Posted on 02/13/2009 8:29:30 AM PST by lewisglad
OK, things aren't going well. Good people are losing their jobs. Every day the deficit is looking more and more like the Great Pit of Carkoon, which, as we all remember, was that giant hole with a ravenous monster inside it that ate Boba Fett in "Return of the Jedi." "In its belly," quoth C-3PO, "you will find a new definition of pain and suffering as you are slowly digested over a thousand years." In this case, pain and suffering will inevitably take the form of inflation of Zimbabwean proportions and proctologically intrusive taxes that will make every April 15th seem like a thousand years.
Our elected representatives in Washington sold the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" as a stimulant for the economy, but it is, in fact, Viagra for the leviathan state. The legislation effectively repeals welfare reform, the single most successful domestic policy of the 1990s. I must have been in the bathroom during that debate.
It's no wonder lovers of limited government and fetishists for free markets are moping like dogs whose food bowls have been moved. Alan Greenspan has repudiated capitalism. George Bush paid for Barack Obama's expansion of government with the proceeds from a fire sale on his last remaining free-market principles. Not only are we nationalizing the banks, but the legislators overseeing the banking industry regulate about as well as I play the left-handed harpsichord.
Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who got a sweetheart mortgage from Countrywide and carried water for Fannie Mae like Gunga Din, should be testifying before his own committee in an orange jumpsuit in exchange for early release. Instead, he's spewing righteous indignation about the malfeasance of the people who used to buy him lunch.
Meanwhile, a bunch of banking CEOs appeared before the House Financial Services Committee this week. Don't get me wrong: These executives should be holding cardboard signs on the side of the road these days ("Will Float Derivatives for Food"), but they at least know what they're talking about. One congressman after another berated the CEOs for making bad loans and having shaky balance sheets. Fair enough. But they also berated them for not using bailout money to make more bad loans, which would keep their balance sheets shaking like Keith Richards at a detox spa.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who last May vowed to nationalize the oil industry if it didn't cut gas prices, spent her interrogation time sounding like the sort of person who waits in line at the DMV while having a conversation with her handbag, only to finally ask the clerk why he's wasting her time. The Atlantic's Megan McArdle writes that watching Waters interrogate the CEOs was "like watching your crazy aunt challenge your boyfriend to prove that fairies aren't real."
One of the great things about capitalism is that, unlike socialism or, say, Bobby Knight, it can deal with failure. In fact, capitalism needs failure. Joseph Schumpeter called this "creative destruction." Your grandmother called it "making lemonade out of lemons." The beauty of free markets is that firms learn from their mistakes or they lose money, shrink and then go out of business. Governments, meanwhile, grow from their mistakes and learn to make money.
Under normal circumstances, the financial inferno would cause a lot of pain, but it would also burn away a lot of deadwood. The strongest firms would survive, and newer, healthier businesses would sprout from the ashes. Plummeting housing prices would make homes affordable for first-time buyers again, particularly those with good credit who live within their means.
Sure, we would still have a stimulus bill, with tax cuts and infrastructure spending and, yes, silly pork projects. And that would be fine. We would even have some kind of bailout of the banking industry, which became a mess in part because people like Christopher Dodd and Maxine Waters tried to play the banker in their own personal game of Monopoly.
But that's not what we got. Instead, the old adage "Everyone's a capitalist on the way up and a socialist on the way down" is kicking in. The thing is, if you're a socialist on the way down, you were never really a capitalist on the way up. Capitalism requires putting your own capital at risk.
What we do have is a grand adhocracy where "government," aka Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner, Nancy Pelosi and a dozen others, will figure everything out as they go. Businesses will rise or fall based on their skill at kissing up to the government.
And as sure as shinola, when government fails again, we'll be told that only government can save us.
90% of jobs are in small business.
This Porkulus will wipe out a lot of small business, and make it extremely hard to start a small business.
That is one of the main features of European countries.
It is a route to permanent recession, just like European countries.
Re: It is a route to permanent recession, just like European countries.
Very similar to the way the old USSR blamed 70 years of failed crop harvests not on collectivist farming, but on 70 years of “unusually bad weather.”
