Stuck on Stupid : NYT thinks Europe can still avert a crisis

I received this in my mail today and wanted to share this gem with my readers. I had to take another sip of coffee and adjust my seat, and look again, it was not a mistake it was still there The New York Times headline read :Even if Europe Averts Crisis-Growth May Lag for Years

“We have to adjust to lower growth,” said Thomas Mirow, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, referring to both Europe and America. “It is of course going to be very painful. But leaders have to speak frankly to their populations.”

The uncertainty about Europe’s future has been driving the gyrations of financial markets since the summer. Earlier this week, stocks rallied on euphoria that a new, more powerful bailout was near, but the rally fizzled Wednesday when cracks began to appear among European nations over the terms of money being given to Greece.

On Thursday, markets were mostly up again after the German approval of the 440 billion euro ($600 billion) bailout fund, intended to keep the crisis from spreading beyond Greece and Portugal to other European countries. Several other nations still have to ratify the agreement, but it now looks likely to be in place by the end of October.

Even this fund, however, is already seen as inadequate. Some worry that it still fails to fully address one of Europe’s most pressing needs: fully recapitalizing its banks.

Coming from the the NYT home of the Keynesian clown Paul Krugman this may not have been a total surprise. But it does point the insanity that the Keynesian clowns live with. I am wondering exactly when they do consider something a crisis ?

Europe is in a crisis and "fully recapitalizing it's banks" is political class doublespeak for passing the losses off onto the taxpayers.

With the lack of leadership both in Europe and in the U.S. and the politicians and bankers continuing to steal money from the taxpayers to cover their risky financial behavior, I agree things will only get worse, but it is already a crisis.

A crisis they are only making worse. when bankers and politicians start saying we all have to share the pain, while only they share in the profits - Things can only get worse.

Thomas Sowell's : "Back to the Future"

In Thomas Sowell's three-part “Back to the Future” series, he looks at the insane fiscal policies that we are still trying to implement more than 60 years after the same Keynesian policies failed during the Great Depression. He points out how the political class fails, perhaps deliberately, to learn from their mistakes.

This Depression era 1930's political cartoon from the Chicago Tribune that asks the question "Planned Economy or Planned Destruction" is just as relevant today as it was then.

In it, members of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration are seen shoveling money out of a wagon with a billboard on the side declaring, "Depleting the resources of the soundest government in the world."

click on image for larger view

In Part I, Mr. Sowell exposes Obama's stimulus schemes.

Once we get past the glowing rhetoric, what is the president proposing? More spending! Only the words have changed — from “stimulus” to “jobs” and from “shovel-ready projects” to “jobs for construction workers.” If government spending were the answer, we would by now have a booming economy with plenty of jobs, after all the record trillions of dollars that have been poured down a bottomless pit. Are we to keep on doing the same things, just because those things have been repackaged in different words? …When it comes to specific proposals, President Obama repeats the same kinds of things that have marked his past policies — more government spending for the benefit of his political allies, the construction unions and the teachers’ unions, and “thousands of transportation projects.” The fundamental fallacy in all of this is the notion that politicians can “grow the economy” by taking money out of the private sector and spending it wherever it is politically expedient to spend it — so long as they call spending “investment.”

In Part II, Mr. Sowell exposes the historical fallacy that government intervention ended the Great Depression.

The grand myth that has been taught to whole generations is that the government is “forced” to intervene in the economy when there is a downturn that leaves millions of people suffering. The classic example is the Great Depression of the 1930s. What most people are unaware of is that there was no Great Depression until AFTER politicians started intervening in the economy. There was a stock market crash in October 1929 and unemployment shot up to 9 percent — for one month.

Then unemployment started drifting back down until it was 6.3 percent in June 1930, when the first major federal intervention took place. That was the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill, which more than a thousand economists across the country pleaded with Congress and President Hoover not to enact. But then, as now, politicians decided that they had to “do something.” Within 6 months, unemployment hit double digits. Then, as now, when “doing something” made things worse, many felt that the answer was to do something more. Both President Hoover and President Roosevelt did more — and more, and more. Unemployment remained in double digits for the entire remainder of the decade. Indeed, unemployment topped 20 percent and remained there for 35 months, stretching from the Hoover administration into the Roosevelt administration.

And in Part III, Mr. Sowell explains how tax changes in the 1920s provide great evidence for the Laffer Curve.

Those who believe in high taxes on “the rich” got their way. The tax rate on people in the top income bracket was 73 percent in 1921. On the other hand, the rich also got their way: They didn’t actually pay those taxes. The number of people with taxable incomes of $300,000 a year and up — equivalent to far more than a million dollars in today’s money — declined from more than a thousand people in 1916 to less than three hundred in 1921. …More than four-fifths of the total taxable income earned by people making $300,000 a year and up vanished into thin air. So did the tax revenues that the government hoped to collect with high tax rates on the top incomes. …Mellon eventually got his way, getting Congress to bring the top tax rate down from 73 percent to 24 percent. Vast sums of money that had seemingly vanished into thin air suddenly reappeared in the economy, creating far more jobs and far more tax revenue for the government.

Keynesian clown economics, and Obama’s agenda of bigger government and class-warfare taxation has only undermined America’s economy further - It never needed to get this bad. History had taught us that, but if we learn anything from history, it's that we don't learn from history.

Liberals vow to challenge Obama in Democratic primaries

It's increasingly likely that liberals will nominate someone to run against Obama. He is weak and unpopular with his democratic base, especially the progressives, and losing ground with independent voters everyday. He still can depend on over 90% of the black vote, majority of Hispanics, and probably most union voters as well. However more and more he is being viewed as a sinking ship, panic is setting in, and the rats are getting ready to jump ship.

