Dow Repeats Great Depression Pattern – CNBC
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is repeating a pattern that appeared just before markets fell during the Great Depression, Daryl Guppy, CEO at Guppytraders.com, told CNBC Monday.
“Those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it…there was a head and shoulders pattern that developed before the Depression in 1929, then with the recovery in 1930 we had another head and shoulders pattern that preceded a fall in the market, and in the current Dow situation we see an exact repeat of that environment,” Guppy said.
The Dow retreated 457.33 points, or 4.5 percent last week, to close at 9,686 Friday. Guppy said a Dow fall below 9,800 confirmed the head and shoulders pattern
With the US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932 – Telegraph (UK)
The US workforce shrank by 652,000 in June, one of the sharpest contractions ever. The rate of hourly earnings fell 0.1pc. Wages are flirting with deflation.
“The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession,” said Robert Reich, former US labour secretary. “All the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing.”
Roughly a million Americans have dropped out of the jobs market altogether over the past two months. That is the only reason why the headline unemployment rate is not exploding to a post-war high.
Let us be honest. The US is still trapped in depression a full 18 months into zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and fiscal stimulus that has pushed the budget deficit above 10% of GDP.
The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June actually fell from 58.7% to 58.5%. This is the real stress indicator. The ratio was 63% three years ago. Eight million jobs have been lost.
The average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. Nothing like this has been seen before in the post-war era. Jeff Weniger, of Harris Private Bank, said this compares with a peak of 21.2 weeks in the Volcker recession of the early 1980s.
Barack Obama: The great jobs killer – Las Vegas Review-Journal
It’s time to call Obama what he is: The Great Jobs Killer. With his massive spending and tax hikes — rewarding big government and big unions, while punishing taxpayers and business owners — Obama has killed jobs, he has killed motivation to create new jobs, he has killed the motivation to invest in new businesses, or expand old ones. With all this killing, Obama should be given the top spot on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.
You won’t find proof of the damage Obama is doing on Wall Street, but rather on Main Street. My friends are all part of the economic engine of America: Small business. Small business creates 75 percent of new jobs (and a majority of all jobs). I called one friend who was a wealthy restaurant owner. He says business is off by 60 percent. He’s drowning in debt. He won’t last much longer. His wealth is gone.
I called another friend in the business of home improvement. He says business is off 90 percent from two years ago. My contractor just filed personal bankruptcy. She won’t be building any more homes. The hair salon where I’ve had my hair cut for years closed earlier this year. Bankrupt. But here’s the clincher — ESPN Zone just closed all their restaurants across the country. If they can’t make it selling cheap food and overpriced beer with 100 big screens blaring every sporting event on the planet to a sports-crazed society, we are all in deep, deep trouble.
I’ve polled all my friends who own small businesses — many of them in the Internet and high-tech fields. They all agree that in this new Obama world of high business taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, and workers compensation taxes, the key to success is to avoid employees. The only way to survive as a business owner today is by keeping the payroll very low and by hiring only independent contractors or part-time employees provided by temp agencies.
Human respond to stimuli – negative or positive. And that is what is going on.
Let’s just say this: 10 days ago I moved my 401K out of all stocks & bonds and into a fixed-interest fund. I just paid off my credit cards today for the first time in several years. I have a stockpile of food, water & ammo. I’m ready, baby. You should be too.
Facts are facts. Ignore them at your peril.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
He’s also killed NASA!
The head-and-shoulders top in the market is provocative, but don’t count on any market pattern absolutely to repeat.
Obama is the tool of America’s “paper aristocracy”, people who try to get the Federal Reserve to print money (hence paper) and lower interest rates in order to goose the various asset markets, and get the average person to feel like they have to speculate in those markets and to be in debt generally. When all that happens, real wealth is transferred from the average person (the loser) to the paper aristocracy (the winner).
The paper aristocracy works hand-in-hand with Big Government, for several reasons. First, printing money / lowering interest rates to below-market levels is in itself a government enterprise; it takes the force of government (backing the Federal Reserve) in order to do it. Second, Big Government greatly benefits from money printing / low interest rates. It feeds government growth and acts as a massive, covert tax on the People. Third, Big Government is in a position to do all kinds of regulatory and other favors for actors favored by the paper aristocracy, helping them limit (or even squash) their competition.
Whenever you see Big Government, you should see the hand of the paper aristocracy. Their philosophy of corporate socialism (socialism for the benefit of large corporation owners i.e. the paper aristocracy) meshes best with the Democratic Party. That is why the Democrats are the favored party of America’s billionaires, why the Kennedys, the Rockefeller heirs, etc. are Democrats, why FDR was a Wall Street fund manager in the 1920s and ultimately did everything he could to benefit the paper aristocracy, opposing them only as a giant show.
