May we please unbail the Bailout?
Posted on October 8, 2008
Filed Under Economy, Congress |
On September 29, having been down over 400 points early in the day, the DOW sank 777 points - to 10,365 - after the House failed to pass the bailout bill. The next day The Oregonian announced the fact in an hysterical 90 point headline, part of concerted effort among many to foster a “We have to pass this bill NOOOOOOWWW to save the markets and the economy!!!”
And passed it was: $850 billion of nebulous pork, paid for, of course, by the taxpayer. Last night McCain proposed $300 billion to bail out mortgage holders; whether that’s in addition or not is unclear, but it’s still a monstrous wealth transfer.
As I type the DOW is at 9275, down 1100 points and 10.5% from the point the bailout was supposed to stop. The spin is investors are - are you ready for this? - afraid we didn’t do enough; the truth is investors are by definition capitalists, and are bailing themselves in the face of the government’s financial grab.
Remember this axiom: When a self-appointed expert defines for you, in Chicken Little terms, a crisis; then proposes the ability to solve that crisis if you’ll just open your wallet…
…RUN. Fast.
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7 Responses to “May we please unbail the Bailout?”
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We wouldn’t have needed it if the republicans hadn’t destroyed the country and perhaps, the world.
Who is to blame? Compare:
28 years of conservative ideological dominance:
20 of the last 28 years with a republican President 1980-1992, 2000-2008
Republican majority Congress:
Republican Senate 1981-1987, 1995-2007
Republican House 1995-2007
(total republican control of Congress 1995-2007)
The last 8 years with a republican President and Congress 2000-2008
Compared with:
Democrats with a slim Congressional majority under a republican president 2007-2008
Seems pretty clear to me.
Right, Dino. And the DOW is down over 25% since Pelosi was sworn in as Speaker of the body that initiates all appropriations, and the budget was balanced only after the Republicans took the majority in 1994, points precisely as relevant as your string on non sequiturs.
I have no truck for the way Bush or the Congressional Republicans have behaved, whether it’s prescription drugs or this disastrous bailout. They’re apparently convinced the NY Times will love them if they just would act a bit more like a Democrat.
But, remember: the quintessential conservative Republican is low tax, low spend, small government, the direct antithesis of the liberal Democrat. After the disaster of the Nixon price controls, Ford’s insipid Whip Inflation Now, and the manifest horror of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan - a real Republican - took us on twenty year plus prosperity ride, now being systematically undone in the pursuit of solving the crisis caused by the implementation of liberal orthodoxy…
I don’t honestly think either side has clean hands in this mess - they both took the lobbyist money in exchange for deregulation of our financial system.
Now the ponzi scheme is starting to collapse and they are falling over themselves to shift the burden to the taxpayer.
The housing bubble as just the last greatest wealth transfer and one more step to the end of the middle class.
Saw today that in 3 weeks AIG have burned through $85Bn in capital we loaned them - and now we are tossing them $38Bn more…
Does this mean only half of the executive team get to go to the spa this time around ?
Only a republican would think turning America from a creditor to a debtor nation was an achievment for Reagan.
Our greatest time fo growth and widespread prosperity was under liberal rule following the WW2. At the high point of liberalism, 1964, GDP was 6%, a level we’re lucky to ever see again or even the 3% typical of the last 20 years.
I do find it amusing how republicans, when faced with empirical evidence of their ideological failures, simply wave the culprits away as not “real” conservatives. Ironically in light of your reply, they did the same thing to Reagan towards the end.
This meltdown, like the Great Depression of the 1930s, has republican fingerprints all over it. Recall that the same kind of republicans, fueld by greed, ran the country from the 1890s to the 1920s, culminating in the devastation of the Depression years. It explains why Roosevelt was able to win FOUR terms, institute all sorts of socialist policies and the Congress had 81% democratic control of Congress by 1939.
Conservatism doesn’t work. It is a disease. A disease of the soul, of the mind and if one is to believe recent research, of the genetics.
[…] On September 29, having been down over 400 points early in the day, the DOW sank 777 points - to 10365 - after the House failed to pass the bailout bill. The next day The Oregonian announced the fact in an hysterical 90 point headline, …[Continue Reading] […]
Good grief, Dino. Winging it doesn’t work.
We know two UCLA economists studied in depth the Great Depression and concluded Rooseveldt’s New Deal actually prolonged the depression by seven years. Perhaps you’re referring to that great liberal Harry Truman? Or Dwight Eisenhower? Kennedy was a liberal only in the classical sense; he cut taxes to spur the economy (it worked), and wasn’t in office long enough to affect much of anything but liberal fantasy. We know how well Johnson’s War on Poverty and Great Society worked, its final undoing blissfully signed into law by Bill Clinton. I’ve already mentioned the Nixon price controls, a perfect example of what happens when government tries to meddle with the economy, and the execrable Jimmy Carter drove us to 12% inflation and 17% interest rates.
So which liberal policies were you touting as successful?
Really? A couple of economists said that? Did they have a crystal ball? I wonder how many economists I could get to say the opposite? I guess the people were so mad at Roosevelt for that they elected him FOUR TIMES and gave Congress an 81% MAJORITY.
The War on Poverty did work. I don’t think anyone expected it to eradicate poverty but it did alleviate suffering. But I know how you conservatives oppose that unless of course it’s you doing the suffering.
Carter inherited high inflation and interest rates from Nixon/Ford. Remember WIN buttons? However, unemployment was only 7% ( a normaal number for the times) when he left office and rose to 11% TWO YEARS into reagan’s first term.
All liberal polices have been successful. We’re ALL liberals in a way. The concepts of freedom and equality are LIBERAL ideals, opposed by conservatives throughout history. We’ve had to drag you people kicking and screaming all the way to progress. Your ideological ancestors favored monarchies and the feudal system. Conservatives are slaves to power and wealth, that’s why you people scapegoat the poor and weak. There’s another name for this but I fear being accused of an “ad hominem” attack.
Oh what the heck. Contempt for the weak is a hallmark of fascism which is what conservatism most closely relates to.