It's almost like markets work ...

How can that be though? The news has been telling us all our lives that free markets result in horrible consequences due to greed.

Someone forgot to tell NYC that markets don't work. They don't correct themselves. Only huge govt. intervention can save you!! Repent, repent!! Oh, sorry. Got a little carried away in messianic revere.

http://newledger.com/2009/06/is-the-housing-bust-about-to-take-manhattan/

So who's being greedy now? The renters, I suppose, asking for lowered rents. Weird. It's like, no matter what we do greed just keeps lingering. Why can't we all just agree not to be greedy? Are we asking too much, America? Is it really so much to ask to cast aside your own self-interests and do what's right for everyone?

A sad, sad point of view

This article, written by Joseph Stiglitz really bums me out if true. Not his "points" about capitalism, but that are so many in the world who delude themselves into believing his essential premise: that so called American "style" capitalism has become a proven failure to much of the third world.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, marked the end of Communism as a viable idea. Yes, the problems with Communism had been manifest for decades. But after 1989 it was hard for anyone to say a word in its defense. For a while, it seemed that the defeat of Communism meant the sure victory of capitalism, particularly in its American form. Francis Fukuyama went as far as to proclaim “the end of history,” defining democratic market capitalism as the final stage of social development, and declaring that all humanity was now heading in this direction. In truth, historians will mark the 20 years since 1989 as the short period of American triumphalism. With the collapse of great banks and financial houses, and the ensuing economic turmoil and chaotic attempts at rescue, that period is over. So, too, is the debate over “market fundamentalism,” the notion that unfettered markets, all by themselves, can ensure economic prosperity and growth. Today only the deluded would argue that markets are self-correcting or that we can rely on the self-interested behavior of market participants to guarantee that everything works honestly and properly.

Wow. How can a seemingly intelligent person make so many mistakes? An aside: we need to, as a civilization, learn how the "other side" thinks. Because this guy's thinking, in my estimation, is fundamentally flawed.

First, Communism is anything but dead. Second, there will never be an "end of history" as described by Hegel, Marx, et al. Societies will always experiment with differing forms of government, trade, monetary policy, etc. Third, our markets were anything but "unfettered". Freddie and Fannie were specifically instructed to buy up billions in subprime loans. Also, I would dispute the notion that American-style capitalism is about "unfettered" markets. That can mean different things to different people. A zero-regulated economy is not capitalism, it is anarchy.

Stiglitz throws out the baby with the bathwater in this article. Or rather, he suggests everyone but the deluded have done so. Count me among the deluded then. American capitalism continues to evolve. We're going through a financial crisis now that we can learn and grow from. But we can't do it by lying to each other and ourselves about the who, what, and how of this mess.

My response to Theresa's "Forced Tarp" comment

I agree with you - the govt. created the same crisis they are now pretending to be the saviors of. The Community Redevelopment Act (I know that's not what it's called) passed in the 90's lowered (some would say forcibly) the standards of lending. Of course, it seemed like a good idea for a long time. It was almost a decade in the making. And to be sure, that while Clinton may have passed the original legislation to make the lending rules looser, NO ONE ever expected the govt. to bail out Bear Sterns. There was never a reason to. "Too big to fail" is obscene and absurd. Whatever happened to Monopoly busting?

Now, from what I understand of the situation, this was far less a bank bail-out than a Wall Street bail out. The securities market doesn't reside in the banks - they're traded on the floor of the stock exchange. And the securities are what brought the house of cards down. Despite being hedged with many prime mortgages, the actual value of homes - whether the loan was prime or not - were simply not in line with their price.

That being said, I have to wonder if this whole thing is even a tenth as complex as they make it out be. Had they let the free market do what it would, things would have corrected themselves by 2010. So says leading economist John Sullivan ;-) Really though, this isn't rocket science: housing prices should roughly follow inflation. It's very easy to graph out inflation and home values side by side and I've seen websites do it. So all you have to extrapolate the two lines starting from 1981 (our last recession). What we would have seen is that housing prices would have dipped BELOW the inflation line. These would have been all of the foreclosed homes and their resulting impact on other home prices. After the foreclosure dust settled, we would have seen a normalization in home prices.