Unfortunately, the Big Government, paper-aristocrat philosophy is not limited to the Democrats; the Republican Party is infected with it. Generally those people call themselves “moderate”, “progressive”, “pragmatic” Republicans. Bush was a strange mix: genuinely conservative in some ways, yet he spent domestically like Lyndon Johnson and grew government far more than Clinton had. And Bush said yes to Secretary Paulson and the Wall Street bailouts, which were a bailout of the paper aristocracy, and an injury to the interests of the average American.
I do NOT think it’s not a conspiracy, these people are probably not conscious of these things, but they instinctively gravitate toward Big Government, knowing it slows down the rate of business & economic change, and therefore helps them. Another name for their philosophy of corporate socialism is: fascism. Capitalism, it ain’t. Capitalism means free markets under small government AND sound money (possibly gold).
Again, part of how the paper aristocracy gets ahead is by depreciating the currency. If you save your money in the bank, you get 0% interest (nowadays) and your purchasing power is eaten over time, as each year the government continues to print money. So, you’re screwed. So you go into the stock market where you are one of the suckers. Or into real estate where you borrow beyond your means, or you just spend spend spend your money and rack up credit card debt. I mean, if you are foolish. The way out of the game is to not rack up debt, kill your credit cards, do invest but very conservatively (looking for long-term value), and not least, keep a decent chunk of your savings in precious metals. And if you want to own real estate, own some farmland and don’t take a big mortgage on it.
What’s going on in the economy right now is, government under Obama is growing out of control – like a cancer. And is creating uncertainty. All of which sucks the life out the host organism (us), dampening real growth. But in a strange way, the paper aristocracy likes that. They like it because it enables them to scream “DEFLATION!” in the New York Times, i.e. the lamestream media. Then they can justify another round of so-called economic “stimulus” – i.e., further money-printing and further growth of government.
So, they’re playing it both ways. It’s a beautiful racket. The economy is growing – in a weak, half-assed way. Big Government and so-called “stimulus” are weakening the growth. When people stop and notice how weak it is, the Democrats / paper aristocracy scream “DEFLATION!” and offer more so-called “stimulus” as the solution. So they offer poison as food, poison as antidote. The solution is to completely disregard what they’re saying and overthrow them. (Peacefully if possible.)
Damn, I thought Obama and Biden said that this was the “summer of recovery”? If I’m not mistaken all the media have agreed.
Last month 650,000 people dropped out of the workforce and have thrown their hands up and stopped looking for work. Imagine that. I saw one such woman sitting on a bench in the park this weekend. She started talking to me. She was stunned and had the look of someone shell shocked. She couldn’t believe with her education, she couldn’t find work after 12 months. The situation is getting scarey. And Obama is clueless.
I keep recalling the old saying about history repeats itself. First as tragedy then as farce. I’m just wondering why we’re surrounded by so many Court Jesters that are NOT funny.
Well what do you know, I kind of agree with ILC. It’s definitely the case that both the parties are bought and paid for by what he’s calling ‘the paper aristocracy,’ and its wreaking havoc on the country. What I don’t understand is how this is the fault of big government, if big government is merely an agent of the paper aristocracy that’s paid to do what’s best for the aristocracy. Isn’t the culrpit here the aristocracy, and the government a conspirator?
A government staffed with smart, competent, and incorruptible people would not be merely useful tools for the powerful elites, but they’ve taken care of that by destroying education in this country, turning the profession of journalism into a bunch of brown-nosing access-whores, and clogging up the media and political discourse with trivial non-issues like abortion/gay marriage and by engineering massive distractions like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s impossible to vote for the kinds of smart, incorruptible we need in control of government because elections nowadays are more about pageantry and staging and one-liners, because that’s what the American electorate has been trained to expect. The political/media establishment is designed to reflectively pounce on any potential challenger to this status quo (I’m talking about figures like Ralph Nader and Ron Paul here, Sarah Palin is no challenger.)
The strength of the citizenry to resist these pressures was always in our numbers, and they’ve simply figured out how to circumvent that strength. What blows me away about the conservative that occassionaly comes along to recognize these problems is that their prescriptions to fix things just makes it easier for the aristocracy to exploit and marginalize us. The every man for himself attitude that GayPatriot expresses is exactly what they would like you to think – that it’s useless to organize into groups, that it’s useless to try to solve big problems. This is manifested in popular conservativism by their opposition to things like unionization, healthcare reform, and global warming. By explicitly insisting that the government avoids doing these things, all you’re doing is guaranteeing that you’ll continue to be taken advantage of by the corporate elites, who will have no problem using the government that you’ve just freed up to help them pay you sh*tty wages, overcharge you for third-rate healthcare, and pump toxins into your environment . Their strategy is to divide and conquer, and conservatives’ counter-attack is to divide voluntarily.
The Democratic Party is no better. They’re as eager to hand the keys over to the moneyed elites as the Republicans have been, though I have to say (obviously) that I’m a whole lot prouder of the liberal base in this country in their response to Obama. Liberals are the only ones doing any real critizing of the administration, for escalating the wars and not closing Guantanamo and not doing something about the MMS when he had the chance, while Republicans are busying themselves with hysterics over Obama’s pastor or why he doesn’t have a flag pin or who he bowed to this week…. which is all part of the plan. The role of conservatism in this scheme is to muddy the waters of political debate with this kind of frivolous nonsense so that the real issues are distorted or made invisible.
