Monthly Archives: January 2009

Rush Limbaugh Proposes $540 Billion Corporate Welfare Package

Doublespeak, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Economics, Government Waste, Media

rushtime Move over McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy and McCain-Lieberman.  We’ve now got the Limbaugh-Obama Bipartisan Economic Recovery Package (AKA LOBERP, pronounced like “low burp”).  Here’s the description provided over at The Next Right:

Mine is a genuine compromise.  So let’s look at how the vote came out, shall we?  Fifty-three percent of voters in this country — we’ll say, for the sake of this proposal, 53% of Americans — voted for Obama.  Forty-six percent voted for Senator McCain, and 1% voted for wackos.  Let’s give the remaining 1% to President Obama, so let’s say that 54% voted for President Obama and 46% voted for Senator McCain.  As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009, $540 billion of the one trillion will be spent on infrastructure as defined by President Obama and the Democrats.  The remaining $460 billion, or 46% that voted for Senator McCain, will be directed towards tax cuts, as determined by me.

Let’s take a quick look at what really happens when the Doctor of Democracy and the Messiah decide to fiscally copulate.  Either Limbaugh is actually dumb enough to believe that Congress will actually deliver that $460 billion is returned to our own wallets, or he is nefarious enough to ensure that the tax cuts would go where he directs.  Of course, there would be no conflict-of-interest for someone to be holding the strings to a $460 billion government purse while also collecting advertising revenue for his radio program.

Then of course, by proposing this plan, we now have evidence that Limbaugh is endorsing a $540 billion stimulus package and he trusts President Obama and the Democrats to define (so long as it is infrastructure related) how it will be spent.

One might think that a self-described fiscal conservative would have the testicular fortitude to say ALL federal bailouts are bad.  He could have said something along the lines of “zero dollars for increased government spending.”  “Not one dime for corporate welfare” would have been acceptable, too.  He could have at least spoken out against deficit spending.  Instead of arguing on principle, he decided to give President Obama and the Dems $540 billion dollars out of wallets — and the wallets of our children and our grandchildren.

Rush Limbaugh currently wants control over 54 percent of this booty in the latest episode of the federal spending orgy.  He’s joined with the mainstream media and the Democrats who think that bailouts are sexy.  Rush, you can voluntarily give Obama as much money as you like out of your wallet.  Convince your ditto-heads to mail in the rest of the trillion bucks. Don’t even think about playing grab ass with my wallet, though.

UPDATE for the ditto heads: Rush Limbaugh spews erroneous conclusions, crap and conjecture on a daily basis. He calls it “entertainment.” I thought I’d give it a shot, too. And what better target could be found for some specious speculation than el Rushbo himself?

Stephen Gordon
http://stephengordon.com

They Sold Us The Rope… Too Bad They’re Tied To The Other End

Credit Crisis, Economics, Foreign Affairs, Monetary Issues

I’ve pointed out the old saying — “If you owe the bank $5,000 and can’t pay, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $5,000,000,000 and can’t pay, the bank has a problem.”

Well, the bank has a problem:

What he might have said was that the nations funding the majority of America’s public debt — most notably the Chinese, Japanese and the Saudis — need to be prepared to sacrifice. They have to fund America’s annual trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future. These creditor nations, who already own trillions of dollars of U.S. government debt, are the only entities capable of underwriting the spending that Mr. Obama envisions and that U.S. citizens demand.

These nations, in other words, must never use the money to buy other assets or fund domestic spending initiatives for their own people. When the old Treasury bills mature, they can do nothing with the money except buy new ones. To do otherwise would implode the market for U.S. Treasurys (sending U.S. interest rates much higher) and start a run on the dollar. (If foreign central banks become net sellers of Treasurys, the demand for dollars needed to buy them would plummet.)

In sum, our creditors must give up all hope of accessing the principal, and may be compensated only by the paltry 2%-3% yield our bonds currently deliver.

