Remember when the captains-of-industry and the commodores-of-finance had their stooges in the purser’s office telling “....your huddled masses” in second-and-third-class and steerage:  “LIFEBOATS!?!....you don’t need no stinkin’ lifeboats!”?

Swim away from the deadly ‘suck’ of this sinking pirate-ship-of-state, captive Sisters and Brothers, by holding-on to each other as Natural Persons to form the Life-rafts of genuine Community.  ‘Fast’ forty Days and Nights from all eCONomic activity.  Make it all together to Turtle Island’s free wild refuge in the Living Virtue of Organic Functional Integrity, as once-again wholly vital components in our Mother Earth’s immune system.

Let the “players” cash in their chips.  They named their price, and their pay-off is even now being counted-out.

ALL TOGETHER….NOW!!!!

HokaHey!

Obfuscating Unemployment, how about “Only 47% of working age Americans have full time jobs”  FYI:
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/01/january-23-2011-only-47-of-working-age.html

Aside from the simple fact everyone I know who is not officially unemployed; because they do not receive one of those lazy person slacker checks,..... finds they have been conveniently shoved past the government posted 9 percent unemployment figure crack.

Seems the only full time full benefit ass holes out there are in Congress and they are always on holiday.

What war?

“And after consulting with a Harvard economist, Leonhardt discovers two more reasons why unemployment is the fault of the unemployed: Disability insurance gives workers an incentive not to work, and low levels of education make them unemployable”.

This quote from the article troubles me for a number of reasons. I think that ‘disability insurance’ was confused with ‘unemployment insurance’. They do mean two entirely different things. Disability insurance relates to the compensation given to those workers injured on the job. Unemployment insurance relates to the compensation given to workers that are laid off from a job through no fault of their own.

The low levels of education is another troubling aspect. Throughout the 1970’s, 1980’s and up to the 1990’s, American companies (union and not) were educating their workers to stay abreast of technology, to learn and use the new products the companies were making and to advance their workers up the ladder in the company. With the exception of a very few union shops, all of this company education has disappeared. Oh, there may be a few ‘seminars’ given out here and there, but none really educates. In today’s world in America, the worker needs to be fully trained in several disciplines that are not taught at any one institution. But to acquire these disciplines, one must go through several educational places, all the while keeping an eye on your age.

Tao Walker

We all like your CONstruct.

Be cool! (Or some such pleasant platitude.)

A graph charting the deficit shows a sharp increase in the deficit beginning in 1980 when Ronald Reagan decreased the top marginal tax rate from 76% to what is now 36% for income and 15% for capital gains.

An old entrepreneurial truism is, “You’ve got to spend money in order to make money.” Expanding markets will expand government revenues. Perhaps the largest contributors to our deficits are the imbalance in foreign trade, and the outsourcing of jobs. We need to rebuild, and protect, our manufacturing base in order to expand “our” economy, rather than protect the profits of Multi-National Corporations.

Fat Freddy:

You need to restrain your arm and hand that hold the hammer that keeps banging yourself and others in the head.

Inherit the Wind:

What you said.

Baltic Dry Index
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=BDIY:IND
and
Unsettling echoes of ‘08
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MA25Dj01.html
suggests caution?

We are doing fine!

http://www.prosefights.org/cs/c/thinkingforth/video/video3c.wmv

“Official” unemployment statistics are misleading indices of the jobless crisis.
Whatever the percentage the government releases for publication, it must be
remembered that the count only is a record of new unemployment insurance
claims filed for in a specific time frame.

Many, many, more Americans are out of work than the government would have
you believe. These “non-quantified” jobless are those whose unemployment
insurance has expired and still have not found work. Have those people just
evaporated into non-existence? As far as the number crunchers in the
government are concerned the answer is YES! No longer “productive” citizens, no
longer significant consumers in this corporate run government, they are no longer
to be counted among the living.

