Friday, January 9, 2009

Current News and Analysis... The Barker Digest!

"The Barker Digest..."

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Anyway... regular readers know the deal; for first time visitors, this is where I post links to articles, op-eds, and other writings I've read and feel deserve a kudo in the form of suggesting that YOU will benefit by taking a peek and pondering, perhaps utilizing, the info gained.

So... click on the Comments link! Read. Respond. Feel free to add your own links to material you believe others - including myself - would benefit by considering.

Happy Friday!

10 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=316309986194207

I know... I know... I've posted these and similar representations of reality before... but these figures bear repeating. (And repeating... and repeating... and repeating...)

Excerpting...

-- Social Security and Medicare are headed for the pecuniary ditch, and they could take the U.S. economy down with them. In less than 10 years, Social Security will begin to pay out more in benefits than it takes in in tax revenues. By 2017, it will need $20 billion from taxpayers to meet its obligations. In 2020, Social Security will be underfunded by $96 billion. Five years later, it will owe $280 billion more than it generates in tax revenues, and only 2.4 taxpaying workers will support each retiree, down from the 3.3-to-1 workers-to-retiree ratio of 2007. (In 1945, by comparison, 42 workers existed per beneficiary.) In 2030, the gap swells to a half-trillion dollars, with only two workers per retiree. --

2017... 2020... 2030...

Why should you care? Well... first of all... hopefully you'll still be alive.

In 2030 my daughter will be 43. Hopefully she'll have a kid or two or three or more herself by then. (*SMILE*)

And then there's just the whole "patriotism" thing. (*SHRUG*) I care about my country. I want it to prosper long after I am gone. (*SHRUG*)

Continuing...

-- By 2041, Social Security will be essentially broke, having exhausted its trust fund, those dollars amassed through decades of surplus payroll tax revenues that Congress will have already squandered on general budget expenditures. --

GET THIS THROUGH YOUR HEADS...

THERE IS NO "TRUST FUND...!!!"

(That's what the "squandering" comment is all about.) (*SIGH*)

The Social Security "trust fund" is stuffed with IOU's. It's an accounting gimmick. The "trust fund" is nothing more than an unfunded future liability.

(*INHALE*) (*EXHALE*)

Continuing...

-- Medicare's future is just as bleak. It is already spending more than it is receiving in payroll taxes. Beginning this year through 2017, it will need $342 billion from the federal treasury to cover the hospital insurance costs run up by beneficiaries. Medicare trustees expect the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund to be insolvent by 2019. --

I know that in the Age of Bushbama/O'Bush balancing the books ain't a big priority... (*SNORT*)... but the numbers this op-ed is is citing are REAL.

Folks... you can fill up one credit card and then get another credit card and use that one to make minimum payments on the first one... (*SIGH*)... you can do this again and again... (*HEAVY SIGH*)... but sooner or later income vs. outflow is gonna reach a crisis point. (*FROWN*)

Check out the full op-ed. I've only excerpted numbers relating to the "problem." The op-ed proposes a solution. (*SHRUG*) A solution I've always supported by the way. (*SMILE*) Check it out!

BILL

William R. Barker said...

Global warm... err... COOLING 101:

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/01/08/its-cold-out-there

-- Since the end of 1998 global warming has ceased. In fact, it is getting colder out there. Two thousand eight was possibly the coldest year of this young century. Over the last two years temperatures have dropped by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. --

O.K. Anticipatory aside... no, I don't get all my environmental info off of R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. and the American Spectator. (*SMILE*) Still... I cite this source because it's an easy read and in the final analysis... Tyrrell's RIGHT!!! He's citing the same scientific FACT that I've read again and again, in newspapers, on websites, in scientific studies. (*SHRUG*)

There's just no way around it... the more you examine "global warming" through a 1990's political looking glass, the more distorted and WRONG the old assumptions and claims turn out to be when contrasted to the latest scientific findings.

