I wonder if the left is working on engineering a recession for 2008. A big recession could dramatically improve the changes that the Democrats could win big in 2008. I've heard a large number of progressive newspeople, like Krugman, talking about recession. This Report on Yahoo says that the two progressive leaders Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are talking about ways to destroy the US currency.
The fact that demand for gas in the US is unabated despite the rise in prices shows that calls for conservation have pretty much gone unheeded.
It is really silly that the progressive tax system and excessive social policies toward social services have discouraged Americans from saving. If Americans had their retirement savings invested in the market, rather than in the pay as you go plan of social security, I think we could weather any challenges thrown at us by the international community. As it stands, I think there is a good chance that the left would be able to engineer a major recession for the 2008 elections.
We have a public education system that teaches Americans how to be slaves. Maybe it is our destiny to diminish. Kurt Vonnegutt used the term "will to become." The millions of progressives who prefer feudalism to freedom just might will us to become a nation of slaves.
Take a look at the history of the savings rate and you'll see that it was higher when we had greater social service spending back in the 1960's and 1970's than it is now. The culprit is the loss of high-paying, unionized manufacturing jobs due to barbarian capitalism.
ReplyDeleteThe left, even if it had the ability which it does not, has no need to engineer a recession. The idiotic policies of profligate spending, unregulated finance, and crony capitalism don't really need any help from the left.
Why don't you learn a little bit about something called the M3 report and then get back to us about what is engineering this recession?
ReplyDeleteYou do know that "capitalism" is another word for savings. In capitalism, people put aside and re-invest some of their production for later use. The fact that fewer Americans are saving today means that there is less, not more capitalism.
ReplyDeleteYou are also right that there was a better distribution of savings in the US before Johnson's Great Society. Now that people expect the government to pay their retirement, schooling and health care in full, they save less.
The result of government largess is a concentration of capital into a few hands and in foreign. The hands that hold the savings that should be in Americans pockets really don't have American's best interest at heart.
Savings and captalism are just different words for the same thing. Our schools teach us to despise capitalism; thus reducing our savings and reducing us to serfdom.
Marshall, you are right that the Feds have left the US economy exposed by increasing the monetary supply. It appears that they've been printing more money but trying to keep inflation in check with high interest. At some point this slight of hand will cause a rupture.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the Feds aren't the only ones that affect the domestic money supply. There is a great deal of US currency held abroad. If the international concerns that hold US dollars threw them back in our face en masse, we would have a financial catastrophe.
Our exposure would be less if Americans had saved more. The Bush policy of borrow and spend has created a great deal of exposure.
I would add to our woes the fact that we are chasing our immigrants away. These people all hold US dollars that they drop when we chase them away.
If I were to list our woes, I would cite the first problem as the low savings and high debt rate of the average American. Second I would list government bungling for creating excessive exposure.
BTW, the decision of the Feds to stop publishing the M3 at a time when monetary supply is expanding is extremely suspicious. I would attribute it to bungling and not conspiracy.
"Our exposure would be less if Americans had saved more. The Bush policy of borrow and spend has created a great deal of exposure."
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to grad school they called this leverage and diversification. It is taught in business schools as a great way to get more capital to put at risk in (hopefully) profit-producing operations. I'm afraid I'm from the old school that likes to limit debt, save, and pay up front for what I use.
Reach,
ReplyDeleteLeveraging is risky ... especially when done at a government level.
There's been more than one healthy company that's gone under because the CEO practiced the leveraging techniques he learned in a modern business school. The collapse of Enron and MCI are good examples.
The fact that our business schools teach this garbage in lieue seeking value makes me sick to the stomache.
BTW, the goal of leveraging is to magnify the influence of a person or group within the economy. These techniques have the effect of centralizing economic power and generally lead to a bigger gap between rich and poor.
Democracy Lover would be correct to rant against this style of government management.
Instead, progressives rant against the private ownership of capital.
This modern dialectic is really strange. Our schools rail against things that lead to widepread prosperity, and teaches business leaders techiques that concentrate wealth in a few hands.