A Keynesian economic policy was never intended to replace a free market industrial or service economy- it’s designed to jump start such an economy out of a serious recession. However, a substantial number of public sector jobs -especially if they result in positive externalities- is needed. I do agree though, the cuases of our current Great Recession run very deep and will not go awy. Huge trade deficits, offshoring of million of white -collar service jobs, an extremely lop-sided tax structure, an insane defense budget will bring us back to modern-day serfdom.

The deindustrialization of the U.S. is one of the reasons I am pretty doubtful about Keynesian economics solving the present problem.  Another is that, in a sense, we have already had a good deal of Keynesian economics in the post-Reagan years, and are having it now, in the form of low interest rates and deficit spending, and it’s not doing anything, except for temporarily keeping things from getting worse—maybe.

The United States, as a whole, has bankrupted itself with military and economic imperialism while its inept ruling class floats above the wreckage.  I don’t think having the government spend more empty dollars is going to make a lot of difference to this scene.

FF:
So…if GE is dumping PCBs in the Hudson, I should sue GE…wait 5-10 years for the case to come up (meanwhile they keep on dumping more PCBs), then spend every dime I have fighting a corporation than can keep dragging out the case, arguing over every comma placement until I’m broke and can’t afford to continue the suit.

And that, to you, is justice and a viable alternative to regulation???? 

Look, I have nothing against using lawsuits if necessary.  Yet there’s also been a movement to limit liability to $250,000 in malpractice lawsuits.  The economics of that are obvious.  Someone has $1,000,000 in medical expenses, refuse to pay and concede the case—$750,000 saved!

If you think that the pharmaceutical companies can be trusted to market safe and effective drugs without regulation, then you are a more naive fool than I think you are. Even with regulation the biggest companies try to bypass the worst expenses of testing, frequently with deadly results (I’ve been in that business for over 2 decades).  Testing is slow and painstaking and expensive.

Here’s what the free market has brought us: at least 3 major erectile dysfunction drugs, lots of psychotropic drugs, advertisements to convince people to bug their doctors for drugs they probably don’t need, and a decided lack of new development of desperately needed anti-biotics.

Some are “standards” like Lipitor.  But Lipitor can pass the brain barrier and break down the sheathing on nerve cells—because it’s cholesterol.  But the company doesn’t actually review data or test for it..it simply mounts an advertising campaign.

And your philosophy thinks this is a GOOD thing.  I don’t get it.

Even a frakkin’ baseball game has umpires to rule and prevent cheating.  Yet, in far more important human endeavors, you are philosophically against umpires.

Tobysgirl:
Interesting note about the subway cars being made in Japan.
There have been many differences between Japan and the US of the past forty years. Japan for example proved that you can still make money when you produce a well built, reliable car that gets 200,000 miles. Detroit in all its arrogance believed Americans would just ” buy American” even though their cars were junk. A major difference though in most corporations though has been a difference in buisness philosophy- Jpanese companies by and large are still run by either engineering entrepreneurs or engineers who were promoted from within. In Amerika, many companies hire from without, and more than three-quarters of the CEOs are either from business schools like Harvard or were in public relations.

The only thing I would add, surfnow, to your comment regarding unions, is that there was a radical UAW offshoot that pressed for the plants to build railcars rather than gigantic SUVs. When NYC upgraded their subway cars in the eighties, the cars were made in Japan.

I love people like Leonhardt. Their tiny, whorish brains spend hours every day working to assign blame for capitalistic catastrophes (built into the system) on anything and anyone other than capitalists! I’m sure unemployment is actually caused by teaching kindergartners to play nicely together when they should be taught to compete, compete, compete.

To THose Commenters Who Ned an Explanation of Keynesian Economics:

Keynesian economics, or demand-side economics is the policy ( I don’t say theory, because it works- and has proven so) is based on the simple idea of increasing aggregate demand. Serious recessions are caused by lack of demand which results in high levels of unemployment. People can’t spend without money. The only factor large enough to create jobs is the government. The jobs produce positive externalities- like FDR’s Second New Deal- which employed 12,000,000 workers many of whom worked on adding and maintaining infrastructure. Then as more are employed deficits bcome surpluses as tax revenues are replenished. The opposite theory ( and I say theory becsuse it dosen’t work) is supply side economics, which promises that if taxes to the wealthiest are cut their wealth will be used for investments which will create jobs with positive externalities. NOt in ths world will that ever work.