(*SHRUG*)

Excerpting...

-- computer projections of global warming have been wrong. Carbon dioxide levels have indeed increased but not temperatures. So bundle up, Al. Last year, in many parts of the world, snowfalls reached levels not seen in decades. The Associated Press recently shrieked that global warming "is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid," but the facts are otherwise. The computer models that have predicted global warming have failed just as the computer models that predicted very few financial losses for the insurance industry from credit default swaps (CDSs) failed. --

If only Goreophiles would content themselves with "well, it sounded right at the time," instead of refusing to acknowledge present day reality...

(*SIGH*)

Continuing...

-- Christopher Booker, writing in London's Daily Telegraph, observes that "2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved." I am not sure I would go that far, but I do believe that the so-called consensus that the catastrophists claim exists among scientists has frayed, and it may be years before we know if global warming is long-range or what causes it. It may be caused by humans, but it may also be caused by natural activity on the sun. From the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization has come a very interesting book of essays that displays the diverse views of some very serious scientific minds. One contributor, Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT, raises the question: "Is the Global Warming Alarm Founded on Fact?" He acknowledges that over the decades there has been some global warming but argues that the predictions of catastrophe are greatly exaggerated. "Actual observations suggest that the sensitivity of the real climate is much less than that found in computer models whose sensitivity depends on processes that are clearly misrepresented." Then there is Freeman Dyson, who in the June 12, 2008 issue of the New York Review of Books writes very calmly about global warming. He assures us that "genetically engineered carbon-eating trees" are just around the corner, likely to be developed in twenty years, certain to be developed in fifty years. What is so promising about genetically engineered carbon-eating trees? Writes Dyson: "Carbon-eating trees could convert most of the carbon that they absorb from the atmosphere into some chemically stable form and bury it underground. Or they could convert the carbon into liquid fuels and other useful chemicals." --

(*SHRUG*)

Listen. I'm not a scientist... but I sure as hell believe in the scientific method! (*SMILE*)

BILL

William R. Barker said...

File Under: Rule of Law? What Rule of Law...?!?!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123172101824372319.html

-- ...Senator Dick Durbin's plan to allow judges to rewrite mortgage contracts for borrowers in Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Under the Illinois Democrat's plan, which is earmarked for inclusion in the pending stimulus bill, judges could reduce the amount of principal, lower the interest rate, and change the length of the mortgage term. --

(*SIGH*)

BILL

William R. Barker said...

File Under: %$)*%)(U@#$_)%&@)$#*%&!!!

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aGgZR28hHCPk&refer=columnist_hassett

-- The Congressional Budget Office last week forecast that the 2009 federal budget deficit will be about $1.2 trillion, roughly triple what it was in 2008. We should hope we are that lucky. The deficit will be that low only if Uncle Sam dies and goes to heaven. --

(*RUEFUL GRIN*)

-- Make no mistake, the CBO forecast is the lowest of lowball estimates. It excludes President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed stimulus package and understates the likely costs of the Iraq war, among other things. A comprehensive estimate that accounts for all “known knowns,” as Donald Rumsfeld might say, would be higher by about half a trillion dollars. If the stimulus bill passes, the deficit next year will be $1.7 trillion. --

Remember back in the "good old days" pre-November 2006 when Democrats railed against deficits and promised if elected to bring back a surplus...??? (*SMIRK*)

-- The whole world’s military spending in 2006 totaled a little less than $1.2 trillion. So next year’s U.S. deficit could cover that and still have $500 billion left over for building bridges....When President George W. Bush was first elected, total federal government spending was about $1.7 trillion. In other words, the difference between federal outlays and federal revenue this year will be bigger than the entire government was as recently as 2000. How could the deficit increase so much, so fast? Part of the story is the decline in revenue, which the CBO forecasts will be $166 billion less than it was in 2008, a 6.6 percent decline. But relative to 2000, revenue has actually increased from $2 trillion to a scheduled $2.4 trillion in 2009. The deficit has skyrocketed because spending has grown from $1.8 trillion in 2000 to a projected $3.5 trillion in 2009, fully 95 percent higher. --