I mean, really - we have THOUSANDS of first time home buyers flooding the market, driving up prices. People take advantage and speculate. AND they make money hand-over-fist. This is the "greed" that everyone complained about. It wasn't greed, people, it was smart. You don't pass up opportunities like that because you think it will create a systemic failure. The idea would have been laughed at in 2005 and should still have been laughed at in 2008.

See, I'm not the only one who's crazy

Kevin Hassett from Bloomberg also believes Obama is out to create a quasi-socialist state.

June 8 (Bloomberg) -- I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.

I'm glad I'm not the only crazy out there.

Two articles for you to ignore

First up - Obama's numbers are made up. Literally. Well, let me be more specific: his "150,000 jobs saved" is an abstraction from macro economic data. In other words, it's made up. The Wall Street Journal says so anyway. Of course, aren't they cause of this whole mess - Wall Street? With their greed? Too bad we don't have a system in place that could place checks on greed. NO!! I have an even better idea!! Let's use greed to fight greed! Haha!! We'll call it "free market capitalism" and people will pursue their own self interests and that'll keep everyone's greed in check.

The second is about Canadian public health "insurance". It tells us things we've heard so many times before: rationing, waiting, giving up and paying for it yourself. This article from the disreputable Wall Street Journal is surely just the beginning of the deluge of hysterical hit-pieces on single-payer systems.

Should you choose to subject yourself to the first right-wing, corporate-sponsored rag-of-an-op-ed piece about healthcare, here are some of the more absurd paragraphs:

Born and raised in Canada, I once believed that government health care is compassionate and equitable. It is neither.

First of all, the author is Canadian, which I think disqualifies him to speak intelligently on the subject.

My views changed in medical school.

As in you were walking down a hallway delivering pizza in a medical school dorm?

Dr. Gratzer, a physician, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Well, la-tee-da.

Yes, everyone in Canada is covered by a "single payer" -- the government. But Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system.

Um ... yeah, so do we. We have to sit in waiting rooms for hours ... more scare tactics from the radical right, people.

The problems were brought home when a relative had difficulty walking. He was in chronic pain. His doctor suggested a referral to a neurologist; an MRI would need to be done, then possibly a referral to another specialist. The wait would have stretched to roughly a year. If surgery was needed, the wait would be months more. Not wanting to stay confined to his house, he had the surgery done in the U.S., at the Mayo Clinic, and paid for it himself.

Oh sure - a "relative". CanadaCode for "pet moose". Hey, he's a rich dude - was able to go to the fancy-schmancy Mayo Clinic in NY. How does this guy count? So he would have been a little inconvenienced having to wait his turn in the Canadian system. So what? At least he has coverage. Besides, he's just a dumb moose.

Such stories are common.

Yeah - stories. Let's look at cold hard facts, dude. Your drool-in-a-cup Wall Street Journal readers might be entertained by these isolated examples, but this is the real world, where anecdotal evidence is easily refuted with yet more anecdotal evidence.

Indeed, Canada's provincial governments themselves rely on American medicine. Between 2006 and 2008, Ontario sent more than 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery -- described by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain."

So Canada is dumping their brain-damaged on us. Nice. Thanks, Canada.

Only half of ER patients are treated in a timely manner by national and international standards, according to a government study. The physician shortage is so severe that some towns hold lotteries, with the winners gaining access to the local doc.

And how does the U.S. fair in this regard? He doesn't say.

Overall, according to a study published in Lancet Oncology last year, five-year cancer survival rates are higher in the U.S. than those in Canada. Based on data from the Joint Canada/U.S. Survey of Health (done by Statistics Canada and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics), Americans have greater access to preventive screening tests and have higher treatment rates for chronic illnesses. No wonder: To limit the growth in health spending, governments restrict the supply of health care by rationing it through waiting.

So we're going to allow 45 million Americans (as defined as people currently living inside our borders - by Americans we mean Norte Americano) go without health insurance just because we're impatient? Look, Canadians w/ Cancer - what else is there to do but wait? Are you going somewhere? Just sit tight and wait the cancer out. Carcinomas are like dinosaurs - if you stay really still they can't see you and walk away.

