Or az Krauthammer put it a week ago Friday:

| "A failure to act, and act now,
| will turn crisis into a
| catastrophe."
| -- President Obama, Feb. 4.
|
| Catastrophe, mind you. So much
| for the president who in his
| inaugural address two weeks
| earlier declared "we have chosen
| hope over fear."

The trouble, 70 years on, is that America's debt is already enormous

Hmmm. As a percentage of GDP, what is America's debt?

This is not a good sign. My bull-crap detector always goes to the roof when a politician start to use fear as a selling point for a legislation. This means that he got no valid, logical points to sell it in the first place.

I guess we have a preview of that the next four years at the White House will looks like;"I am the Messiah! Follow me or you will sink in the abysses of Despair!".

Hmmm. As a percentage of GDP, what is America's debt?

Right out of Wikipedia, for your viewing pleasure:

As of February 5, 2009, the total U.S. federal debt was $10.71 trillion, or about $37,703 per capita. Of this amount, debt held by the public was roughly $6.4 trillion. In 2007, the public debt was 36.8 percent of GDP, with a total debt of 65.5 percent of GDP. The CIA Factbook ranked the total percentage as 23rd in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

Wow- that chart on Wikipedia is so weird. See how debt as a percentage of GDP continues to drop after WW2, then spikes in 1980. It drops again around 1993 or so, then goes up again in 2001. Weird.

The New Deal wasn't a failure. It was a brilliant success. It did very little to reduce unemployment, but it enormously expanded the reach & power of the Federal Government, which was the whole point of the exercise. FDR managed to get re-elected 3 times. The Obamunist only has to do it once. And as long as fewer than 19% of Americans are on the breadlines 8 years from now, he'll even be able to brag that he was better at handling a depression than FDR. No one will stop to wonder what 8 years of fiscal sanity could have done for the country instead.

The New Deal wasn't a failure. It was a brilliant success. It did very little . . ., but it enormously expanded the reach & power of the Federal Government, which was the whole point of the exercise

Exactly.

Same with damn near everyother helping hand from the government, like NCLB, or the mexican american war, and in my opinion the civil war as well

my despair isn't so much that the grab has happened... every politician wants money and power. The despair is that the sheeple bought it. "Oh, this is gonna turn the economy around!" Yeah? perhaps. Or the econ might be turning on it's own anyway. How does taking money from me make the economy turn, any more than my spending money make the economy turn? Everyone seems to forget that the catalyst [not cause exactly] for this is the mortgage impolosion. Which had a lot of help happening based on the governments' insistance that peopole without good credit get loans. And the rollback of laws designed to keep that from happening. Plus derivatives and leveraging out the wazoo. Helped along by the very same government that is acting now.

When you put it that way people say: "Oh. Well, gotta go, been nice talkin' to ya..."
Tell them that the money the government spends is YOURS, and they sing "lalalalalalalala, can't hear you." "Money don't grow on trees, boy!" Heh, your parents said it at some point. Convenient that congress ignores that when they want to. Massive wealth redistribution? Check. The thing that most worried me about this guy is coming to pass with the stroke of a pen, and I'm supposed to feel good about that?

OI, sorry choir...

Obama and the Democrats have announced that their policies are based on a 1.5 "economic multiplier" that will improve the economy. Does it matter that these leaders base their policies on a discredited, obviously false, 70 year old theory?

I think it is more than strange to believe that when the government buys 2 TV sets, the government gets 2 TV's and someone else gets one for free. A great deal. But, it is entirely due to miscounting transactions as being wealth.

If Obama (via Keynes) is correct, that there is a 1.5 wealth multiplier on spending, then $100 in spending produces $150 in wealth, and we should all benefit from counterfeiting.

Let's Counterfeit Our Way to Wealth

Excerpt: This counterfeit money should have the same 1.5 multiplier associated with government spending. The money won't be saved, it won't go to the taxpayers (who have their own money), and it will get into circulation immediately where it can stimulate the economy and even create more tax collections.

Even better, there is no need to borrow money or raise taxes to get back the money, because this would create it at very low cost. The investment and job creation plans of the taxpayers would not be interrupted.

Where have I gone wrong? By believing Obama and Keynes. Maybe they don't care if they are wrong, as long as they get to spend the money.

The housing bubble was a direct stimulus, loaning money to people. The new plan is a "trickle-down" stimulus. The government wants to give money to businesses in the hope that this will raise employment and create permanent jobs. Money to businesses run by the politically connected.

