Channel: What's Fit to Sift
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They tell even the Media to shut up or we will cut you off. Sure, this did work in prior elections, but it will not work this time because while they can tell the Netroots to shut up, we will not stand by silently. Not. This. Time.
We, the Netroots, do not have to wait for the Media to cover the story. We will cover it.
We do not have to have the "facts" spoon feed to us. We will find the facts ourselves.
We do not have to wait for permission. We will grant it to ourselves.
So go ahead. Call me a sexist when I actually supported womens' rights. I know where I stand.
Go ahead. Call me racist when I am the Black man that has been struggling for this moment. I know what has really happened.
Go ahead. Call me "Liberal" when I am actually firmly in the masses. I know what a mess the "conservatives" have made.
Go ahead. Keep telling me that I am losing when I am in the lead. I know that we will win because it is our time.
You, who love war, who love money, who love power -- your time is up. You had your chance, but no more, not this time, because it is our time. It is time for all of the people -- all of the people of the United States of America.
(Written by dkawaii at Daily Kos)
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I have a strident republican friend who happens to be an atheist and has been so shaken by Palin's nomination that he is now probably going to vote Dem. on the presidential ticket. For all her gaffes and mishaps, I definitely feel that the base core of what scares me to death about her is how her fundamentalist views might shape the way she views middle Eastern politics.
What does the Austrian school of thought have to say about what to do in response to the current problems?
The Austrians do have a proposal, an extremely elaborate and complex one--the only difference is it is subtle in execution and there is no prime mover. It is a solution which involves millions of people--rather than a mere dozen.
The Austrians do not wish to do nothing, by any means, there is much to do to cure the economy. We can discuss the underlying economic principles in another post, but here are some items which would be a good start:
1. The government must aggressively investigate and prosecute all instances of fraud--putting those responsible in jail and levying extremely stiff personal fines.
2. The government should immediately issue a public statement stating that there will be no bailouts or financial aid to companies who failed to properly manage risk. Companies with responsible executives and solid business practices will not be punished, nor will taxpayers. Historically, a large contributor to market volatility has been speculation on impending regulation. This statement will severely calm the market--which is currently rocketing up and down on a daily basis amid speculation on the extent of government intervention.
3. The government is to immediately cease all monetary infusion in order to curb inflation. Inflation significantly retards actual growth. In a healthy economy, economic growth is perfectly matched with monetary growth. As it stands, economic growth is very far behind. Doing this will raise the value of the dollar and increase the real value of savings and lower the prices of goods.
4. A modest reduction in government spending should be followed by an equally sized tax cut. Tax cuts in the 1920s stimulated economic growth, helping to prevent a serious recession. This will create a larger supply of consumer savings available for investment, while also providing incentives for banks to lend.
5. Legislation encouraging mortgages with small or nonexistent downpayments must be repealed. Economists should issue a public statement encouraging lenders and lendees return to the de-facto standard of 20% down on a house. This protects the homeowner from foreclosure by providing a store of value to guard against market fluctuations.
6. Interest rates and housing prices must face a market correction. The artificially low interest rates from 2001-2004 must be allowed to rise in order for loans to become profitable again, and housing prices must be allowed to drop to pre-bubble levels. The result will be both affordable housing for consumers, and low-risk loans for bankers.
7. Market action must be permitted to allow banks to liquidate bad assets, even at a loss. This cash flow will enable banks to rebuild. Those banks which improperly diversified and are unable to rebuild must be allowed to fragment and be sold off to the highest bidder. This will enable responsible, ethical banks to gain larger market share and provide a larger pool of customers with higher-quality, safer loans.
8. Government officials should publicly de-emphasize the politically charged statistic of home ownership, and encourage homeowners to seek to live in their means by pursuing all housing options available.
9. Communities should come together to help support people affected by the housing crisis. Families and friends should offer temporary housing or modest monetary relief to help get people back on their feet--perhaps in exchange for help renovating the house, or other services.
Unless you're holding back a PhD degree in economics, I'm not sure we know enough to say anything more definitive than that there are multiple schools of thought on economics, and the consensus of those who run our economy is closer to Krugman than it is to Ron Paul.
The four competing economic schools of thought in the United States, historically, have been:
1. Keynesian
2. Austrian school
3. Chicago school
4. Marxian
There are several dozen other schools. Modern economics was invented in 1776 when Adam Smith published "The Wealth of Nations", the principles therein, which survive and are accepted to this day. Ron Paul is a member of the Austrian school--this is the same school as the economists at www.mises.org. Paul Kruger, like the majority of US economists in the last 80 years, belongs to the Keynesian school of thought.
The Keynesian school of thought has been the dominant school in the United States in the last 80 years. Keynesian economics claims that the state can stimulate economic growth through interest rates, taxation, and public projects. You can see how this thought meshes really well with the government we have today. For a Keynesian, this is the economic basis for the Federal Reserve.
