Belmont Club reports that the Federal Open Market Committee met in December to sort out that things are going to get worse and then better. Their method… sophisticated wild assed guessing. Well I can do that!
I think we are going to have a very bad next few years. Why? Because nothing has changed except more money was magically printed. All the same rules are in effect. All the same systems. All the same incompetent and/or corrupt people are in charge.
Is Fannie Mae still doing what it did? Are people who can’t pay back loans still getting loan offers? Is the government still taking on more and more private risk? Is Social Security still the largest Ponzi scheme ever concocted? Are we about to give billions to private concerns based on their unions political clout? Are politicians about to print money to “stimulate” us, when they could just let us keep our own money?
Nothing has changed. So why would things get better?
Obama can lift his chin up as high as his skinny neck can contort. He can boom out inspiring words from an air filled resonating chest. But he isn’t changing anything. He isn’t any different. He is quite possibly, worse, because I don’t think he cares about the whole country. He is a Democrat. He adds up special interest constituencies. If you aren’t they, well good luck to you.
January 7th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
“All the same incompetent and/or corrupt people are in charge.” But we just had an election that will change a lot of the “people in charge”, the results of which you seem to dislike before they even get into their office chairs. Did you somehow expect significant change with the same party back in power? You can’t be for and against change at the same time.
January 7th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Perhaps I should have said “same type” of incompetent and corrupt people. I don’t see much difference between Orrin Hatch and Harry Reid. Both nice mormon lads who lost their soul in DC.
January 7th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
“nothing has changed except more money was magically printed.” Please comment on Keynes’s argument that a drop on private demand can be offset by a rise in public demand to keep the economic activity flowing until private activity recovers. What do you think will be the effect of a trillion dollars of public demand suddenly poured into the economy? That is the basic theory behind the “stimulus”. You are, of course, free to reject Keynes’s theory if you can offer a credible economic counter-argument. If so, which counter-Keynes economist(s) do you believe, and why?
January 7th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Keynes who? The money that was magically printed went nowhere. It replenished bank reserves. It could have been done by reducing reserve requirements.
I’m up for “stimulus” just not Obama, Harry Reid and the UAW deciding how to spend it.
As I’ve said time and time again… letting us keep it is better for all of us, just not as for for Barry and Harry.