Freedoms Truth

Our Current Economic Illusions

"Problem is, this regime has been blamed for talking down the "robust" recovery ...for politcal reasons."

Which is exactly what they did. They needed to overstate the danger, in order to sell their bogus 'solution'. Meanwhile, the inexorable workings of the economy would go through the recession-recovery cycle anyway.

" The regime has always maintained at least from what I hear them say, that things were going to get worse before better."

That's akin to predicting the rising of the sun in the East.

No, the REAL bogus statistics the Obama admin/Regime are peddling are the 'jobs saved' numbers. We now know many of those numbers are beyond bogus - they listed jobs 'saved' in Congressional districts that dont even exist!

Our Current Economic Illusions

"stimulus money that is mostly tax cuts"
Wrong. the 'stimulus' was really a local/state govt spending bailout and was mostly Government spending. That's one reason why it was so ineffective.

Our Current Economic Illusions

AxIt - "dear republicans I'm so sorry for you that your loved GOP terribly messed up things in the last decade"

Dear political Partisan: Ahem, private sector employment is down about 7 million since Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House in Jan 2007.

In accusing others of putting a political prism on things, you are PROJECTING.

AxIT: "and now under the dems things are improving."
Employment, GDP, value of dollar, and deficit/debt, are all worse than when Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took Congress.

"It must hurt, but you have to live with this."

We will be going another 6 years before the economy recovers to have employment as low as it was under the Republican Congress. It must hurt, but you have to live with the consequence of your own BS. You've put a bunch of clowns in charge of the economy, and the consequences are lower growth, higher deficits and higher unemployment for as long as the Democrats remain in charge.

The Economic Recovery That Isn't

Schiff's focus on JOBS is well-placed. What is as bad as the jobs report is the average workweek, and looking at the fact that our economy is currently putting the total amount of hours that was put it back in 2002 - is that the path to a growing economy?


The first step on the road to long-term recovery is to stop killing jobs with bad Government policies. Will the Obama/Democrat zeal to socialize healthcare careen our nation on a path to inevitable fiscal ruin as the taxes and mandates just kill future jobs?

Now comes crunch time in DC. If this is passed, USA's economic pre-eminence will be history. Save America's economy, Stop ObamaCare!

Sentiment Overview: Surprising Increase in Optimism

There is One and only One Major leading economic indicator that owerwhelms all others right now... Will the Obama/Democrat zeal to socialize healthcare careen our nation on a path to inevitabl fiscal ruin. The markets have perked up on ever Obama setback, and fell back when ObamaCare advanced.

Now comes crunch time. If this is passed, USA's economic pre-eminence will be history. Save America's economy, Stop ObamaCare.

This Recession Ain’t Over

"Why do writers seldom talk about what it would take to get this economy back on a healthy road? Like a smaller and less intrusive and controlling federal government. Like lower taxes. Like eliminating many rules, regulations and laws that prevent the private sector from doing it's job. It is the private sector that creates new businesses and new jobs. It is the private sector that keeps the government sector afloat. Yet the public sector does all it can to stifle that sector. Makes no sense to me. "

You have awesome ideas ... but ... So long as Obama and the Democrat are in charge of Washington DC, their approach will be the opposite of that. They are about to destroy healthcare innovation for the next generation *AND* tee us up for massive new taxes and the destruction of state budgets, all in one fell swoop.

So proposing doing that is a bit like trying to round up virgins in a whorehouse. It might be fun, but it's an exercise unlikely to succeed.

Marc Faber: 'It Will All End in Disaster'

" The USA is suffering from crony capitalism."

I hear ya. The news today:

AIG director named to Obama task force
www.freerepublic.com/f...

www.freerepublic.com/f...
bailout benefitting exec (Goldman Sachs) gave the max to Obama's 2010 Senate campaign in Dec.

www.freerepublic.com/f...
Cali Democrats in lege putting friends and family on lege payroll
"At least a dozen political allies, relatives and friends of legislators, including political candidates in need of a salaried landing or launch pad between elections, were on the legislative roster last year at a cost of $754,000."

www.freerepublic.com/f...
The Obama administration rejected a Tribune request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel’s time as a director.

www.freerepublic.com/f...
Another high-ranking official in the Obama administration has had to leave his position, and in this case, one has to wonder how he got the job in the first place. Scott Polakoff, the top bank regulator for the Treasury, has taken a leave of absence after internal audits uncovered his allowance of backdated capital infusions, which could amount to cooking the books for IndyMac and other institutions. But the OTS chief had also been responsible for regulating AIG as well..


...AND SO IT GOES, using the taxpaying wealth-producers funds to help the politically connected.

Marc Faber: 'It Will All End in Disaster'

"> The Hoover administration practiced Austrian economics ("laissez
> faire approach to the economy")."

Completely wrong view, and a myth the socialists and Democrats like to spread. Anyone who repeats this myth just shows their ignroance. Hoover raised taxes (increasing high end tax ratesfrom 25% to over 60%), raised tariffs, and ramped up spending. It only made the economy worse.
FDR in 1932 ran on balancing the budget(!!), although he ended up increasing deficits and budgets massively. It too failed economically, but worked politically by creating a Govt-spending-dependent class of voters.