So as a spin on the old [perhaps mis-attributed] Lenin quote about rope, the Chinese, Japanese and Saudis sold us the rope to hang ourselves. But we tricked them. We paid for that rope with nothing.

We may be hanging ourselves, but the other end of that rope is still tied to them with our dollars — if we go down, they’re coming with.

Maybe this is just one of my more pessimistic days, but I think that we’re actually reaching a major tipping point. I don’t know what that will entail, but it won’t be pretty. You can only sweep the dust under the rug for so long; eventually you trip over the big bump in the rug.

Hat Tip: Reason Hit&Run

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

MV = Py

Credit Crisis, Economics, Monetary Issues

So, as evidence that I’ve never taken a true macroeconomics course, today was the first time I’ve ever seen this equation…

M – Monetary base
V – Velocity of money
P – Price level
y – Real GDP

People have asked my how I can claim the Fed/Treas are inflating when P and y are decreasing, and it’s all about V…

So I saw this comment over at Econlog today, and it deserves a response:

MV=Py, so V’s decreased lately caused by decreasing P and y. If we feed M steroid, how sure are we that y will go up more than P?

I think that’s backwards. V is decreasing which is CAUSING the decrease in P and y. It’s not the other way around.

V, in my limited understanding of the world, appears to be pretty closely act as the debt-fueled consumption loop we embarked on during the housing bubble. Asset prices rose, so we took on debt against those assets, used it to bid up prices, causing asset prices to rise, causing more debt, etc etc. V was expanding, and that expansion fueled huge increases in P and y.

When the housing bubble burst, the credit markets (V) went with it. Housing dropped. The Dow dropped. Oil dropped. Housing was demand-driven, but the drop in oil prices was far too large to be attributed to demand destruction. With M being (relatively) constant, and y being (relatively) constant, the two most mobile factors were V and P, and I think the drop in V caused the drop in P, not the other way around.

So the commenters question — “if we feed M steroids”, what will happen? — seems to assume that V is a minor factor, not a major factor, in the equation. I think this is exactly backwards, as V is far more mobile of a factor than M.

And that belies that point that we’ve started feeding M steroids, but haven’t seen the resultant rise in P or y yet! As fast as the Fed/Treas is trying to increase M, V is dropping faster. But if V is a very mobile — rather than sticky — factor, once it increases to a more normalized level acting on a much larger M suggests that P will explode.

This, anyway, is how I see this playing out. The Fed/Treas is setting the stage for hyperinflation, and once the economy starts to gather up “confidence” it will be too late to stop it. But, again, I’m not an economist — and although I felt like I understood the concepts at stake — today was the first time I’ve ever seen this equation. So if anyone can possibly assuage my fears, please tell me why.

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

Dumbass and Authoritarians Among Us

Constitution, Crime and Punishment, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, General, Immigration, Individual Rights, Legal, Police Watch, Politics, The Bill Of Rights, The Surveillance State, The War on Drugs, Theory and Ideas, War on Terror

Here are a few choice comments in response to a recent post where I argued that Ramos and Compean should not receive presidential pardons. I was aware that this was a very unpopular position to take (even among libertarians) but I was stunned and disturbed by the tone of some of the comments. I’ll let these comments speak for themselves.

It is my hope, to all you ACLU types, that an illegal drug running pimp dosn’t stop at your place of residence. After all the drug lord was only looking to put food on his families table.

Who cares if he was shot in the A$$, once again what does that prove. It proves he was shot in the A$$. So what!!! You insane pot smokin, red diaper doper babies would take the illegals side. After all his culture is far superior to ours. Why wouldn’t we want him and his countries poverty, corruption, sewage fertalizer, rampid drunk driving, rapes, and MS 13 here. It would make things so much better here. We have gone from the melting pot to the chamber pot thanks to all you ilk.

Comment by Michael — January 8, 2009 @ 3:59 pm

oh..and…too bad they didn’t blow the slimeball’s brains out! The ONLY crime Ramos and Campeon are ‘guilty’ of is not being better shots! How about this: Give them raises, Give them promotions, and teach them to shoot STRAIGHTER!