Ironically, as the U.S. is on the verge of rushing toward government health care, Canada is reforming its system in the opposite direction.

Canada can't make up its mind - what does this have to do with us? This is America and we do things our own way, like the folks from Texas.

Americans need to ask a basic question: Why are they rushing into a system of government-dominated health care when the very countries that have experienced it for so long are backing away?

Duh - because we're AMERICA, you DB. Just because socialized whatever hasn't worked in backwards countries like Canada and England, doesn't mean we can't make it work here in the U.S.

Forced TARP

Many of the banks that received TARP money have been wanting to get out from underneath the governments restrictions on compensation and dividends by repaying the government the bail out money. Hurray! We're getting our bail out money back :-) Oh no... wait, this doesn't fit into Dear Leader's long term goals. The administration isn't allowing this "yet", for their own good, of course. It's so nice how our government is always looking out for the little guy.

Here's a story from the Wall Street Journal that very politely summarizes the benevolent restrictions placed on the TARPed banks ... for their own safety and long term profitability, of course.

An anology

So the press isn't biased? Let me ask you: if a weather-person told you that the cat 3 hurricane barreling toward you wasn't going to be so bad after all because the wind-speed is increasing at a slower rate than it had been an hour ago, would you go to the beach? If you were bleeding to death but the doctor told you not to worry, the rate at which your blood loss is increasing has decreased since the last pint, would his assertion give you cause to relax?

And as ridiculous as these examples are, it is exactly what the press tells us to believe about the economy. And I say "tell us" because when the press says something, they are supposedly reporting the facts.

Laughable (if you can afford to laugh, that is)

Great economic news, folks!!! The economy is coming back! Woo hoo!! Layoffs have slowed - isn't that just peachy? Why, only 350,000 Americans were laid off this month! Phew - Obama (pboh) brought us back from the brink, people. That was a close one!! Damn, I almost thought we were going to have a depression there for a minute.

Now, I know some of you might think I'm being disingenuous, but I offer as proof of my sincerity the fact that the author of the AP article wrote the following:

The much smaller-than-expected reduction in payroll jobs, reported by the Labor Department on Friday, adds to evidence that the recession is loosening its hold on the country. It marked the fourth straight month that the pace of layoffs slowed.

"This tide is turning," said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus. "We expect this trend of slower job loss to continue throughout the year."

Oh RAPTURE, layoffs will continue to slow for the rest of the year!! See, I told you I was being serious: an economist says the tide is turning. Who am I to argue proof of this magnitude. See, it's not just Obama (pboh) who is assuring us that things are getting better; naturally he would since he has a vested interest in doing so; but both an impartial journalist and a learned scholar have stated so as well :-) You can't argue with evidence of this magnitude?

And you know, I just want to give a special "shout out" (ala Sarah Palin) to Bush for making all this possible. Would Kerry or Gore have been brave enough to get the train rolling with TARP, Bear Sterns, CitiCorp, Fannie May, Freddie Mac, etc, etc? I doubt it!!! They would have assumed the people of this country were too smart for that sort of rapid socialization of the American financial system. HA!! Looks like you two were out-thunked by the master thinker G.W. Bush.

Do I really think Obama is that bad?

I often posit ideas and theories only as a rhetorical and logical exercise. So to clarify to myself and my vast four-person audience, I don't really think Obama is trying to destroy the country, but I wouldn't be 100% surprised to find out that he is. If I were to give odds on "Obama the elected fifth column" VS "Obama the ultra-lefty looking to make the US more like the EU", I would give odds of about 1 in 20 that he is the former.

The point is that I am not certifiably insane. But the other point is this: we really do need to keep a close watch on the guy, just as we do all elected officials. And not because he might be that wolf in sheep's clothing, but because the guy clearly doesn't understand the real world. He's like a college professor turned president. The notion of a philosopher king only works within philosophy itself - not the real world.

Accident my a**

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090603/D98J6BAG0.html

Sure it was. Like I said, Manchurian candidate. I'd love to see him impeached and brought up on treason for this. But we don't charge anyone with treason anymore. LOL, if we did, we'd have to indite ourselves for having elected this guy in the first place.