Back in 2006 when a GOP Congress was debating raising the U.S. Debt Ceiling, Senator Barack Obama said this;
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.
“And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on.
“Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities. Instead, interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans–a debt tax that Washington doesn’t want to talk about. If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies.
“Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
And the Keynesian Bush administration, which spent MORE (even adjusted for inflation than LBJ did on reckless social spending) DID indeed OVERSPEND...but the same critique holds true today...especially for a President who ran on TAX CUTS and CUTTING DEFICITS and REDUCING the National Debt and delivered a record $1.6 TRILLION Deficit his very first YEAR!
We DO deserve better. We both NEED and DESERVE more Liberty (individual responsibility and control) and economic freedom (a LESS regulated market).
The question is, “When are we going to get the Liberty, especially the economic freedom we all need?”
But now that Barry's in charge, what he said in '06 is immaterial, 'cuz now he can spend his way out of anything! Right into hyperinflation of the Carter Era(ror).
ReplyDeleteAmen Skunky!
ReplyDeleteAnd JMK, I've changed the name of my blog. It's no longer PoorGrrl Zone. However, the url is the same so would go have a look see and let me know if you dig the new moniker? Thanks, friend.
Well, the failures of hyper-Keynesianism are becoming more and more obvious even to the pols themselves.
ReplyDeleteToday Dodd and Dorgen have abandoned their plans to run for re-election. Neither had any plans to retire before the polls showed how weak they were.
The problem for Conservatives is that these guys are now free as "lame ducks" to thumb their noses at the polls and thus "the will of the people"...and embrace the more radical agenda of the liberal Left.
The problem with 2010 is that as big a rout as it looks like its going to be for the Dems, it still may not dig the Republicans out of the huge hole they've dug....or more aptly the hole the MSM and the Keynesian Rockefeller Republicans dug for them.
The MSM is STILL looking to blame the worsening economy on "free markets and deregulation," despite the FACT that the Bush administration was as Keynesian (big government) as either LBJ's or Nixon's (both very Keynesian administrations) AND that the Bush administration not only eschewed ANY "deregulation," it was one of the most regulatory administrations in decades! Not only did it reliably deliver OVER 1,000 pages of NEW regulation EVERY year, it also enacted Sarbannes-Oxley, one of the most expensive and far-reaching pieces of economic/business regulation in decades!
People have to know this, because they MUST be aware that its been the REGULATED market NOT the "free market" (which America hasn't seen since 1912, when JP Morgan and Bernard Baruch combined to forge the existing modern regulated market we have today.
Consider the history of the REGULATED MARKET in America; born in 1912, booming times through the 1920's....then the worst financial crisis in modern history (The Great Depression)....then WW II and the post boom economy for America, followed by the Keynesian explosion from 1964 to 1981....and the implosion of that Keynesian economy during Jimmy Carter's star-crossed tenure...and then the increasing alliance between government and the banking industry, resulting in politicians and bureaucrats writing and re-writing lending criteria and banking parameters that saw $1 TRILLION in subprime loans being made from 1993 and 2000, resulting in huge bailouts to many American banks in the late 1990s....then, in the wake of those bailouts and the realization by bankers and mortgage brokers that they weren't risking/betting their own monies, but the peoples (TAXPAYER) monies, resulting in over $4 TRILLION in subprime loans being made between 2002 and 2008 and the second worst global financial crisis in modern history (second to the Great Depression)!
That's some sordid history, isn't it?!
In my view, socialism officially failed in 1989 when the former USSR collapsed and the REGULATED Market (or the "Corporatism" we've had in America from 1912 to today) officially failed in 2008.
So, the MSM, if it had ANY sense or understanding of economics, would be espousing the ONLY rational alternative - the free and open/unregulated market America's Founders espoused and founded this country on!
Saw it Seane-Anna and I've changed your name on my blog roll.
ReplyDeleteLove the new name and still love your writing!
SF is indeed right about what's going on.
There will be much higher inflation not too far down the road. This is a GOOD time, maybe a GREAT time to buy silver and gold....I prefer silver because (A) it's cheaper and (B) it has more industrial applications.
AS NOMEX notes, "It is estimated that more than 95% of all the silver ever mined throughout history has already been consumed by industrial use. That silver is gone forever, unrecoverable at any price. In 1900, there were approximately 12 billion ounces of silver in the world. Today, that figure has fallen to about 300 million ounces of above-ground, refined silver. This means that at current prices, it would only take about four billion dollars to purchase all of the above-ground silver in the world today."
http://www.monex.com/prods/silver.html
Consider that the worldwide market demand for silver has been growing steadily, while supplies of silver have been (as NOMEX noted) disappearing. New high-tech uses for silver will almost certainly strain the already-tight supplies even further. Given that world demand for silver already (NOW) exceeds annual production and has for every year since 1990, the depletion of the world's above-ground stockpiles of silver has been ongoing. The U.S. government was once the largest stockpiler of silver on the planet. In that role it dumped billions and billions of ounces of silver onto the world market over the years, resulting in depressed silver prices. Today, that government silver stockpile is pretty much gone, and today the U.S. government is a buyer of silver at prevailing world silver prices.
Silver looks poised to greatly increase in value over the next few years, especially if inflation takes hold here, as dollar inflation tends to result in precious metal price increases.