I’m about ready to hoist the black flag. I pick up my new shotgun today and am still hopeful that it’ll only be used for protection/defense, but I’m ready to be “proactive” if circumstances warrant it. Goldberg is right that we’re heading for inflation of Zimbabwean proportions and a revolution may be just around the corner.
Mr Goldberg’s otherwise correct article seems to have one misleading typo:
The line: “Governments, meanwhile, grow from their mistakes and learn to Make money.”
Should read:Governments, meanwhile, grow from their mistakes and learn to Fake money.
Maybe he is still running a PC and his politically correct MS Word spell checker changed the “F” to and “M.” If National Review can’t afford to get him a MAC, maybe they could get OpenOffice to replace Word — after all, it is free.
Absolutely correct. The real difficulty is that the people he brought with him have already established a track record of failure. And they still preach the idiotic internationalist pieties of the UN and the ICC, thoroughly corrupt and wasteful institutions whose prime concern is antithetical to the best interests of the U.S. and the West generally. Carter brought us Iran; Clinton, Somalia. The UN has presented us with Darfur. Those are the new/old players, and to add insult to injury they have claimed the risible title of "realists."
LOL I have bben known to do just that.
Re: “ If conservative Republicans can hold the Dems feet to the fire and win back control over the next 4 to 8 years and bring back free market capitalism”
One point: The above line from your post presupposes that there will be an actual contested election in 2010 and/or 2012. Every known objective of Obamanation is directly focused on the prevention of that occurrence.
As “deepthroat” is portrayed as saying in “All the President’s Men,” “Follow the money!”
The “stimulus” bill, like the Keynes’ “economic” policy which underlies it is a means of rationalizing socialism rather than stimulating the economy.
Consider:
1. Regardless of economic status, if you are a permanent federal bureaucrat or you receive more from the government that your tax payments (if any) you are on welfare. The word has a distasteful connotation but “on the dole” correctly describes the majority of almost every nation of europe - over 70% in some cases. Obama’s plan, if he is able to be “successful” from his viewpoint, will result in over 50% of americans being effectively “on the dole.”
2. The funding of his old “community organizing” buddies in Acorn with hundreds of millions — Sole objective is to exponentially accelerate voter fraud using the tax-paying victims to fund it.
3. Objective of “Censorship Doctrine” is exclusively to abolish and eventually criminalize all public criticism of government. It WILL NOT be applied to force any “balance” in the MSM either electronic or print.
4. Total jihad against 2nd Amendment as well as all other natural rights recognized by the Bill of Rights. Other than Obama’s campaign lie of “I support the 2nd amendment” he has a history of more than 50 major statements and actions against gun freedom and as far as I can find NO statement or action in favor of it. Since the campaign he has reportedly required all persons appointed or hired by his administration to fill out a personal questionnaire which asks if the applicant or any member of his/her family owns, has ever owned, or has access to, a gun. He doesn’t want to have any sentiment in favor of individual freedom within his administration.
Lets get real: The old democratic party is dead. Truman, if alive, would be horrified at this bunch.
If the lights go out here, they go out all over the world. Obama’s stated objectives include an exponential increase in transfer of wealth from US taxpayers to the UN.
The danger we face is real, and the threat of severe recession - even depression — is bad but recovery possible. The threat of generations long, or even perpetual, socialism is much, much worse.
Sure you can keep it for that, but I'd recommend pheasant hunting. Far more productive.
It’s not that I doubt that any of your predictions would be something the Dems would like to accomplish, but just watching how screwed up they were trying to put together this stimulus bill tells me they will fail at most things just through their own inability to organize. When the Democrats can’t come together to spend a trillion dollars you know they are in trouble.
The assumption that they can somehow prevent a challenge in 2012 is a little bit paranoid.
Steny Hoyer says that true bipartisanship might make elections unnecessary.
I see a red (in more ways than one) flag here.
“Steny Hoyer says that true bipartisanship might make elections unnecessary.”
He’s whistling in the wind. True bipartisanship to democrats means going along with everything they want with hopes of getting an occasional bone thrown their way. The Republicans seem to have grown backbones and I couldn’t be happier.
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