Quote:
Originally Posted by KSagal
Bob,
No we do not agree on several of the points that you said we could agree on. You need not presume my mind. I am happy to explain myself if treated civally. I do agree that poorly done, even the right thing can have collateral damage, but that does not mean that doing the wrong thing is justified. And the government has never been known for doing anything the right way anyway...
I happen to believe that when credit is tight, and people are unsure, then lenders will look for a sure thing. They will only want to loan money to those whom they feel are layoff proof. They will want a higher level of security, and since the real estate market is in the toilet, real estate is not the best security... At this time, I do not think it is prudent for the federal government to declare it intends to borrow on trillion dollars... Where do you think that money will come from? It will come from the people who have money to loan. Which is a sure bet? The guy who is upside down in his car company or the federal government? Who is a better risk? The guy who is upside down in his house who just got layed off, or the federal government?
You cannot have it both ways... The global market is in a mess. Our theives and liars in Washington want people to do what they are not willing to do all the time... We should tighten our belts while they take a chartered train to the spa, on my dime. You cannot complain about tight credit markets, then go and borrow more money at one time than has ever been borrowed in the history of the world. Do you feel that the feds borrowing huge sums of money will not affect the rest of the credit market? I do think it will.
I did not say that government should fold up and stop spending. There is a large jump from that and spending a trillion dollars more than we were planning to spend yesterday. This package is not designed to replace the normal operation of government, this package that the president is talking about as I type, is over and above the day to day...
I have not gotten any answers to the fact that this was tried in the 30s and it did not work for a decade. Government did not solve the Great Depression, and no one will address that, because it proves my point, and undermines the concept of spending our way out...
Since these kinds of giant spending programs were tried several times after 1933, years into the depression, and we were still in a depression 8 years later...
So, are you guys saying that we spend a trillion dollars today, and we will still not be whole in 8 years? This is a trillion dollars today, after 750 Billion dollars last fall. And this depression is only a few months old, even though many things have been on the decline for years.
The bottom line is that what will happen will happen. These guys don't even pay their taxes, much less listen to the 45% that did not vote for them. Because they will do what they do, the only ones who will know if it works or not are historians... We can say woulda, coulda, shoulda forever. Only one path can be taken at one time, and those who are inchage have no desire to hear about another path... Such is life.
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Have I not treated you civilly?
As for the only thing I see that I said we could agree on, it seems you agree:
Quote:
Originally Posted by KSagal
I do agree that poorly done, even the right thing can have collateral damage
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Color me puzzled.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I share all the concerns you mention.
There are things we should do. I am not sure how much of them we should do.
There are things we should NOT do. I'm not sure how much of them we can survive doing.
I think I made it clear I don't believe we can spend our way out. I think we have to be slow, careful, balance the costs of any steps we take against their benefits -- including, as you rightfully point out, their effect on the credit markets! Excellent point, and a big part of my beef with the policies that got us here in the first place.
I'm pretty liberal, as you guessed by now, but I do believe in economics. I think that, taken en masse, the individual economic decisions made by individual families and companies and divisions within companies, far outweigh those made by government.
Government has a definite role to play. Some of that role is to stay out of the way. Some is to keep the lights on, as it were. Some is even a safety net, but that's not a very sustainable type of spending.
I have grave doubts about the spending package (let's call it what it is). I'm arguing for a specific focus for any stimulus which IS done. Your point about credit markets is a constraint on how MUCH stimulus we can afford to even attempt. I freely admit, I don't know how much we should attempt; I've limited myself to trying to sort out the direction, not the magnitude.
I'm probably more liberal than you on the question of magnitude, but I really don't think our concerns as as different as you seem to think.
You probably wouldn't much like about 60% of my opinion about who's to blame, and applaud the other 40%, but I don't much want to go there. But if you have any ideas about how to prevent it from happening again, I'd love to hear it.
I suspect Obama feels that dramatic action is the only way, from a psychological point of view. Often, that might be the case. I'm not sure it works here. I don't think psychology trumps fundamentals, and I've been seriously worried about the fundamentals for a long time -- especially about the size of the government debt.
I guess I didn't make the story all that short...