I’m all over the place here, but that’s as close to agreeing with someone around here as I can probably get.
If you are a short-term investor, or just can’t sleep at night, then by all means get out!
However, it may be worthwhile to consider some other points as you make your investment decisions.
With the recent recession still fresh in the minds of investors, any soft data point is seen as evidence the economy may be backsliding into recession. Investors are quick to sell when a soft spot emerges fueling a pullback that takes the S&P 500 below its 200-day moving average.
In any setback over the past 60 years, about one year after the start of every recovery a soft spot emerges. Around the time of these soft spots:
1. Consumer confidence declined by 13 points. On June 30 consumer confidence was reported down 10 points from the prior month.
2. ISM consistently fell back to about the break-even level of 50. The ISM is down to 53 from the recent peak of 60.4.
3. The weekly number of first-time filings for unemployment benefits rose by 49,000. Jobless claims are up 18,000 from the low earlier this year.
4. The S&P 500 fell about 5% below its 200-day moving average. It is now 6% below the 200-day moving average.
Despite the concerns, these soft spots were not signs that the recovery was going to fail. In fact, in every case the recovery was successful and a multi-year period of economic growth followed. That suggests today’s decline may present a buying opportunity, rather than a sign of a return to a bear market and recession.
HOWEVER, Legislative and policy uncertainty surrounding regulatory and tax and budget issues will continue to weigh on the markets over the remainder of 2010. That’s a nice way to say that our beloved government is stinking up the place, and we should all work hard to replace the idiots in Congress and the other policymakers.
Typo, meant to say, “I do NOT think it’s a conspiracy..”
It’s both. One hand washes the other. The paper aristocracy sends some of its scions to Congress, some to State governments, some to the bureaucracy, some to the Federal Reserve, some to the parties (again especially the Democrats), some to the media, some to business and banks that depend on government favors, some to lofts where they live on trust funds.
ROFL – I had to stop there.
Government is legalized physical force. Government is a legalized gun. When America was born, we lucked out because we had some very smart men who set up the smallest government they could picture working at the time, and then watched each other viciously to make sure they weren’t grabbing power, and they were led by General Washington who set an example of truly not wanting power and voluntarily giving it up. But… human nature being what it is, that couldn’t and didn’t last. It couldn’t last, because government by its nature attracts those people in any society who want to throw their weight around, who want to tell others what to do, who think “there oughta be a law”, who want to do favors to some and crush others, who want to look noble or “compassionate” or whatever at others’ expense; in other words, those who want to exercise power. Other than government’s basic (and legitimate) functions of police – courts – military to protect life – liberty property… other than those, efficiency and ability and are the last thing that we should wish for, in government. And incorruptibility, the last thing we should expect.
…because in fact we do not need them, and absolutely should not want them, even if they weren’t mythical, which most of the time they are. Unless of course you happen to be a crypto-fascist worshipper of the State who loves the myth, which Levi, I do believe you are. After all, in past comments you have advocated what was in essence the economic program of Mussolini and Hitler. (I will let The_Livewire dig up the quotes.)
Levi, again, you do not understand.
Another laugh line. 🙂
This is manifested in popular conservativism by their opposition to things like unionization, healthcare reform, and global warming.
So let’s see; for example, with health care reform, we are going to fight the government by destroying private companies and handing over all of the responsibility for health care to the government.
This is why “progressives” like you have no credibility, Levi; it is obvious to everyone that all of your “solutions” involve simply handing over control of everything to the government.
Meanwhile, the reason you want “group action” is simple; you’re lazy.
You don’t want to pay for your own health care. You want other people to pay for you.
You don’t want to be assessed and paid based on your productivity and performance. You want to be assessed and paid regardless of either, as is the whole point for unions.
You are a freeloader and a moocher, Levi.
Man – Fair comments; I myself think the economy is growing – if weakly. I just expect to see the current gloomy headlines to be exploited by Obama and left-liberals for yet another round of so-called “stimulus”, that will drag us even more, later.
It’s interesting that in the German hyperinflation of 1919-1923, everyone had a job who wanted one. Unemployment was 1%. It got that way because the German “stimulus” – ever larger doses of deficit spending and money printing – destroyed living standards, including the real purchasing power of wages, when it destroyed the German currency. As the real value of wages declined, employers could afford more employees. The true measure of a depression is the decline in living standards – people’s ability to afford butter, gasoline, clothes, doctors, etc. It can be an inflationary depression. We do not have to end up where Germany did. If we keep applying more and more “stimulus”, though, we will eventually.
I know there are some good, smart, competent, and incorruptible people that do work within govt walls. There may even, at this very moment, still be more of those in government than the less desirable opposites. That said, I’m going to play the Calvinist and side with Adams on this one. Too many who have the desire to serve in public service, in one way or another, are corruptible by nature. The process of political success, the way the game is currently played disfavors the honest and promotes the use of dirty, disingenuous politics. The system simply rewards it.