(*SIGH*)

-- Each year, Congress passed pork-laden expenditure bills, which became part of the long-run baseline the minute they became law. Each time that the federal government wasted a billion dollars, it created budget space to waste $1 billion again and again, ad infinitum. That’s perhaps the scariest fact about next year’s budget. The skyrocketing spending of 2009 will be the CBO baseline for every year after that. It will be easy to provide health care to everyone; the budget space will be blocked out. Indeed, Congress can spend with impunity in years to come, covered by the protective shroud of the CBO baseline that this year delivers. We can ride big government spending and trillion-dollar deficits all the way to 2017, when the Social Security trust fund itself starts running deficits. This year may establish a government-spending black hole with gravity strong enough to suck the U.S. economy over the event horizon. Such a spending path has two possible endgames. Neither is pretty. --

One more time...

-- Print or Tax. The Federal Reserve could print enough money to accommodate all of that debt, in which case the dollar will collapse and the U.S. will be looking at a South-America-style run on its debt. Or the U.S. government could get its fiscal act in order with higher taxes. For that to happen, income taxes would approximately have to double. While advocates of Keynesian-style stimulus are correct that this economy is terrible enough to warrant dramatic action, it is hard to understand how such a fiscal path might help. So what if second-quarter gross domestic product blips up a little bit? What business is going to expand its operations with the mother of all tax hikes peeking over the horizon? If government spending provided such a wonderful boost to the economy, we would be in Nirvana already. If we want to create optimism about our future, we need to provide a reason. Putting a ring road around every city in the U.S. will not accomplish that. The only sensible path is for the U.S. to put its long-term fiscal house in order. Without that, this year’s stimulus will likely be a historic flop. --

(*SIGH*)

I need a drink.

BILL

William R. Barker said...

http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11444354

Actually... let's go straight to the primary source..

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2008/joe2008_jfcom.pdf

-- There is one dynamic in the literature of weak and failing states that has received relatively little attention, namely the phenomenon of “rapid collapse.” For the most part, weak and failing states represent chronic, long-term problems that allow for management over sustained periods. The collapse of a state usually comes as a surprise, has a rapid onset, and poses acute problems. The collapse of Yugoslavia into a chaotic tangle of warring nationalities in 1990 suggests how suddenly and catastrophically state collapse can happen - in this case, a state which had hosted the 1984 Winter
Olympics at Sarajevo, and which then quickly became the epicenter of the ensuing civil war. In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico. Some forms of collapse in Pakistan would carry with it the likelihood of a sustained violent and bloody civil and sectarian war, an even bigger haven for violent extremists, and the question of what would happen to its nuclear weapons. That “perfect storm” of uncertainty alone might require the engagement of U.S. and coalition forces into a situation of immense complexity and danger with no guarantee they could gain control of the weapons and with the real possibility that a nuclear weapon might be used. The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by the Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone. --

(*SIGH*)

BILL

William R. Barker said...

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=316828833910825

Excerpting...

-- Incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells the Senate that global warming "threatens our very existence" and she'll shape a foreign policy to fight it. --

(*HEADACHE*)

Jeez... the woman doesn't even bother to us the "new and improved" PC phrase "climate change."

No. With world temperatures on the decline for the last five... seven... (something like that) years, Mrs. Clinton is still focused on "Global Warming."

(*FROSTBITE*) (*GRIN*)

Continuing...

-- Clinton pledged during her confirmation hearing Tuesday that reaching another deal like the 1997 Kyoto Accord would be one of her highest priorities. "America must be a leader in developing and implementing a global and coordinated response to climate change," she told the Senate Foreign Relations panel, even as conflict continues in Gaza, war rages in Afghanistan and the nuclear clock ticks in Tehran. --

(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

That'a'girl!

