Posted on 10/20/2008 8:35:10 PM PDT by Alter Kaker
Ben Bernanke apparently wants four more years as Federal Reserve Chairman. At least that's a reasonable conclusion after Mr. Bernanke all but submitted his job application to Barack Obama yesterday by endorsing the Democratic version of fiscal "stimulus."
While the Fed chief said any stimulus should be "well targeted," even a general endorsement amounts to a political green light. Mr. Bernanke certainly knows that Mr. Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill are talking about some $300 billion in new "stimulus" spending, while President Bush and Republicans are resisting. And by saying any help should "limit longer-term effects" on the federal deficit, he had to know he was reinforcing Democratic opposition to permanent tax cuts.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
It was a well orchestrated conspiracy.
GO VOTE FOR McCain or complain for the next four years, if we make it that long! :(
Obama keeps building up his BUSH ADMINISTRATION. We really need McCain to win so we can have real change.
Highly doubtful.
Alan Greenspan was so far and away the worst Fed Reserve chairman in history that the idea we're even debating this seems laughable. He created the internet bubble by absurdly inflating the financial markets with artificially cheap money and deliberately propped up the housing bubble in 2002, in order to make up for the collapse of the internet bubble.
That would have by itself secured his standing as worst Fed Chairman ever.
However, Greenspan went well beyond that, by (1) urging low income homeowners to choose adjustable rate mortgages (brilliant advice), (2) urging seniors to invest their savings in the stock market, (3) thoroughly politicized his office by supporting Clinton's tax increases, etc.
If there were any justice in this world, Greenspan would be rotting away in a federal minimum security jail cell, longing for conjugal visits from Andrea Mitchell.
I guess I'll have to rent that one again. The first part of Jacket is great; the rest of the film tends to drag.
Here is a GREAT booklet written by Garet Garrett back in 1938. A conservative view on FDR and the New Deal. The entire thing is like a playbook for Obama’s 1984 (opps - Freudian slip - 2008!) It is truly frightening and should be read by every conservative wishing to see the future. (So much of it has already come to pass - again!)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/929392/posts?page=11
Here are some excerpts - he is writing about FDR getting elected and the New Deal:
....And so the first problem was solved. The seat of government was captured by ballot, according to law.
PROBLEM TWO
TO SEIZE ECONOMIC POWER
This was the critical problem. The brilliant solution of it will doubtless make a classic chapter in the textbooks of revolutionary technic. In a highly evolved money economy, such as this one, the shortest and surest road. to economic power would be what? It would be control of money, banking, and credit. The New Deal knew that answer. It knew also the steps and how to take them, and above all, it knew its opportunity.
It arrived at the seat of government in the midst of that well known phenomenon called a banking crisis, such as comes at the end of every great depression. It is like the crisis of a fever. When the banks begin to fail, pulling one another down, that is the worst that can happen. If the patient does not die then he will recover. We were not going to die. The same thing had happened to us before, once or twice in every twenty years, and always before the cure had brought itself to pass as it was bound to do again.
In his inaugural address, March 4, 1933, the President declared that the people had “asked for discipline and direction under leadership”; that he would seek to bring speedy action “within my Constitutional authority”; and that he hoped the “normal balance of executive and legislative authority” could be maintained, and then said: “But in the event that Congress shall fail... and in the event that the national emergency is still critical... I shall ask Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis broad executive power to make war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”
It is true that people wanted action. It is true that they were in a mood to accept any pain-killer, and damn the normal balance of authority between the executive and legislative authority. That was an emotional state of mind perfectly suited to a revolutionary purpose, and the President took advantage of it to make the first startling exposition of New Deal philosophy.
Note his assertion of the leadership principle over any other. Discipline under leadership. Note the threat to Congress “in the event that Congress shall fail.” But who was to say if the Congress had failed? The leader, of course. If in his judgment the Congress failed, then, with the people behind him, he would demand war powers to deal with an economic emergency.
The word emergency was then understood to mean what the dictionaries said it meant namely, a sudden juncture of events demanding immediate action. It was supposed to refer only to the panic and the banking crisis, both temporary.
But what it meant to the President, as nobody then knew, was a very different thing. Writing a year later, in his book, On Our Way, he said: “Strictly speaking, the banking crisis lasted only one week.... But the full meaning of that word emergency related to far more than banks; it covered the whole economic and therefore the whole social structure of the country. It was an emergency that went to the roots of our agriculture, our commerce, our industry; it was an emergency that has existed for a whole generation in its underlying causes and for three-and-one-half years in its visible effects.
It could be cured only by a complete reorganization and measured control of the economic structure....It called for a long series of new laws, new administrative agencies. It required separate measures affecting different subjects; but all of them component parts of a fairly definite broad plan.”
So, what the New Deal really intended to do, what it meant to do within the Constitution if possible, with the collaboration of Congress if Congress did not fail, but with war powers if necessary, was to reorganize and control the “whole economic and therefore the whole social structure of the country.” And therein lay the meaning the only consistent meaning of a series of acts touching money, banking and credit which, debated as monetary policy, made no sense whatever.
why can’t Bush take all his friends to that dust-bowl ranch of his while we adults try to get McCain elected and stop the tide of marxism?
v-e-r-y
interesting.
i’ve got to check him out.
thank you.
My thoughts exactly. The boot scenes were good while the rest of the film was more of a stinker.
>...March 4, 1933, the President declared that the people had “asked for discipline and direction under leadership”; <
i’m sure that we will be hearing similar words from comrade obamao!
I am no fan of Greenspan per se or any Fed Chairman. I don’t believe in giving one man that much power. I’m not defending him other than to admire his brilliant work at obfuscating and meandering and boring congresscritters to tears. That’s all.
What about his “irrational exuberance” comment? In his one moment of candor he warned people to sober up. Was it the job of a Fed chairman to tell people not to buy stock in ass.com? The internet bubble was financial darwinism.
As for the rest of this, let me take it line by line:
(1) urging low income homeowners to choose adjustable rate mortgages (brilliant advice)
What are you talking about?
2) urging seniors to invest their savings in the stock market
What are you talking about?
Surreal.
Why is now a good thing to democrats?
No, not his job.
However the Greenspan did something much worse than that. He lent money to banks at insanely low interest rates for the sole purpose of letting them invest in things like ass.com. That created the internet bubble. When that went South, he injected even more money into the economy, with the express goal of getting people to get no-money-down adjustable rate mortgages on investment properties. What could possibly go wrong?
Greenspan also raised rates 7 times in 13 months back in 1994. Fighting the invisible spectre of inflation like Don Quixote taking a sword to windmills.
My free advice to anyone right now, which is about all it’s worth, is wait till your local municipality is caught in this credit crunch and can’t borrow unless they pay 6.5% tax free.
Than buy the bonds and take the tax free interest. That’s what I’m going to do.
That’s worth more than me and AKs incessant babbling.*
*This shall not be taken as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. That offer can be made by prospectus only.
What a misleading headline
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