At my last business rountable meeting, 10 out of the 12 business people there said they would hold off doing any hiring. Worried about future government regulations and healthcare costs that are undefined.
Wonder why business isn’t hiring? Ask a business person.
BTW Independent Fox News reports that 26% of Americans questioned, didn’t know WHO we fought the war of Independence AGAINST!!!
Can you guess what percentage of those 26% voted for Obama?
but they’ve taken care of that by destroying education in this country,
Thanks liberals.
turning the profession of journalism into a bunch of brown-nosing access-whores,
Thanks liberals.
and clogging up the media and political discourse with trivial non-issues like abortion/gay marriage
Thanks liberals.
and by engineering massive distractions like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Distractions from what, exactly? Distractions from attacks on our country and the horrific deaths of nearly 3,000 people? Distractions from despotic regimes threatening the US and her interests?
Meanwhile, we have an asshole who doesn’t want to be distracted by Republicans who got flooded out of their homes and businesses. Nor does he want the GOM to distract from his vacations, golf swing and hobnobbing with celebrities.
It’s impossible to vote for the kinds of smart, incorruptible we need in control of government because elections nowadays are more about pageantry and staging and one-liners, because that’s what the American electorate has been trained to expect.
Liberals sure as hell wouldn’t want an informed and educated electorate or they’d NEVER get into office.
What blows me away about the conservative that occassionaly comes along to recognize these problems is that their prescriptions to fix things just makes it easier for the aristocracy to exploit and marginalize us.
Like keeping blacks and other minorities poor and therefore under your thumb? Sorry, that’s not a Conservative idea.
This is manifested in popular conservativism by their opposition to things like unionization,
There’s your aristocracy right there. And not only does the proletariat have to work to keep one boss rich, many voluntarily add another with the promises of better pay, but they get shitty benefits in exchange. Not to mention that about all unions are good for is keeping incompetent people employed while they destroy the eeeeeeevil business they “work” for.
healthcare reform,
Enjoy your government rationing which you demanded.
and global warming.
There’s never been any real suggestion for dealing with this charade other than even more erosion of freedom and prosperity whilst making the USA the leader amongst third-world nations.
The rest of your comments are even more meaningless blather.
“Let’s just say this: 10 days ago I moved my 401K out of all stocks & bonds and into a fixed-interest fund. I just paid off my credit cards today for the first time in several years. I have a stockpile of food, water & ammo. I’m ready, baby. You should be too.
Facts are facts. Ignore them at your peril.”
And ten days ago, I said you do not know your financial history. This is a deflationary period. Buy bonds.
No, thank you. Bonds are at the top of a 28-year bull market. I try to buy low… not high.
What does that mean, a deflationary quarter? A deflationary calendar year? Let’s look at the past 10 years, wherein the dollar’s purchasing has already shrunk enormously (oil $20 vs. $75). And let’s talk in 12 months, after the Fed’s next round of QE pisses off the Chinese for good.
It’s impossible to vote for the kinds of smart, incorruptible we need in control of government because elections nowadays are more about pageantry and staging and one-liners, because that’s what the American electorate has been trained to expect.
And if they’re black, all the better.
And exactly which “wars” have been escalated?
RJL, it’s a bit late to buy bonds. Bonds are a necessary part of every diversified portfolio, and I hope you have owned them for a long time now. But right now, most bonds issued by good companies are selling at a premium. And US treasuries? Can you say bubble?
P.S. And the reason bonds are about as high today (2009-2010) as they will ever be, is because Obama is flooding the world with unprecedented new supply. It’s called $1.5 trillion annual deficits. Flood a market like that and no, it will not go up another 28 years or even another 4-5 years.
ILC, good point. Keynesian economics followed by Obama and Giethner are hurting our economy. Unlike in Germany, however, full employment is a long way off. Next week the FED will auction another $10 billion! Helps the big international banks, but is destroying our economy. We agree with Bruce’s comments about small businesses failing. The real argument shouldn’t be about deflation or inflation. That merely takes our eyes off the ball. It is the lack of Growth! That’s how President Reagan pulled us out of the Carter economic malaise.
ND30 to Levi:
Either that, or Levi is willing and able to pay for his own health care, but he wants other people to assuage the unshakable White Guilt he feels over the fact that not everyone is as fortunate as he.
By the way, in case another Great Depression befalls us, is there any well-to-do BlackAdder on here who’d be willing to take me on as a Baldrick? Seriously, I’d do it for minimum wage plus room and board. I’m at least as smart as an octopus (I can solve T-shaped mazes and open jars!), have martial-arts training, my cooking and breadmaking skillzes are legendary, I’ve successfully installed ceiling fans and garbage disposals, and I know how to turn two Jacquard-loom tapestry placemats from the dollar store into a stylish beaded throw-pillow with zipper.
Not that I’ve always dreamt of being a manservant, but hey — it’d be nice to have that as a fall-back option.
