I’m not afraid of fear itself, nor am I particularly fearful of the latest market upheaval. What I am fearful of is the government reaction to all this. My greatest fear is that the government will double down on its out of control spending and economic monkey business in reaction to the “crisis.”
It’s about time government let the market do its thing and leave us alone. Every time government gets involved it succeeds only in saving powerful cronies from having to sell their second home in Aspen. What do we, the average America citizen who gets dinged for all this crap, get in return? Nada. Zilch. Nothing.
Oh, but we do get something. We get to pay more taxes and deal with more regulation! Then, we get all the wonderful unintended consequences that go along with it. Those consequences then create another “crisis” that must be once again fixed by government. And so it goes.
Perhaps our beloved representatives will finally learn that they can only take so much from the productive and pile up only so much debt, but I doubt it. As Mark Steyn puts it in the subtitle to his latest tome, After America: Get ready for Armageddon.
During the campaign season Barack Obama’s souring rhetoric offered hope to all Americans. Since being sworn in the new president has become the commander and chief of gloom. The fact is that Obama’s rhetoric isn’t warranted. The nation isn’t facing the Great Depression right now. What the nation needs to hear is that this is a slowdown, they’re common, and it doesn’t require uncommon action. Instead Obama is using the slowdown for partisan political advantage. Let’s face it. The monstrosity that was just passed by Congress could have never been passed without the horrible press coverage of the economy and president’s never-ending gloomy statements. Bradley Schiller has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that hits the nail on the head.
Mr. Obama’s analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they’re also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren’t likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fearmongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a “recovery” package that delivers a lot less than it promises. A more cool-headed assessment of the economy’s woes might produce better policies.
Obama’s policies seem more like Hoover than FDR. When the stock market crashed in 1929 Hoover took an uncommon approach to a common problem. The economy normally contracts around every ten years. Unfortunately Hoover decided government intervention was necessary. Hoover’s policies of higher tariffs, taxes, and interests rates ended up turning a recession into an depression. When FDR became president he basically adopted many of the same politics. Is it any wonder why the depression lasted until the war?
The only thing we have to fear is the government itself. The nation has been on the road to bankruptcy ever since FDR. LBJ’s Great Society pushed us faster towards the brink and no politician has been able to change the course. Now the nation is facing a recession and the current leadership is using it as an excuse to pass the single most expensive project in the history of the nation. The stimulus package costs more (adjusted for inflation), than the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the race to the moon, the Korean War, the New Deal, and the invasion of Iraq. If you throw in the cost of TARP (and the glorious sequel coming soon) the US government will authorize more spending than all of those events combined plus World War II, and the Vietnam War. In other words this is the largest increase in government spending in the history of the Republic. Keep in mind unemployment is still in single digits. What is the justification for this drastic action?
I’ve been updating the website this weekend. It’s bee a few years since I upgraded the blogging software. There are a lot of features I’d like to add, but I’m basically having to learn from scratch again. It took all day just to figure out how to add links to the sidebar.
In other news some Senators caved and it looks like the Government Stimulus bill will indeed pass. This just means it’s more likely that our generation will witness our government going bankrupt. Ron Paul has more…
This bill isn’t so much an indictment of the Democrats as it is on the Republicans. The Democrats have always been known as the big government spenders. It’s the principle of their party. The Republicans squandered an amazing opportunity after decades of Democrat rule in Congress. The Republicans just took after the Democrats. Unfortunately the Republicans never enjoyed a large enough majority to get away from moderate rule. Americans who are tired of wasteful spending and corruptions now have no alternative. The nations heads inevitably towards bankruptcy. When the economy bounces back in six months or two years the Democrats will claim they did it. When the country goes bankrupt 5 years or 20 years from now those greedy bureaucrats will be nowhere to be found.
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