Recent changes give little warrant to the expectation of a full, sustainable recovery in the near term.
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If you do, they will almost certainly disgrace your family.
If you don't care for economic theory or econometrics, just read the Bible. A substantial contingent of Democrats seems to love passenger-rail subsidies for reasons that have little or nothing to do with pork for their friends. In view of the Fed's fundamental, if wholly unacknowledged, role in bringing about the world's present economic debacle, the question that Bernanke's current proposals immediately raise could not be more obvious: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Vulgar Keynesianism, which purports to be an economic model or at least a coherent framework of economic analysis, actually excludes the very possibility of genuine economic action, substituting for it a simple, mechanical conception, the intellectual equivalent of a baby toy. President Barack Obama promises that the deficit will be brought down to $1,170 billion in fiscal year 2010. Don't bank on it. The Democrats are using the alleged crisis as the pretext for a monumental looting of the taxpayers. The bad news is that neither commercial banana cultivation nor a republican form of government has proved viable in this country. However intellectually contemptible military Keynesianism may be, it has a proven record of getting the Establishment where it wants to go. Wailing and gnashing of teeth are all the rage in Washington as wannabe plunderers warn us of dire consequences unless the government acts as the middleman in their attempts to raid the taxpayers' bank accounts. The rate of economic growth from 1866 to 1897, a period of secular deflation, was perhaps the greatest ever experienced by the U.S. economy during a period of comparable length. If you increase unemployment benefits, it is reasonable to expect an increase in the rate of unemployment. With gasoline prices falling, shouldn't Congress be singing Big Oil's praises? What we have before us now is a systematic redistribution from the prudent and the responsible to the imprudent and the irresponsible. The Secretary of Treasury is empowed to buy any asset whatsoever under the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The economy is awash in loanable funds, and the unprecedented volume of such funds now being supplied appears to be the obvious explanation for why real interest rates are so low in so many financial markets. Some of us wish that rational argument, cogent evidence, and humane sentiment would persuade a preponderance of the public to demand an end to the war. History suggests, however, that only personal grief and economic pain will induce the American public to act against their perfidious leaders. The beginning of political wisdom is the realization that despite everything you’ve always been taught, the government is not really on your side; indeed, it is out to get you. Leaders must always bear personal responsibility for how they turn the wheel, once they have occupied the driver’s seat. People yearn for security, and they look to the state to provide it, but they are calling upon a wolf to guard the sheep. Formerly known as “the best and the brightest,” crackpot realists are now hard at work dishing out death and destruction wherever they turn their attention in the wider world. The U.S. adventure in Iraq cannot have a happy ending. The state is the most destructive institution human beings have ever devised — a fire that, at best, can be controlled for only a short time before it o’erleaps its improvised confinements and spreads its flames far and wide. In all actual U.S. wars, the people have been net losers; in each instance, they would have been better off if the war had not been fought. |
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