To bail out or not to bail out...that is the question.

[alexamenos]

H.O.P.E. = Homage to the Omnipotent Political Establishment

A change I can believe in = meet the new boss, same as the old boss

[Arne]

Originally Posted by Underdog

^The American people are getting mugged and raped in a bi-partisan effort to make the rich richer (again...)

"Hope" and "Change" are just words - grab your ankles, bitches!

What happened to the reputation thing? I can't seem to give rep.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by Arne

What happened to the reputation thing? I can't seem to give rep.

I believe that it has been blown off.

[dude1394]

Thomas Sowell

http://townhall.com/columnists/Thoma...ng_the_economy

"Jolting" the Economy
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Barack Obama says that we have to "jolt" the economy. That certainly makes sense, if you take the media's account of the economy seriously-- but should the media be taken seriously?

Amid all the political and media hysteria, national output has declined by less than one-half of one percent. In fact, it may not have declined even that much-- or at all-- when the statistics are revised later, as they very often are.

We are not talking about the Great Depression, when output dropped by one-third and unemployment soared to 25 percent.

What we are talking about is a golden political opportunity for politicians to use the current financial crisis to fundamentally change an economy that has been successful for more than two centuries, so that politicians can henceforth micro-manage all sorts of businesses and play Robin Hood, taking from those who are not likely to vote for them and transferring part of their earnings to those who will vote for them.

For that, the politicians need lots of hype, and that is being generously supplied by the media.

Whatever the merits of trying to shore up some financial institutions, in order to prevent a major disruption of the credit flows that keep the whole economy going, what has in fact been done has been to create a huge pot of money-- hundreds of billions of dollars-- that politicians can use to give out goodies hither and yon, to whomever they please for whatever reason they please.

No doubt we could all use a few billion dollars every now and then. But the question of who actually gets it will be strictly in the hands of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It is one of the few parts of the legacy of the Bush administration that the Democrats are not likely to criticize.

Much as we may deplore partisanship in Washington, bipartisan disasters are often twice as bad as partisan disasters-- and this is a bipartisan disaster in the making.

Too many people who argue that there is a beneficial role for the government to play in the economy glide swiftly from that to the conclusion that the government will in fact confine itself to playing such a role.

In the light of history, this is a faith which passeth all understanding. Even in the case of the Great Depression of the 1930s, increasing numbers of economists and historians who have looked back at that era have concluded that, on net balance, government intervention prolonged the Great Depression.

Many of those who have, over the years, praised the fact that this was the first time that the federal government took responsibility for trying to get the country out of a depression do not ask what seems like the logical follow-up question: Did this depression therefore end faster than other depressions where the government stood by and did nothing?

The Great Depression of the 1930s was in fact the longest-lasting of all our depressions.

Government policy in the 1930s was another bipartisan disaster. Despite a myth that Herbert Hoover was a "do nothing" president, he was the first President of the United States to step in to try to put the economy back on track.

With the passing years, it has increasingly been recognized that what FDR did was largely a further extension of what Hoover had done. Where Hoover made things worse, FDR made them much worse.

Herbert Hoover did what Barack Obama is proposing to do. Hoover raised taxes on high-income people and put restrictions on international trade, in order to try to save American jobs. It didn't work then and it is not likely to work now.

Perhaps the most disastrous of all the counterproductive policies of the federal government was the National Industrial Recovery Act under FDR, which set out to do exactly what the politicians today want to do-- micro-manage businesses.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court declared that Act unconstitutional, sparing the country an even bigger disaster.

Today, it is unlikely that the courts will let anything as old-fashioned as the Constitution stand in the way of "change." In short, the economy today has some serious problems but things are not desperate, though they can be made desperate by politicians.

[Underdog]

What we are talking about is a golden political opportunity for politicians to use the current financial crisis to fundamentally change an economy that has been successful for more than two centuries, so that politicians can henceforth micro-manage all sorts of businesses and play Robin Hood, taking from those who are not likely to vote for them and transferring part of their earnings to those who will vote for them.

We're living in scary times when I can agree with Dude about anything remotely political...

(and I don't think anything would be different with McCain instead of Obama - let's not forget that Bush is still running this circus!)