10 Reasons Why We Still Haven't Hit Bottom

"If there's any upside to this recession, it's that we won't have to put up with all those house flipping shows on t.v where complete morons made a whack of cash just because they woke up that morning."

Uh, they've been replaced by " buy foreclosure" infomercials and 'buy gold' ads.

10 Reasons Why We Still Haven't Hit Bottom

"Most bottoms occur when no one thinks it is. "

A marvelous self-refuting comment. It's tough being a contrarian bear when bearishness is rampant.

I thought November was the bottom, but when it when below 7200, everyone just cr*ppped, thinking "where is the bottom?" As of today we are above several levels of support from that bottom.
We may retrace, but then again buy a company at single digit PE that will survive until 2011 without going BK and you'll have a winner.

It is probably a good time to buy if and when it retraces.

Three Reasons the Stimulus Will Fail

"2. Just the fact that in the next year to 18 months, there will be over $2T of stimulus money from various nations of the world to be spent on a variety of projects and tax cuts will raise business confidence. "

This bill LOWERS business confidence because big Govt is back, its soaking up taxpayer wealth and crowding out investment with deficits. Its adding regulations and scaring business with the threat of socializing industries. And bashing companies left and right.

And btw, there are no real tax cuts of the tax rate type. There are only dinky tax credits that even non-taxpaying deadbeats can get. IT USED TO BE CALLED WELFARE. Why business confidence would rise when the economy is socialized and the welfare state expanded is a mystery.

The bill is a huge massive hoax of the worst sort.

Three Reasons the Stimulus Will Fail

" Great piece but I have one question. What would you recommend we do? I've read plenty of these kind of pieces and I think we all get it, but nobody seems to have a well thought out SOLUTION. Perhaps"

... The Republican alternatives by House and Senator Jim DeMint were about the best we can do. We cannot stop the recession, but we can keep it shorter by getting ready to incentivize economic growth long-term. This means tax rate reductions on income payroll and corporate income, regulation reform, encourage domestic production of energy, and lift the threat of Co2 regs.

Do all that and 2010 would be a nice recovery year.

Three Reasons the Stimulus Will Fail

"The economy is driven by demand, not supply. "

The ignorance of this comment is stunning. This is the economic equivalent of flat-earthism. You only demand what you can afford, you can only afford what wealth you have, you only have wealth based on real production, ie supply.... so supply of economic goods do drive it all.

That's why you are wrong about everything you say neutrino23. tax cuts do work, because the economic world is not flat!

Three Reasons the Stimulus Will Fail

" The most prudent thing to have done was to pass these monies in the form of tax credits and incentives to businesses and entrepreneurs who then would create the jobs that have gone missing in this new economy. "

That was the Republican alternative - it was about growing the economy.

But the Democrats main goal was not to help the economy but to abuse this crisis to ram through their very liberal spending agenda.

It's a travesty to even call this trillion dollar boondoggle bill a 'stimulus'. It's a hoax and a Madoff-like con scheme.

Three Reasons the Stimulus Will Fail

" The author is clueless. He is engaging in the usual Right Wing morality play - excess living must be replaced with prudent living."

No, you are clueless. He is saying the wasteful boondoggle Gvot spending bill, mislabeled and dishonestly sold as 'stimulus' will not help the economy. It will not. Even CBO has scored the bill as showing WORSE ECONOMIC ACTIVITY THAN DOING NOTHING over a 10 year period. Any short term benefits (which are overstated) will be more than outweighed by the long-term pain of another trillion in debt - the largest deficit in a single year. This is a path to financial ruin for the country. We taking an easily manageable recession and turning it into an excuse for killing the dynamic private economy.

" Many of the countries that experienced housing bubbles such as Spain and Ireland have much higher savings rate than the US. That didn't prevent their bubbles."
Which is a complete and utter non sequitor. Credit bubbles are if anything *fed* by excess savings into inappropriate investment.
But it IS indeed wise to point out that you cannot fix one bubble with another bubble.
We had an internet bubble, which caused pain, so Greenspan created another bubble - housing and commodities - to fix that.
Now to fix the pain we are creating a Govt debt bubble. It will end, if history repeats itself, with us looking like Japan 1990s or like latin america 1980s - over-indebted and with a pernament sluggish economy.

"Recessions are caused not by too much spending on goods and services, but too little."
This is like saying a cold is caused by coughing. Recessions are by definition a reduction in economic activity, but underspending is NEVER the ultimate cause. the credit

Get thee to a von Mises textbook.

"Conservatives during the early years of the Great Depression made exactly the same arguments as this author"

Classic logical fallacy.

" - we should tighten our belts and balance budgets!"


"They were wrong. The US economy only reached full employment when it government spending and deficits dramatically increased during WWII."

We had deficits for the whole 1930s. FDR's New Deal was a failure; after 8 years unemployment was still in double digits and economic activity was still lower than 10 years prior in 1939. FDR and Hoover both left tax rates too high and burdened the economy with regulations. Had the tax rates and regulations been reduced, the economy would have done much better.

What we really needed was to restore confidence, and only by getting Govt out of the way and securing the benefits of the natural private economy can you restore the economic activity and wealth creation.