Posted on 10/16/2008 9:27:54 AM PDT by RBroadfoot
Don't Blame Capitalism Amid the chaos of recent days, as the federal government has taken gargantuan steps to stabilize the financial markets, realigning the U.S. economic system in the process, comes a nearly universal consensus: This crisis resulted from government reluctance to regulate the unbridled greed of Wall Street.
...
For the political left, which has long championed the need for such limits, this crisis is the opportunity of a lifetime.
...
The United States reached its economic preeminence on the strength of its free markets. So far, the economic disaster exacerbated by government policies is creating opportunities for further government interference, which will lead to bigger catastrophes. Binding the country to a tangle of socialist ideals will seal our fate as a second-rate economic power.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Most Republicans are particularly worthy of contempt ... at least the Democrats didn't pretend to believe in free markets.
“Our political leaders — Bush as well as Democrats — have done more to advance the cause of global socialism than any group since the Bolsheviks in 1917.”
That’s a bit of a stretch. What about China, Cuba, Eastern Europe, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicuragua, Peru, Venezuela, Zaire, Spain, France, Scandanavia, Great Britain, etc.? They have a bit of an edge on us.
Now here is something interesting:
For all you beer drinkers out there!
If you had purchased $1,000 of AIG stock one year ago, you would have $42 left.
With Lehman, you would have $6.60 left.
With Fannie or Freddie, you would have less than $5 left.
But if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all
of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have had $214.
Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.
It’s called the 401-Keg....
“For the political left, which has long championed the need for such limits”
Stopped reading right there..
BS
Much to my chagrin this guy has been correct about the downturn all along. And he is correct in his assessment here.
The Dims keep tryin’ ta switch the blame to us!
This is a pretty good investment plan, but it can be improved.
Just save your aluminum cans for a couple of years and you’ll probably get your full $1000 investment back. Inflation is the inevitable consequence of the trillions of $ created over the past few weeks. Price inflation will more than offset the deflationary effects of the wreckage of the real economy upon commodity prices. Of course, a few six-packs may cost $1000 by then.
Advice my husband will like. LOL. = D!
Read the whole column -- the line you cite is the end of his summary of the "nearly universal consensus" which he argues is wrong! The blurb at the end of the column indicates that the writer was an economic adviser to Ron Paul. And the column makes a whole lot of sense -- too bad the writer's not running for president!
This financial chaos is the direct result of too little regulation of governmental activity in the markets - giving free houses at taxpayer expense to buy votes for the ‘rats - and too much regulation in the private sector - government intimidation and extortion to threaten private banks and investment firms to provide the funding for those free-housing mortages.......
Not most Pubs, the RINO’s. There are fine House and Senate conserv-Reaganites left. The fact is, the blame is on the MSM, the educators on our campuses and I mean high school and primary school too as well as the daily pounding of the Pelosi-Reid types. Obama is just Bernie Sanders with smooth. But, apparently nearly 50% of America thinks that is just grand. Hate has driven that feeling and emotive response not just Pub stupidity.
It’s the second paragraph.
Not the end of his summary.
And he doesn’t clarify anywhere in the article that the statement is ‘wrong’.
How about this? Do you think he’s right about taxing capital gains and mortgage interest?
“Prominent among these wrongheaded advantages are the mortgage interest tax deduction and the exemption of real estate capital gains from taxable income.”
But he’s NOT correct about the libs pushing for oversite and no where in the article does he ‘clarify’ that it was the repubs that wanted it, not the left.
And what about capital gains and mortgage interest tax?
That’s a ‘good’ idea?
“Prominent among these wrongheaded advantages are the mortgage interest tax deduction and the exemption of real estate capital gains from taxable income.”
It's a comment that flows from his summary: he gives the "consensus" (which he knows is wrong) and comments that the left loves it (the "consensus") because it gives them the wedge they've been waiting for.
"Prominent among these wrongheaded advantages are the mortgage interest tax deduction and the exemption of real estate capital gains from taxable income. These policies create unnatural demand for home purchases and a (tax-free) incentive to speculate in real estate."
He merely points out that the governmment policies have been distorting the housing marking for a long time and that this is where it started. I doubt that he would advocate getting rid of them now in one fell swoop -- far too many people have done their planning and made sizable financial decisions and commitment based on them. But -- as Rush has pointed out -- it's still gov't interference in what should be a free market.
(Rush further speculated that housing prices would be significantly lower without the mortgage deduction; demand would be lower, for one thing, without the buyers who make the commitment not because they want a house, but because the mortgage deduction is too good too pass up, and -- of course -- real estate speculation would be much less attractive.)
You're free to like and approve of the tax advantanges, but you can't rationally deny that they're government manipulation of the market. Getting rid of them now would be widely unpopular and they're probably the main obstacle (in practical terms) to getting to a flat tax.
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