Ah, does any one ever tire of fatfreddy’s glen beckian, free market, reaganomics, entrepenurial bullshit train.

Capitalism is the reason that there are fewer and fewer free marketeers at the table. THAT’S HOW IT FUCKING WORKS, MORON! While I liked TAO Walkers metaphor about the free market, I have always preferred the comparison of pure capitalism to the NCAA basketball tournement. It goes like this, at the begining of the season there are some 300 colleges competeing for one prize. Most of them don’t stand a snowballs chance in hell, ecause the playing field starts out un-level. There are schools rich in money and tradition and connections that are always going to be advantaged over all others. After a long season, most of the weak are eliminated, leaving 64 (65) teams to make that final push for the prize. After a few weeks of ruthless competetion only one winner remains. That’s how capitalism works, one winner per sector, and a whole lotta losers with broken dreams and unsecured debt. (as I have said before, watch the film “Rollerball”, where the world is controlled by 7 corporations, that is capitalism in it’s purest form)

I love Libertarians, driving on roads and bridges built with tax dollars. Airports, yup those too. Water and sewer systems, power and phone to rural areas. And of course those scumbags that call themselves police and firemen.

If it were up to libretarians we would all be living in company towns and dying at work in droves. What a great america that was!

Moshe Adler

‘... Since unemployment is a regular feature of a free market system, let’s not mystify it. And let’s also not pretend that the cure for it is as mysterious as the cure for cancer, when all we need is to tax and spend.’

The money has to be worth something.  If someone just dumps money, not connected with labor or goods produced by labor, into a community, any increase in employment will be short-lived.  Only the inflation will be permanent, and the community will be one of those in the realm of ‘They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.’  This may be passable, but it is not prosperous.

So there was this commanding officer-sanctioned, winner-take-all poker tournament on an ocean liner one time….seats at the table reserved exclusively to the really high-rollers aboard.  So while not just anybody could could afford to buy-in, of course, clever grifters working the gathering crowd soon set-up a side-book, so that even the lower-class spectators, along for the ride on a globe-girdling cruise, could get theirownselfs a piece-of-the-action….limited by official decree to betting only against each other, though. 

An additional inducement for the commoners to stay riveted to the show was a lottery.  The grand prize was a one-time invitation to dine at the captain’s table.  The hordes of losers inevitably came to believe the drawing was rigged, and heated exchanges about such suspicions became regular occurrences amongst the not-entirely-innocent bystanders.  There was soon an overwhelming din of inequity in that den of iniquity, that floating crap-game….but the suckers still bought lots of tickets, hoping against “HOPE!” to be the lucky winner, for a “CHANGE!”

With stakes like that, and everybody invested, it wasn’t long before the non-stop “gaming” spectacle became the 24/7/365 obsession of most of the passengers and crew….‘specially when word got out that the registered owner of the vessel himself was among the ‘players.’  Meantime, the ship’s condition was going to hell because nobody was taking care of Her maintenance and repairs.

The big game was reaching a climax, however, and nobody could be bothered with ominous signs of trouble from both the bridge, manned by second-raters, and the boiler-room, where the ship’s engineers had installed robot stokers and tied-down the safety valves.  On the mezzanine deck, the deadly combination of crooked religiossified ‘politics’ and stacked-deck ‘poker’ stayed the myopic tunnel-visioned focus of everybody on-board.

Then one fine Day the bottom blew out.  Then, well….

That was all She wrote.

HokaHey!

So, “tax-and-spend” is the official liberal/progressive answer to unemployment? Here’s Mary Ruwart with the official Libertarian Party answer.

...Study after study shows that taxes, regulations, and trade restrictions destroy the Mom-and-Pop businesses that create most of America’s jobs. Both Democrats and Republicans have voted for all three, even when paying lip service to smaller government. The economic stagnation we are now experiencing can be laid at the feet of both parties.

