PatriotsReign

I just wrote my congressman asking that he not support any more corp bailouts or economic stimulus' moving forward. I think our entire federal government has lost their minds and refuses to look at the record deficit that is about to explode...

White House sees record budget gap in 2009

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Monday projected the U.S. budget deficit will soar to a record of nearly half a trillion dollars in fiscal 2009 as a housing-led economic slowdown cuts into government revenues.

The economic and fiscal deterioration will complicate efforts to bring the budget to balance and pose challenges for whoever takes over the White House in January, either Republican Sen. John McCain or Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

"I believe whoever becomes the next president will have a very, very sobering first week in office," predicted Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat."

Yet at the same time Washington is saying this, they're considering more bailouts and economic stimulus'.

I encourage everyone to write their congressmen & women to urge them not to support more spending on corp bailouts and stimulus'. It's just making it worse and building a deficit that is beyond ridiculous. If we need a correction, trying to stop it is just plain foolish.

MrBigglesWorth

Like I've said I think they have no intention of paying back any of that debt.

__________________
"There are two categories of superbowl participants that nobody remembers:

The team that lost the game and the team that only won one." Dwight White- Steelers

PatsFanInVa

They just raised the statury debt limit (the max on our national credit card) to over 10 trillion dollars.

We should all be capable of the math, especially with the US population at such a conveniently round number of about 300 million. That's a 33,333 dollar debt for every man, woman, child, and even census-counted resident alien.

Of course that does not even count the amount we KNOW we will have to pay which has not yet hit us: demographic related obligations like social security and pensions, the lifetime medical care of the large contingent of soldiers injured for life in the ongoing war, doing SOMETHING about health care, etcetera.

And don't tell me we can just privatize future obligations and let the magical market fix it all. To duplicate last century's performance, the Dow has to be in the millions by the end of this century. Think about that. The Dow Jones Industrial average, which once brushed 14,000 and now hovers between 11,000 and 12,000, has to be in the millions. In a "post-industrial" economy. Equities may indeed be attractive in the future, especially as compared with the present moment in time. I doubt, however, that they'll prosper as they did for the period we always quote for historical rate of return.

Our problem is we've forgotten that when we invest in something we aren't investing in other people's psychology. We're investing in a company that can make something or do something. The proportion of that equation to the idea of raising cash to provide the service of raising cash for the purpose of raising cash has alienated the concept of investment from the concept of capitalization; hence, our current financial meltdown.

And now the bailouts: state socialism at its worst. Profits when times are good, bailouts when times are bad, when entities are too big to fail.

Let 'em fail, right? Not so fast. That's a far too rapid solution for my tastes, because they'll take a great deal of my imaginary wealth -- for which I invested actual money derived from actual labor. Trouble is, I'm an individual. My interests are served by picking the bailouts I like. For example, Fannie and Freddie. (Suuuuure it's just loan access and some interest rate breaks, right?) It is a bailout.

The outrageous bailout of the mortgage giants themselves, on the other hand, could have not been written -- with the effect that mortgage lenders would understand that they are not immune to downside risks. That would unfortunately likely give us a few more years of pain in housing, over an above that which we are doomed to as it is. But that horse is out of the barn in either event.

Similarly, the welfare for the rich which is the result of our historical low marginal tax rates must be addressed; it does not create wealth. Actual provision and valuation of goods and services creates wealth. When we all paid too much for dot coms, it did not create wealth. When we all paid too much for mortgages, it did not create wealth. When we pick the next bubble and play casino games, we do not create wealth.

What we create is debt, as the collateral we leverage against our new "can't end" speculative bubble deflates, we have the payment staring us in the face, and we have taken out a HELOC for the new boat we've been told we can own because our house is suddenly so much more valuable than it was a year ago. Or worse, the debt is in the form of a mortgage out of whack with all fundamentals, because "all that has changed."

And on top of this, we have the bandaids to think about as everybody starts bleeding at one time.

What you call for is an end to the bandaids. I don't care: six of one half dozen of the other.