In the last 80 years, Keynesian economics has been so thoroughly disproved, I myself do not understand how anyone considers it viable. Keynesian policy was single handled responsible for the great depression (see Murray Rothbard's "America's Depression") and there is no doubt that bubbles, such as the latest housing bubble was caused by state manipulation of interest rates (http://mises.org/story/3130). The idea that we can spend ourselves out of a recession has been thoroughly disproven (http://jim.com/econ/chap04p1.html). The reality is that during a recession, excess credit only causes a depression. This is because artificial credit impedes production (http://jim.com/econ/chap06p1.html). Artificial credit conceals the information that producers use to know how much to produce, and consumers use to know how much to spend. This is why Paul Kruger thinks that we can spend $700 billion to save this economy, and that he and Paulson (another Keynesian) believe the economy can be cured simply be lowering interest rates. Their ideas have been historically proven to be false, but the reason they remain popular is that an economic policy which sanctions government control over interest rates, and increased taxes, and large spending projects is politically desirable for obvious reasons. Even if these ideas seemed viable at one point, that is clearly no longer the case--the fallacies of Keynesian economics have caused ever major recession, shortage, and depression in the last 100 years. The Keynesian policies enacted by Germany, which lead to hyperinflation and the economic collapse are what allowed you-know-who to come to power. There is an argument to be made that Keynesian economics is partially responsible for WWII. Beyond that, the evidence that it is a failed school of economics is overwhelming. This is why you shouldn't trust any Keynesian economist who claims to have a solution to this mess--because it was their policy who got us into it.
Paul Krugman for one, and I've seen a couple other articles that've tangentially mentioned it as being a bad decision.
Paul Krugman should no longer have any credibility, all of his economic theories have been systematically proven false. His theories are the precise reason we are in this mess. He is of the same school of thought as Paulson. These are the people who got us into this mess, we shouldn't be looking to them for answers on how to get out of it.
www.mises.org is the most-cited academic source for economics, and the most-viewed economic website in the world. It boasts the support of several distinguished Nobel prize winners, and the hundreds (thousands?) of economists which comprise it support what Ron Paul is saying, and has been saying for decades.
I believe that is the same petition.
I think I'd like to believe that we could do nothing, and that the market would take care of itself, but economists are starting to really question allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse.
Who is questioning it? The good parts were successfully sold off for prices that were mutually beneficial, and all the bad parts have vanished.
Just this week, CNN reported that 166 academic economists petitioned congress not to intervene with the economy.
Sounds good to me, but I think we're in a problem more complex than that. Since these are banks, we'll see some pretty disastrous effects ripple through the economy as businesses and people's ability to get credit disappears.
What do you think about what happened to Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, they both collapsed and the government didn't intervene, yet both were successfully bought and the bad assets were dissolved. Didn't crash the market, in fact it barely caused a blip.
I wish I were better at that.
I don't want McSame.
My concerns about Obama is not about what he personally believes in but how reasonable a president he is. Can he see the big picture and make decisions that are right for the country and not just towing the party lines.
In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
I don't know your politics, but I'd recommend voting third party, rather than not voting.
If your objections to Obama are truly about his competency, and not his ideology, watch the debates and some of his policy speeches. He's no dummy, and he'll be surrounded by the best and the brightest in every topic.
http://news.videosift.com/talk/Netrunner-hits-500-wins-election-goes-to-jail-In-same-day
Correct me if I'm wrong, that's how I remember it. I don't have time to look into now (I'll check later).
In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
To some degree, I agree with you. He is saying raise taxes on the rich as long as we're in a period of economic growth, and end this ill-conceived war that never should have been waged as long as it doesn't look like it will destabilize the region.
Personally, those mitigating factors just enhance what I've liked about him from the beginning -- nothing is black and white, nothing is beyond reconsideration. He makes clear his philosophy on foreign policy and economic policy. He's clear about the direction he wants to move in, but hesitates to make unconditional promises about specifics, because, well, it would be irresponsible to say "regardless of what's going on, we're leaving Iraq".
If he did, then you'd be telling me he's as unwavering, irresponsible, and reckless as Bush...and you'd be right.
I don't see that as lying or spin -- he's not keeping those mitigating statements quiet, and anytime someone asks him about it, he freely admits that nothing he's proposing is a fixed in stone "damn the consequences" sort of policy.
On the other hand, you have committments from McCain to cut taxes, and stay in Iraq until we win -- just don't ask when that victory will come, or what it means, or whether there's a certain point where the cost of victory is too high. Ask him about balancing the budget, and he promises to do that by 2013 too, even with tax cuts, just don't ask how that's possible.
Even if I agreed with McCain's economic and foreign policy ideologically, after seeing what Bush's absolutism did, I want someone who sees shades of grey and who is showing willingness to be flexible, rather than clinging to their ideology regardless of the situation.
In reply to this comment by deedub81:
I understand there is a place for attacks, I just want to change the world. 'Can't we all just get along?"
I'm just as guilty as the next guy.
I haven't decided who to vote for, but Obama is making it hard for me to commit to his side.
It's stuff like this that causes me to think twice.
"Democrat Barack Obama says he would delay rescinding President Bush's tax cuts on wealthy Americans if he becomes the next president and the economy is in a recession, suggesting such an increase would further hurt the economy.
This statement tells us a lot about Obama. Is he admitting that it would hurt the economy to rescind the Bush tax cuts? It seems to me like he's whispering the truth about common sense after shouting out whatever he thinks people want to hear. Obama has been preaching the woes of the Bush Tax Cuts for as long as he's been running for President. He's just hedging his bets here. It's all about the polls!
Just like his stance on the Iraq war. During the debates against the other democratic presidential candidates he promised to start pulling troops out on day one!
After he all but sealed the party's nomination he changed his stance to not pulling out unless it makes sense.
Well, duh.
He is promising the world and yet he keeps his options open with talk like this. Isn't it a perfect example of wanting to have your cake and eat it too? Pure political pandering, if you ask me. Why can't he just give it to us straight?
In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Hey, if you promise to vote Obama, you can call me anything you like.