What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

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Yet the Republicans aren't saying what they'd cut. Besides taxes. Which will increase the deficit.

Funny.

You apparently missed the abundant history of tax cuts leading to increased tax revenue.
And while we're at it, maybe you can explain why Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" can't be allowed to die without some tweaking. Why can't Democrats let those tax cuts expire at the end of the year just the way they are?
 
You apparently missed the abundant history of tax cuts leading to increased tax revenue.
And while we're at it, maybe you can explain why Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" can't be allowed to die without some tweaking. Why can't Democrats let those tax cuts expire at the end of the year just the way they are?

They don't include a middle-class tax hike.
 
9/17/2009

With the Dow climbing near 10,000 again what's happened to all of the dire, end of the world ravings of our resident "conservative" economists?

Where is all of this inflation we were warned about? According to reports the Consumer Price Index is down 1.5% overall from last year. Despite Augusts increase in prices, gasoline is still down 30% from the high a year ago.

Despite the dire warnings of some of Lit's resident math wizards the Chinese are still very much interested in buying US Treasury securities.

I guess the sky isn't falling after all. :cool:

Today:
If misery loves company, Alan Greenspan should be providing me solace anytime now. You see, last month I wrote a piece titled Greece: A Preview of Things to Come. It included this sentence:

What we are seeing now in Greece is a preview of what is eventually bound to transpire in the United States.

To some, this claim seemed crazy. A few snickered. They could not imagine that things in America would ever get so bad.

Last week, Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal titled U.S. Debt and the Greece Analogy.

I urge you to read it. Alan Greenspan clearly thinks things will get bad. This should not surprise, for the figures are depressing indeed.

Notes Greenspan: "Federal debt to the public rose to 59% of GDP by mid-June 2010 from 38% in September 2008." This, by the way, does not represent the full extent of America's national debt, as it does not include the $4.5 trillion owed to federal trust funds. And we have not even mentioned yet a hundred trillion-plus in unfunded liabilities.

After bemoaning our lack of fiscal restraint, Alan Greenspan makes a statement that should send a shudder down the spine of every American:

The federal government is currently saddled with commitments for the next three decades that it will be unable to meet in real terms.
Vasko Kohlmayer
The American Thinker
__________________
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
Frederic Bastiat
 
This is one truth that no politician or government official ever mentions publicly. The coyness is understandable, since we are speaking about a form of theft -- the government ripping off its creditors and citizens alike. Being now out of government, Alan Greenspan dares to utter the unutterable. For this he should be commended, as his statement is certain to attract the ire of the governing elite to which he once belonged. This is how he puts it:

The U.S. government can create dollars at will to meet any obligation, and it will doubtless continue to do so. U.S. Treasurys are thus free of credit risk.

Yes, they are, indeed. Regardless of how excessive its obligations, the U.S. government will never have to openly default, because it can simply produce dollars at will. But the ability to discharge one's debts in this manner is neither satisfactory nor honorable. Quite to the contrary, it leaves creditors and citizens stuck with increasingly worthless money.
__________________
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."
John Maynard Keynes
 
As many people know, the Fed Chairman and the Board of Governors are nominated by the president. They can also be removed at any time by the president "for cause." As such, they are prone to pressures from the White House.

This is something Alan Greenspan surely knows something about. He was pressured by both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to keep interest rates low during politically sensitive periods. Greenspan's low interest rate policy produced two great bubbles: the dot com bubble in the late nineties and the real estate bubble in the middle of the decade that followed. They both burst, with spectacular effect and painful consequences, when Greenspan was forced to jack up interest rates due to rising inflation.

To recover from the latter, the government undertook additional levels of borrowing, which only further exacerbated its already chronic debt habit. As a result, we now face indebtedness of unprecedented proportions which threatens to bring down the whole economy. The situation has become so critical that only a complete change in the government's attitude toward spending could bring us back from the brink. According to Greenspan,

[t]he United States, and most of the rest of the developed world, is in need of a tectonic shift in fiscal policy. Incremental change will not be adequate.

This is surely a vain plea, for Greenspan must know that the tectonic shift he is calling for is politically unfeasible. There will be no cuts, much less deep cuts. There is simply no political will to implement them. Despite the obvious gravity of our situation, all we are getting is more spending, and that on an unprecedented scale. Health care reform, global warming bills, and endless bailouts keep rolling out of Washington even as we are drowning in a tsunami of debt.