What I would call for is an end to this myth that the private sector can do no wrong, and is only efficient when markets fueled by greed are free to run amok.

What would you tell me in 2005 if I told you that mortgage lending/borrowing had to live up to strict government oversight?

You'd call me a commie. After all, government is so useless and incompetent it can not possibly ever do any good in any capacity. Plus, if government does something, that means someone has a job doing it. Everybody and everything is best left to its/their own devices. Like predatory lending practices.

Here's how it looks to me in retrospect: The fox does a very poor job of watching over the chicken coop. And as always, when the dust clears, what we will see is a huge transfer of ownership of real assets to the financial sector. Not to old-style capitalists, who are capitalizing productive ventures. Certainly not to workers. No, it is a transfer of wealth to those whose living derives from the business of finance. Not surprising, when you realize that we characterize the production of debt as a production of wealth.

It strikes me that we want to find some mechanism to prevent or tampen speculative bubbles, period. At the very least, we should watch the wholesale greed transactions very, very carefully, rather than stand back because the "incompetent" government can not do anything good, especially in the face of the virtuous, God-given mechanism of the invisible hand.

If you haven't noticed, said invisible hand tends to repeatedly raise its invisible middle finger to the majority of us.

PFnV

patsfan13

Well you started out strong PFiVa, The spending driven by entitlement programs is out of control and the demographics of our society will make the system impossible to maintain. THen you bring up the mortgage problem as an example of why markets 'can't' solve these problems.

I find this ironic since the sub prime lending was demanded by congress to help demographics that weren't in the housing market. If not for the government interference we may not have had a sub prime crisis.

While the markets have bubbles, excesses and corrections, the markets are still better than centralized planning and control. This of course doesn't mean criminal fraud should be allowed.

PR, I agree with you outrage against reckless government spending.

I find it ironic however that both posters support a candidate who advocates more government planning of the economy and a full government takeover of our healthcare system which will create the largest government we have seen. As well as policies to restrict our access to affordable energy in favor of government subsidized energy which isn't cost competitive.



PR, I think you make a very good point with this post.

__________________
"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."

PatsFanInVa

Oh I'm sorry. Everything's going to hell because of lazy people and Democrats who spend too much money (but only do so when Republicans are president; otherwise, the deficits are comparably miniscule, or they run surplusses.)

Those terrible Democrats... they have the NERVE to pay for expenditures through taxation!

Better?

patsfan13

Dems paying for their expenditures???????

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Good one!!!

the pubbies do their fair share of big gov crap.

BUT how do you "pay" for national health care given our demographic situation???

Do we cover illegal aliens???

__________________
"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."

patsfan13

Dems paying for their expenditures???????

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Good one!!!

the pubbies do their fair share of big gov crap.

BUT how do you "pay" for national health care given our demographic situation???

Do we cover illegal aliens???

__________________
"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."

PatsFanInVa

Well for the last 50 years, every president not named Reagan and Bush has reduced the size of the debt as expressed as a percentage of the GDP (to remove inflation from the equation.) So counting the old kind of republican, such as Ford and Nixon, you could say its a neo-con trait to not pay your way (but to talk about how someone else is to blame.)

http://911review.org/Media/National_Debt.html

Wildo7

You're forgetting that there's always a National security crisis whenever a Neo Con is in office. "The world changed after X event" and that's way we can't pay down the debt

patsfan13

With the current demographic situation how do you pay for national health care???

The vast majority of spending is entitlement spending most of it on autopilot,Patters is very proud of SS, medicare and welfare all of which are dem projects. Bush 43 did the prescription program which was a disaster. You won't find me defending the spending of the Bush administrations.


As to Reagan, he inherited an economy that was a disaster thanks to Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter. He won the cold war and stopped the terrible inflation we suffered through in the 70's and created the groundwork for the growth of the 89 through the present (although we are p*ssing it away now). BTW revenues more than tripled under Reagan, the congress spent it all.

__________________
"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."