Hmm... I wonder how realistic Mrs. Clinton's "weather control" proposals will be? Hmm... federal funding for project like http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeatherControlMachine perhaps?

(*SMILE*)

Continuing...

-- She praised the incoming chairman, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as "among the very first in a growing chorus from both parties to recognize that climate change is an unambiguous security threat." "At the extreme it (climate change) threatens our very existence. But well before that point, it could well incite new wars of an old kind over basic resources — like food, water and arable land," she said. --

But... but... but...

Continuing...

-- But the real likely result of a warmer planet would be increased plant life from more CO2 — the basis of all life on earth — and longer growing seasons. Ironically, it is environmentalists, with their passion for biofuels, who insist on using food in our gas tanks, raising food prices, consuming arable land, polluting our water through farm runoff and promoting world hunger. --

(*SHRUG*)

Continuing...

-- Why, in an economy reeling from a market collapse, are we still considering imposing tough emissions controls certain to kill both jobs and economic growth? The EPA said the cap-and-trade program in the recently stalled Lieberman-Warner bill would have caused a loss of $3 trillion in GDP in a $14 trillion economy. A joint analysis undertaken by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation concluded that passage of the Lieberman-Warner bill would have cost the average American household $6,752 per year, with jobs lost totaling as many as 4 million by 2030. Weather Channel founder and eminent meteorologist John Coleman says: "The sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer sunspots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost 10 straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where's the global warming?" --

Ahh... TEN years...

(*GRIN*)

Seriously. Not funny. The truth is, the Pied Pipers of the "Global Warming" (aka "Climate Change") movement pose a greater threat to America and the world than either "global warming" or "global cooling."

BILL

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123206822799888351.html

Excerpting...

-- Ever since the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program was exposed in 2005, critics have denounced it as illegal and unconstitutional. Those allegations rested solely on the fact that the Administration did not first get permission from the special court created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Well, as it happens, the same FISA court would beg to differ. In a major August 2008 decision released yesterday in redacted form, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, the FISA appellate panel, affirmed the government's Constitutional authority to collect national-security intelligence without judicial approval. The case was not made public before yesterday... --

(*SIGH*)

Not exactly in line with the mainstream media take on the wiretaps, huh? (*SNORT*)

Oh, well... the Democrats and their MSM allies won the public relations war. So what if they were wrong on the merits... right...? (*SIGH*)

Continuing...

-- ...the Constitution bans only "unreasonable" search and seizure, not all searches and seizures, and the Fourth Amendment allows for exceptions such as those under a President's Article II war powers. The courts have been explicit on this point. In 1980, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Truong that "the Executive need not always obtain a warrant for foreign intelligence surveillance." The FISA appeals court said in its 2002 opinion In re Sealed Case that the President has "inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information" and took "for granted" that "FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power." FISA established a process by which certain domestic wiretaps in the context of the Cold War could be approved, not a limit on what wiretaps were ever allowed. Though the decision applies only to the stopgap FISA measure in place between 2007 and 2008, it sets a precedent. For all the political hysteria and media dishonesty about George W. Bush "spying on Americans," this fight was never about anything other than staging an ideological raid on the President's war powers. Barack Obama ought to be thankful that the FISA court has knocked the bottom out of this gambit, just in time for him to take office. --

(*SIGH*)

And, yeah... seriously... I concur. Not only should Obama be thankful that the FISA court has knocked the bottom out of this particular (and unfortunately successful) political gambit of the liberal Democrats, but we should ALL be thankful that as Obama takes office this presidential power has been upheld.

BILL

William R. Barker said...

File Under: God Bless Victor Davis Hanson!

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=316913905605100

Excerpting...

