For the first time, the Obama administration is considering an economic policy which makes some sense.
As the Washington Post writes:
The Obama administration is developing an initiative to take money from the $700 billion program for the banking system and make it available to millions of small businesses, which officials say are essential to any economic recovery because they employ so many people, according to sources familiar with the plan.
The new effort -- which would represent a striking shift from the rescue program's original mandate -- would direct billions of bailout dollars toward a program that aims more at saving jobs than righting the financial system.
As I've repeatedly pointed out, Tarp is not really limited to a certain amount. So - if implemented - the program would not necessarily take a fixed portion of the $700 billion Tarp bailout funds from the banks and give them to small businesses. In theory, the Treasury could give trillions to banks and give billions to small businesses.
Of course, it would be better to give money directly to the taxpayers - that's the way to stimulate the economy (although others argue for other measures).
But I like the fact that Treasury is at least talking about switching from throwing money at the giant banks to giving some to the little guy.
Maybe the big boys are starting to feel the heat from the populist anger at the fat cats and their sugar daddies at Government Sachs.
Thankfully, my choice of focus in disciplines has not been economics.
ReplyDeleteIt's a rare moment when I might get swept off my feet -either by any analysis -or the resulting promulgation of policy initiatives, rules or regulations. So, when I read here that, "For the first time, the Obama Administration is considering an economic policy that makes some sense," my skin curled with a creepy sensation.
One of the things that makes for good writing of any genre, -is an adequate foundational basis in reality for a writer's ideas. This is one reason writers like Twain and Chesterfield -in his "Letters to His Son"- have made such colossal contributions to the library of humanity.
If you haven't read all of Twain and the compilation of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son, -you are in a bucket full of ample evidence of the fact that no one ever became well-read in university.
One of the categorical cliffs one might fall off in their writing, is a belief that government can do anything well, which has positioned directly below it -yet another categorical cliff -for all the unwary Wylie E. Coyotes to fall off again, -the cliff representing the idea -that anything turns out the way government planners plan it.
Here, the fatigued writer of this article, who writes under the unlikely pseudonym, George W-, has not only fallen off both cliffs, he apparently has contracted a likely fatal case of Stimulus-itus -possibly from reading too many online government propaganda leaflets.
Am I sure? Yes, I am sure.
Primates, within which group we are clearly classified, are thieves to the very last one, -right down to the near-thimble-sized primate, the Pigmy Tarsier. We are no different.
And pouring easy-stimulus-money into the country's small business arena -is only going further drag the business ability and ethic of this country into the sewer-rat-infested gutter it mostly has become already.
I think the writer further is laboring under some false sense of history, that economic progress might somehow benefit humanity at large. If so, his assumption is far worse than tenuous.
Some ten years ago, I wrote in an online journal, a satirical expose of current events, that the then reigning Rumsfeldian regime would not allow the U.S. to be challenged economically or militarily anywhere in the world, -and that these bumblers would surely do something incredibly stupid -should such a challenge arise.
Those war mongers have essentially succeeded in their defense of the Don't_Tread_on_Me bully-empire, and, -we have entered into a new stage, sort of a Post-Bush Era of loathesome economic opportunity, if you will, and even if you won't.
In this era, we have a new fed chairman -who has his own ideas about the world this new craftier regime now juggles. Those who are not familiar with how such things transpire, are quite nervous about the new fed chairman's juggling abilities. These spectators add to the drama of the well-crafted juggler's act.
Rest assured, folks. Ben Bernanke sees himself as something of a world-economy Sun King, -a Louis the XIV sort of guy.
If you are up on your world history, you would do well to picture Ben as the subject in the famous portrait of Louis the XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud.
Ben Bernanke and his sidekick, The Court_Jester-esque -Little Timmy Geithner, think they are embarking on a new Enlightenment, -set off by their stewardship of a new economic era of enlightened prosperity.
Princeton and Dartmouth are such a fine Universities where young men study -but fail to become well-read.
But then again, this notion that economic progress -confers upon humanity -some benefit- is a common delusion not harbored by this philosopher.
This notion the economic prosperity confers some benefit upon humanity, -is where humanity lost its way, -back during the first Enlightenment -made possible by the first Sun King.
This may turn out to be a scam since the likes of Buffett, Trump and Gates have showed up in the ranks of those getting "small business" consideration by the government.
ReplyDeleteHow is this going to work??? It will work temporarily, but it's not going to fix anything. Yeah, at least if we taxpayers could pay off our debts, we'd have more consumer power. The people who run this country either want it to fail on purpose, or they're just that VAPID. I mean, once there are only rich people left acquiring money, who is going to pay all the taxes? Can't expect they will be paying everyone else's employment insurance!?
ReplyDeleteFor almost ten years, Tim Eyman and his cohorts have done everything they can to undermine the people's trust in government, decimate the common wealth, and destroy the public works energy that enrich and protect our communities.
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