Mix up a Martooni or two or a Gin and Tonic, and read and weep over the fecklessness of our political betters. As I have said before, I am worried about what the heck is going on and do not know anyone who is not.
The 70-Million-Check Constituency. It's about the delusion that "money happens." Money does not "happen" without people busting their asses in profitable work.
How to Contain the European Debt Crisis: Giavazzi and Kashyap. It is not a joke: the credit cards are at the limit, and the creditors are rightly concerned. If the big creditors blow up, we all blow up with them. Debtor nations are like suicide bombers, but at some point there is not enough money in the world to pay them off.
Gelinas: Why We Don’t Recover - Washington persists in postponing the bad-debt reckoning, strangling consumption and killing jobs. A quote:
If Congress and President Obama, as well as the candidates who would like to succeed the president in 2013, maintain their silence, people should at least understand that the lousy jobs numbers are no mystery. They are the result of a policy that Washington has willfully chosen. As the Fed notes, the cost of this policy isn’t measured in dollars but in something more precious: time. Washington’s refusal to confront the debt problem is costing millions the most productive years of their lives.
That part is heart-breaking. But if you were or are an employer, would you be hiring now? We in CT are firing, not hiring, and not happy about it at all.
Larry Summers, via Mankiw:
Never forget, never forget, and I think it’s very important for Democrats especially to remember this, that if Hitler had not come along, Franklin Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with an unemployment rate in excess of 15 percent and an economic recovery strategy that had basically failed.
Saved by Hitler. Imagine that!
McArdle: Slouching Toward Default, on Both Sides of the Atlantic. Houses of cards, nothing but debt on debt to maintain an illusion of prosperity while Asia thrives on growing economic freedom.
The Fear-Based Economy - Further tax increases could bring an already frightened, sputtering economy to a standstill. We are watching the dramatic and deliberate destruction of the economy, of jobs, and of enterprise, but you'd think, from the MSM, that it is business as usual. If you have kids, you should worry because crazy, ignorant people are running this thing and harming everybody who is not a government employee.
Home Depot founder Marcus: 'I'm Not Sure Obama Would Understand Anything That I'd Say':
Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that today the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with. Home Depot would never have succeeded if we'd tried to start it today. Every day you see rules and regulations from a group of Washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business. And I mean every day. It's become stifling.
Dan Greenfield gets it. Edge of the Spending New Frontier:
So the utopians cannot accept the functionalist notion of government as a means of conducting vital functions on behalf of the people, rather than the utopian tool of transforming the people into a great society with seven academic degrees for everyone and recycling at every curb. Such a system is not a moral one to them and they are duty bound to resist it. And the functionalists similarly cannot accept a system that deprives them of agency by overlaying its political code over every aspect of their lives.
But it is the utopians and their economic policies who have forced their own moment to its crisis. Had Obama not won, they would have been able to comfortably sit back and blame Bush era policies for the mess. But their will to power also undid them. It gave them so much power that they are choking on it. With predictable blindness they exploited the crisis for all it was worth and are now left holding the bag. And their policies are now at the center of the debate.
But deeper still is the question of the place of government in the political and economic life of the American. This moment is a wake up call for a country that has been willing to avoid looking too closely at the fine print of the social programs and the total cost of the national debt. And the real question that drifts out of the debates is not about spending cuts, but about the role of government.
The utopian conception of government is not only a freedom deficit, but a functional deficit. The former is obvious, but the latter is often less obvious. The left is often dinged for its controlling ways, but less often for its incompetence.
Tracked: Jul 22, 12:19