[Arne]

Bush on handing money to the incompetent and how awesome and necessary it is: http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/play...26716&src=news

[alexamenos]

We are not talking about the Great Depression, when output dropped by one-third and unemployment soared to 25 percent.

yet...we are not yet talking about the Great Depression 2.0....

But the question of who actually gets it will be strictly in the hands of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It is one of the few parts of the legacy of the Bush administration that the Democrats are not likely to criticize.

Sowell isn't quite the douchebag that Krugman is, but he's just as much of a partisan tool and statements like this are fine examples of hs toolness. He's so dead set on blaming the Democrats for stuff that he can't even begin to see the facts...like, the decision as to who gets the loot isn't "strictly in the hands of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid", it's in the hand of unelected officials like Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke and they don't and won't tell us who they're handing it to.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by alexamenos

yet...we are not yet talking about the Great Depression 2.0....



Sowell isn't quite the douchebag that Krugman is, but he's just as much of a partisan tool and statements like this are fine examples of hs toolness. He's so dead set on blaming the Democrats for stuff that he can't even begin to see the facts...like, the decision as to who gets the loot isn't "strictly in the hands of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid", it's in the hand of unelected officials like Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke and they don't and won't tell us who they're handing it to.

Currently I would say it's in the hands of dubya...unless you think Paulson has no accountability to him.

Tommorrow it will be in the hands of the people Sowell mentioned.

[Arne]

Originally Posted by dude1394

Currently I would say it's in the hands of dubya...unless you think Paulson has no accountability to him.

Tommorrow it will be in the hands of the people Sowell mentioned.

Presidents are like congressmen - tools. You know, the president is a free market guy, until Dick Cheney tells him that spending money on lots of wars is good and Hank Paulson tells him to spend trillions on his banking friends.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by alexamenos

yet...we are not yet talking about the Great Depression 2.0....

Not to mention that we're living in a different world now than we were then - joblessness is only part of the equation...

The first time around, most of the world's economic powers were recovering from WWI, so nobody really had the means to challenge our international standing... This time around, there's about a half-dozen countries waiting to pounce on the #1 spot - if we slip, we fall...

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by Arne

Bush on handing money to the incompetent and how awesome and necessary it is: http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/play...26716&src=news

I really like how they congratulate each other for handing $300+ billion of our dollars to their cronies.

The good news, now we can go charge things on our Citi-cards and then pay interest on money we've loaned to Citibank. Hat-tip to the inestimably wise alexamenos for this blast from the past:

it's like we're a bunch of hamsters in a cage....we work our asses off so we can buy more shit, and we can't stop buying more shit because if we do we'll lose our high paying jobs which allow us to buy more shit. meanwhile, our wives are working their asses off too so that we can pay the interest on credit cards that we used to buy more shit, and rather than spend time with our kids we buy them a lot of shit and send them to shitty schools which are paid with our ever spiraling property taxes, thanks to rising property values.

and at the end of the day fucking citibank owns everything.

ok, so I guess it's arguable whether citibank owns everything, but when we're sending them our dollars so that we can borrow our dollars back from them and pay them interest on money we loaned to them in the first place....well...you get the idea.

btw....George Bush is such a douchebag that even the Republicans in our midst have to acknowledge that theres quite a divergence between his statement that "History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, but too much" and his eagerness and reckless abandon as it comes to getting invoved in the market.

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by dude1394

Currently I would say it's in the hands of dubya...unless you think Paulson has no accountability to him.

Tommorrow it will be in the hands of the people Sowell mentioned.

this is where you have it backwards, dude....Bush is accountable to Paulson and his ilk, not the other way around. Barrack Obama has already named a Paulson/Bernanke acolyte as his Treasury Head, he's named the guy that's leading the charge to give trillions of our bucks to his banker buddies -- meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

...........

hattip to arne for also recognizing the backwardsness in dude's thinking.

[Underdog]

OOPS - wrong century!

[Arne]

I can't get enough of this Jon Steward clip: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/in...&itemId=189591

Update: By the way, at the end of the video Bush admits that he's not the guy making the decisions, saying: "My first instinct was to let the markets work, until I realized, I am being briefed by the experts."

[alexamenos]

that's pretty good -- I especially like Bush's analysis of the problem, "Our financial system is a house of cards, and the cards are starting to fall."

Reminds me of the definition of a political gaffe -- a political gaffe is when a politician inadvertantly tells the truth.

