaster ("speeding toward a brick wall") which could only be averted by strong government action ("slamming on the brakes"). I'm not.

You haven't been paying attention in class SDW. Not at all. Paulson blessed Goldman, who would have run laughing all the way to the bank, had they not already been the bank. Bear was sold for peanuts. Lehman was liquidated. Gone. GE... please.

The players didn't conspire with one another. Those who Paulson chose to win, won. The losers were those who hadn't curried favor with the well-connected. They disappeared. The ultimate loser was the taxpayer, to whom this and all future risk was transferred from here to eternity.

This was very, very recent history. You must have been watching too much American Idol or something. The lesson is really quite simple... follow the money, in this case: from those who have it to those who wasted it.


The President and Congress bought the big lie along with you. Hey, how could you go wrong.

"The media"... you must be joking.

Bernanke was simply the messenger, who dares not bite the hand that feeds him. What was he supposed to do... admit this is all a sham, throw up his hands and walk away from the job? In that case you may have really seen the scorched Earth you fear. The Fed was and remains completely powerless to have done anything. Congress says give us the money, Treasury says there is none, and the Fed makes it appear. Bush grabs another beer and flicks on the Rangers game. The illusion lives yet another day.

As for "financial professionals" for them, the illusion is their lifeblood. Many economically intelligent people have been deriding this decision since it was conceived. You've been debating (badly) with several of them right here.

Speak of the Devil and he appears:

Obama Recruits Former Goldman CEO and ex-NJ Gov Corzine To Win Back Wall Street

Leave it to a Democrat administration to exhume all the horrendously bad characters you thought were long dead and buried:


Another source puts that at $500 million. But who's counting.

"Above the law" Jon Corzine is toxic. Poison. And very, very well-connected. His insane tax-and-spend, soak-the-rich orgy nearly devastated New Jersey. Residents and businesses have been fleeing by the thousands every year. Even his predecessor Jim "I am a gay American" McGreevey was tolerable.

"Equal justice under the law is dead in New Jersey"

Who's the party of the poor and downtrodden?


His Esteemed Royal Highness Corzine spent well over $100 million of his own money on his first two elections (Senate, Gov) plus another $23 million for re-election, a record only recently broken by Meg Whitman. Christie defeated him with a mere $3 million. That's how bad it got - Corzine couldn't even buy his way into office any longer.

Think this guy will bring a dose of sanity to the looming government shutdown debate? Think again: Governor Corzine Signs Executive Order for Orderly Shutdown of Government Operations. You know the drill... shut down all the state parks, beaches and swimming pools in the middle of July.

Why Corzine? Was Lord Voldemort not available, Mr. Obama?

Little Timmy Geithner may be calling it quits in August. Good! He's a dumbass. However, given a choice between dumbass and pure evil... I'll take the former.

This is bad...

I haven't gotten to chime much but SDW, these guys really understand what is going on and you need to listen to them. Half-conservatism doesn't exist. Sorta government solutions still screw up just as bad and on top of it they damage the brand and allow Democrats to go big. There is no such thing as too big to fail. All those actions the government took did not help.

Senator Barack Obama
Senate Floor Speech on Public Debt
March 16, 2006

Obama Owns the Debt-Ceiling Fiasco




Democrats did deliver a nearly $2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling, just last year. Had they only increased it by $5 trillion instead, when they had the chance, they could have avoided this mess.

Heck, increase it by $10 trillion. $100 trillion. Why not a quadrillion? It's not as if that takes any more work.

Perhaps I was phone hacked!

The problem avoiding the particulars of course, is that MJ, Jazzy and John are willing to wipe away the giant government edifice that leads to ever larger problems. You see the results from that edifice and buy into the belief that government must fix the problems they actually caused with ever larger and more massive measures.

A nice quick example of this is health care. People want government to make health care "affordable" when the unaffordable health care stems from......government. You can't have the cause of the problem be the solution to the problem.

Employer provided health care came about because of wage controls imposed by the government during World War II. You don't have an employer provide your auto, home owners insurance, etc. Government controls who can offer insurance, what they must offer, the approved medicines, procedures, who is licensed, etc. They control all the inputs but someone else is responsible for the outputs of course.

This was not originally true with commerce but with massive government sponsored entities, demands to lower lending standards, the Fed Reserve, etc. They have altered all the inputs and as a result are responsible for all the outputs. Folks like yourself declare that they ought to fix it but in reality they ought to be swept away from controlling all these matters. Bailouts amount to paying people off so they will give control and trust back to the government again. Would things initial be worse with certain failures? I'd say yes but would the result become better when people refuse to allow the same mistakes again? Yes. The point is government engages in bad business. Paying off the parties who witness it and going at it again doesn't fix that point.