Ron Paul made an impassioned speech today. One of his points is that we can’t simply re-inflate the bubble. He further claimed that we certainly can’t solve our crisis by attempting to create “capital” with a printing press. He claims that we are at a sea change, and that we need to learn to live within our means. He’s got my attention.
Booooo! Ron Paul sucks and Laissez-fair capitalism is one of the greatest threat to human life.
And no, I'm not being sarcastic
Mr Paul is only partially correct. Truly, capital comes from savings, but the money for those savings comes from production and production depends on employment.
I started a more detailed description of what happend but gave up. It was a complicated series of events orchestrated by greed and financial incompentence.
Printing more money is not a permanent answer. But sequestering the bulk of the national wealth in 1 or 2 percent of the population through any means possible is most sertainly not the answer.Nurturing of job opportunities is.
The entire mindset of Washington right now is concerned with group think and decisions by "democratic" consensus that tries to make everything "fair."
I believe I said this elsewhere on Dangerous Intersection. When fairness is the game, everything and anything of any real or perceived value becomes relatively less valued because these values have become diluted to an extent the original meanings which created the value are now changed. Yes, equilibrating values widens the means, but in so doing eliminates the meanings of established traditional understandings of value. This sets pre-existing values adrift into a sea of commonality that means the end of any safe harbour.
When people do not sense a safe harbor for themselves or their businesses they will not risk what they once valued only to be told again that their willingness to risk loss previously was one of the wrong values.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
This is not a pithy statement to be tossed out the window.
Todays statements should say "nothing ventured" because "gain is not possible."
With respect Erich, your introduction to this clip gave me nothing to hope that Ron Paul had anything interesting to say.
Pat. I think that Ron Paul is a nut on some issues. On this particular issue of the "bailout," he caught my attention. I am highly suspicious about the tactic of printing massive amounts of money, money we don't really have.
Perhaps this funny money will get us through the next year, but it reeks as a long-term solution. I'm not an economist, but my instincts are that we are (as individuals and as a country) dragging ourselves down by living beyond our means. Paul's frustration with this tactic of spitting out tons of paper money resonates with me.
By finding common ground with Paul on this issue, I am not thereby endorsing his opinions generally.
Could it be that America is finally seeing the vanishing nature of their values and the diminishing nature of hope for future returns?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the opinions expressed here thus far do not offer solutions; not one of us has proposed even a sliver of the holistic program required to stimulate the economy in a responsible manner. Unless, of course, your solution is pure, 100% laissez-faire (which would still be a program, because we'd have to reconfigure or destroy the U.S. Treasury, (see http://www.mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae2_3_1…. pull out all the taxpayer money that's already sitting in bank coffers).
We have the theories of economists through the ages, maybe some new theories, and a lot of fears. I'm encouraged by the fact that, as interested citizens, we can articulate our critical analysis of the Obama administration's emerging economic policy. However, we should not quickly dismiss anyone else's analyses unless we have a better programmatic solution.
Partisan politics will hover threateningly over and around the development of any plan for government intervention. Some politicians seem like gnats; our impulse may be to swat at them instead of listening. This reaction is a dangerous one, though. To summarily dismiss people who are genuinely trying to contribute to the brainstorming session because of their past utterances is to prematurely narrow the marketplace of ideas that may lift us up and out of this quicksand market. I, for one, sigh a breath of relief when I hear President Obama say that "everything is on the table."
I offer the following as information for anyone willing to examine what happens to the nature of existing values and future values when top down enforced socialism is espoused as a solution. The people become dependent upon the ruler(s) and can not be part of any solution because they are not seen as having anything or value to add to the solution. The solution of "enforced economic equality" leaves those in charge of the economy with no way to motivate the masses to higher productivity: A letter from a Cuban.
Karl, Et Al,
There is something that almost every Republican and Libertarian fail to understand and refuse to acknowledge. Rules and oversight are needed to maintain certain standards of responsibility when in common competition.
When you drive a car somewhere, you are in control of a powerful machine that can take you somewhere or , if used recklessly can cause death and destruction. Now if you are the only person on the road, you may be able to drive 170 mph and survive, and you may lose control of the car and die, but you would say you are only risking your own life.
