Well as Thanksgiving is fast approaching, perhaps it is only appropriate for us to take a moment and give thanks to the government that is looking out for us. Indeed, with all the "bad-government" talk these days – I think someone should stand up say thanks to the President and Congress for rushing in and saving the day. Seriously... some people could be morally opposed to throwing bad money at a bad problem – but not in America. Capitalism is so antiquated – why bother letting the markets handle problems when you can intervene and make them do what you tell them! It's a win-win - now if I don't pay my Citi Card on time I can just call up and tell them I'm a majority shareholder so they can suck it! A more cowardly administration might be reluctant to spend so much money bailing out all the important financial gurus of today (damn they're so good at their job) but not here. No, we're pledging approximately $4.6 trillion dollars to the effort. Now when I read that this morning – I was like "hey $4.6 trillion that's not so bad… our national debt is like $11 trillion" but really, $4.6 trillion is a lot of freaking money – another sign of how awesome and fearless our country really is. Check out these numbers from Jim Bianco:
• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion
TOTAL: $3.92 trillion ___________________________________________________________________
(Data courtesy of Bianco Research)
So, on this Thanksgiving, I'm going to say "Thanks to America." Really… Thanks! Lets not be constrained by silly economic principles that use confusing French words like laissez-faire (besides who likes the French anyway), lets not let real capitalist countries like China force us to remain true to that stodgy "invisible hand", lets not worry about our children or grandchildren who will some day have to pay back all this debt (with interest – Carpe Diem right?) No, this Thanksgiving we can say thanks knowing that whatever we do, however much we suck at our jobs, however inferior our products are to the products of those damn foreigners, we can rest assured that America's government has our back and that, my friends, is worth our thanks.
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3 comments:
Why do we waste so much time scratching our heads over numbers that dont have any value system anymore? When they got rid of the gold standard, they took away any logic behind money that I know of. How can our president ask congress for 700 Billion dollars? Where in the holy hell do they pull that kind of money out of? Do they simply print it and say here you go???
I actually prefer our version of government and economics over most. Even a bent democracy beats a country ruled by communism or a dictatorship. Sure, things don't seem to have worked out lately- But it's because the rules became lax, and too many people took advantage, and were taken advantage of. (Well, this is one of many reasons.) Someone recently defended the people who took out mortgages they couldn't afford by saying "If you hand a cell phone to a five year old, they're going to take it.." Sure, but they're five. I knew a five year old who put a GI Joe up his butt to piss off his mom.
The fact that we can let things get this bad speaks volumes about our lack of regulation, which can be a very good thing a lot of the time. There's a level of personal responsibility that's lacking though, but you can't expect the government to step in on that..
As for the government bailout, someone had to do something. Sure, I hate to see people get rewarded for bad behavior, but if we didn't bail out the banks, we might have had a lot more dead banks lying around, stinking up the place. More bank death equals more people making runs on banks, and before you know it, banks could have made the endangered species list. That's a lot harder to swallow than the bailout in my head, and the same applies to other recipients of bailout packages.
The thing that gets me is, all of this has happened before, and not just once. It's a cycle, one that's hard to predict, and is never exactly the same, and one that no one has a clear answer about how to deal with it. Once the general population starts getting scared, hoarding their money, it makes matters worse, and it's beyond me how you calm down an entire country and get them feeling okay about spending their money again.. Which in the end is what could really turn the economy around. Personally, one of the things I really like about this country and how we do things is that we have the freedom and the ability as individuals to thrive off an economic downturn. There are people throughout history who have come out of market crashes better off than most, some have even built fortunes from them. It's all happened before, it'll all happen again, and it's still great to be living in a place where even during the worst financial crisis of our time, we can be sitting at home typing about it on our relatively inexpensive home computers, over the internet service we pay for every single month no matter how bad things seem to get.
I firmly believe that money should be a subject in school, teaching kids the importance of credit, how financial systems work, how your credit score is evaluated, what a mortgage is, etc....the problem is that people only figure this stuff out when they are adults and get into a bad situation. It call all be avoided with education of these important systems in our financial world. I once took a zoology class....what a joke! It did me absolutely no good! I needed to know how credit can mess up your life, not why spider monkeys don't possess the cognitive ability to stop snorting cocaine when given an indefinite supply.
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