Re: US to spend $900 million in Gaza


"John Vamp" <jvampatella@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:c163efde-83e6-4ac7-9614-f574cca35a9d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Feb 24, 4:55 pm, "Raymond O'Hara" <raymond-oh...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"John Vamp" <jvampate...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:93b406d8-1c80-4985-939b-3641b600c414@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Feb 24, 7:17 am, "PatsSox" <Pats...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"John Vamp" <jvampate...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message...

Well Obama criticized Republicans for fiscal irresponsibility - for
overspending and putting us into debt - and the very first thing he
does is pass the largest spending bill in human history - money that
we don't have. And then he's adding another billion (almost) to
rebuild.......not New Orleans or Detroit, but *Gaza*. In other words,
he criticized running up big deficits and then turns around and does
the exact same thing.
--------------------------------

And economists agree that he had to do something.

Something, sure. But to criticize Bush for massive deficit spending,
and then within 3 weeks of taking the oath you ram through the largest
deficit spending bill in human history............well, let me just
ask whether that's being consistent.

The way Japan
got out of their mess in the 90's was to pour trillions into the economy
and
nationalize the banks. The recent market drop might be attributable to
Chris Dodd and Alan Greenspan's musings about nationalizing our banks...
something that Wall Street wants to avoid at all costs. Once bank stocks
start falling everything else just follows.
If you don't think that we need to spend money to get out of this
mess.... what would you suggest? Personally, I think we should learn
from
Japan... it took them a while to figure out how to pull themselves out
of
a
downward spiral... and they recovered quite nicely.

First, the government needs to be streamlined. There is so much
waste, fraud, and abuse in the government at all levels (including my
local little town...it's mind-boggling). If we are going to be
serious about cleaning up our collective financial house, we need to
be streamlining government at all levels.

Second, simple principle: do not spend more than you take in. This
is a fundamental financial principle for you and me personally, and it
should be for government. I will admit to not being an economist
(McDuck would say that's obvious), but if maintaining a balanced
budget is what we as individuals ought to do, why should that
principle be any different for companies or governments?

Third, no pork. Get these politicians of both parties away from the
feeding trough. If we are going to spend money, have it be on
universally-agreed-upon items of importance.

Fourth, encourage personal responsibility. Yeah, politicians say nice
things, but the entire system is based on debt and credit. One of the
biggest problems with the economy today is the "frozen" credit
markets. People don't have the money they need to buy TV's and cars,
and to renovate their homes or go on vacation. So what do we do?
Instead of saying, you know, maybe you should be more frugal and more
responsible, we encourage people to rack up more and more debt. It's
so irresponsible, it's almost criminal.

Fifth, stop taxing business like we do. Businesses don't vote, but
they sure do employ lots and lots of people. Encourage American
businesses to stay in the United States (or, on local levels, to stay
in your city or state), and use reduced corporate taxes as a lever.
This is not trickle-down economics (I'm not asking for a reduction of
taxes on "the rich"). This is common sense. Whenever states want to
encourage businesses to come to their state, even Democratic governors
reduce business taxes. Why? They know it works.

There's more, of course, but this is a start. As I told McDuck, I
think our problems are long-term, not as much short-term. Short-term,
here are the problems, in no particular order (I'm sure I'll miss
some):

- Unemployment. It is now at 7.6%. But look at this
chart:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_unemployment_rates_1950_2005.png.
You'll see that unemployment was higher in 1991, and much higher in
1982-83. It was higher in 1975-76, and higher in 1958. So even
though unemployment is high right now, it's been higher on several
occasions since the Depression.

- Falling stock values. On October 9, 2007, the Dow closed at
14,164.53, the highest point in history. It is now at 7114.78 (as I
type, before today's market opens). But as bad as the Dow has fallen,
it was worse in 1987. Remember "Black Monday"? The Dow lost 22.6% of
its value in one day - that was the largest percentage drop in Dow
history. From the end of August to the middle of October, the Dow
lost about 36% of its value - in just about 2 months! Our current
fall over a similar period of time (September 19 (when it was at
11,388.44) to the present - about 5 months) has seen the Dow lose 37%
of its value. So this is definitely bad...very bad. But it's been
bad before, and much more recently than the Depression.

- Bank and financial house failures. Clearly, the collapse of Merrill
Lynch, Lehman Brothers, AIG, etc., had a terrible effect on the stock
market and the economy in general. But look at this table (http://
www2.fdic.gov/hsob/HSOBSummaryRpt.asp?
BegYear=1934&EndYear=2007&State=1). Look at it in chart
form:http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/R4jwVwesbiI/AAAAAAAADS4/MnK3l6Q....
You'll notice that (a) this was done before the current crisis, but
(b) we experienced in the mid-80's to the early 90's a massive
increase, over about an 11-year period, of bank failures. We aren't
close to that number now. Maybe some of them now are bigger in size
than those back then, but nevertheless, we experience far more bank
failures then than we are presently.

- The housing market. Falling home prices are bad, for sure, and
people being unable to buy homes or pay their mortgages is bad, too.
But - and I'm adamant about this - a huge part of the problem is
lending practices our government insisted upon through FM/FM. That,
plus fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the American people has
led to this. I know people in my town right now that are struggling
to pay their mortgage (on a $400,000 house), but who own BMW's,
Volvo's, expensive plasma TV's, etc. And they are simply unwilling to
sell the $50,000 BMW and buy a $10,000 used Honda Accord. Well,
that's fine, I understand they like a nice automobile. But then don't
complain that you can't afford to pay your mortgage, because clearly
*YOU CAN*. So some of it is very real - FM/FM handing out loans to
people that really couldn't qualify for a loan; and some of it is pure
financial mismanagement and greed on the part of people.

I think the underlying problems to these short-term issues are really
systemic in nature, and they reflect major problems with us as a
society. And *THOSE* things are not going to be fixed by spending
$800 billion that we don't have.

John

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

it's not the "deficit spending" {which reagan started} it was th
republican
mantra of deregulation and their insistance that the free market would
deal
with these issues.
instead we got enron and this banking/credit crises as the free market
acted
as it is wont ,irresponsibly.
fools like you don't seem to think guys like bernie madoff, ken lay, and
allen stanford exist.

There are obviously crooks everywhere, Ray. Especially in the federal
government.

John

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the real crooks are in pvt business.
they just buy the govt, especially the repub side though there are bought
dems too, like tom daschle.


.

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