1. Who bailed out Wall Street in the first place?
Bush. TARP was all Bush’s baby. Well, and that idiot Paulson’s too... Bush was ignorant enough to allow clowns like Paulson and Cox to wreck the markets to save the banks.
As for going after the banks now? The GOP leadership still doesn’t get it. They’re already talking behind the scenes about how to let the banks find a way out of being hoist on their own petards in this foreclosure charlie-foxtrot.
2. Yes, I have run my own business. Employed people too. Will be starting another one in a couple of years. Tax cuts won’t help unless there are customers. And customers for many businesses are in short supply. That’s why many small businesses aren’t taking on debt to expand, or spending on expansion: no customers. Or customers who don’t commit to long term spending.
Yes, the regulatory uncertainty (especially about Obamacare) as well as the tax regs is putting a huge amount of burden on small business. As I like to ‘splain to the pointy-head types: in a small business, they don’t have dedicated lawyers and CPA’s on the payroll to figure this stuff out. There’s the head of the business who does most all this stuff, and the more regulatory change forced down on them, the more they have to take time away from actual profit-pursuit to deal with the regulatory compliance.
But relieving regulations now won’t bring customers back to 2006 levels. Consumers need discretionary income and they don’t have that. We need a plan to increase household incomes in the US, and that has been missing over the last 10 years. That’s why the banks created more and more stupid loan products to allow people to buy things they could not afford: disposable income was stagnant since 2001 or so. The only way that the “Bush economy” happened was a radical increase in the private sector debt.
3. Ignored it? Ah, no. The GOP was a cheerleader for WTO admission for the PRC.
We don’t need to worry about tearing down China’s economy. Just respond to their currency manipulation (ie, their peg). The Congress could implement standards for food and consumable product safety that are quite obviously needed, and they could also grow a pair on the issue of Chinese product dumping.
I’d also recommend that all computers used in sensitive government offices and industries be required to be produced in the US. That’s another topic for another time, but I sense that the PRC is playing a very long game on the computer & consumer electronics issue that may result in some very ugly surprises down the road.
And as for your rose-colored glasses of “I know we can win.” No, you can’t. Not when there is a currency arb peg in place. Double the value of the yuan and then we might be able to win, but with a peg in place, there is no chance. Currency arb coupled with labor available below minimum wage will always beat whatever we can do.
4. Sure they can. No excuses. They can’t get a “all at once” repeal rammed through, but as Robert Byrd used to demonstrate, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. The Republicans don’t like doing any hard legislative work, but Obamacare could be taken apart piece by piece, in one piece of essential legislation after another. They can start by exempting some industries from OC’s requirements, or by pushing the start date into the future, etc.
5. The GOP wanted to implement “private savings accounts.” That wasn’t going to work then, and it won’t work now. Let’s face facts: Most people are friggin’ morons when it comes to the financial markets. Many of them are Harvard MBA’s, too. Or worse, Harvard economics majors. Look at what happened to Harvard’s endowment at the hands of Larry Summers.
This level of stupidity is what allowed the housing bubble to happen, and the dot-bomb bubble, and so on. Now especially, there is no way that the GOP’s ideas of running your own retirement are going to fly.
So what the GOP should do is radically increase the annual contribution limits to 401(k)’s and IRAs, and just talk about ONE thing for SS and Mediscare: means testing. Just say “There’s no need for the government to give Bill Gates and Warren Buffett a Social Security check.” Just that ONE thing - means testing - breaks the “entitlement” legal roadblock.... and after that, just like the income tax, they can start playing with the means testing limits.
The Democrats will howl like ruptured ducks even at this one little change.... but if they GOP persisted, they could play the DNC’s own game against them. Quit talking about revolutions in the system. Just try to implement one small change that puts the camel’s nose into the tent and make the one little change be the goal.
But the GOP won’t. They want to talk about huge, radical change. That won’t ever happen.
“So what the GOP should do is radically increase the annual contribution limits to 401(k)’s and IRAs, and just talk about ONE thing for SS and Mediscare: means testing. Just say “There’s no need for the government to give Bill Gates and Warren Buffett a Social Security check.” Just that ONE thing - means testing - breaks the “entitlement” legal roadblock.... and after that, just like the income tax, they can start playing with the means testing limits.”
That seems like a good idea to start. We’ve got to get control of the entitlements — that’s the killer — for EU as well.
So your solution is?