[Arne]

Great, great interview with Jim Rogers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOQzjV_CTco

[Arne]

Great post over at lewrockwell.com:

If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.
Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

[alexamenos]

I just saw that - it's mindboggling how big this is. It may be years, decades, before we can grasp the true magnitude of this.

[GermanDunk]

Uhm, this is interesting.

Originally Posted by Arne

• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

Are this costs

@Iraq : only invasion or total
@Viet: only 700 bn. ?
@NASA: annual costs ? What costs ?

[Arne]

Originally Posted by GermanDunk

Uhm, this is interesting.



Are this costs

@Iraq : only invasion or total
@Viet: only 700 bn. ?
@NASA: annual costs ? What costs ?

Total paid yet, I think. To put it into perspective Germany pays something like $130 bn. for education a year. 700 bn is ALL OF GERMANY working something like 2 to 3 months just for destroying wealth.

Update: They used official inflation data to adjust this data, so all of the inacurracy can be followed back to the US government that is constantly lying about inflation. Measuring inflation like it was meassured back in the 70's we would have had 10% inflation for the last couple of years.

[GermanDunk]

Originally Posted by Arne

Total paid yet, I think.

Hm, inflation adjusted means calculated on todays excange rate ?

[Arne]

Originally Posted by GermanDunk

Hm, inflation adjusted means calculated on todays excange rate ?

It means that they try to say that it would need $700bn. today in order to buy all the stuff that could be bought for $110bn. during the Vietnam war.

It means they take into account that our money is constantly being depeciated (no matter what offcial currency you use), since central banks are printing money like crazy everyday...

P.S.: I'll answer your PM another they, I need to go to bed now, sorry! :-)

[DirkFTW]

Originally Posted by Arne

Update: They used official inflation data to adjust this data, so all of the inacurracy can be followed back to the US government that is constantly lying about inflation. Measuring inflation like it was meassured back in the 70's we would have had 10% inflation for the last couple of years.

Hmm, so the comparison is not as bad as it looks only because our currency is a lot worse than it looks?

hooray for small victories

[DirkFTW]

Oy.

Schiff v. Detroit Mayor Part 1

Schiff v. Detroit Mayor Part 2

[Arne]

Originally Posted by DirkFTW

Oy.

Schiff v. Detroit Mayor Part 1

Schiff v. Detroit Mayor Part 2

Schiff is amazing, I'm thinking about applying for an internship at his company.

[alexamenos]

I liked the good mayor's call for "economic patriotism". Economic patriotism, lol, is a much more palatable phrase than fascism.

But that wasn't much of a debate -- the mayor was such an idiot and such a sleeze that it wasn't even fair.

I loved Schiff's point that a diversion of umpteen billion to the auto companies is a diversion of umpteen billion away from somebody and something else. We don't see who or what that somebody or something is, but somehow, somewhere the capital the government is allocating (by force) to Chrysler, GM and Ford isn't going to be invested elsewhere. Hence, the government "rescue" of the big 3 is also a destruction of something else.

This is the central lesson of "Economics in One Lesson." ...

the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.

[mcsluggo]

that crowding out argument holds A LITTLE water in normal economic times -- but in ALL times the concept is abused all to hell, and over stated. (UNLESS you mean that $1 of government bailaout money spent here is $1 that the governement doesn't have to bail out somebody else... in which case you might have a point, but somehow I doubt that is the source of your angst)

$1 invested by the government does NOT mean that there is $1 less for the private sector to invest somewhere else. Investment dollars are not a fixed stock, zero sum game. $1 of government investment will crowd out private sector investment to the extent that the $1 affects the price of investment capital (interest rate) and makes some investmetn that otherwise would have been attractive at teh OLD price no longer attractive at the new price.

In todays capital markets, when things are semi-frozen up, the relationship breaks down almost entirely. Private sector is not very interested in lending right now (to anyone BUT the USG) and is not very price sensitive.... it is very hard to "crowd out" the private sector, when they have already bolted for the exits.


it is easy to make arguments that in the medium to long run, there could/would be problems - the government doesn't make the most objective nor intelligent investments... and worst of all, there is a sort of inertia to this sort of investment (once the door has been cracked, the slope is greased for FUTURE investments that might occur, and even if they DON'T accur, use up valuable auto industry resources grubbing for them (rent seaking behavior))

..but in the short run? when credit markets are seized up? Sorry, I don't see any crowding out arguments.

