Wonkette
The New York Times‘ Nobel laureate beardclown Paul Krugman has quite a Keynes Boner in this morning’s column. He wants the Obama administration to flood as much money as possible into the government and not to be dandies about Debt. You know that famous socialist president FDR? Well he was a pussy: “One of these prejudices is the fear of red ink. In normal times, it’s good to worry about the budget deficit — and fiscal responsibility is a virtue we’ll need to relearn as soon as this crisis is past. When depression economics prevails, however, this virtue becomes a vice. F.D.R.’s premature attempt to balance the budget in 1937 almost destroyed the New Deal.” Sure! If the Chinese will pay for Obama’s non-lame New Deal, then hey, why not, rock ‘n’ roll, where’s my refundable tax credit already? [NYT]
I was wondering when George Clooney was going to weigh in on the economy.
Do ya think if we taxed the fuck out of the Mormon and Catholic Churches we could balance the budget in, say, five years?
ihasasad: Win.
ihasasad:
Taxing those Evangelical Mega-Church/Malls would eliminate our debt in 3 years. Why does Jeebus hate America?
ihasasad:
Don’t forget the Jews.
…I have a better plan: Why dont all the “Blue States” keep their money and the “Red States” can rot?! Questions anyone???
ihasasad:
Not the Catholic Church. They’re selling properties left and right to pay those child abuse settlements.
The Mormons have the bucks.
“As soon as this crisis is past.” Right. However, “Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.”
30 yuan for a Happy Meal?! Out-wageous!
I’m doing my part by putting out receipe book entitled “How To Eat Dirt and Not Your Neighbors”. It’d be a best seller in the near future if anyone had any money to but it.
It would be a beautiful thing to see the Mormon Church, especially, taxed to death for their Prop 8 debauchery. I’d cry a tear like that Indian in that commercial except it would be a happy tear instead of a sad tear.
I can’t wait till we’re printing a $1 Trillion bill like Zimbabwe! Let’s put Phil Gramm’s face on it, then use it to wipe our asses!
Servo: Appraise the Lord!
I would like a tax credit and a new puppy, please.
Is this why the Mayan calendar ends at 2012? Did they foresee the invention of the snow machine? Does Caribou Snow Bunny have enough clout to bring on the Apocalypse? Enquiring minds…
Terry: Actually, they’re “gifting” a ton of their properties down to the parish level in order to get them off their books.
Eventually, Bono will be doing concerts to implore the world’s soverign wealth funds to forgive US debt.
AngryBlakGuy: Hey man, they need your money. Meth and truck nutz don’t buy themselves.
So now we buy into the Cheney proposal that “Deficits don’t matter”?
Dear God, The Dark Lord has already won.
Steal from the rich; give to the non-rich. Problem solved.
He’s scaring me just a little bit.
Deficits don’t matter sometimes. The New New Deal will get the unemployed building new bridges, or, more likely, acting in Art Fag City in an Internet-only “living newspaper” with 500 total YouTube hits.
Which is to say, I approve.
/waves unproduced play at government officials
To be fair, this is exactly what my neo-con economics professors said in defense of the Reagan deficit. They were all authoritarian in their Louis Boston suits saying “so what?” which may not be the most ethical argument to spring on undergraduates, especially drunk-all-the-time ones.
nurple: Reaganomics is not only evil, but unfortunately necessary. The sum of all good ethical branch of the economic world is all about the Benjamins.
Well, St. Mary’s Catholic Church in N.C. has some ’splainin to do to the IRS…
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2008/11/priest_says_no.html
BTW- what kind of code does this place use to do fun font stuff and links here?
Shot at Wolf:
If not 2012, then…
http://killerasteroidproject.org/apophis.htm
The question is not whether we should be spending like drunk Keynseyan sailors on shore-leave in Bangkok on two-for-one girls night. The question is whether we can spend enough fast enough to rescue ourselves from this fucking nightmare. Can we bail out Citigroup and GM & Ford as well as the collapsing everything else? It’s truly starting to look like you should buy guns, bottled water, canned food and board up your home like Will Smith did in “I am Legend” and not plan on coming out for a couple of years.
tootsieroll: Basic HTML works for me.
Obama better build some dams in Tennessee this time around, otherwise his hipster supporters won’t give his New New Deal the retro-chic appeal it needs to survive our wintry economic climate.
