Here’s a cure for that. Let’s hope he’s wrong. Part of the problem is that, because panics like this are to some degree psychological, pieces like this don’t help, even if they’re valid. It’s sort of like the Heisenberg principle–the very act of diagnosing the problem can exacerbate it.
6 thoughts on “Feeling Upbeat About The Economic Future?”
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We have a $10 trillion debt with a $trillion deficit. This is not sustainable IMHO.
Sarah at the RGA (www.rga.org) says the republicans have let us down by being no different from the democrats on this issue. If she keeps that up, I’d say she’s showing some of the leadership that we need.
I think the roller coaster is likely to take a deep plunge for next few years at least.
Hopefully the mother of all recessions (depression) won’t impact companies like SpaceX, though that is probably wishful thinking as Elon’s other company Tesla is having trouble raising money for production.
I prefer relativity theory to the Heisenberg principle. If you have little debt, some savings and still are employed then a deflation can be a good thing.
Well, I can’t say I’m hugely impressed with his reasoning, which seems to reduce to “the optimists have been wrong so far, so be a pessimist.” Er…the optimists will always be wrong until they’re right, and so will the pessimists. Neither optimism nor pessimism is, by definition, a predictive technology. They’re just acts of faith. I see no obvious reason to favor his act of faith over anyone else’s.
However, that doesn’t mean I disagree with him. I agree, in fact, that things will get worse, although this is merely my act of faith. I’ve noticed a little uptick in the number of people I know who’ve lost jobs, or are looking harder than usual for jobs. What I’ve also noticed is that they don’t seem sufficiently worried about this, as the cold facts of the present economy says they should be. What happens when people are overly optimistic and then get a cold shower from reality? Panic, usually, a violent swing to the other extreme, of unreasonable pessimism.
To my mind, the big problem with a consumer-driven economy teetering on the edge of deflation is jobs. If people have them and are confident of keeping them, than even if there aren’t any raises on the horizon (because of deflation), they’re willing to spend. But if people are fearful of losing their jobs, then they just won’t spend, period, and deflation becomes king.
What’s ironic about this situation is that the exact wrong man is about to take charge of this mess. What’s needed, if jobs are the key, I would argue, is an enormous injection of business-oriented optimism. People with money to hire others need to suddenly feel that the potential profits on doing so are fat beautiful monuments to greed and capitalistic Mr. Monopoly excess.
We need a President who would ram an abolition of all business taxes through Congress, and who spoke in glowing, approving terms of profit, particularly magnificent windfall profits that let the capitalist retire at age 45 to the Caymans to sip rum served by Scarlett Johanssen in a Brazilian bikini. That might well serve to make people with a little money of their own willing to borrow more money on the enticingly easy terms the Fed is setting and start hiring people.
Maybe God is intending to teach us a sharp lesson by having allowed us to choose a completely false saviour, an antichrist, as it were, so we can learn the facts o’ life. If so, I fear he has greatly overestimated our intelligence.
We need a President who would ram an abolition of all business taxes through Congress, and who spoke in glowing, approving terms of profit, particularly magnificent windfall profits that let the capitalist retire at age 45 to the Caymans to sip rum served by Scarlett Johanssen in a Brazilian bikini. That might well serve to make people with a little money of their own willing to borrow more money on the enticingly easy terms the Fed is setting and start hiring people.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t on offer in this election, thanks to the media selecting both candidates. “Profit” was a dirty word to John McCain as well. Though McCain would have been less bad in this regard, in a relative sense.
Recently some people have been comparing BHO to FDR. I think they are right. I look forward with no joy to BHO pursuing the same sort of ill-advised, ideologically-driven policies that made the Great Depression of the 1930s more painful and protracted than it should have been, and adding to that the burden of Global Warming regulations that will strangle the economy until the US GDP falls below that of Burkina Faso. Chuck Shumer will go around announcing the imminent death of one industry after another, Comrade John Conyers will have his show trials of Bush administration officials to take our minds off the sick economy, and the MSM will tell us that “sharing the pain” is patriotic. Whoop de doo. Weimar Republic anyone?
If Comrade Conyers somehow does manage to bring Bushies to trial over what amounts to policy differences and ideological concerns, we will see an outbreak of civil war within 12 months. Lawfare is followed by warfare as surely as the night follows day. The nation is simply too evenly split right now to make those kind of “unthink” policies actionable (regardless of whether or not they’re even close to a good idea, on any grounds).
This would be a far more destructive, bloodier war than the one 150 years ago, because it would in fact be a true civil war instead of an attempt at secession. Even the left cannot be so ignorant of history as to ignore this. Which is why I’m hopeful that the “They’re just mentioning this in order to make other upcoming policies, ones they really want, look less bad” theory is correct.