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by mcsluggo

that crowding out argument holds A LITTLE water in normal economic times -- but in ALL times the concept is abused all to hell, and over stated. (UNLESS you mean that $1 of government bailaout money spent here is $1 that the governement doesn't have to bail out somebody else... in which case you might have a point, but somehow I doubt that is the source of your angst)

$1 invested by the government does NOT mean that there is $1 less for the private sector to invest somewhere else. Investment dollars are not a fixed stock, zero sum game. $1 of government investment will crowd out private sector investment to the extent that the $1 affects the price of investment capital (interest rate) and makes some investmetn that otherwise would have been attractive at teh OLD price no longer attractive at the new price.

In todays capital markets, when things are semi-frozen up, the relationship breaks down almost entirely. Private sector is not very interested in lending right now (to anyone BUT the USG) and is not very price sensitive.... it is very hard to "crowd out" the private sector, when they have already bolted for the exits.


it is easy to make arguments that in the medium to long run, there could/would be problems - the government doesn't make the most objective nor intelligent investments... and worst of all, there is a sort of inertia to this sort of investment (once the door has been cracked, the slope is greased for FUTURE investments that might occur, and even if they DON'T accur, use up valuable auto industry resources grubbing for them (rent seaking behavior))

..but in the short run? when credit markets are seized up? Sorry, I don't see any crowding out arguments.

you are absolutely right that the stock of investment dollars is not a zero sum game. the stock is, in fact, as large as federal reserve computers can compute. this alchemy, however, doesn't do anything to resolve problems of inefficient use of scarce resources.

and if land, buildings, machinery and equipment, labor, etc....aren't scarce, then there is really no need to debate economics and we should all quit our jobs and wait on the government to send us goodies.

so, what the federal government is doing is saying that certain land, buildings, machinery, labor, etc, should be employed in one endeavor rather than another. that is an inescapable truth. that may be good for the big three auto makers, but it is most certainly not good for the other unseen endeavor.

it's easy enough to say that the private lenders aren't lending...and I think the most plausible reason they're not lending is because there is a vast federal reserve induced disconnect between viable business ventures and prevailing rates of return. the federal government does nothing but exacerbate the problem by propping failing businesses up while keeping interest rates down.

[mcsluggo]

hmmmm, I think you PURPOSELY almost completely missed my point.

the dollars aren't being invested ANYWHERE other than treasuries (and interbank lending has begun to calm down a bit). Yesterday's's isuance of 4 month T-bills came in at exactly ZERO percent. Investors were willing to accept NO RETURN just to have their money in an investmetn that they had confidence would actual repay in 1-month time. AND the issuance 4x over subscribed (there were 4 people who wanted to buy at that price, for each note that was sold)... this meant that in the secondary trading, the yield on these treasuries actually went negative (investors were willing to pay $1001 for the right to be repaid $1000 in one month)

It is not crowding out BY the government, at this point, it is a "flight to quality" Investors are spooked right now and are not ivesting in much of ANYTHING except USG paper.

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by mcsluggo

hmmmm, I think you PURPOSELY almost completely missed my point.

It's not so much that I missed your point, but rather your point is beside the point.

The point is that the federal government is about to redirect land, labor, machinery and equipment towards the big three automakers and away from some other unseen, unspecified use. It is an undeniable fact that so long as Person A works for GM than he does not work somewhere else. Hence, one cannot argue that the Federal Government does not thwart something else when it goes to great length to keep Person A employed by GM. To say that we must keep these automakers making autos is to say that the labor and capital (real capital, not fiat dollars) should not be put to use doing something else. Hence, the folly in the argument of proponents of such bailouts is they do not and will not adequately count the costs, because the costs are unseen opportunity costs.

And...as for negative returns on t-bills, etc., etc.....yeah, I get this. At precisely a time when fed is trying to push cash through a system despite the fact that a lot of people aren't borrowing and a lot people aren't lending, there's a huge build up of cash looking for a place to go. The negative returns on t-bills are just the next fed reserve created bubble (when this one pops, it's gonna be real ugly).

So....saying that it causes no harm to anyone else for the government to nationalize the auto industry, and pointing to negative returns on t-bills as evidence of this, is a bit like saying it would cause a person no harm to take up a meth habit since he's already fucked from years of crack cocaine abuse anyway. There would be a grain of truth to this statement but it's not that I missed your point, it's just that I don't care.