Surely Bruce needs a valet on his many cross-country trips. I can be a good Cuisinier, Boucher or Boulanger, though I’m not wild about the latter.
Well it’s one of my regrets that I only have ‘civilized’ skills, (insurance-fu, customer operations, leadership, data collection, etc.) and nothing to fall back on. I supposed I could go live in the woods and learn my way. Need to watch more survivorman, I guess.
Though I have to laugh at these:
Or to quote a famous spokesman: “Our program is simple: we wish to govern Italy. They ask us for programs but there are already too many. It is not programs that are wanting for the salvation of Italy but men and will power. ”
“Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State. ”
Amusingly this would fit Levi too: “This is the epitaph I want on my tomb: “Here lies one of the most intelligent animals who ever appeared on the face of the Earth.””
Global Warming is a hoax, as has been shown again and again. Unions? The two threats to the workers are the corperations and the Union Leadership as Mother Jones said.
Indeed, Levi misses the point in saying that we believe “it’s useless to organize into groups” We’re organized, heck RJ and ILC are both sharing their views on the bond market openly, I’ve offered to help people navigate insurance issues. We believe that people can organize, we don’t need the government to do it for us.
One final set of quotes:
“I am making superhuman efforts to educate this people. When they have learnt to obey, they will believe what I tell them.”
“People like you need people like me to drag you kicking and screaming into the future. The entire scope of human history has been a march of liberalism, and this jingoistic, laissez-faire, God-fearing path you fools are prescribing is only knocking us off the right track.”
Consumer and small business confidence is dropping. Three months ago in my own architectural practice thought things were looking-up. Now everyone is pulling back on projects, on re-investing in their businesses, or going into debt to fix-up their homes. Where there was the sense that the economy was improving, now there’s the return of uncertainty again.
– Access to small business capital has dried-up again.
– Fear of layoffs and “down-sizing” have returned…even within the public-sector types.
– Business property-rentals and commercial real estate rates are dropping again. And commercial space vacancies are on the rise…
And James Earl Obama is POTUS again.
ILC’s “paper aristocracy” essay (#2 above) is a gold mine and worth reading several times.
ILC, what are your thoughts of these two points:
1) Shrinking the dollar through massive printing serves to devalue the outstanding bonds. (Paying back a $1,000 bond issued in 2006 with 2012 dollars worth half of the 2006 dollars that bought the bond.)
2) We are largely a service economy and previous recessions have largely been conquered by the rebound of the manufacturing sector. Government Motors, Chrysler, big oil, etc. have been neutered. Government financed and directed infrastructure tinkering is neither consumer driven nor a general permanent job creator.
Obama has an objective of folding many more people into the government financed (read: taxpayer) government “service” economy and to have those folks protected by SEIU. In the simplest of terms, he is creating something like a bank that operates solely by the directors loaning each other money.
There is no such thing as a perpetual motion economy. Economies only work with growth in productivity and innovation.
heliotrope,
1) Yes, exactly. People don’t realize their peril with U.S. bonds. They are guaranteed to be paid back – because the U.S. government will just print the money, if it has to. But what will your payback money be worth, after everyone else’s payback money has also been printed from thin air? Now, that is a “long run” argument. If you bought bonds at the bottom in 1982 (18-20% interest rates), over the last 28 years you have done well. But the “long run” is upon us. Unless the U.S. massively reverses course (which could happen but probably not under Obama), we will have to issue more and more bonds, and print more and more new money to cover them.
2) Again yes. It comes down to real wealth. Services are nice and are part of it, but food, energy, commodities, clothes, machines, tools, toys are what countries actually trade with each other, and make your physical living standard. If we aren’t letting grow our production of those things, then we aren’t growing our living standard.
It’s worth noting that Big Government and the paper aristocracy have many internal factions that try to get on top of each other. You’re right that Obama is probably more interested in growing government and the SEIU, and not consciously sympathetic to the Goldman Sachs types. Big Government may be viewed as, pardon the metaphor, a gang bang. I’ve never been in one, but I watched _Sudden Impact_ the other day, which has a gang bang scene (the heroine’s backstory). The rapists cooperate and compete, almost simultaneously.
Thank you for the compliment. What I say largely comes from “Austrian School” commentators on economics. I particularly like Howard Katz , whose name you can google for his essays, and Peter Schiff, who has a delightful new book on very basic economics.
levi is here?!
Levi please speak to the….
debt,
Afghanistan,
Oil spill (been on it since day one).
Beaches in TX LA FLA MI ALA.
unemployment, underemployment.
New Black Panther case dropped.
Obama uncomfortable meeting with Jews.
NASA s main goal to outreach to Muslims.
Immigration suit against AZ.
Majorities of “the people” against Obamacare.
Majorities for AZ and USA immigration law.
Russian spies.
Christmas day bomber.
Ft Hood massacre.
Obama golfing and partying.
Obama approval at 45% (who are these 45% hehe)
there’s more but I’ll wait til u respond to these.
