For those out there who still think.........

Severe economic disaster is good for any profession. Let the heavily debted and upside down operators perish and there will be less competition...

Let's say all the countries in the world go bankrupt at the same time. What would keep them all from declaring bankruprcy so that they can defalt on all of the loans?

90% of the world population would die from disease and starvation. Most do not want to think about what might be in store for them if we do not get our house in order. History alone should provide a clue, we are not different than those who went before and no smarter than them, in fact knowing how to provide the basic needs of life for ourselves along with the means to do so, we are lacking, we are inferior than those who went before in the basic knowledge of survival.
jud

speak fer yourself....Ted said it right, "AMMO UP" ....;-)

I am not one living under the delusion that everything is going to be okay with the economy. In fact I believe that the worst is yet to come.

My 88 YO dad was predicting another depression as early as 5 years ago. I thought he was wrong right up until the events of 2 years ago. His prediction was based on the similarities between the current “culture of excess”, and that of the 1920s.

Paden, there are two reasons to ammo up. One is to defend what you have from a defensive position and the other is to take from others what you don't have. Which one are you? I suspect that most are in the second category and they will not confront those they find defending themselves successfully and feed on the things they take from the weak. The advantage of that. The weak will die and those feeding on them will waste their gains and also soon pass, leaving a better chance for others to rebuild.
jud

Or think "Who is John Galt?"

well I still think, just not about that stuff, to much...

> Paden, there are two reasons to ammo up. One is to defend what you have from a defensive position and the other is to take from others what you don't have.
> jud

Jud, that pretty much says it all. And for the most part always has. I think the point of the article was to say that it doesn't have to be that way. Granted, the weakest always die first. But, how many of the weakest chose to be among the weakest?

Maybe, if the 'truth' could be known, there are plenty of resources in this world for it's human population. That will never be known, however, until we move to some economic model not based on the present printed fiat money usury credit laws which are right now, in a way, killing us all. The more important consideration might not be ammoing up, but rather what weapon you choose.

Take care,
Ed

Don't we learn from the past?

For those who think that things "just fix themselves" and "balance out" - consider that the Great Depression did not fix itself or just balance out automagically.

In fact, what helped the most in the Depression was stimulus spending. New Deal, CCC, WPA and other programs were what finally turned things around. It took time, though.

The point is, that putting money in motion is what makes the economy work. It worked then, it's working now.

One other important part to take note of is that much as we are seeing today, the conservatives raised the same complaint of government spending and demanded a dialing back of spending - that was 1936's Conservative Coalition. This caused a setback, with the country sliding back into depression through 1937.

And now we have history threatening to repeat itself, with the Tea Party and conservatives demanding that the spigot be shut off, effectively strangling the economy and any chance of recovery. How do you expect the garden to grow when you are putting a kink in the hose?

As people have been saying, "It's about the economy, stupid". Well, the partisan talking heads need to wake up and stop being stupid.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

Gunter...what would you do to fix things?

What do you think is the best path to take.

Gunter,

>
>
> In fact, what helped the most in the Depression was stimulus spending. New Deal, CCC, WPA and other programs were what finally turned things around. It took time, though.

Gunter, don't forget WW2.

And, I don't think the people we need to worry about repeating history would be labeled conservative/liberal/ , or libertarian/teabagarian. Most of them would just be known as central banksters in my book. But, everyone has a different perspective on these things.

I'm just glad there are people talking about what other views are out there using some common sense. Something besides fox, cnn, nbc, etc, you know?

Take care,
Ed

Gunter...what would you do to fix things?

Stimulus works. We do have to be careful about deficits, but frankly the right answer to that is raising taxes, not cutting spending. Choking off spending is definitely not the answer.

But, it can't just be government spending, either - others need to put money back into the economy as well.

Banks puckered up bigtime after they burned themselves on the liar loans and derivatives of prior years, and won't lend money anymore. They need to lend money - yes, in a responsible way, no liar loans, but they do indeed need to lend money. We bailed them out, now they have to do their part and help bail the economy out, yet they aren't doing their part.

Tax cuts won't work, either. The Bush tax cuts did little for the economy or jobs, given any opportunity in this economy, people will tend to just stash anything extra, rather than putting that money to work, and stashing money away isn't going to help us out of this.

Money has to be liquid. The more tight things get, the more we put a stranglehold on spending, the more damage it does to the economy. We have to stop the offshoring and hoarding that's going on. Money loses value when it's not in play, and that ends up dragging the whole economy down.

We need money put there, moving and changing hands as often as possible, plain and simple.

Gunter...what would you do to fix things?

A---frickin-men!!! Excellent post!. I am against raising taxes unless the money is spent efficiently, but you just hit the nail right on the head.

I will add that people saving money (aka stashing it away) is a good idea.

Gunter,

I think that it has been well documented that just when things began to look up, Roosevelt would get another of his new deal programs and down the economy went again. It was none of those programs that turned the economy around, it was WW 2 production that provided the jobs to allow for a recovery. The economy in a free nation needs to be left alone by the government and the people allowed to keep what they earn and the economy will prosper. It is the parasites of this nation that because they feel entitled will destroy us all.
jud

Gunter,

WWII was what? Government spending on a massive scale. Yes, we had a war to fight, but there was a huge amount of money being raised and spent for it.

