If We Blow It Up Again It Will Blow Up Again April 18, 2013
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: bail-out, crony capitalism, Dr. Robert Owens, hyper-inflation, Obama economy, QE 1, QE 2, QE 3, quantitative easing, Stimulus, TARP, wall street casino
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Back in 2007 when I was speaking of the crash to come I noted that we really didn’t have to worry because our fearless and infallible leaders intuitively know the remedy. When the bubble bursts they will blow up another bubble.
The absolute triumph of Keynesian economics in America and the West has never been more on display than during our rocky journey through the Great Recession. An economic contraction which our leaders say is over and those of us who work and live in flyover country know is still grinding us down to the new normal. TARP was going to save the economy. It didn’t. President Obama’s porkulus stimulus was going to save the economy. It didn’t. QE 1 and QE 2 were going to save the economy. They didn’t.
Then along comes QE 3 with an open ended commitment to pump 85 billion per month into the economy, and presto-changeo alakazam and miraculously the stock market is breaking new highs and the real estate market is beginning to revive. Unemployment keeps inching down and even the Neocons over on Fox are telling us the cratered economy is showing signs of life. It turns out if you magically create trillions of dollars and drop them from helicopters across the country there seems to be more money blowing in the wind. As one very profitable prophet once said, “It doesn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Hang on to your hats because a booming economy has to become part of the Obama legacy so that the transition to a centrally-controlled economy can ever be hailed as the prescription for success. Just as the booming economy of the 90s is constantly brought up as “The prosperity we experienced during the Clinton years” so to if any politician ever attempts to restore economic freedom, or when there is another crash it can be blamed on too much regulation, a pathological fear of deficits, and return to the old days of greed and avarice.
Those of us old enough to remember the Clinton years should know that it was the peace dividend and the Tech Boom Bubble which fueled the prosperity of the 90s. We should also remember that it was a phony peace dividend since our military was engaged in interventions around the world during Clinton’s depredations in the oval office. We should also remember that the Tech Boom flew through the air with billions in stock values for companies that made no profit and eventually delivered not prosperity but the crash of 2000.
Our Constitution was not written to be not a living document that evolves over time. The words were never meant to take on new meanings with every passing generation. The accumulation of case law and judicial proclamations was not meant to supplant the written political contract that the Sovereign States individually decided to ratify. However, contrary to the oft stated desires of the Founders of our nation and the Framers of the Constitution the United States has evolved into a behemoth bureaucracy. In all bureaucracies instead of the best and the brightest rising to the top those who learn to pull the levers the best end up controlling the machine. Often the official leaders are merely telegenic front men for the powers behind the throne. The grifters who have gained power through elections filled with ineligible voters, outright fraud, gerrymandering, and a two party system where-in Progressives control both parties use the living document ruse to turn the Constitution into a dead letter.
Crony capitalism has replaced free enterprise. Just watch the big gaming table at the New York Stock Exchange. Its volatile swings are dictated not by innovation, profits or production they are instead moved by real or projected government actions. Will the Fed keep creating money out of thin air? Will the EPA impose Cap-N-Trade? Will the imperial presidency use a foreign adventure to grasp more power? The banks act as willing accomplices of the Fed borrowing money at 0% interest and buying Treasuries at 3% helping to maintain the fiction that we aren’t monetizing our debt and printing our way to prosperity. The foreigners who used to crowd the treasury auctions know what is going on. Today the biggest purchasers of American debt are American banks using the Fed’s funny money.
How many times must this Ponzi scheme economy show itself for what it is? How many times must this self-serving Progressive cabal be exposed for the hypocritical central-planning neo-fascists that they are? How many articles like this must be written before enough people wake up and do something? We glory in the American Revolution. It overthrew tyranny and established personal independence, individual freedom, and economic opportunity on a scale that had never before been seen in the world. This is something worth celebrating. However, the counter revolution has been in progress since Hamilton founded the first bank and John Adams threw his opponents in jail. The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance, and today’s generation may be too busy watching the game to notice their country is being transformed into something they won’t recognize by the time they get up for their seventh inning stretch.
Any semblance of a freely functioning economy has vanished since Progressive leaders like FDR, LBJ, and BHO birthed government control and intervention as an 800 pound gorilla on steroids. The mirage of false prosperity is once again raising its crowned head out of the sea of financial calamity it created with the last bubble. A new bubble is forming and happy days will soon be here again with a chicken in every pot and a flat screen in every home. How many of our fellow citizens will be swept up in the coming Obama Boom? How many will be devastated when it all comes crashing down again?