-- Euphemism comes from the Greek word euphemia, which means "using the good word" — usually in place of the accurate bad one. Recently we've become experts at it. Printing trillions more dollars and growing government to cover new debts isn't so bad if we call it "stimulus." That is far smarter than saying something honest like, "I propose a new $1 trillion debt program." --

A point I've made many times myself.

"Investment" is another one of those euphemism you hear and read constantly nowadays when what they REALLY mean is "SPENDING;" spending BORROWED money at that. (*SMIRK*)

-- The old-fashioned spendthrift policies we used to ridicule as congressional pork and "earmarks" are now justified under that ubiquitous nice word, "stimulus." If funding another questionable museum in your district was once congressional pork barreling, it'll now be a patriotic act to get the economy moving again. --

AMEN, brother Victor! Testify!!! (*WINK*)

-- ...the government apparently doesn't only want to free up credit to get us back to our profligate habits of borrowing what we don't have so we can buy what we don't need. It also would like to create new programs to build infrastructure; guarantee new loans; and offer additional credits, bailouts and entitlements. Or in the words of incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." --

Yep. Ya can't make this stuff up... (*SIGH*)

-- Traditional conservative custodians of the budget can't say much. They are largely discredited on matters of finance. During the last eight years of Republican prominence in Congress and the White House, the government borrowed as never before. --

Which is why early in 2006 I left the GOP and re-registered as a Democrat in order to make the statement that enough was enough.

AND...

Which was why in November 2006 I voted AGAINST my (then, now former) RINO Congresswoman Sue Kelly and FOR left winger John Hall (who won!).

Yep. Sometimes you've gotta cut off your nose to spite your face.

In 2008... I voted for Bob Barr. When push came to shove I just COULDN'T vote for John McCain.

-- The government-affiliated, underregulated and corrupt Fannie Mae may have collapsed. And it may have helped to cause the subprime mortgage meltdown. No matter — the proposed "don't waste a crisis" cure seems to use that model of government-guaranteed corporations to absorb as much of the economy as possible. --

Burmuda Triangle straight ahead...? FULL STEAM AHEAD cry co-captains Bush and Obama!

(As "Buzz" Paulson echoes... "TO BANKRUPTCY AND BEYOND...!!!)

(*HEADACHE*)

-- Still, no one knows whether the present borrowing and printing of money to give short-term credits, cash grants and jobs to Americans will get the economy moving again or simply reinforce the bad habits that got us here in the first place. --

(*RAISING MY HAND*)

Uhh... uhmm... excuse me...

I KNOW!!! I KNOW!!!

These asinine and profligate policies not only WON'T set the economy right, they'll lead to stagflation by late 2009/early 2010.

(*SIGH*)

-- Even in the current mess, recent unemployment figures are around 7% — not the 10% of the recession of the early 1980s, much less the 25% rate that peaked in the Great Depression. --

Well... TRUE... but to paraphrase incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, "Never waste a good opportunity to fearmonger!"

-- Meanwhile, energy prices have plunged, saving consumers and the country hundreds of billions of dollars. --

Well... THANK GOD for lower energy prices... but how grateful we should be depends upon where we set the baseline. Compared to my baseline of 1982-2005... I'm not looking at today's prices as "saving" me money so much as they're helping to balance out the oil price spikes of 2005-2008; three years worth of spikes that cost me personally thousands upon thousands of dollars. (*SHRUG*)

-- We are going to have to pay these debts back by cutting federal spending and entitlements or raising taxes — or both. Or we can convince panicky debt holders abroad to loan us even more money for years at near-zero interest rates. Or we can try simply printing trillions of new dollars to inflate the economy, while hoping that creditors don't mind being paid with funny money. --

Let's say it together folks...

S*T*A*G*F*A*T*I*O*N is a'com'n...