[DirkFTW]

Interesting...

GOP alternative to bailout

Hard Benchmarks:
On December 2, the Big Three presented to Congress their plans for restructuring. While the plans included laudable goals, too few details were provided as to how the companies will actually achieve the restructuring and the savings they have promised. In some instances new agreements to achieve the savings would not be entered into for months or perhaps years.
The Big Three must lock in the restructuring they have promised in a matter of weeks, not months or years. Congress should instead establish firm benchmarks and a tight timeline for restructuring. Such benchmarks will include for example requiring that by March 31, 2009 each company should reach agreement whereby:
•The companies’ creditors agree to a framework to reduce each company’s indebtedness by at least 1/3.
•The UAW holds to concessions already made and further:
o Concedes the elimination of Supplemental Unemployment Benefits;
o Concedes elimination of the Jobs Bank Program;
o Agrees to either reduce company retiree health care obligations or otherwise convert a portion of such obligations into equity; and
o Agrees to reduce wages and benefits to the levels paid by non-Big Three manufacturers.

...

The Big Three may need some form of interim financing as they finalize their restructuring. In normal economic times, if their restructuring plan is considered viable, such financing should be available in the private market. Because of the current credit crisis, limited assistance may be appropriate in the form of insurance, rather than a taxpayer-funded government bailout that replaces private investment. We propose that the government provide insurance, funded by the participants with a modest FDIC-like fee, which would cover up to 50 percent of the losses of new investment in the case of default, helping to unlock immediate private investment (not unlike debtor in possession financing). Such insurance would expire on March 31, 2009. This proposal ensures that taxpayers are protected and provides a powerful incentive for the Big Three to quickly implement their restructuring plans.

[mcsluggo]

nah, you missed the point.

The nominal valuation of capital isn't the point. The fed is pumping up the money supply right now, but the value of the dollar (which is increasing right now, btw) and inflation (which is decreasing right now, btw) are not the current issues to worry about. THe big issue is the slack capacity.

federal bailaouts and federal spending are not crowding out ANYTHING right now, because there isn't anything to crowd out... there is additional excess capacity being built up every day (500k additional workers last month) as the economy seizes up. You don't have to oversell your point (as you have DRASTICALLY done) to point to potential problems from the govt intervening right now.... but one thing that is certainly NOT a problem, is the government squeezing private sector employment of resources out of the way. Not right now.

in the medium/long run? some problems.

```can we have ANY faith that the govt will reign excess spending back in when it should BEFORE the next upswing is very far underway? no definately not

``` will there be some benefits from "creative destruction" lost by the govt propping up a some industries. Yes, this will increase ineffciency in the next upswing by a little.

``` Can we trust the govt to "pick winners"? no, definately not (see last point)

``` Will there be counterproductive "rent seeking behavior"? yes, absolutely.....

and several more....


BUT the fact of the matter is that the econmy is RAPIDLY moving away from a full employment equilibrium. If treated with benign neglegt there will not just be creative destrction, but real and lasting destruction of wealth and projuctive capacity. Period. A little bit o business cycle is a healthy thing. A depression sucks ass.


and back to your point about the irony that when the government is trying to pump money into the system because nobondy is borrowing and nobody is lending ... but there is sooooo much money lookin gfor somewhere to go (to the govt) ...... this isn't irony. this is THE point. borrowere and lenders aren't lending to each other, they are running for cover, and govt securities are cover. it is not exess liquidity that is bien pushed out flowing BACK to the t-bills... it is ALL liquidity. THAT is the problem.


your final point. People have been hooked on caffine the last several years, so their heart rate is too fast. You seem to think a solution of slowing the heart rate to zero to kill the addiction is just a beautiful improvement. I don't.

[DirkFTW]

Let the Big 3 go under so their assets and equipment can be bought by these guys.

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by mcsluggo

nah, you missed the point.

No, I assure you that I caught and understood the point, I just don't put much if any weight upon it. I'd venture to guess that my understanding of neo-keynesian analyses is better than your understanding of Austrian Business Cycle Theory.