Comment by Petra — January 17, 2009 @ 10:01 pm

WAAAAA Get over it, they should have killed the dam drug dealer, They did make a mistake but with the Green card the DEMOCRAPS gave to Davila to yet again bring drugs to the USA again, not as an illegal but as a resident alien, wich is worse? I dont get you guys. No drug dealer is ever without a weapon of some sort.

In cases where there are drugs in the quantities like this case, “judge, jury, and executioner” is fine with me.

Comment by John — January 19, 2009 @ 7:22 pm

Brian, I’m guessing you work in a very safe, predictable environment, free from any real dangers. I know I do. That is why I can’t imagine what these BP agents go through on a daily basis.

There are very real dangers they face every day, and that certainly colors their world and perception of interfacing with other people. I personally am relieved that Pres Bush has commuted their sentences, and like a previous poster, am saddened only that he did not fully pardon them. They ARE heroes. They protect our country daily from scum bag, law breaking thugs that don’t care one bit for a civilzed society complete with rules and humanity.

Against the law to shoot unarmed criminals?!? So every criminal out there that can outrun the police should be allowed to just “run away” from authority to freedom, just because he doesn’t carry a gun? Ridiculous. That’s ok though, because I know there are BP agents out there along with thousands of other brave soldiers of freedom protecting our borders who continue to do their jobs to keep us safe, despite whiny verbally abusive pansies like you sitting in your safe little world sipping your cosmopolitans and spewing liberal rhetoric around like so much poison.

By the way, if you want to call me to talk politics, you won’t need to “press 1? for English. This is America; English IS OUR LANGUAGE. If you want any other language, go the Hell back to your own country!

Comment by Dennis — January 19, 2009 @ 10:47 pm

I say shoot these lazy bastards [illegal immigrants] BEFORE they infect us. What’s the problem with that? I don’t see any. And YES, pot is illegal. I don’t care how innocuous you think it may be to smoke it – it’s ILLEGAL. And smuggling it into the country is illegal and needs to be answered with any force necessary to stop it. BTW, I think many drugs that are now illegal should be legal, but until they are anyone who knowingly is involved with ANY aspect of drug use or trafficking does not deserve any sympathy or benefit of the doubt. He drove a truck into our country with 750 lbs of marijuana in it. That’s a fact and he’s an idiot. I wish the BP agents would have been a better shot and made a fatal shot.

Comment by Dennis — January 20, 2009 @ 5:26 am

Here was another response, this time to the follow-up post I wrote after President Bush commuted Ramos and Compean’s sentences.

Yet another example of the idiotic media “journalists” who publish opinion as fact. You disgust me. Here’s hoping you also have a “close encounter” with the drug smuggling illegal MY U.S. border patrol agents shot.

Comment by Daphne — January 20, 2009 @ 7:06 am

Apparently I’m not the only one at The Liberty Papers who attracts authoritarian loons. Stephen* Gordon had one commenter who doesn’t seem to be too concerned about the possibility that average Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights were routinely violated during the Bush Administration:

I’m always amused by those who fret over privacy. Just exactly what are these people afraid of? What could the Feds possibly learn that they would even care about? Do people really believe that those overworked surveilance people have the slightest interest in what some yokel in Kansas is doing? Paranoia seems to almost a national disease in this country. No wonder we can’t compete in the world – we’re worried about meaningless crap and ignore what’s important.

Comment by kent beuchert — January 22, 2009 @ 1:03 pm

So you may ask: “So you have some nutty people posting nutty comments on your posts…what’s the big deal?” The big deal is that these people vote in elections and serve on juries! Is it really any wonder we find ourselves losing more and more of our liberties? This is the mentality we are fighting against.

On a more positive note, there were also some very well-reasoned arguments by others who responded to these posts. “Brian” (from the first post) was relentlessly attacked for defending the crazy notion that suspects should be considered “innocent until proven guilty.” It’s my hope that there are a few more Brians out there than this small sample of random, (mostly) anonymous, fools.

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Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/
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