Re: OT: The Fear Merchants

On Mar 30, 7:46 am, Peter Cole <peter_c...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
PatTX wrote:
There I was, yesterday, listening to Ed Wallace
(http://www.insideautomotive.com/) on his Saturday morning car show.  Ed had
just finished reporting that car sales for the last weekend in March had
gone 'way up, giving the industry a welcome boost. He said it was because
people are beginning to come out of their fearful posture and that the
economy would recover faster once people did so. The "gloom and doom" caller
started in on the Republican talking points of President Obama spending more
money and having a bigger budget, and Ed told him that what brought the US
out of the "Great Depression" was the government spending on WWII (among
other things).  He stated that the amount of government spending on the war
was greater than the budget President Obama is proposing.

After ruminating a bit, it became clear to me that the RNC has sent out the
word to all of their talk show minions to "spread fear" because this is the
best way to keep the economy bad. If people will go into a shell and not
spend any money, the economy will take longer to rebound.  I didn't
understand why Glenn Beck was talking of "revolution" or Sean Hannity was
bleating about "fascism" and Rush Limpballs was broadcasting the fear of
"radical socialism" until this. Now it all becomes clear: they are trying
with the scare talk to keep the economy down! It seems to me that such a
plan borders on being unpatriotic to the nth degree as they are willing to
wreck the economy simply to gain political points.

Something to think about....

Pat in TX

While I agree that talk show pundits are entirely self-serving, I can't
go so far as to say that fears of government over-reaching are entirely
fabricated. Our current debt servicing is 16% of the federal budget,
deficit spending can't go on forever without dire consequences. That
said, there's an obvious difference in investment vs. spending. If done
wisely (a big "if"), the deficit can both bolster a shaky economy and
leave us better off for future challenges. Deficit spending in this
crisis seems necessary, while the Bush era deficits seem in retrospect
like an experiment based on far less sound economic theory.

National health care, for instance, will certainly lead to some
rationing and reduction of choice (as did the current HMO mechanism).
The real issue is the inevitability of change, looming health care costs
are worse (by a large factor) than looming deficits.

Expansion of government is as inevitable as globalization, like it or
not, the toothpaste won't go back in the tube. That doesn't mean there
aren't choices -- good ways & not so good ways to cope with the inevitable.

While greed abounded in the last decades, I believe that many (even
liberals) sincerely believed that unfettered capitalism could achieve
miracles. In some ways it did. The irony is that the biggest success
stories (e.g. China) came from a mix of capitalism and oppressive
government. Rational people don't have to be economic or political
science geniuses to see that there are ways to go forward to prosperity
without social inequality or overbearing governments. Our experiment
with de-regulated markets is over. We've belly flopped in energy, S&L
and investment banking. Economies around the world have suffered under
cycles of bursting bubbles and speculative capital flows. Time to try
something new.

Debate is fine, but purely ideological firewalling may have tragic
consequences. The real risk is that we do nothing. History has put us on
the sharp part of so many hockey stick curves simultaneously. As
Franklin said: "We must all hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall
most assuredly hang separately"- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Well, now we will have to sit down and wait. There have been numerous
stimulous efforts that ought to create some jobs and start promoting
economic activity. It will take at least 6 months to a year to see
some improvements. At that point, the pundits will have somemthing to
talk about. Right now, it is too early.

The reason that the neo-liberals are furious and their pundits sing
their bitching is that they are not seeing any tax cuts and government
loans are comming with regulatory measures. Neolibs had, since the
80s, gotten rid of any semblance of regulatory control and anti-trust
legislation and some were able to fill their pockets with obscene
amounts of money while slowly but steadily destroying the economy. Now
that people said enough, its gotten ridiculous, and we want some
government control, the neolibs are saying that not being able to do
what AIG and Enron did is communism. Well, nobody is buying it and I
am really happy that the government can tell GM's CEO to book it if GM
wants to get federal loans.
.

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