Budget talks: This is getting nasty

Market plunging in last 15, 20 minutes. Down 540 as the bell is about to ring. Gold back from over $1800 but pushing for it again.

 

Not ignorant at all. And you have the motivation right, in good measure.

There are signs that our economy has slowed to a crawl. The Federal Reserve, through monetary policy, believes it has the power to stimulate economic growth (and employment). That means getting people to spend money.

A few things to keep in mind, though. They don't have the power they pretend. They have been engaged in this same exact policy for three years now, and it hasn't gotten people to stop hoarding cash. They have artificially kept short-term interest rates (what banks borrow from them at) near zero and have engaged in a number of actions designed to make money plentiful and cheap, including buying back the debt issued by our treasury -- with them propping up that lending market, it kept yields, or borrowing rates low.

None of that stimulated the kind of economic activity they would have hoped for, though. And it has done its part to contribute to our debt, because the Fed's balance sheet -- due to those quantitative easing programs, and TARP prior to that, is bloated. It is several trillion dollars, which is particularly galling because they operate without oversight, as a quasi-secret organization. They have power over the people, because they control our money. It should frighten people.

And. ... 1) There are consequences to their policies. Prior to 2008, the Fed embarked on these kinds of policies, particularly under Alan Greenspan, for different motivations. They thought they could create never-ending economic growth. Their interest rate policy, more than anything, is what created several asset bubbles that led us to exactly where we are today. We got false prosperity for nearly a decade, rather than natural economic cycles. The payback for that was a huge crash. 2) What the Fed is doing is inflationary. They are essentially flooding our market with endless supplies of dollar bills, which makes the value of the dollar bills we all have in our pockets worth less. They then pretend like there is no inflation. That inflation has no run away on us yet, but its because the economy has flatlined. The problem here is that, we are nonetheless seeing it -- ask anyone who has been in a store in the last year, and when the economy picks up, the horse will have already been let out of the barn, and they won't be able to reign it in. They are acting shortsighted, and the consequences down the line are going to be disastrous. This is primarily why the price of precious metals has run up so much. They are a hedge against the world's various central banks debasing their currencies in the name of "stimulating" economic growth.

Lastly, the reason why nothing they are doing is working is that our fiscal policy (what our legislators have been doing) has people spooked. So, as they are finding out, short of giving away loans for nothing, they are not getting people to spend and invest, because they see a potential world meltdown looming, and even if it falls short of that, we are at or near another recession, and as the old saying goes, in a recession, cash is king.

 

We have nearly 100 pages on this thread alone, part of which degraded into people deciding who is rich and who isn't and who should bear more of a tax burden and who shouldn't. We have the president playing class politics every time he comes on TV, creating strawmen about millionaires and billionaires -- the people who actually support most of the tax receipts coming in. And even with that BS, we don't have enough millionaires and billionaires to support the mess we have created.

We have also had numerous presidential campaigns predicated on class politics. Barack Obama did it during a time that economic troubles were on people's minds. But John Edwards comes to mind, too, with that hypocritical "two Americas" speech I heard over and over again.

Once again, I must remind you, I have never said anything about "soaking" the rich. That is your editorializing to attribute strong verbiage to me that I never said, to try to turn me into scrooge McDuck. Please don't.

1) I simply have pointed out a few inarguable facts. A small percentage of the highest income earners in this country pay the vast majority of our Federal income taxes -- right now. We have the most progressive income tax system in the world--right now.

2) Our entitlement programs are sinking us. The amorphous "rich" can not save them. We need to expand our tax base by a lot if this is the world we want, and honestly, I stand by what I said earlier. My hope is that if everyone bore the cost of our $3 to $4 trillion budget and realized that it cost actual money -- out of their pockets -- there might be some changes in attitudes. RIght now that isn't the case. The general attitude I see is, "let the rich pay for our problems." It starts with our president who seems to be verbalizing that every other day, and what is particularly gauling is that while he talks about corporate jets and billionaires, he then does the slight of hand to make it people earning $250K or more. Those people already pay the majority of our Federal income taxes, in what is a very progressive system. Demonizing them, as if they don't do enough, is not only wrong, it is cynical. It uses class politics to try to further erode the basic liberties of economic freedom that we should be fighting for.