-- What got us in this debacle was the lack of self-control on the part of consumers who borrowed to spend more than they could pay back, rapid growth in government debt, and Wall Street speculators who wanted obscene returns they had not earned. --

Yep. And now these clowns want ME to bail 'em out. (*SIGH*)

-- It would be a pity if government trumped these bad examples and turned some helpful federal loan guarantees of troubled banks into a permanent state-run economy with crushing debt for generations to come. --

Yeah. And it'll be a miracle if what Hanson fears DOESN'T come to pass. (*SIGH*)

Let us pray:

Our Father...
Who art a conservative...

(*SMILE*)

BILL

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123215327787492291.html

Excerpts...

-- Democrats like to claim the 1990s were a golden age while the Bush years have been disastrous. But as the nearby chart shows, Mr. Bush inherited a recession. The dot-com bubble had burst in 2000, and the economy was sinking even before the shock of 9/11, the corporate scandals and Sarbanes-Oxley. Mr. Bush's original tax-cut proposal was designed in part as insurance against such a downturn. However, to win over Senate Democrats, Mr. Bush both phased in the tax rate reductions and settled for politically popular but economically feckless tax rebate checks. --

Yep. Bush couldn't and wouldn't fight for what was right to he settled for counterproductive half-measures... FECKLESS indeed. (*SIGH*)

-- By late 2002, the economy was struggling again -- which is when Mr. Bush proposed his second round of tax cuts. This time the tax rate reductions were immediate, and they included cuts in capital gains and dividends designed to spur business incentives. As the tax cuts became law in late May 2003, the recovery began in earnest. Growth averaged nearly 4% over the next three years, the jobless rate fell from 6.3% in June 2003 to 4.4% in October 2006, and real wages began to grow despite rising food and energy prices. The 2003 tax cut was the high point of Bush economic policy. --

(*SHRUG*)

While I tend to question the claim that real wages began to grow (I'm guessing it's based upon the deliberate mischaracterization of inflation via government methodology) the other figures are fairly trustworthy.

-- Mr. Bush's spending record is less admirable, especially during his first term. He indulged the majority Republicans on Capitol Hill, refusing to veto overspending and giving in to their demand that the Medicare prescription drug benefit include only modest market reforms. Even those reforms have helped to restrain drug costs, but now Democrats are set to repeal them and the main Bush legacy will be the new taxpayer liabilities. --

Yep. (*SIGH*) Bush's refusal to rein in Congress (particularly the RINO Congresses) was and is inexcusable.

-- the budget deficit did fall mid-decade, as tax revenues soared with the expansion. In fiscal 2007, the deficit hit $161 billion, or an economically trivial 1.2% of GDP. That seems like a distant memory after the bailout blowout of the last few months, but the point is that the Bush tax cuts aren't responsible for the deficits. Before the recession hit, federal tax revenues had climbed above their postwar average of 18.3% of GDP. --

Yep. (*SHRUG*) Classic Laffer Curve.

(BTW... I don't call ANY deficit "trivial.")

-- While his Administration was handling the fiscal levers, the Federal Reserve was pushing the monetary accelerator to the floor. In reaction to the dot-com implosion and the collapse in business investment, Alan Greenspan rapidly cut interest rates to spur housing and consumer spending. In June 2003, even as the tax cuts were passing and the economy took off, he cut the fed funds rate to 1% and kept it there for a year. His stimulus worked - far too well. The money boom created a commodity price spike as well as a subsidy for credit across the economy. Economist John Taylor of Stanford has analyzed the magnitude of this monetary mistake in a new paper that assesses government's contribution to the financial panic. The second chart compares the actual fed funds rate this decade with what it would have been had the Fed stayed within the policy lanes of the previous 20 years. "This extra easy policy was responsible for accelerating the housing boom and thereby ultimately leading to the housing bust," writes Mr. Taylor, who worked in the first-term Bush Treasury, though not on monetary affairs, and is known for the "Taylor rule" for determining how central banks should adjust interest rates. By pushing all of this excess credit into the economy, the Fed created a housing and mortgage mania that Wall Street was only too happy to be part of. Yes, many on the Street abandoned their normal risk standards. But they were goaded by an enormous subsidy for debt. Wall Street did get "drunk" but Washington had set up the open bar. --

I'll NEVER understand how such highly credentialed individuals can be so wrong so often. (*SIGH*) I was bitching and moaning about all this from the getgo and I never took a single economics class in college!