Again, look at the graphs showing economic recovery after the crash of '29. Nothing was helping until the New Deal started to gain steam. You will then clearly see the dip back into recession in 1937 when the conservatives started killing off the New Deal stimulus programs.

But then, as the conservatives realized the errors of their ways and resumed some of the stimulus programs it turned back around, and later, we got into WWII, bringing its own stimulus spending in.

Compare that to Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that we didn't bother raising the money for - those have been pure deficit all along, it's been hurting us rather than helping us. Yes, we need to spend like we did in WWII, but we also need to be raising the money for it, again, like we did in WWII.

Gunter,

>...Compare that to Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that we didn't bother raising the money for - those have been pure deficit all along, it's been hurting us rather than helping us. Yes, we need to spend like we did in WWII, but we also need to be raising the money for it, again, like we did in WWII.

Maybe it's that we don't live in the same times that existed at the beginning of WWII.

Now, 'world war' would mean much more dire consequences than were even possible then.
No, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan represent the new reality of the 'military industrial complex'. Perpetual war that DOES stimulate the economy to a certain degree. Just not to the point of killing off all of us. The manufacturers of the bombs and ammo and guns are still doing fine. It's just a lot more automated and distributed around the world. War production is no longer, even with a wink or a nod, meant to only benefit those who are on 'the winning side'.

Gunter...what would you do to fix things?

> Stimulus works. We do have to be careful about deficits, but frankly the right answer to that is raising taxes, not cutting spending. Choking off spending is definitely not the answer.
>
> But, it can't just be government spending, either - others need to put money back into the economy as well....people will tend to just stash anything extra, rather than putting that money to work, and stashing money away isn't going to help us out of this.

You contradict yourself, Gunter. Did the stimulus work? If so, then how can your comment that people will tend to just stash anything extra be truthful. And if it is true that people will stash the extra is true, then the stimulus did not work because it did not create jobs. But oh yeah, it did not create jobs. So it did not work.

The truth of the matter is that the Bush Tax cuts worked. The capital gains cut in 2003 resulted in an INCREASE in revenue. In 2003, capital gains tax rates were reduced from 20 percent and 10 percent (depending on income) to 15 percent and 5 percent. Rather than expand by 36 percent from the current $50 billion level to $68 billion in 2006 as the CBO projected before the tax cut, capital gains revenues more than doubled to $103 billion. Past capital gains tax cuts have shown similar results. The comment that the economy was not helped by the 2003 tax cuts is also false. The six quarters before the cuts, the annual growth rate was 1.7%, the six after showed an annual growth rate of 4.1%. The economy lost 267,000 jobs in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. In the next six quarters, it added 307,000 jobs, followed by 5 million jobs in the next seven quarters.

Now, tell me: how do you think people will respond in 2011 when the $1000 per child tax credit goes to $500. Do you think that the average American family, losing an additional $500 in taxes will just say "No big deal? Tell me, what historically is your slowest month? Mine has always been February, just after that average family got hit with a big credit card bill. I think that additional $500 will be a drag on the economy. They are short that month and they will not spend it.

Gunter,

No, the Afghanistan war is not stimulating anything, mainly because it's not being paid for. It's only dragging us into deeper deficit.

What else is different between WWII and Iraq/Afghanistan?

In WWII, there was a lot of individual sacrifice made, not just in terms of troops fighting abroad, but at home also. We rationed. We paid far more in taxes then than we do now. Yet now folks want to say that they should not ever be expected to make any sacrifices for their country. Unpatriotic, IMHO.

Frankly, we have to fight the economic downturn like we really mean it. Yet all the Tea Party people want to do is effectively throw in the towel, unplug the respirator and pull out the IV hose, and let this great nation of ours just die and descend into chaos, by cutting spending and taxes.

If cutting spending's truly what you want, if cutting taxes is truly what you want, then yea, ammo up because it's definitely gonna be a rough ride. And I guarantee, what you sock away now won't last. And I guarantee, where we end up will be far worse than had we tried to turn things around now.

A perception of winning the battle in the short run, but definitely losing the war in the long run. That strategy is tremendously shortsighted.

Frankly, I'd prefer that we try to save this great nation of ours. For that reason, we absolutely need to continue putting money in motion rather than cutting recovery off at the knees.

Gunter...what would you do to fix things?

The Bush tax cuts are still in force NOW.

Yet, the economy has been in a downturn for 3 years now.

So how can you say they work?

Obviously they do not work.

The economic boom you cite was due to other causes, and in fact, much of it was already in motion well before the Bush tax cuts went into effect.

In fact, part of the side-effect of the Bush tax cuts was that large amounts of money disappeared offshore and out of our economy to tax havens during that time. Again, how can the machinery of the economy turn when the fuel is being bled off?

This is as simple as it gets.

As for stimulus working, virtually every economist in the nation agrees that the downturn would have been far worse had we not put stimulus spending into the economy.

Only part of the money has been spent, yet the clear signs of recovery are already there.

There is no contradiction whatsoever in any of what I've said. The machine needs fuel, plain and simple.