*sigh* is this the 'change' people voted for?

[safewrite]

We all know where the economy went wrong by now. Conservatives can argue that the incentives for giving home loans to people who could never make the payments were put in place under the Clinton administration. Liberals can argue that these sub-prime lending practices continued, and even increased, during the Bush administration. Everyone agrees

Comments

[blackhanddpants]

Almost every time some bit of news comes out of the new administration, my spouse says sarcastically, "That's change I can believe in."

[mindseas]

My daughter warned me about the dangers Keynesian economics a couple years ago when she predicted this whole mess. I feel like too much of an economic moron to figure out what's going on unless some one points things out to me.

[barbarienne]

Speaking from across the aisle

[safewrite]

Just to answer one of your comments (more later, when I have a moment): My concern is small businesses, not megacorporations. Small businesses drive new job creation in this country. We will not get out of the nether regions of unemployment statistics otherwise.

So while I am a firm believer in public safety nets and programs, they has to be balanced with things that will help small businesses. While a lot of this may cause prosperity to temporarily trikle up, as you put it, printing money without tax reveues will surely bankrupt us.

Consider this: when we are told that the bailout cost, although large, is still manageable, it is only half the story. The loss of tax revenue is another nail in the coffin and could lead to a dramatic and unpredicted rise in public debt. That's not just taxes from megacorporations, it is taxes from you, from me, and from everyone else.

[barbarienne]

Small businesses are exactly who "urban development" is intended to help!

Whether it works is another question, but Crom knows nothing else has helped until now, so we may as well give it a shot.

I agree with you that taking on more debt is a scary proposition. However, not taking on debt is almost certain to crash the economy even further. When you have a system that is allowed to "naturally run its course" you end up with economies like India and Brazil: most of the money in the hands of a few, with a feedback loop that continues to drive that arrangement to ever-wider extremes.

(Yes, India has a slowly growing middle class. That was possible because of the influx of cash from...the USA! The cash has to come from somewhere. We don't have cheap labor to entice other nations to invest in us, so debt it must be

[safewrite]

I see that and I understand the theory. However, if we end up printing money that devalues our currency to the point of hyperinflation...can you say 1923 Germany, boys and girls?

The Romanians have a saying for this: they call it "Wetting yourself to keep your pants warm."

*sigh* is right

[anonymous]

Oops; time to stop reading this blog. I don't need a fresh source for uninformed, illogical political blathering.

See ya!