What happened to the truth "Receive a fish and eat for a day. Learn how to fish and eat forever." Only the private sector has the incentive and knowledge to guide production and employment. The government can only take taxes from productive people and give the money to favored interests.

easyopinions.blogspot.com/2009/02/tested-stimulus-plan.html
A Tested Stimulus Plan

We just tried a stimulus through housing policy.

Don't really see the big deal about the election in November. Obama wants to spend a bunch of money. The guy running against Obama would have spent a bunch of money. The guy before Obama wanted to spend a bunch of money.

Meet the new boss.

Snake, excellent point. I'd like to hear from some of the Eeyores on this thread about what they'd do if they were in charge. Can't imagine they would recommend doing nothing as an alternative.

Actually, Rojak, doing nothing would be far better than TARP, TARP II, and The Great Future Mortgage.

You wanna know how to resolve this shit?

1) get rid of the CRA
2) Let Fannie and Freddie and all the rest fail.
3) Let GM and Chrysler fail.
4) Cut the corporation tax to 0
5) Cut capital gains tax to 10% for the next 5 years.
6) Eliminate the AMT
7) Cut government spending by 5% per year in real dollars (not 5% off of the already-increased baseline). Do this until the federal government spends no more than 10% of US GDP.

Pertinent Questions:

If Obama, Pelosi, & Reid were to take $1,000,000,000, place it in a large pit, and light it on fire, would this also be called "stimulus"?

Assuming most people would answer 'No' to that question, then why is it that any money spent on any program, no matter how wasteful or even useless, is now called "stimulus" and considered acceptable by all too many?

Brian, you're correct.

Why Stimulus Plans Fail

Look, for what this so-called stimulus cost, they could have just cut a check for $2,500 for every man, woman, and child in America.

Then we would have either paid down debt, increasing the capitalization of the banks, or we would have gone out and bought big TVs.

Both of which would have had a far more stimulative effect on the economy than the shit sandwich we were handed.

I'd go along with brian's list.

I'd also eliminate most of the departments in the federal government, end the war on drugs, and privatize both social security and medicare. Maybe brian would be doing the same things under point #7.

Anyone see the news this morning? Obama is putting together a "task force to oversee the restructuring of the auto industry."

Does anyone actually care that it isn't the federal government's job to oversee the restructuring of the auto industry or any other industry?

Jo -

We're looking at a government that has every intention of nationalizing everything it can.

They've made the first moves towards that with the Porkulus Ass-Rape. Between that, TARP II and the "Auto Bailout", we're looking at having nationalized the entire healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, the automotive industry, and the financial services industries by the end of O's first term.

And this is being done during a massive world-wide deleveraging amidst near-total economic collapse.

For as bad as we have it here, Europe is even more fuckder. They're just waiting for the first domino to fall.

Brian, nationalization crossed my mind too. And if anyone can do a worse job of making cars than the Big 3, it would be the government.

It's not about doing a good job. It's about control.

If they can control what we are allowed to want, then they have complete control, at least in their minds.

Remember, the Democratic party is not interested in individual liberties. They are interested in turning the United States (hell, probably the world) into a live-action version of The Sims.

And we're the sims.

Obama is probably right to assume that those same memories have it that the massive state interventionism of the New Deal triumphantly restored America to full employment.

Good thing Obama can rely on American voters educated in the public mind control system.

FDR probably extended the Depression by at least five years. FDR didn't restore the country to full employment (impossible to achieve), Hideki Tojo did.

And if anyone can do a worse job of making cars than the Big 3, it would be the government.

Now, let's look at some ways the government could run the auto industry:

...like Amtrak. Your car will never get anywhere on time and every third one will run off the road randomly and explode.
...like the post office. You'll get six pounds of junk mail every week to haul around, reducing the efficiency of your vehicle and taking up room you might have used for groceries, home repair items, or your children. But the auto companies will technically be profitable.
...like the TSC and the FAA. You'll have to take off your shoes before getting into your car, two of your tires will be on a break anytime you want to go anywhere, and there's a good chance your GPS will have given up smoking that day and will accidentally instruct you to drive into another car. If you try to replace it after that, it will file a union grievance.
...like the school system. Your GPS will slowly get dumber the more you drive until one day it will begin speaking ebonics and forget where your house is.

Seriously, if you think the unions have too much power over the auto industry now, wait until the union-dominated government agencies and politicians get finished with it.