The disadvantaged would-be entrepreneurs are hurt the most by the added expenses and red tape put in place by both Republicans and Democrats. Regulators in several states have tried to drive African-Americans out of the hair-braiding business because they didn’t have a cosmetology license, which costs about $5000 for the year-long course which doesn’t even teach braiding. In Texas, regulators insist that computer repair technicians get a costly private investigator license that requires a three year apprenticeship—-or go to jail! Florists in Louisiana have to pass a rigorous licensing exam, even though experts can’t tell which floral arrangements were created by licensed or unlicensed practitioners. I could go on, but you get the idea. These regulations cost would-be entrepreneurs time and money, so that fewer individuals can afford these extras. Fewer service providers translates into higher consumer prices.

Unlike Libertarians, both Republicans and Democrats support such regulations. Consequently, those frustrated by them turn to the libertarian Institute for Justice (IJ), a non-profit legal firm that takes such cases pro-bono. In state after state, IJ has fought for our right to make an honest living—-and won! Visit their web-site (http://www.ij.org) to see the smiling faces of the IJ clients who have the job of their dreams because libertarians came to their rescue!

Imagine what a Libertarian president could do for the national economy when he or she stopped federal regulators from killing the jobs that Americans need to feed their families. The average federal regulator destroys 150 private sector jobs per year. For every regulator who lost his or her job, the American citizenry would gain 150 new ones! With that rate of job creation, the out-of-work regulators would probably find themselves speedily rehired. More people working means more wealth creation for all and lower prices for consumers. Everyone wins!

Right now, the American government, at both the state and national level, is at war with its citizens, especially those too disadvantaged to jump through the regulatory hoops. Isn’t it time to end the “war on work” and enjoy the “peace dividend” of more jobs and greater prosperity? Isn’t it time to vote Libertarian?

http://www.lp.org/blogs/mary-ruwart/how-would-a-libertarian-president-create-jobs

I tried to post the link, but I got this error message:

Action Denied: Blacklisted Item Found

Inherit The Wind

Insurance Companies Sue Bank Of America Over “Massive Mortgage Fraud”, Find 91% Of Securitized Loans Are Misrepresented

The Offering Documents for the Certificates at issue, which were relied upon by Plaintiffs, represented, among other things, that (i) the loans packaged into the Certificates were underwritten pursuant to the Countrywide Defendants’ specific loan origination guidelines; (ii) Countrywide Home (defined below) evaluated the prospective borrowers’ credit standing and repayment ability prior to approving any loan; (iii) when the Countrywide Defendants’ made an exception to the stated underwriting guidelines, they did so on “a case-by-case basis” and only if “compensating factors” justifying the exception were present; (iv) almost every mortgaged property received an independent appraisal which conformed to acceptable standards and formed the basis of its loan-to-value (“LTV”) ratio, an important metric to MBS investors; (v) the loans selected for securitization were chosen “in a manner [not] intended to affect the interests of the certificateholders adversely”; (vi) the “AAA” or other investment-grade ratings assigned to the Certificates were accurate reflections of the Certificates’ credit quality; and (vii) the Certificates’ issuing trusts possessed good title to the underlying mortgage loans. Each of these material representations was false when made, and Defendants knew or recklessly disregarded the falsity of these representations. Plaintiffs relied on the misrepresentations and suffered losses as a result.

Full filing:

SoTexGuy

though it seems to me there is plenty of money [BernankeBucks] around..

Don’t kid yourself, and don’t be fooled by the “numbers”. The banks know two things.

1) Inflation (Price) is coming.

2) All of that toxic shit is still on the books.

It’s all smoke and mirrors. But as long as Bernanke is printing, and the FASB is giving them accounting deferments, all is good!!!

Flummox

Sorry, but I’m sick and tired of the fucking lies and manipulations. And it’s so obvious that these “White Shoe Boys” don’t have a clue, either.