The Washington Post is reporting that Ralf Nader and progressive leaders want to field a slate of candidates against President Obama in the Democratic primaries to make him stake out liberal stances as he seeks re-election. Ralf Nader emphasizes that this is not a move to defeat Obama.It is more an attempt to keep him er, uh honest -- good luck with that.

Mr. Nader said the intent is not to defeat Mr. Obama but to make him focus on issues that might get lost in a purely Obama-versus-GOP discussion.

So what have Democrats learned from 2008 -- NOTHING. We know from the campaign in 2008 that Obama will say anything to get elected. Just don't hold him to it after the election. If Obama had any moral integrity it would have shown up by now.

Nader goes on to say that liberals are disappointed in Obama's handling of the Wall Street bailouts, the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the U.S. involvement in the military effort in Libya. They also criticized Mr. Obama’s decision to extend the Bush-era tax cuts and the recent deal he struck with Republicans over cutting spending to raise the debt ceiling.

Could we say that Obama lied ? No they won't go that far, they dare not. This is how Obama learned to make his living in the halls of America's elite Universities like Harvard, slipping and sliding through the huge cracks liberals leave open for him to duck out of taking any responsibility for his actions or deceptions.

Ralph Nader's message to the poor and middle class that are suffering through the worst economic crisis since the Great depression seems to be -- eat shit and die, we have to raise taxes and generate more revenue for the Nanny State to waste.

It gets better...Nader -- Mr. Snap and Sizzle himself goes on to say that :

“What we are looking at now is the dullest presidential campaign since Walter Mondale — and that’s saying something, believe me,” Mr. Nader told The Washington Times.

We believe you Mr. Nader if anyone knows boring it would be you. The Democrats and liberals are hopelessly out of touch with reality. They are locked onto their failed Keynesian economic policies like a suicide bomber locked onto his detonator switch. More taxes and more stimulus will fix everything. Completely ignoring the wasted $800 billion of the first stimulus, TARP, and the bailouts . In the last ten years we have had so many stimulus programs the government has run out of acronyms for them. The Keynesian's reply to every one of their failed policies is always the same -  It wasn't big enough.

I saved the best for last. The main reason they are worried is that;

They fear the liberal voice is being drowned out in the presidential campaign.

Drown out the liberal voice ? They must be kidding. The liberal voice is everywhere CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, Time, Life, PBS, New York Times, Washington Post, along with thousands of their toady affiliates.  It's not likely their voices will be drowned out any time soon, unfortunately.

I think what they mean is that they fear that someone else may get a chance to be heard, and expose the sham they are running on the American people.

Good Luck with that nomination. Liberals will not vote against Obama in any great numbers, they would then be considered racists, and we all know that can never happen.

Obama lectured Americans on living within their means - really, he did

The all time leading KING of spending other people's money and driving up debt came out and lectured us on "living within our means" As with most Obama speeches it was long on rhetoric and abstract concepts, very short on details, and facts.

We have reached the intersection of Cloud-Cukoo-Land and The Yellow Brick Road. In what can only be described as an another awful political stunt to portray himself as the only fiscally responsible adult in the room. Obama took credit for the talks that averted a government shutdown,and  also lectured America on “living within our means.” and acted as if the last three years never happened, they just went up in Pixie dust right before our eyes ;

“Like any worthwhile compromise, both sides had to make tough decisions and give ground on issues that were important to them,” Obama said before cameras in the White House Blue Room as he acknowledged some of the cuts agreed to would be painful, with certain programs cut back and other projects encountering delays. “But beginning to live within our means is the only way to protect those investments that will help America compete for new jobs,”

Of course, Obama never wanted to cut a dime from the budget that he increased by a trillion dollars in the last three years.

We know because we have video tape, and the internet now to prove it. We've watched hundreds of these speeches by now, and they keep looking more like DNC fund-raisers than an Oval Office address. Though Obama constantly refers to the need to compromise, his idea of compromise  is to take to his bully pulpit and tell the public to overwhelm Republicans with demands to raise taxes. ... never once has asked them to demand congress cut spending, except when it's couched under the guise of raising taxes.

As far as the "Grand Plan' to save the poor honest, hardworking folk it's another reelection scam that he hopes will save a few people enough money on refinanced underwater mortgages, with the hopes that they will then take that money and spend it, creating some positive economic numbers before the election.

This one could actually work, for his reelection, not the economy if we lived in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. We all know that when Obama wants to hand out money to Wall Street, or pet alternative energy companies like Solyndra, his administration green lights the money, breaks the rules, and possibly the law, to fast track the loans almost immediately.

But when The feds are handing out money to the poor, honest, hardworking folk, they create a maze of red tape and government restrictions that a layman cannot even understand, and needs to hire a lawyer, who will take 50% off the top, just to do the paper work. The money barely trickles out, if it ever trickles at all.

It's a pitiful sight watching a president twisting in the wind, pretending that he is just caught in forces beyond his control, unable to do anything except go on repeating the same mistakes. It takes courage to change course. he doesn't have that courage.

Obama, Geithner and Bernake are ideological prisoners of the failed Keynesian faith they have been following all along -- their conviction is that the country can spend its way out of hard times. And when times get harder, just keep spending more. They couldn't change, even if they wanted to, and they don't want to.

Obama likes to complain no other President in history has been treated worse than him. No one gives him credit for all he has done, and that he can't get anything right. At this point he is right, he's continually doubled down on failed policies for three years, and passed up many opportunities to change course. If he actually gives in to any of the fiscally sound ideas that he's been bashing and rejecting for the last three years now, right before the election, he really looks bad. But he has the audacity to do it. That's for sure.