(*HEADACHE*)

-- ...most everyone else was also drinking the free booze: from homebuyers who put nothing down for a loan, to a White House that bragged about record home ownership, to the Democrats who promoted and protected Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (Those two companies helped turbocharge the mania by using a taxpayer subsidy to attract trillions of dollars of foreign capital into U.S. housing.) No one wanted the party to end, though sooner or later it had to. While the Fed is most to blame, the Administration encouraged the credit excesses. It populated the Fed Board of Governors with Mr. Greenspan's protégés, notably Ben Bernanke and Donald Kohn, who helped to create the mania and even now deny all responsibility. Meantime, Mr. Bush's three Treasury Secretaries knew little about the subject, and if anything were inclined to support easier money and a weaker dollar in the name of reducing the trade deficit. We know because numerous Bush officials sneered at the monetary warnings in these columns going back to 2003. When the bust finally arrived with a vengeance in 2007, the political timing couldn't have been worse. Mr. Bush tried to rally with one more fiscal "stimulus," but he repeated his 2001 mistake and agreed to another round of tax rebates. They did little good. The Administration might have prevented the worst of the panic had it sought some sort of TARP-like financing for the banking system months or a year earlier than it did last autumn. But neither the Treasury nor the FDIC seemed to appreciate how big the banking system's problems were. Their financial triage was well meaning but came too late and in a frenzy that invited mistakes. This history is crucial to understand, both for the Democrats who now assume the levers of power and for Republicans who will want to return to power some day. Mr. Bush and his team did many things right after inheriting one bubble. They were ruined by monetary excess that created a second, more dangerous credit mania. They forgot one of the main lessons of Reaganomics, which is the importance of stable money. --

And what's the lesson, here, folks...??? (*SIGH*)

BARKER FOR DICTATOR!!!

(*RUEFUL GRIN*)

As to comparing the Bush record of incompetence to my prediction of what we'll get with Obama...

YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTH'N YET!!!

(*SIGH*)

BILL

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123214833023191881.html

Excerpting...

-- While we've been warned about the trillion-dollar deficit Mr. Obama is facing, accrual accounting and properly audited numbers from the U.S. Treasury Department would show the deficit last year was $3 trillion, according to this former Rhodes scholar and investment banker. "The U.S. government uses cash accounting," he says. "That is illegal for any enterprise of any size in America except for the U.S. government. Every for-profit business, every not-for-profit business, every state and local government has to use real accounting except for Uncle Sam." --

-- The difference is because the reported national debt does not reflect the IOUs implied by Medicare and Social Security promises to future beneficiaries. If you are a business that has committed to spend $100 in the future, you have to acknowledge it now in your accounting instead of treating it as a free lunch. Failing to do so would be a criminal offense for Dow Jones, he tells me, so why does the government get away with it? --

-- "Medicare alone is $34 trillion in all. We don't even know how to measure Medicaid, but it's probably an equal amount. So just right there Barack Obama is inheriting over $60 trillion of problems. This is not counting the bailout, or Social Security or anything." He continues, "The argument as a Democrat is that the best way to preserve those programs is to prepare for their needs. The way to destroy them is to ignore their needs." --

-- Continuing to gloss over the numbers has real consequences. Last year, for instance, Standard & Poor's reported that the U.S. Treasury bond would lose its AAA rating by 2012 because of the way Washington has been carrying on. America would have the same credit rating as Estonia and Greece, and then the same as Poland and Brazil, and then it would be like . . . Mexico. "Yet no one knows about this," he says. --

BILL