The too-big-to-fail friends of the government will be made whole. The perpetually re-elected and their handlers will have their golden parachute pensions and plush jobs on K-Street and at Fannie, Freddie, and crony filled board rooms across the country. The only ones hurt will be those who do the real work, those who play by the rules. When the new bubble blows up the remedy is ready made: we’ll just blow up another bubble. How could this ever go wrong?
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Economics 102 February 22, 2013
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: Class warfare, Dr. Robert Owens, Obama economy, Obamanomics, Progressive economy, quantitative easing, Stimulus
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People avoid silence because they’re afraid of what they might hear. Although we value our freedom of speech, polite conversation in America is subject to one crushing rule, “Don’t talk about religion or politics!” Most of us were raised with this stifling warning in our ears. The purpose was to avoid arguments at the dinner table but the result is a population unconcerned in the two subjects affecting life the most. I can only talk about the weather for so long which displays the wisdom of memorizing sports stats and watching American Idol. With the two biggest topics off the table we’re faced with either trivial pursuit or silence. Bored with the weather and having neglected my memorization and viewing options I propose a topic to stimulate vigorous conversation without causing any bickering: economics.
Barry, Harry, and Nancy knew they had to take us through-the-looking-glass in four short years. With no effective break on their power for the first two years, Congress moved so fast their yesterday became our tomorrow. That tomorrow is now today. The ruling party rammed their agenda through without one opposition vote. Every revolution needs an emergency to justify radical surgery and the economy is the emergency available. Consequently, these descendants of FDR and LBJ shoved a raw deal down the throat of a great society.
Almost everyone is in agreement that the first stimulus failed. According to MSNBC, “In January, Obama’s economic team predicted unemployment would rise no higher than 8 percent with the help of $787 billion in new government spending.” However, according to the LA Times the unemployment rate in May reached a 25-year high of 9.4 percent. The President may see glimmers of hope but Say-it Ain’t-So Joe said he couldn’t rule out a second stimulus telling us the administration which ran on the slogan, “The worst economy since the Great Depression” misread how bad the economy was. How bad is it? What’s worse than the Great Depression? What’s their answer to this baddest of bad economies? What’s their Plan B? Try Plan A again, and again, and again? I think what our leaders need as they drive the largest economy the world has ever known over the cliff is Economics 102, Macroeconomics or how an economy works.
Most people, including the best-government-money-can-buy, look at the economy as if it were controlled by magic having no idea where the rabbit goes or where the doves come from, and since I doubt I’ll convince any of our all-knowing leaders to enroll in freshman macroeconomics I want to offer a crash course in Economic Reality.
- Government regulations distort markets and inflate bubbles.
- Every generation experiences at least one bubble and at least one bust.
- Every bubble bursts.
- Every burst bubble is followed by a panic.
- Panics inspire economic regulations.
- Economic regulations reflect political ideologies not economic realities.
- Economic regulations always regulate the excesses of the last bubble.
- Economic regulations are always blind to the excesses of the next bubble.
- Since consumption is the purpose for production any economic regulation that ignores this fact always leads to the misapplication of resources and the misdirection of effort.
10. Depressions are recessions with government help.
11. It is impossible to spend yourself into prosperity.
12. It is impossible to tax yourself into prosperity.
13. Higher taxes lead to smaller revenue and black-markets.
The New Economy leads straight to the Second World, from freedom to conformity from capitalism to Obamanomics. Instead of a fair race with the rapidly transforming economies of Asia, America runs hobbled like a child in a three – legged race strapped to the stiff-legged ideas of collectivism.
Why would our leaders want us economically hobbled? What would they gain if we fall into the swamp of poverty engulfing most of the world? Wouldn’t they be right there with us? Go to any Second or Third World country and you’ll see the rich and powerful behind walls in gated-communities where they live in the First World while everyone else sits in the dust eating leaves. In America, we avoided this fate with the growth of a massive middleclass. Under assault with stagnant wages, rising prices, and disappearing jobs the middleclass is being outsourced. How is this being accomplished?
Remember the mantra of the Clintons? “It’s the economy stupid!” That’s still the Liberal’s strategy, riding like a flea on a rat cradle-to-grave social engineering in the guise of economic policy. The Progressives drive the economy into the ditch all the while saying it is someone else’s fault and shrieking that we need more of what is causing the problem: bloated government and runaway spending. A lack of basic economic understanding is destroying the greatest economy ever forged. A zero sum game causes divisions and arguments about who gets what when we used to all strive for the same thing: success.
America is splintering as the melting pot becomes a smelting pot. What is its cause? The divisiveness of class-warfare encouraged by the only people who win through America’s split between red and blue, rich and poor, us and them. Who are they? If it isn’t us I guess it’s them.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
