On a piece over at Cynical Nation titled, Obama and the pirates
(Posted by BNJ)
http://www.cynicalnation.com/2009/04/obama_and_the_pirates.html#comments
Barry said, “I don't have time to say much about this other than that I'm disappointed (though not surprised) that so many on the right can't bring themselves to celebrate this because their guy didn't get elected in November. And yes, much of the Left did the same thing for the past eight years, but that doesn't make it okay. So even if I never have occasion to do it again, I'm drinking a toast to Obama and dead pirates.”
In response, and remember, this was back in mid-April of 2009, I replied, “I feared we were getting another Jimmy Carter, but it seems we have another G W Bush - a dedicated, albeit cautious Keynesian, determined to keep us engaged in a military WoT.” (JMK)
Turns out that this certainly appears to have been merely “wishful thinking,” on my part.
Yes, getting the UAW to agree to major concessions was a PLUS, but putting them ahead of GM’s investors and first-line creditors, as was done with the government-overhaul was a HUGE NEGATIVE.
Moreover, the current administration is not only “Carteresque,” but “the Carter administration on steroids.”
Jimmy Carter’s foreign policies were an unmitigated disaster, especially in regards to Iran, where the ousting of the Shah led to the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the legitimizing of the scourge of today’s world “radicalized Islam,” by giving it the legitimacy of a home state.
His economic policies were a continuation of the Johnson-Nixon-Ford Keynesianism, only with an emphasis on even MORE reckless and irresponsible social spending.
Housing activists like Gail Cincotta and Wade Rathke (ACORN’s founder) found political allies in the Liberal Congress of that era, especially William Proxmire (D-WI) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who helped guide the horrific Community Reinvestment Act through Congress.
Among the worst abuses of the intentionally abusive CRA was that it had housing activists like Ms. Cincotta and Mr. Rathke overseeing how the banks doled out their loans!
The CRA was the first of many steps, and perhaps the BIGGEST, in transforming America’s banking system from one centered on making profits for their shareholders (a bank’s ONLY rightful purpose) to one of assisting in delivering a perceived “public good.”
Ironically enough, Barack Obama was a huge part of that movement. His first job out of law school was working as a lawyer for ACORN and taking on Citibank in 1996 for “not making enough loans to low-income people” (that is “people unable to pay them back).
Today, the banking industry is heavily government-controlled and risk-averse bureaucrats have foisted policies on banks that are crimping the number of loans such institutions make to Venture Capital investments (entities that might turn into the nest Intel or Microsoft) and into Federal Treasury Securities...right now U.S. banks are net BUYERS of such Treasury securities to the tune of some $185 BILLION annually! That’s BAD because is means A LOT LESS credit available for business loans and home mortgages.
Ultimately it means a much LOWER living standard for ALL Americans.
And THAT is the goal of the Liberals in this country...especially those in government.
What we’re looking at now is an economic tsunami whose winds haven’t even hit us YET.
Early next year the rest of the world’s buyers of U.S. debt are set to increase the costs of borrowing for Uncle Sam and that means the cost of servicing that debt will ultimately more than double over the next few years! What that’ll mean is higher interest rates and high inflation rates, along with prolonged high unemployment for as far as the eye can see.
We could, if we’re very unfortunate, see a return of STAGFLATION by 2010...which would almost certainly signal the end of Democratic dominance in Congress.
“But what if they’ve already locked us into Cap and Trade based treaties and a huge healthcare entitlement, by then,” many ask.
Well, it’ll be up to the next crew in D.C. to clean up that mess. Eradicating such treaties, or otherwise signaling our unilateral unwillingness to live up to them AND pulling, not only any new entitlements out by the roots, but perhaps dismantling most, if not ALL of the Great Society, by transforming them the way workfare transformed welfare.
The healthcare overhaul COULD be fine-tuned and tweaked in exactly that way.
Any newly expanded “public option” made restricted (say no more than 4 visits to a physician a year) and rationed (perhaps no more than $10,000 in care, or less, per year)...while encouraging private insurers to allow those able and willing to circumvent that rationing and restrictions via various forms of “gap insurance.”
That way, businesses and Municipalities would be freed from the burdens of providing all the free healthcare they do now AND, more importantly, the rationing and restrictions of the public option would be targeted to the poor and non-productive.
We’re heading for some very dark days economically because the media has assisted in exonerating government in a government-caused economic calamity.
Since the 1970s Liberals like Senators Proxmire and Kennedy helped housing activists force banks to make more loans to low income Americans. That’s BAD BUSINESS and it’s bad for America.
Traditional lending criteria (20% down, along with a reliance on one’s credit history, debt to income ration, etc) resulted in the SAME default rate among both black and white borrowers, proving that “credit-worthy blacks were NOT turned down by banks.”
But Moderate Republicans played a big part in this as well. Jack Kemp fought for “the ownership society” and G W Bush and most of those in his administration also bought into this, baling out banks after they were legislated into making more and more high-risk loans.
Keynesianism, specifically government meddling in the mortgage market is what caused the subprime mortgage mess and triggered the global credit crisis, and STILL the U.S. government has done NOTHING to correct the problems that created that mess. Subprime loans are still legal to make, Glass-Spiegel has not be re-instituted, the CRA hasn’t been reformed, credit default swaps and both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still very much involved in the mortgage market.
Worse yet, Cap and Trade promises to create a bubble similar to the housing and the tech bubble with energy!
Keynesian economic policy amounts to economic malfeasance.
And yet Keynesianism hasn’t been blamed for the mess it created, instead, it’s been anointed the cure!
As a result, we’ve followed up a Keynesian (big government) created problem with, not only MORE, but indeed hyper-Keynesianism.
That does not bode well for our future.
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