Inherit The Wind

“Keynesian Economics” states that government is the largest actor in the economy and therefore, being the only actor that can be controlled by government, using the two groups of tools government has:
Monetary and Fiscal policies.”

Would you care to explain this to me? Are you saying government is God?

“But the use of both monetary policy and fiscal policy to influence the economy is TRUE Keynesian Economics.”

Why influence the economy at all? Because people need to be controlled? I thought that’s why we have religion.
“This ignores the fundamental problem that we spend over a trillion dollars a year on defense spending—which is just as much government spending as building roads and bridges, or paying for Medicare.”

And we need to do this because…..

“Finally, it ignores the fact that without regulation, corporations will happily pollute our air, rivers, ground-water, land and oceans to deadly levels all to increase the quarterly bottom-line.”

So, if your neighbor dumps a bunch of toxic waste in your yard, what do you do? Cry? Blame the Republicans? No, you sue the bastards.

Tell me, where do these corporations get money to do what they do? Fiat money is fraudulent. Fractional reserve lending is fraudulent. The government forces us to accept worthless pieces of paper backed by nothing. But they know what is best for us. Actually, they know what is best for them. War is good for them, and the economy. Our debt-based economy is a “wartime” economy. Which is why we have, and need, perpetual war.

“Furthermore, it ignores the fact that regulation can (if more “liberal” than “Conservative” policies are enacted) prevent the mortgage, stock exchange and banking excesses and travesties we’ve seen, which Glass-Steagel prevented since before WWII.”

Still blaming “deregulation” on the mortgage crisis, huh? It had nothing to do with all of the cheap, easy money Greenspan was pumping into the economy. If Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) tell us one thing (along with post-Keynesianism), is that too much cheap easy money in the economy always seeks mal-investments. Now, this is what I was alluding to. When “times are good”, Keynesianism (and monetarism) tell us we should cut the supply of money and pay down debt, right? What politician, or group of politicians has ever advocated this? What central banker? Sure, Clinton paid down a small part of the debt, but all the while, Greenspan was artificially lowering interest rates. That’s why any type of Keynesianism will never work. The markets must be set free. The markets are the combination of human action.

So, who is the ultimate regulator? The Federal Reserve is, of course, the ultimate regulator. They control the money supply through reserve requirements and fed funds interest rates, and FOMC. They actually have regulatory authority to control mortgages through HOEPA. 91% of the mortgages written by Countrywide have been shown to be fraudulent, or “liars loans”. 90% of the MBS they sold with a “AAA” rating have been downgraded to “below investment grade”, and “junk”. How did Gramm-Leach-Bliley cause this? Countrywide isn’t a bank. Neither was Lehman or Bear or Aurora. They were the ones that sold and packaged fraudulent loans, and sold them with all of the reps and warranties that was the cause of the mortgage meltdown. How can you possibly blame a regulation that forbid commercial banks from being investment brokers, when the primary failures came from straight investment banks?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld5tERIBvsg

I will always listen to a libertarian’s arguments. But face it, the silliness of a libertarian accusing someone else of living in an ivory tower makes it a lot harder to take their arguments seriously.

You mean lying about unemployment don’t you. Well for one thing laying off workers
increases profit, so that’s why profits are up. Then there all those jobs that went
overseas, NAFTA, CAFTA…etc.  It’s not a mystery really, we have no leadership, larceny
is legal, and congress is on the take..

I find it weird that on a so-called progressive site the argument has to be of the form “giving money to the workers is good for the economy ==> good for the rich too”.

How about we just arrest all the rich, strip them of their unearned and undeserved wealth and divide the wealth that our society creates, equally among the decent hard working members of society who actually created it?

The rich have generally committed all manner of terrible crimes so there’s not really any legal issue.  Prosecute them the way they currently prosecute us.  Jail them the way they currently jail us.  Confiscate their property the way they do to us.

Or just spend, really.