Anyway, the auto bailout is a pretty trivial thing compared to Paulson's boondoggle, and it's failed to happen through congress (a bit of a surprise to me). I suppose this means millions of auto workers will soon be out of work and we'll all be driving russian made cars or something like that now.

[alexamenos]

http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=1189

[Arne]

Dr. Ron Paul:

Economic Freedom or Socialist Intervention?

The freedom to fail is an essential part of freedom. Government- provided financial security necessitates relinquishing the very essence of freedom. Last week, the big 3 American automakers came back to Capitol Hill with their hands out to the government. Congress spent this past week debating how much money to give them and what strings should be attached. Though the bailout plan for the auto industry has suffered what I would call a temporary setback in the Senate, other avenues for public funding are being explored through the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. I am afraid the American auto industry will soon learn that having billions rain down from Washington will not be the blessing one might expect.

The government, after it subsidizes an industry, tends to become a very demanding benefactor. Politicians may not have any real idea about how to build a car, run a bank, educate a child, heal the sick or build a road, but they are quite adept at using carrots and sticks to manipulate and threaten those who do. Most of the federal control over education, roads, healthcare, and now banking and soon auto manufacturing, is done through money, mandates and conditions. The bailout proposal we were considering would force automobile manufacturers to submit their business plans for the approval of a new federal "car czar." This bureaucrat would have the authority to approve the automakers’ restructuring plan, monitor implementation of the plan, and even stop certain transactions he determines are inconsistent with the companies’ long-term viability.

One could argue that if billions of taxpayer dollars are going to flow into a failing industry, then representatives of those taxpayers have "bought" a say in how that industry is run – which is precisely why bailouts are such a bad idea for both the industry and the taxpayers. The federal government has neither the competence nor the Constitutional authority to tell private companies, such as automakers, how to run their businesses. I would have thought that failed experiments with central planning and government control of business that caused so much harm in the last century would have taught my colleagues the folly of making businesses obey politicians and bureaucrats instead of heeding the wishes of consumers, employees, and stockholders. But the auto industry is in danger of learning for themselves one of the oldest lessons in politics: he who pays the fiddler calls the tune.

It is not the job of government to sustain business. The government should get out of the way, and instead examine excessive regulations, tax policy and red tape that have been hostile to manufacturing in this country. We should get back on a sustainable economic course in this country, or we are doomed to collapse, as the Soviets did, under the crushing burden of big government and a strangled economy that can no longer pay for it.

http://www.house.gov/htbin/blog_inc?...ngdetail.shtml

[Underdog]

[alexamenos]

very good^^^

I want to see the Citibank ad next. Something like,

We at Citibank thank you for giving us your hard earned dollars, and we look forward to loaning it back to you at 22% apr.

[alexamenos]

George Delano Bush, Big Government Democrat, Rides Again

I'll bet anyone here $25,000,000,000 (zimbabwe dollars) that Bush will go down in history as the laissez faire president who's small government, free market ways led to the Great Depression, 2.0. Seriously, 10 years from now....i'll cite a major work on GD2 which presentd a picture of Lyndon Baines Bush as Hoover redivivus.

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by alexamenos

George Delano Bush, Big Government Democrat, Rides Again

I'll bet anyone here $25,000,000,000 (zimbabwe dollars) that Bush will go down in history as the laissez faire president who's small government, free market ways led to the Great Depression, 2.0. Seriously, 10 years from now....i'll cite a major work on GD2 which presents a picture of Lyndon Baines Bush as Hoover redivivus.

George Bush, the man who's led the charge with the biggest government interventions in the history of ever....

Hoover, the big government conservative before big government conservatism had a name...

We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put it into action.... No government in Washington has hitherto considered that it held so broad a responsibility for leadership in such times....

here's a little bit from the "history" news network which points out how George Hoover Bush's laissez faire ways leads us inevitably to Saint Barrack Roosevelt Obama's Keynesianism.

btw....for anyone popping in out of the blue, what I'm saying is that neither George Bush nor Hoover were "laissez faire" guys -- they both intervened constantly and like crazy in the market, hence the idea that Great Depressions I & II grew in the days of rampant free market capitalism misses the mark somewhat -- GD I, like it's successor, began with a series of financial bubbles brought about by Federal Reserve, founded, 1913, manipulations and was subsequently exacerbated by Hoover until Roosevelt came along and turned Hoover's socialism-lite into something more closely resembling fascism.