But it’s not some fundamental aspect of the government that leads to these issues. You’re describing it as if it is a given that political leaders will accept bribes and engage in double-dealing simply because they’re running the government and not because they’re terrible political leaders. Would you say that the government is corrupting the aristocracy, or is the aristocracy corrupting the government?
So your assertion here is that there will never be another group of people as brilliant as the founders to lead the country? I don’t buy that for a minute. In a country of 300 million people? Now way – there are millions of people in this country that have the potential to be great presidents according to the law of averages alone. The problem now is that the system bars their entry into the political arena. Candidates like Obama and Bush aren’t elected because they have some massive groundswell of popular support, they’re elected because they’ve been chosen for us, they’ve been deemed acceptable by the powers that be and they’re already paid for. To point to Bush and Obama as evidence that we’ll never have another good President again is just ridiculous.
I’d also like to add that all these founders that we’re all so proud of and who we think are all such great leaders were slaveowners that wrote into our founding document that a black person counted as 3/5 of a human being. The point is they weren’t some divine, perfect people that only come around every few thousand years, they had their defects too. Surely we can find someone else to do the same good job.
Yeah, well, it’s really easy to run a small government in the late 18th century when you’re a fledging group of former colonists numbering in the few millions whose territory extends a few hundred miles. Most people lived off the land, there was a vast, bountiful continent with plenty of room for everyone for thousands of miles to the west, thousands of miles of ocean separated you from the rest of the world to the east, it took weeks to travel a hundred miles, the economy was uncomplicated and there was no industry to speak of…… obviously a small government was satisfactory, there was nothing to govern!
Fast forward to the present, when there’s 300 million of us, we’re rapidly consuming resources, there are threats to global security all around the world, there are dozens of intermediate linkages in between people and the resources we need to live, and on and on. Our society is about a million times more complex than it was in the days of George Washington and it is straight up delusional if you think that government should sit on the sidelines and let the markets decide our collective fates from here on out. That just doesn’t make sense. Good government is about helping the people that can’t help themselves, and guess what? As much as you’d like to think you’re a rootin’, tootin’, tough guy conservative that pulled yourself up from your bootstraps all by yourself, there is some respect in which every person in this country can’t help themselves. Examples; How are you going to help yourself get to work that’s 22 miles away? How are you going to help yourself when your home catches on fire? How are you going to help yourself from the Nazi Party, or the Soviet Union, or Al-Qaeda?
Like I said above, if you think that in a thousand years the world gets a handful of capable leaders and that’s it, you’re just crazy. I’m not looking for mythical people, I’m looking for people that are honest and brave and consistent and intelligent and value more than recognition and wealth. I know people in my personal life that exhibit all of those qualities, don’t you? You might as well put it a bullet in your head if you don’t think that these kinds of people exist, merely because the system designed to crank out sh*tty Presidents has spat out a couple of sh*tty Presidents.
And again, another big problem with conservatives here is that the the aristocracy has you so wrapped around their finger that the moment any of these people are identified, you’re immediately into a pre-packaged rant about how their plans are socialist, communist, evil plots to destroy civilization.
Uh, great? When will you get bored with crap like this?
Hmm Levi didn’t help me with my points in #28.
I feel like I’m in public school……
BTW where did Tano, and some of the other small letter libs go?
Or have they switched over to voting Republican?
Obama said he got up in the morning and went to bed at night thinking of only one thing….
FIRST HE SAID JOBS JOBS JOBS.
Then he said oil spill, oil spill, oil spill.
Wonder where the truth lies, as he goes to another BBQ.
Did you notice how odd Obama look as he met with BeBE N. PM of Israel? He seemed far more comfortable with the Arab Kings and Muslims than with a Jew.
Our society is about a million times more complex than it was in the days of George Washington and it is straight up delusional if you think that government should sit on the sidelines and let the markets decide our collective fates from here on out.
One has to admire Levi’s cluelessness: he rants about how incompetent and corrupt the government is and then insists that the cure is more of it.
The funny part is that Levi, being a product of liberal education, apparently has never read the speeches of Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler ranting against the “elite” and how they had “corrupted” government and how it was important for “the people” to reassert themselves and submit to the rule of the glorious Communist, Fascist or Nazi Party.
Good government is about helping the people that can’t help themselves
Can’t, Levi?
More like won’t.
Such as yourself. You don’t want to pay for health insurance so you scream and whine and try to use the government to force other people to pay it for you. You don’t want to pay your mortgage so you scream and whine and try to use the government to force other people to pay it for you. You don’t want to work harder or get an education, so you scream and whine and try to use the government to force people to pay you more than the value of your work.
As I noted, it’s the
fascistleft-liberal way: poison as food, poison as antidote.No, actually. That is what family, church and good private groups are about – whether the private groups are businesses or charities. Government, by contrast, is a gun. It does not help people, it coerces people. Who benefits? Not the productive, the prudent or the deserving poor. But the undeserving, the lazy, the power-hungry, the paper aristocracy, etc. Or as NDT put it:
Exactly.