Must See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w

It has never been more obvious that America is an ossified dying empire with a
suicidal inertia that no leader or movement can stop. If Sarah Palin, Dennis
Kucinich, or Carrot Top were president, the system that the president pretends to
run would still be bailing out banks and insurance companies, escalating wars,
hiding atrocities , and generally chugging along to its ruin.

Moshe today HOLOCAUST remembrance day this ties in
today to the Secrets of military corporate
dictatorship,that is how it all started by the secret
POLICE NAZI TIME. Today the people are uprising years
of torture killing by Dictators and so Tunisia
Algiers, Egypt, masses rising to meet their
democracy, AND YET THE EQUIPMENT that the dictators
use to KILL TORTURE IMPRISON all the TANKS running
over people are American tanks sold to the Dictators
YES PROFITS BEFORE PEOPLE, Americas long time motto,
The water cannons, tear gas the police uniforms,
Shiels shoes everything you need to kill numerous
people all MADE IN USA, now Karma will bring those
same Tanks, same water cannons same Police, What you
do to others you do to yourself. Wake UP AMERICA YOUR
LOOKING LIKE YOUR STUCK ON STUPID:Hillory supporting
Egyptian dictators SHAME DEATH TO AMERICA:

Keynesian economics will never work, and here’s why:
************

You’re a smart guy, FF. Why do you keep repeating this idiot right-wing mantra?

“Keynesian Economics” states that government is the largest actor in the economy and therefore, being the only actor that can be controlled by government, using the two groups of tools government has:
Monetary and Fiscal policies.

Monetary Policy is controlling the size of the money supply, primarily by the interest rate, but also by how much money is printed/coined.

Fiscal Policy is using taxes and spending to influence the economy.

Milton Friedman “monetarists” advocated solely the use of monetary policy and claimed fiscal policy cannot help (I’ve never understood this and I did graduate work in economics).

Right-wingers claim that “Keynesians” only believe in using fiscal policies, which is a vast mis-representation.  Keynes advocated the use of fiscal policy as a short-term corrective to economic cycles.

But the use of both monetary policy and fiscal policy to influence the economy is TRUE Keynesian Economics.

The Libertarians would have us end the Federal Reserve, effectively ending Monetary policy, get rid of all income taxes, and virtually all government spending, except on defense and the judiciary, and then let the economy run wild.

This ignores the fundamental problem that we spend over a trillion dollars a year on defense spending—which is just as much government spending as building roads and bridges, or paying for Medicare.

It also ignores that we STILL need taxation to pay for that military and judiciary budget.

Furthermore, it ignores the fact that regulation can (if more “liberal” than “Conservative” policies are enacted) prevent the mortgage, stock exchange and banking excesses and travesties we’ve seen, which Glass-Steagel prevented since before WWII.

Finally, it ignores the fact that without regulation, corporations will happily pollute our air, rivers, ground-water, land and oceans to deadly levels all to increase the quarterly bottom-line.  They will demand that workers engage in unnecessarily unsafe, even deadly labor practices or starve and be black-listed, unless they acquiesce.

All these things have been evident in the failures of the Reagan, Bush I, Bush II and and Boehner/McConnell Presidencies.

Conservatives have been bashing labor unions ever since they were invented and using the same old tired arguments against them. Bottom line however is owner and management are against unions for one reason and one reason only- ugly greed.What conservative shills like Leonhardt don’t mention is not only do the workers had no say in producing gas-guzzling behemoth SUVs in the midst of an energy crisis , the real problems for Detroit started in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is when arrogant owners and managment relied on public relations and advertising rather than innovation- why Japan started to kick our butts. In fact, many of America’s best and brightest engineers went to Japan. Neither does Leonhardt mention that in Japan the average CEO makes about 50 times more than the assembly line worker in his company- in Amerika it is 400 times as much. So while a veteran line worker makes 58,000. a year-  his boss in the mahagony-panelled office makes 23,000,000.

I don’t have the answers to our current fiscal and economic predicament.. though it seems to me there is plenty of money around.. we’re awash in it by some estimates. So one problem is severe income and wealth inequality.. Good luck convincing the top 1% to give back some of that productivity and wealth.