Yeah, we're SOOOooo... "evolved."
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They become apt to take because they wish to spend and cannot do this easily; for their possessions soon run short. Thus they are forced to provide means from some other source. At the same time, because they care nothing for honor, they take recklessly and from any source.
Aristotle
 
With a Lib-o yell, he cried "More, more, more..."

Of course, he didn't used to say that. From 2003:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/opinion/11KRUG.html

" Last week the Congressional Budget Office marked down its estimates yet again. Just two years ago, you may remember, the C.B.O. was projecting a 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. Now it projects a 10-year deficit of $1.8 trillion.

And that's way too optimistic. The Congressional Budget Office operates under ground rules that force it to wear rose-colored lenses. If you take into account — as the C.B.O. cannot — the effects of likely changes in the alternative minimum tax, include realistic estimates of future spending and allow for the cost of war and reconstruction, it's clear that the 10-year deficit will be at least $3 trillion. "

And now that's the two-year deficit, but that's fine now.

He should get monograms that say "Nobel-prize winning partisan hack." I'm sure Obama would want some, too.
 
Increasingly we see the Nobel prize is being awarded by Socialists whose economic theory is a basic form of Marxism (once you strip out all the "We're not Marxists because..." parsing) to people who think JUST LIKE US!
 
Nationally, about 95% of jobs gains in May were due to federal government jobs.About 60% of Maryland May job gains were federal government jobs, primarily Census jobs that historically have lasted about one to three months.
 
You apparently missed the abundant history of tax cuts leading to increased tax revenue.
And while we're at it, maybe you can explain why Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" can't be allowed to die without some tweaking. Why can't Democrats let those tax cuts expire at the end of the year just the way they are?

Can you point out a time in American history where this has happened? It didn't happen under Bush II near as I can tell. Reagan RAISED taxes despite populare revisionist history. So when did this happen?
 
wiki

Can you point out a time in American history where this has happened? It didn't happen under Bush II near as I can tell. Reagan RAISED taxes despite populare revisionist history. So when did this happen?

When President Harding assumed office on March 4, 1921 the United States was in the midst of a post war economic depression. By 1920, unemployment had jumped up to 12 percent and the GNP had dropped by 17 percent. Harding ignored Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover's recommendation for proactive federal intervention; rather Harding cut tax rates for all groups and reduced the national debt. Recovery began to take place in summer of 1921; by 1922 unemployment receded to 6.4 percent; by 1923 the unemployment rate was 2.4 percent. Economist Benjamin Anderson writes, "In 1920–21 we [the U.S.] took our losses, we readjusted our financial structure, we endured our depression, and in August 1921 we started up again. . . . The rally in business production and employment that started in August 1921 was soundly based on a drastic cleaning up of credit weakness, a drastic reduction in the costs of production, and on the free play of private enterprise. It was not based on governmental policy designed to make business good.”

another

Coolidge's taxation policy was that of his Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon: taxes should be lower and that fewer people should have to pay them.[113] Congress agreed, and the taxes were reduced in Coolidge's term.[113] In addition to these tax cuts, Coolidge proposed reductions in federal expenditures and retiring some of the federal debt.[113] Coolidge's ideas were shared by the Republicans in Congress, and in 1924 Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1924, which reduced income tax rates and eliminated all income taxation for some two million people.[113] They reduced taxes again by passing the Revenue Acts of 1926 and 1928, all the while continuing to keep spending down so as to reduce the overall federal debt.[114] By 1927, only the richest 2% of taxpayers paid any income tax.[114] Although federal spending remained flat during Coolidge's administration, allowing one-fourth of the federal debt to be retired, state and local governments saw considerable growth, surpassing the federal budget in 1927.
 
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You loved the "leading economic indicator..."

Good news!

Next month's numbers almost HAVE to show home sales up...

http://www.conference-board.org/press/pressdetail.cfm?pressid=3936

You know that the LEI is a composite index right? Your Math degree covered that yes?

I noticed none of your erstwhile compatriots answered. So were you in favor of the housing subsidies that were not renewed that caused the drop in new home sales?

I'm betting a resounding no, if you bother to answer at all.
:cool:
 
You apparently missed the abundant history of tax cuts leading to increased tax revenue.
And while we're at it, maybe you can explain why Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" can't be allowed to die without some tweaking. Why can't Democrats let those tax cuts expire at the end of the year just the way they are?

The Bush tax cuts increased revenue but not nearly enough to offset the lost revenue from the cuts. Even the rosiest, most partisan estimate I've seen only says the benefit from the cuts made up for 40% of the loss.
 
Today:

Vasko Kohlmayer
The American Thinker
__________________
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
Frederic Bastiat

Nobody gives a shit about the American thinker though.
 
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