Fixed it.
#31
If he’s not read Mussolini, his words seem to synch up nicely.
I listed a bunch of things in the quote you’ve cut that are examples of government taking action on your behalf that your church and family would be incapable of doing. Could you explain how your private groups and charities are going to deal with these meta-level societal problems? Is your church going to pave the road for you so you can get to work? Can your uncle keep the neighborhood safe all by himself? You’re just being ridiculous if you want to refuse to believe that the government is capable of helping people.
Not a concern of mine. We have to fix it eventually but this isn’t the time.
Been against it for years, Obama is making the same stupid mistakes that Bush made. The whole affair is as pointless as it is expensive.
The failure here is in the government not preventing it from happening in the first place. An Obama screw-up to be sure, and those clips of him talking about how safe oil rigs are a few days before the spill make him look like a gullible moron that believes everything he’s told by even the most bad-faith actors.
The stimulus bill should have been larger and it should have been more focused and specific instead of just whatever pork projects everyone had lined up. Another Obama screw-up where he tried to appease his critics with far too much temperance and only ended up compromising his own policy that he’s solely on the line for.
Never heard of it. Sounds like something I would never care about.
Total bullshit.
Is this… what do you want me to say about that? NASA can ‘outreach’ to whoever it wants.
Don’t care.
I’m against it, too. Another example of Obama looking for some conservatives to give him a pat on the head that ultimately destroys his policy and makes him look like a stupid coward politically. Whenever Obama comes to a fork in the road, he takes the lose/lose route.
Don’t care.
‘
What do you want me to say here? That these people are assholes? Consider it done.
Embarrassing. My ideal President works 365 days a year with no breaks. He’s a jackass, Bush was a jackass, and that’s obvious given the number and scope of problems they’ve both dealt with (and created.)
Don’t count me in that 45%. I won’t be voting for Obama again and might just vote for whatever dumbass Republican you guys toss up to cancel out somebody else. I hope the Democrats get rolled this November and and I hope Obama gets blown out in 2012 because they’ve done terribly. Obviously we’re going to have to bottom out completely as a country before we start getting serious about domestic and global issues again, and the Republicans are going to get us to that bottom sooner, probably by invading Canada or something. The Democrats are governing almost exactly like Bush did but are draping themselves in the progressive and liberal labels, which is probably more damaging in the long run than just having conservatives run things.
I hope they lose and I hope the history books remember them for squandering one of the greatest political opportunities in American history.
My two cents. The stimulus should not have been larger. It should have been focused purely on creating jobs, immediately. Only a third of it is earmarked to go to anything such as road and infrastructure construction / improvements, which does create jobs. Much of the spending in the bill does not go into effect until 2012, just in time for the big election. What a happy case of serendipity… NOT. Like the Health care bill, Obama handed off all the responsibility of crafting and guiding the direction of the legislation to Pelosi and Reid. Yes, it is their job to craft the bills, but Obama, unlike his predecessors, even G W, offered no vision or guidance or input at all. And in the hands of hack politicians like Pelosi and Reid, well, what did you expect.
That said. The idea of stimulus, as is currently envisioned, has not been proven to actually stimulate an economy out of a deep recession. By the time FDR was able to implement the New Deal, the Great Depression had bottomed out. It definitely acted as an economic buffer, and helped at least put some folks back to work, but it did not grow the economy either, and may have hampered an faster recovery, though that is impossible to say given the circumstances.
Oh, and at least FDR’s programs, the alphabet soup, did definitely create jobs. Too bad
ObamaPelosi / Reid did not bother to look at history and do stimulus and job creation right.No: Rather, there should have been no so-called “stimulus” at all. Government is a drag on the economy. The so-called “stimulus” has been a drag on the economy. It doesn’t matter if it is so-called “focus” on so-called “jobs” or not. By enlarging government’s role in the economy, it drags the economy. If Obama had done nothing – leave deficits at $1 trillion instead of boosting them to $1.5 trillion and beyond – economic growth would be that much stronger, right now.
It is NOT the case that things would have been better, if only we had the right so-called “stimulus”. That is Levi thinking. “Government intervention in the economy is going to work THIS time, I just know it, if only we do it right.” The classic thinking of leftists everywhere. What’s that saying about people who do the same thing over and over again, expecting that THIS time, somehow, the results will be different?
Bzzzzzzzzzzt, wrong answer! The New Deal acted as a giant economic drag.
What is little known these days (because left-liberals don’t want you to know it), is that New Deal-style programs – tax increases, spending increases, deficit increases, regulation increases, public works and leaf-raking – were actually started by Hoover in 1930. That is what turned an ordinary business-cycle recession into a Depression. Roosevelt merely intensified them, or took them up to the next level, with the New Deal. That is what dragged out said Depression for 8 more years of agony. Thus, Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s Big Government policies *together* took an ordinary business-cycle recession and dragged it out into a 12-year depression. THEY caused the problem.