That scenario is not competitive, however, if you are a race driver, you are competing against others for a prize. This incentive encourages each driver to go faster, take more risks in the hopes of winning and claiming the prize. This incentive to win is also an incentive to do unethical things to gain an advantage over your competition. These unethical things could include anything from removing safety equipment to lighten the car, to sabotaging you competition (or even paying members of your competition's pit crew to sabotage their car for you).
If you are the only driver that does this, and the rules don't prohibit it, you will expect to win the prize more often. But after you win one race this way, everyone else will learn from your example and do the same, and the result will be more likely that nobody finishes because the sabotaged cars break, and the because of the missing safety equipment, the drivers get injured or killed in the process.
This is something like what happened in the financial industry. The rules were removed and this encouraged the bankers, brokers, and underwriters to favor the high risk, high return strategies such as pushing sub-prime loans, and bundling those non-liquid assets into derivatives to use as collateral for open trading. Anyone who has ever had an accounting class should be able to see the problem in commoditizing debt derivatives.
The problem is that the people who perpetrated this fraud were playing with other people's money and collateral. Imagine he car race scenario but with with fully loaded school buses racing for the prize with no safety equipment and only 1 loose lug nut holding each wheel on.
The initial bailout money went to the very same people who created the problem. Yes, people should be rewarded when they are successful. but they most certainly should not be rewarded when their risky behavior harms others.
The first bailout went to the financial corporations that worked the financial system to shift billions of dollars to an elite few. These prime examples of bovine excrement sculptors began abusing the money on multimillion dollar percs instead of applying it to the company debt, obviously expecting they would be free and clear after the company collapsed.
The more recent funds have many strings attached, along with strict oversight on how the money is used.
Nero should not be allowed to fiddle while Rome burns. Tanya Harding should not be praised for hiring goons to cripple her competitions. Marie Antoinette should be punished for taking from the poor to maintain an opulent lifestyle.
Honestly, these guys are getting off easy. I wish I made a half million a year instead of less than $50,000.
The most recent bailout packages were originally intended to help the people who had no say in the squandering of their life savings, their homes and their livelihoods. Obviously it is only a stop-gap to reduce the damage until the inequities of the Bush administration can be reversed.
I love poor little Ron Paul. Yes, he goes to an extreme degree on his old-school fiscal conservatism (when it comes to opposing the FDA and things like that), but I really appreciate the guy for what he represents. Very few Republicans are actually fiscal conservatives these days, voting as they do for bloated military budgets and deficit spending, and Ron Paul is one of the sole voices out there representing true economic conservatism (and he isn't a bigot, to boot).
I don't agree with him on everything, but the dude has integrity- and he's one of the Republicans that Democrats really should "reach across the aisle" to meet. He's already best buddies with Kucinich, though, so perhaps they both occupy a special, bipartisan corner where all those maligned as "kooks" are relegated. I think the "kooks" deserve some more respect.
The systematic functioning of corporate America is far from flawless. There are grave errors in the operation of any corporation when the chief goals are profitability for the sake of the corporate executives and the investors. This can be like rewarding the worst practices as long as no one can determine how the books are being manipilated, or what the moral values are of the people sitting around the board room.
It is obvious whether you are an individual or a corporation, the lack of ethics and self restraint is the basic problem. Removing incentives for hard and honest work is a fool hardy idea. This is the crux of socialism, the possibility of misguided unchecked deceit is minimalized, but so are the incentives for individual effort.
A nation of individuals and corporate executives without a moral compass is the one that needs socialism. America is getting what it deserves because of the educational and political system that it has fostered since the end of World War II.
Once the educational system was rendered a "moral relative morass" the only quiding principal of the nation became profitability and financial increase.
The problem will not go away until the people individually recognize their lack of personal ethics and their collective corporate lack of equity to investors, employees and customers.
Fiscal restraint is not something that can be legislated upon a people that will not see their own unethical behavior, whether thet call themselves conservative, liberal or moderate.
Every corporate board room needs a fair mix of people with more than just financial training. Resumes of board executuves should include character witnesses from someone other than their closest associates and political party affiliation. No corruption going on in the political parties now is there.
A systems of accounting needs to be universally established and maintained so people can not cook the books. No body wins when the profits are hoarded by the corporation to the diminishment of all of those they have had ongoing relationships with, including the government of a free society.