One thing of note is that no matter who is lecturing us on the current crisis or showing us the golden path to our economic salvation.. they embrace the same paradigm of limitless growth and expansion.. The only way for more people to be secure economically they preach, is for there to be ever more production, more productivity, (translate that to mean lower pay).. more mining, drilling, sprawl, paving.. more everything. They even put numbers to it.. 2%, 5% whatever.

The problem with that as a base assumption is that we’re in the place we’re in after a century of production and expansion and growth of wealth far exceeding the dreams of avarice of the suited savants like Keynes and his ilk. What’s up with that?

The other nagging problem with fixing the human machine by applying more of the same is the reality that the earth is a closed and finite system.. and economists and planners seem to work from the notion that it’s open-ended, limitless. And of course it’s not. Just because things things have been changing slowly and incrementally.. climate, for instance.. that doesn’t mean it can all go on for ever. Despite what they tell us the Gulf of Mexico was permanently diminished by the recent BP boondoggle.. at some point things like that will add up to changes we can’t ignore.

Unfortunately it may just take something really terrible for an understanding to dawn upon us that we need fundamental change in how our economies and politics work.. not just more of the same.

Adios.

Statues of the unemployed wait for FDR.

I thought that was people waiting in line for bread, in the former Soviet Union. Yes, the grain crops are good this year!!!Bahahahahaha.

And let’s also not pretend that the cure for it is as mysterious as the cure for cancer, when all we need is to tax and spend.

FAIL

Broken window fallacy.

————————————————————————————

What we really need, is a major war. We know how well WWII ended the Great Depression. It worked so well, that FDR had to enact wage controls, due to the shortage of workers. He couldn’t allow the workers to make too much money, could he?

So, when bread hits $10 a loaf from all the Keynesian inflationary tactics, who is really hurting the poor? Oh, I’m sorry, the Fed is telling us that CPI is at 1.5-2%, right? What is it when you figure in the things that people actually need, like food, energy, and housing? 8%? What is Russia’s inflation? Why are they going to enact price controls on food? We know what happens when a government imposes price controls, right? Every single time, price controls led to shortages.

Now, figure in all of the inflation in China. China has just raised their minimum wage. That means higher labor costs, which means higher production costs, which means higher prices. All of that cheap shit coming from China, is going to go up in price.

The good people at Zerohedge put together an interactive map of all the recent price hikes and food riots. But there’s no inflation, right?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/interactive-map-recent-food-riots-and-price-hikes

So, free markets is what we have, and free markets is what we had prior to the ‘29 crash? That’s a joke right? What we had was a combination of Capitalism, Socialism and Mercantilism. It is, in fact, what we still have today. It is impossible to have free markets without having free banking. But that would be too unstable, right? You know what free banking is, yes? In case you forgot, up in your Ivy League, Ivory Tower:

http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/SmithV/smvRCB.html

But we need the government, and the central bank to provide liquidity to the market, to prevent a shortage of cash, right?

Keynesian economics will never work, and here’s why:

Politicians and the central bank will never do what is necessary during the “good” times. Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never. Never, ever. Never in a million years. You know that. I know that. History has shown that to be true.

Anyway, what does Keynesian Economics tell us to do when inflation sets in? It tells us to raise interest rates, and cut the supply of money (raise reserve requirements) ala Paul Volker 1979. What happens when you have a $14 trillion debt, and you raise interest rates? The interest payments go up. All of the short term debt will need to be refinanced at the new, higher interest rate. Then, we will need to “tax and spend” just to service the debt. Forget about money for digging ditches. Or, we could always default.

It seems so simple, really. Give money to the wealthy,, who have all the discretionary income they need,regardless of whether it is in the form of tax cuts or not, and the economy doesn’t ripple. Give money to the working class, whether in the form of tax cuts or raising the minimum wage, and that money immediately reappears in the economy.

All the talk about tax cuts for the wealthy promoting business expansion is malarkey. All the emphasis on corporate welfare simply brings this nation closer to third world status.