Sunday, February 08, 2009

Nightmare on Constitution Avenue

UPDATE: below

The similarities of US Government actions now and in the beginning of the Great Depression are frightening. We are talking Friday the 13th scary here. How many times must they unlock the door to the basement? Here is a clue: Jason's still down there. (Not coincidentally, Jason returns this Friday--the first Friday the 13th of 2009.)

Hold onto your armrests as we review the Great Depression Script and see how the Obama Production compares (co-produced with the Fourth Estate). I include the Fourth Estate in this because it is the mouthpiece of the Democratic party. Disagree? Write or call your favorite reporter and ask them "What will the GDP be with and without this plan? Especially over the long term?" You will be answered with stunned silence.

Lets go to the score card:

Great Depression: Massive increase in government (which did not help the economy.)
Obama/Fourth Estate: Massive increase in government that will not help the economy either.
Score: Check.

Great Depression: Smoot-Hawley Tarriffs wreck economy
Obama/Fourth Estate: Buy American, carbon caps/tax
Score? Ouch.

Great Depression: The administration prosecuted those that had profited on Wall Street during the roaring 20's. (Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (2007), Chapter 7)
Obama/Fourth Estate: Obama targets Wall Street excess
Score? Ouch

Great Depression: Over One Thousand Economists Publish Letter Opposing Government Proposals. (Shlaes, Page 96)
Obama/Fourth Estate: Hundreds of Economists Write Letter Opposing Government Proposals.
Score: Ouch...

Great Depression: Administration Experiments with Economy (Shlaes, Chapter 5)
Obama/Fourth Estate: House Appropriations Chairman Dave Obey, D-Wis., said the goal is to act now and address problems later. During the Depression, he said, President Franklin Roosevelt "tried lots of things. We'll do the same thing."
Score: Ouch!

Great Depression: Americans elect a charismatic politician to the White House with the primary skill of giving fireside chats and little real knowledge of the economy.
Obama/Fourth Estate: Americans elect a politician to the White House with the primary skill of good 30 second sound bites and little real knowledge of the economy.
Score: And the Oscar Goes to. . .BO-44!!!

Great Depression: Roosevelt is elected on a platform to abolish useless commissions, reduce government spending and then did exactly the opposite.
Obama/Fourth Estate: Obama pledges to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and now is doing exactly the opposite.

I have to hand it to BO-44, his "spend wisely" rhetoric sounds great, but is unpersuasive and not applied to the present plan. Likewise, the only thing that historians can agree upon about Roosevelt is that his fireside chats were comforting while they distracted from the sub-rosa goal of turning the country towards socialism.

So, the conditions precedent to a re-release of the original horror from the '30s would be:

  1. Wage/price controls,

  2. To see the Supreme Court throw out the "Stimulus Bill" as unconstitutional, as was Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration, and

  3. Have Obama threaten to pack the Supreme Court, though it doesn't appear as if threats will be required this time.
If that happens, then 2009 - 2019 will definitely be America's lost decade.

Friends, when the title of the movie starts with "Halloween ..." or "Friday the ...", we don't need to see the picture to know what is in it or how it ends. As far as making government bigger, well we've seen that movie before. No thank you.

MORE:

See Greg Mankiw's "It’s No Time for Protectionism" in Saturday's New York Times.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

One thing people forget, Leftists want to (need to) destroy the system (which is often working fine otherwise) before thgey can gain ultimate power.

Destroying our economy is not a worry to Marxists (neo or otherwise).

Bob Cosmos said...

Lenin said "The way to crush the bourgeoisie [the middle-class] is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation"

OBloodyHell said...

I call attention once more to...

Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis


..."All iss goink tu der plan, comrades..."

Bob Cosmos said...

OBH Thanks for brining the American Thinker piece to my attention. That is a long article, but the author does a fair job of building to this conclusion:

"As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior to package mortgages as investments, and for the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them. These changes created the conditions that ultimately lead to the current financial crisis. "

Wow.

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Anonymous said...

On the press conferance last night. No one in the Obamedia asked him one challenging question about the dog park, the TSL uniforms, the swimming pools, the fish barriors, etc., etc., etc., on this hog farm spending bill. Not one question about the pork he denied existed. not one from a room full reporters. The press is cuckhold and America hasn't even been kissed. "It was just sex with her baby. With you it is love."