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If things go as they appear to be heading in the recent primaries, we can look forward to Frick (high taxes, high restrictions, high spending) versus Frack (high taxes, high restrictions, high spending), or Hillary v. McCain.
The result of that is guaranteed: Hillary in a heartbeat. The Billary machine and the media will insure Demofiend victory.
There’s just one hope for the irrascible asshole McCain–a terrorist attack on American soil, scaring people into voting for the Hanoi Hilton veteran (did he endure it just to run for president?) because of Osamaitis.
Both results mean the end of the American Dream. Does it really have to come to this?
Can’t we all just get along without government telling us how to live, and taxing us into submission?
The Federal Reserve Board, in extraordinary out-of-session action, today lowered the federal funds and discount rates to 3.5 percent. Whoop-de-do. Why the hell did they ever raise them above that to begin with?
It baffles me where these people get their reasoning. Do you ever read the Fed’s nonsensical comments? Where did they learn this babble?
Yeah, yeah, they were trying to control inflation, but do you save your children by drowning them when they have a fever? That’s essentially what the Fed did to the U.S. (and world) economy.
Good going, guys. Let’s see, that’s an least three over-reactions in the Greenspan-Barnanke era.
Three strikes and you’re out?
As I wrote previously, the U.S. economy functions best on low interest rates, in the 2.5 to 3.0 percentage point range. When rates started to more than double that in the past two years, trouble soon followed. Witness the recent so-called "subprime" mess.
Now, however, hopeful signs are emerging that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is coming to his (my) senses, as it’s widely believe he and his board will cut rates by one-half a percentage point in late January, bringing it down to the 3.75 percent level.
Close, but he’s going to have to go lower. Remember, Japan had its rates at zero for almost a decade, and the best that could accomplish was to maintain the status quo of constant deflation and recession.
There are lessons for mature economies, low interest rates being one of them. In truth, we really have an "overprime" problem–interest rates too high–rather than a "subprime" problem of lending rates being too generous.
Maybe Bernanke has learned a painful lesson.
Posted by farleft | Posted on 10-01-2008
Category : Liberal Antidote
Most people in my generation grew up hearing the saying by Lord Acton that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolutely power corrupts absolutely."
Very few then paid attention to it, going blithely ahead thinking only of themselves. Today, no doubt fewer still think the quotation to be anything other than an old, useless observation–except when you can pin it on your enemies.
That’s why I was so pleased today to find a column in the Orange County Register saluting Lord Acton and offering up more of his quotations.
I love this one, which is so true as you survey the current electioneering for president:
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern."
READ MORE
Posted by farleft | Posted on 03-01-2008
Category : Liberal Antidote
I watched a documentary on Andrew Jackson on public television last night that confirmed the fact that Old Hickory was our first dictator.
This got me to thinking about how dictators are so well loved and respected in America.
Consider Abraham Lincoln, the man who actually succeeded in starting the civil war that Jackson toyed with and then clamped down on the country with an iron fist, even suspending habeas corpus (where the hell did he get that right?). Our most totalitarian president is now considered our greatest, and no one is allowed even to question that judgment.
Then, how about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from whom the hands of power could only by relieved by death itself?
Dictators, all three, and all three are no doubt the most popular presidents we’ve ever had in the public’s eye.
What does that tell us about human nature?