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
Don’t pick on Krugman. I seriously love that man. Like if they made a Krugman teddy bear, I would talk to it and have tea parties with it and invite other teddy bears. Don’t fuck with me. I am crazy.
Serolf - I have been reading Night of the Long Knives by Maracin (not Gallo) and he says Germany had recovered from its hyperinflation before the Nazis seized power, ie the brown/blackshirts had to create new chaos and disorder in order so that seizing power would be more acceptabe to the German people. Hence the Reichstag fire. I really think this gold coin/gun nonsense is simply not gonna happen unless some Nazi type goes out of their way to make it so. The system will correct.
What’s gonna happen is that America is gonna slum it for a couple of years, buying dried beans and supermarket-brand soda and suspending their cable for a month. And they’ll all get squatters rights in foreclosed houses because the local police want the houses occupied. I’m basically saying the economy is fundamentally sound ahahahahhah McCain you were right and everyone said you were wrong and you fell for it.
If we weren’t already $7 trillion in the hole, I might balk at this; but at this point? In for a penny, in for a pound is my proud motto. And let’s not compare this to Reagan, please. Reagan cut income taxes, especially for the wealthy, while he was quadrupling the defense budget, and actually RAISING payroll taxes. Basically Reagan’s economic plan was to buy everyone at Northrup-Grumman a Ferrari and give each of them a $5,000 hookers-and-blow-per-diem.
And if our Notgeld isn’t a swanky Bauhaus-design, I for one will be most disappointed.
I say we do whatever the economist who was right about the housing/bank crisis says we do.
Anyone else getting totally freaked out by all those commercials suddenly starting with “We know it would be great to have a little more money in your pocket — so look at how cheap (insert product name here) is!”
Monsieur Grumpe: What, do you really like your neighbors so much?
- You can’t hang dirt in your smokehouse to preserve it for the winter — neighbors +
- Your neighbors will try to eat YOUR dirt, rather than use their own — neighbors +
- You can’t render tallow from dirt in order to make candles for light to clean your guns by — neighbors +
Please re-think your cookbook. “How to Serve Your Neighbors” would be a much better title.
tootsieroll: Jeez, in the 20 years I was a practicing Catlikker, I never met a priest that was that much a dick. But then I was 5 years an altar boy, and never once molested, so I may have not had the typical Catholic experience.
nurple: They’ll take away my cable from my cold, dead hands, I don’t care how many grapes I have to pick to pay for my hi-def, every pay channel and On Demand cable package. And speaking of the New New Deal, I’m totally ready to start building some dams
Hooray - with the amount of stuff we all delete unwatched from our DVRS, we could all suspend our cable for a month and not miss it.
I still say it’s all a dark Cheney, revival of the Republicans plot.
We all get to keep our foreclosed homes, but have to cancel basic cable.
Without basic cable, Jon Stewart has no means to lead us.
Then the Catholic priests will step in and say anyone who voted for Obama or watched a Jew on TV is in mortal peril of their eternal soul.
From there is all Bill Kristallnacht and race wars.
Actually, I don’t watch Stewart as much when the news is going my way. Recently I actually have enough temerity to watch network news programs, knowing they won’t be a continual kick to the groin as they have been for the last eight years.
This issue is probably going to be the important thing we judge Obama on. On the one hand, Dems are now functionally the party of fiscal conservatism and there will be enormous pressure on Obama not to go on a Keynesian deficit spending spree. On the other, his constituents really need him to— if the speculators who caused this whole mess are able to get bailed out bc it would be too dangerous not to, well, then are the mass employers that are going bankrupt (the auto companies, the airlines, a bunch of state and local governments) going to get the same help? Because, man, if they don’t— if GM or a couple airlines or states go broke and we have layoffs in the hundreds of thousands— this depression is going to get a lot more real very fast. It would probably cause larger economic fallout that would result in, say, several commenters here getting laid off too. Of course, “Please spend lots of DOLLARZZ obama!!!” isn’t the most change-y slogan around. Sad.
The “stop the failure cascade” argument is facially tempting, but no one is buying Detroit’s cars now anyway. Why should the gummint support building more? It would make more sense to bail out homebuilders/mortgagers because housing has more utility than unsold automobiles/trucks. Or give the money to GE to build rail cars, for which there is a substantial demand. (Full disclosure - I am a rail car.)