Friday, November 28, 2008

A Better Stimulus Plan

From a quarter millennium ago:

"that they deceived every man into his own ruin; and ruined the nation, to enrich the directors and themselves: They sold their own stock, and that of the directors, under false and fictitious names, contrary to the obligation of their bond to the City, which obliges them to declare the name of the seller to the buyer, as well as the name of the buyer to the seller; for they knew that no man would have been willing to buy, had he known that the brokers and directors were in haste to sell. Thus they used false dice, and blinded men’s eyes, to pick their pockets. “And surely, Mr. Ketch,” says the counsellor, “if he who picks a man’s pocket is to be hanged, the rogues that pick the pockets of the whole country, ought to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.”

6 comments:

TheTrucker said...

But, neeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuwwwwwwwwwwwww. We will create money and send it to them so that they will not further destroy the functioning economy, the functioning society. We will reward them and hold them in great esteem for their ability to sucker us. It takes men of leadership, intellect, and republican values to execute such a plan, and we need more such bold and gifted business leaders.

We are in the final death throws of an economic philosophy that is utterly bankrupt. And the perpetrators are making off with as much "insurance" against the inflation oriented future as they can possible get.

With the death of any vestige of the "gold standard" in 1973 the insane idea that there was any upper limit to the supply of money was destroyed. But this fanned and kindled and supported flame of misperception was the foundation of the erroneous perpetuation of Neoclassical economic theory in the form of "supply side" or "trickle down". i.e. if there is a fixed supply of money then the rich people are our only escape from privation.

Perhaps the good thing that will come from this is the final realization that governments need not borrow and that there is no upper limit to the amount of money. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury will be creating more than seven trillion dollars from thin air over the next 6 months to be awarded to the crooks that have already stolen it.

What is most aggravating is the continuing assertion by the MSM that this money will be added to the national debt and be a liability of the taxpayers. Even worse is the lie that says the $700B had to be done that way.

The American people should not stand for this. The creation of new money for the purpose of bailing out the crooks is bad enough. To act as though this will create a new debt for the common people is simply insulting.

Anonymous said...

...we need more such bold and gifted business leaders.

A spelling error here. That should be

we need more such bold and grifted business leaders.

Anonymous said...

What was the source of this quote?

Anonymous said...

Trucker,

Have you considered this may be more akin to an asset swap with very little new money created but, instead, growing internalization of formerly private risk by government?

J Thomas said...

John, here's a link to it.

http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1237&chapter=64438&layout=html&Itemid=27

Ketch is made out to be a british executioner, who wants to execute stockbrokers etc and has complex arguments why they deserve it.

TheTrucker said...

I think I understand the language "internalization of formerly private risk" being executed by the Fed. What I don't understand is why the Fed would do this and how the Fed or the citizenry benefit from it. Why would the Fed, on behalf of the people, buy these betting slips from these bookies? Surely the Fed is smart enough to know these are bad markers.

Reality economics looks at peak oil and peak everything as the cause of the really big problems.

The housing bubble was certainly a part of the deal, but the mortgage problems do not amount to 8 trillion dollars. The finance people (the gamblers) expected the world economy to just keep right on growing and the wall of reality smacked em right in the face. -- all those bets were wrong.

So why should the fed and the real people and the real economy want to rescue the people that made all these bets and lived high off the hog by doing so? I think Peter Dorman is right in saying that we don't really want to "nationalize" this mess.

What do we get for this? What is the "return" on this "investment"? IMHO the entire "financial industry" as it now exists is nothing but a bunch of hucksters and the world would be much better off without them.

The actual commercial banks should not be having a problem. If Joe the plumber is having trouble getting a short term loan based on receivables then please allow me to start a bank and I'll handle it. We need to be chartering a lot of new banks and telling the old ones to suck eggs.