We know because there is a highly relevant counter-example: the Depression of 1920. You never heard of it (except maybe in my comments) because it was over so fast. It was over so fast, because President Harding ignored Commerce Secretary Hoover’s recommendations for fixing it. Instead, Harding cut taxes, slashed spending even more, put the government budget into balance. And the Federal Reserve, for its part, withheld any lowering of interest rates. In short, that time the government did all the right things to let the economy heal as quickly as possible. That’s what happens in America, when government just gets the hell out of the way.
No. We can say. See above.
You call leaf-raking a job? You call public assistance, that drags down everyone else and subtracts from the total economy, a job? I don’t. The point is not just to have a job. If it were, we could all create jobs for ourselves digging holes and re-filling them, this very minute. Unemployment would be 0%.
The point is to have *productive* jobs, jobs doing things that other people want, so you can trade them (via money) for the valuable products and services they are producing in their jobs. It is what human beings naturally do… until government gets in the way, preventing them. The latter half of the 19th century, which the Paper Aristocracy teaches us was a period of many so-called “depressions”, was in fact the greatest forward progress of living standards and productive jobs ever experienced by any nation, in all of recorded history.
Likewise: If money printing and so-called economic “stimulus” were the path to healing the economy, then why stop at $1 trillion? Why shouldn’t the Democrats do a $3 trillion or $10 trillion “stimulus” right now? Let them try. Lord, please please PLEASE let them try, so that this horribly mis-educated citizenry will see the resulting disaster and finally, it is to be hoped, finally understand.
Funny thing about Porkulus.
If it had been a massive spending hike for roads, I might have supported it (well at least that part) maintance of roads (like interstates) IS a duty of the federal government.
Another thought on the New Deal “buffering” notion: To the extent that the New Deal bolstered the position of the labor unions by law (government force) and thereby kept real wages artificially high, it caused unemployment. Something that causes or worsens the problem of mass unemployment, as the New Deal did, is not my idea of something that “buffers the economy”.
Stockpile of ammo? Nothing says being an American more than “the guy I didn’t like won the election, so I’m gonna git me some guns”
Nothing says “I hate America” more than appointing someone who lied during her confirmation hearins and wants to disarm America. Nice try Kevin.
More on Hoover’s Keynesian spending – which pushed the country into the Depression, but which today’s Left writers, such as Paul Krugman, say never happened:
http://rationalargumentator.com/issue251/hooverslash.html
More on what Roosevelt did to make the Depression worse and drag it out: – and how Obama shows similar tendencies:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/08/AR2010070804272.html
I listed a bunch of things in the quote you’ve cut that are examples of government taking action on your behalf that your church and family would be incapable of doing.
I think not.
My church built out in the middle of the country, laid, and paved the road to it, all without government assistance.
Your problem, Levi, is that because you’re a lazy worthless welfare addict who doesn’t know how to work, you assume everyone else is just like you.
And you know what’s funny? The government we have right now is made up of workers like you — lazy, corrupt, unproductive, and whining about how society owes them a living.
Yes. Leak raking IS a job. So is landscaping. So is pool service, Frog’s Pool and Spa, which is the company I own. I’m so sick of conservative elitist ragging on physical labor as something beneath worthwhile work. Rush the other day was ragging on foreclosure funds going to landscapers that maintain those properties. Yet those funds paid to landscapers are the type of stimulus spending that is actually useful to keep a local economy from completely collapsing. And yet these jobs are derided by conservatives. It’s no wonder there is a myth that there are jobs that Americans won’t do.
Look. the new deal programs were not optimal employment, and could not have led to a booming economy. At the time during the height of the depression, it is estimated that about 90% of job creating wealth was destroyed in the crash of 29. I don’t buy that extremely high figure, but there certainly was a huge drastic reduction of job creating wealth in the early thirties. The New Deal, though certainly NOT an economic growth engine, did, unlike porkulus, put many people to work, which was the difference between being able to at least buying a meal for your kids vs having nothing.
PS. Frog’s Pool Service and Spa Repair – in case anyone needs some pool service or spa repair.
Interesting post, sonicfrog,
I’d disagree on one point though. Yes you’re providing a service, and it is ‘a job’ The difference for me though is if the government should be cutting you a check.
Case in point, my Hermitage. I just had windows replaced, because they needed it, and because I had the money. Now my windows qualify for the energy credit, and I’m going to take it, since I believe I pay too much in taxes anyway. But the check(s) I cut came from me, not from the Government. The contractor (nice conservative man, married) is paid by the company I paid.
If Uncle Sugar had paid for my windows, it would be different, as it would be taking someone else’s (well several elses) money to pay the contractor.
Same thing goes for the houses owned by the bank. In an ideal world, if the bank had to foreclose on a house, then upkeep and maintance would be paid by the bank, as part of the cost of their investment. Just as I paid for upkeep on my investment. If the government is giving the banks to pay money to the landscaper, then it doesn’t create work in the traditional sense.
It is akin to ‘digging holes and filling them’ to me.