Yup. Those are not new thoughts/worries to me. You should read this book for a conclusion to these problems.
Posted on 12/14/2009 8:36:13 AM PST by blam
Niall Ferguson: The World Is In Denial, The Great Repression Lives On
Joe Weisenthal
Dec. 14, 2009, 5:10 AM
Niall Ferguson is in the media a lot, but this interview with Consuelo Mack (via Paul Kedrosky) is one of the best summations of he's views we've come across.
Some of the points he gets across:
* Governments and households are in denial about how the world has changed post-crisis.
* Wall Street is in a worse state than prior to the crisis because now the government backstop is explicit, and because the remaining players now have a bigger oligopoly than before.
* The yuan-dollar link is badly hurting other countries, like Japan and Germany, because the Yuan really should be strengthening. Instead it's weakening.
* The Fed will have to catch its lenders by surprise -- a shock devaluation of sorts -- if it wants to inflate its way out of debt.
* It won't be that long before the US has a true equal -- China -- in the global economy.
* As the US gets poorer, chaos around the world will increase, as we can't afford to create stability.
* Aready we're seeing it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Yup. Those are not new thoughts/worries to me. You should read this book for a conclusion to these problems.
No way.
I won't believe it.
Nope.
"We can resist enslavement to big central government that crushes hope and opportunity. We must be wary of government largesse. It doesn’t come free and often accepting it takes away everything that is free. Melting into Washington’s powerful and caretaking arms will only lead to suck away the incentive to work hard and chart our own course. This will only contribute to an unstable economy and dizzying national debt, and it will make us less free.
"We don’t have to feel that we must beg an allowance from Washington – except to beg the allowance to be self-determined.
"See, in order to be self-sufficient (we) must be allowed to develop, to drill and build and climb to fulfill our promise! We can not start believing that government is the answer. It can’t make you happy or healthy or wealthy or wise. What can? It is the wisdom of the people and our families and our small businesses and industrious individuals. And it is God’s grace helping those who help themselves." - Sarah Palin, July 26, 2009
BIG will come from printing money off the printing presses. The US will have to monetize its debt, IMHO. I don’t see a realistic way around it.
When the presses start rolling, the prices are going to shoot up. Gov’t will have to send out checks to us to survive. I plan on being a traveling poet and balladeer. I don’t like this, but I don’t see a way around it. Taxes will never be enough to pay off debt, plus socsec, and medicare.
America will have to be rebuilt from the ground up. It will be a different place.
parsy, who calls like he sees it
All well and good, but you have to remember, the minority party is the GOP. Should they get back in power, they don’t have a clue what to do. What clues they do have will sink the country even deeper. Cutting taxes is a pile of crap in today’s economy. What, make the deficit higher??? Whoopie, make way for the Republican Einsteins.
The things that may give us a fighting chance, like trade protectionism, more unionism, higher tax rates on the wealthy and finance reform are all GOP taboos. Even the democrats don’t do that stuff.
So we are stuck with monetization of the debt. Think where that is going to lead.
parsy, who has stared into the abyss
There’s something about the canard that “the only thing that got us out of the depression was WWII” that bothers me, can’t quite figure it out, but it seems to fit in the FDR/New Deal version of history.
For starters it cost us several hundred thousand lives, nationalization of virtually all of industry, the rise of mega-corporations, etc. and got us meddling in so many countries and so on. The notion seems to always stop the discussion where it ought to start.
I agree. I bring it up to begin the discussion of just how serious our current predicament is. So many think this is just economic and forget why wars are fought.
Jack Kennedy cut taxes on capital gains and income taxes and the net tax receipts increased - because of increased business activity.
G.W. Bush did the same.
What is it you trade protectionist socialists don't get. Economics is not a zero sum game. But its tough to put my finger on where your wrong because you have a new set of loony tunes every time the economy has a burp.
Economies will continue to burp - doesn't mean that stomach surgery is necessary.
Capitalism is a "creative destruction machine". If the leftist socialists would stand back and stop messing with the process - much of September 2008's monumental pileup would be behind us - sure, there would be wreckage by the side of the road....but traffic would be flowing again.
And the wreckage would be exactly those who cause the accident and deserved to be left in the ditch.
Instead your team has patched a tire here, pulled a fender straight there and left the same drivers at the wheel of a much less stable machine.
Idiocy - pure idiocy.
JFK cut taxes in the 60’s and so did Bush and it supposedly worked so it surely will today.
Let’s see, was it Black Jack Pershing who promised to bury some Muslim terrorists with pigs back around 1900 and it worked in the Phillipines. Maybe we should try the same thing in 2009.
No, that’s the point. What works sometimes don’t work in all situations. Cut taxes is the GOP’s one trick pony and sometimes the tricks just won’t work. Time to put the old brain to work and stop relying on talking points.
parsy, who believes the GOP has no tricks left
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