Thursday, March 12, 2009

Economic Liquefaction

Look around. Take note of what is going on in the world and the nation around you. For not too distant in the future, those who have the means to rewrite history will do exactly that to publish their version of truth. Don’t forget, in spite of 9/11, that our country enjoyed a strong economy until the mortgage fantasy of “affordable housing for all Americans” poisoned the underpinnings of our capitalistic economy and left many who played by the rules wondering where all their savings went. Don’t forget that long before we were all delivered from the wilderness in November 2008 that the price of gasoline had returned to reasonable levels. Don’t forget the federal income tax rate that you are paying for your 2008 AGI as it will not be so low next year. And most of all don’t forget that our homeland has not been attacked by terrorists since 2001.

Now back to the world around you; have you heard that there is an economic crisis? There is obviously much debate about how we should proceed to turn the economy around. Those who believe in capitalism and market forces believe that allowing the economic cycle to run its course, while painful, will lead us back to solid ground. Others believe that government should step in to shore up the economy by helping those that are “too big to fail”. As indicated by my mortgage fantasy statement, I believe the government shore up may help in the short term, but the overall affect will be to prolong the pain of economic recovery by allowing companies that will eventually fail anyway to hang on longer than they should.

It is my opinion that a convincing argument may be made by making your opponents position look weak. It is obvious that President Obama favors larger government and the shore up approach. Since President Obama uses every opportunity to state how much of a crisis our economy is in it is my opinion that he is practicing Economic Liquefaction. By talking down the economy, I believe President Obama is intentionally trying to convince the entire country that capitalism has failed through the destabilization of the economic ground beneath our feet. As the economy becomes less stable it will become apparent that the government shore up is the only available option. The weak economy also provides President Obama with an excellent margin of error as the history writers will “remember” how he turned the failed economy around since it had nowhere else to go but up. There is definitely a big upside for the President and the Democrat congress to allow the economy to languish a bit longer so that the eventual recovery can be attributed to all of their “help”.

Hoping for Change.

##That’s my opinion##

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You two sure do have a lot of hot air. You should start a baloon tour company. But don't count on any emergency services to help you when your baloon catches fire, because they're part of the bloated government.

Lucid Guy said...

Well leftie, you should know bloated when you hear it.

Beth said...

Sad that Leftie cannot actually make a comment to defend his side but rather tries to knock down the writers of this blog. Then again that is all the left knows how to do, bring people down.

I have heard many economists say that the Great Depression was made worse by the New Deal, why can't we learn from our mistakes?

Leftie said...

I thought I would liven up this dull post. Here's the truth:

"Tue Mar 31, 1:45 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama benefits from a broadly held perception that others bear the bulk of responsibility for state of the U.S. economy, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll published on Tuesday.

Asked who was responsible for the economic meltdown, 80 percent in the poll blamed banks, financial institutions and corporations. Some 70 percent also blamed consumers for taking on too much debt and the former Bush administration for lax regulation. Only 26 percent said the Obama administration was not doing enough to turn the situation around.

Two-thirds of respondents approve of the way Obama is handling the presidency, and 60 percent approve of the way he is handling the economy.

Sixty-four percent said were confident Obama's policies will improve the economy, down from 72 percent just before he took office in January.

Forty two percent said the country was now heading in the right direction, a five-year high. Late last year, when then-President George W. Bush was in its final months, as many as nine in 10 American said the country was heading in the wrong direction.

The poll of 1,000 adults was conducted Thursday through Sunday and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

(Reporting by Alan Elsner, editing by Alan Elsner)"

Pragmatic Guy said...

I sympathize with Leftie's viewpoint (although the style is questionable!). Lucid's analysis of the US economy is more amusing than enlightening. Leftie could spend as much time debunking Lucid than Lucid spent writing his opinion, but Lucid would not change his mind, nor would Beth realize that only the most extreme economists argue that the Great Depression was made worse by the New Deal.

For starters, Lucid points to "affordable housing" as the "poison" that took away the savings of those who "played by the rules". That opinion completely sidesteps the issue of the bankers, investors, insurers milking the system for everything it's got -- Lucid is blaming people who collectively purchased a few billion in assets with no mention of the folks who milked us of hundreds of billions. Big Capitalists Who Usually Are Republicans would be innocent, Joe Minimum Wage Who Is A Typically A Democrat down the street would be guilty. If that is not a horribly biased view of the world...

Another puzzling but revealing comment: big government proponents would believe that we need to help those are "too big to fail". But that's largely the opposite -- big government proponents want the government to be big, not the big bankers that got saved! It is the small government/free market folks who want to save the banks -- the underpinning of the capitalist system. The argument has been largely reversed! Let's face it, the bailout of the big banks should piss off Leftits and Rightists alike, because it is contrary to what we all believe. It is blatant governement intervention (capitalists say "baaaaad"!) and it is big corporate interests scratching each other's backs (socialistas say "baaaaad"!).

Another one: it is "obvious" that Obama favors larger government, when it was the Bush administration that first architected both stimulus and bailout. What if Obama just wanted to fix the mess, and then return to the market economics that he's been preaching all along? If Bush acts socialist and Obama speaks capitalist, can we really say that his anti-corporation direction is "obvious"? If anything, I'm very confused as to what Republicans really stand for.

This one's more puzzling: "Obama is trying to convince the country that capitalism has failed". That doesn't require as much work as the President is undertaking. There are tens of thousands of journalists and economists making that statement right now. There's been front page editorials about it. Why would Lucid single out Obama for an opinion that is so widespread around the world? Because it fits in the "political motive" category? Sure it does. But we could speculate about any leader's intent endlessly. Lucid's speculation is legitimate based on current facts, but it doesn't explain why we should disagree with Obama's strategy in the first place! Lucid ties Obama's strategy with "capitalism=bad" when I could as simply tie with "capitalism=good". So if Obama is successful as Lucid suggests, I could just as well say "yea capitalism, thank you Obama for proving it". Is Lucid staging a rebuttal for the Majority's impending success in saving our country? I cannot but relish at the idea. After all, the arguments for why it was the Democrat's fault that the banking system collapsed should be interesting to read!

Oklahoma City Divorce Attorney said...

I definitely believe that there is a political strategy behind the talk.