When up means down

By Capt. Fogg

The Mayans were far less pessimistic about 2012 than the people who fill my inbox with prophecies of economic doom every day. Actually doom is too mild a word and so is apocalypse if one is trying to set a mood so terrifyingly descriptive of what is happening now and is about to happen, thanks to that Obama. Of course these people are selling investment strategies which I'm sure include buying things they're desperate to get rid of like the gold they bought at $1900 an ounce, but any way the market wind is blowing, they make money from the seminars and newsletters and from screaming like Chicken Little. There's a lot of money in the doom business.

Most of the people I talk to seem convinced that everything is getting worse and won't get better until we "get rid of" Obama in 2012; replacing him no doubt with someone who thinks managing a worldwide economy is an easy task for someone who once managed to save a pizza business by firing everyone, and yet has the nerve to talk about being able to "create jobs." Not to change the subject, but it's truly stunning to see the seamless segue from "government can't create jobs" to "elect me and I'll create jobs, jobs, jobs."

I guess it's no less stunning than Fox News' and John McCain's embarrassing assertions that the 2008 economy was "robust" as we all marched unwittingly off the cliff like a certain cartoon coyote -- and of course, that because "Liberals" were warning us about the inevitable collapse, they "hated America." Not like those forward thinking optimists that modern conservatives are.

We can expect, now that the next presidential election is a year away, that the howling and wailing and rending of garments will grow louder and angrier and numbers will appear proving that calamity awaits us all, no matter what actually happens. It's far too soon to be sure, but this chronic pessimist and a few others with more credible credentials are noticing that our Gross Domestic Product After adjusting for inflation, climbed to $13.35 trillion last quarter, topping the $13.33 trillion peak reached in the last three months of 2007.

I hate to make too much of it, particularly with the Filibustering Vandals doing everything they can to sabotage the economy until November 8th, 2012, but the reality is not quite what the pseudo-conservative chorus is chanting. At least for the moment, things are looking less down. Unemployment is still high, of course -- just a bit above Ronald Reagan levels and we can expect the screamers to keep screaming about that while refusing to do anything about it. We can expect Tea Pissers like Tom "Looney" Rooney (R-Florida) to keep meeting with "Job Creators" and telling us that business owners will hire more employees, irrespective of demand, if we cut their marginal rates even more -- and we can expect that if things do recover steadily and noticeably, he'll find a way to take credit for it because after all, they kept that O-BAH-ma from doing anything for four years while lambasting him for doing nothing. If there is anything these Doomsters are optimistic about it's that they'll always have someone to blame.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Kill the cuts!

By Capt. Fogg

There seems to be a difference between the ultra right as represented by Ayn Rand disciple and 'free markets cure all ills' cult leader Alan Greenspan, and the ultra right as personified by the rabble rousing opportunists who feed the vernacular conservatives of America. Dilatory though he may be in admitting that free markets are no more free or self steering than a car without a driver, he's none the less not as retarded as people who claim to see Russia over the horizon, staple tea bags to their hats and shriek about tax increases they didn't get. He does, albeit slowly, question the ad hoc axioms upon which he bases his theories and thus, through doubt, he thinks, he learns, he changes.

Amidst the tumult of irate e-mails calling President Obama a liar for personally having raised the cigarette tax ( a tax is a tax, after all ) and a communist for unleashing THE BIGGEST TAX INCREASE OF ALL TIME, which actually is nothing of the sort, it's refreshing to hear Greenspan utter:

"I am very much in favor of tax cuts but not with borrowed money."

What he's dismissing is the lifeblood of Republican economic policy and has been at least since the Reagan administration: tax cuts pay for themselves. It's policy that along with a huge increase in government agencies, military spending and a war now having cost more that World War 2 was supposed to be paid for by tax cuts, but failed. It was paid for by borrowing from foreign sources with our independence as collateral.

A rational person must have noticed by now that it doesn't work and never has worked and virtually always precipitates a recession. An irrational man, a Fox man, a Conservative man, even a Libertarian man, chants liberaliberaliberal, constructs straw stuffed scapegoats and tries to distract us with fairy tales about the President's religion and parentage.

"The problem that we've gotten into in recent years is that spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous."

said the Former Federal Reserve Chairman on NBC yesterday. It's axiomatic in our new propaganda soaked world that fixing a problem is far less effective and more expensive than hiding it under foamy lipped hysteria, and so the tax cuts that were designed to expire this year by the Republicans who wrote them into law, become a surprise betrayal by Obama. Those liberals are betraying us by following the law we wrote!

The tax cuts, that if renewed will cost us $2.2 trillion to $3.8 trillion over the next decade and put us that much further in debt, since no, they will not pay for themselves as has been demonstrated but will further impoverish the nation but to the benefit of a handful of people and corporations. But that debt must be thought of differently than any debt incurred in extending unemployment benefits and the glaring hypocrisy must never be acknowledged. For are we not conservative?

"You don't agree with Republican leaders who say tax cuts pay for themselves?"

asked David Gregory on Meet the Press.

"They do not."

was the emphatic reply.


(Cross posted from Human Voices)