Wingers and the Economy
| Fri Nov. 28, 2008 9:47 AM PST
WINGERS AND THE ECONOMY....I read Charles Krauthammer's column this morning — yet more proof, if more were needed, that people with very high IQs can also be very, very stupid — and I got to wondering. A developing meme on the right suggests that our recent economic meltdown isn't really the fault of the free market having a heart attack at all, but rather the fault of the government performing triple bypass surgery in response to what was really no more than some free market heartburn. And so I wonder: Is this really going to be the National Review/WSJ editorial page/Grover Norquist line going forward? And if it is, what's the right response? Sober op-eds explaining why they're wrong? Or dismissive laughter? I'm thinking the latter.
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Comments
Is this really going to be the National Review/WSJ editorial page/Grover Norquist line going forward?
You forgot Michelle Malkin. She's been pushing this nonsense for months. I'm guessing she has a cache of gold bars buried under the garage.
Submitted by Linkmeister (not verified) on Fri Nov. 28, 2008 10:17 AM PST.
Wall Street has always been influenced by political activity in Washington. If Krauthammer never noticed it before, it's because he wasn't looking.
It gives far too much credit to Krauthammer to imagine that he is stupid. I think he well realizes that whatever he is peddling is is bullocks, but he just doesn't care. He pushes it because that's his job.
Malkin, OTOH, is stupid enough to believe her own crap.
Krauthammer is always the same, he approaches the threshold of producing a real thought, and then backtracks because it would violate ideological purity.
It's possible to think that greater govt involvement in the economy is necessary and desirable and also be concerned about excessive political influence. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. But the right has not been comfortable with complicated thought over the past decade.
Well, let's see:
Conservatives were successful in removing regulations that restricted what financial institutions could do and how they did things. The distinction between banks and other types of financial institutions such as investment houses substantially disappeared.
The people in those businesses looked to line their pockets rather than make prudent decisions that would ensure profits beyond the next quarter.
Things fell apart and an administration that got elected by exploiting the wedge issues that hard-line conservatives hold dear went and doled out money to its friends, rather nonchalantly ignoring how it told Congress it would use the money it was given.
Hmm, seems standard operating procedure to me.
Of course the Right has to deny any responsibility and blame Liberals, which is also standard operating procedure. Can't accept blame, no sir! That would be too adult-like.
Sober op-eds explaining why they're wrong? Or dismissive laughter?
Both please.
They need to be taken apart with the highest level of intellectual skill and forensic acuity, and mocked ruthlessly until they feel the shame they deserve.
Not like that's possible of Charlie the Wheelchair General, but a guy can dream.
So I carefully read the Krauthammer article, trying to find anything in it which might have sent Kevin off on this little bender and came up blank. Everything which he said was pretty obvious and uncontroversial.
Perhaps this is why Kevin didn't discuss that article's content at all - he just bounced off it into unsubstantiated speculation and smearing.
In all: a most weird posting.
a: So I carefully read the Krauthammer article, trying to find anything in it which might have sent Kevin off on this little bender and came up blank.
So where did Krauthammer discuss how we got into this situation? He talks about the politicization of the market, but ignores that the reason business people are so fixated on the political efforts to 'rescue' the economy is that they are looking to politicians to save their butts. The business people made poor decisions and thus needed the politicians to save them. Blaming politicians is denying reality and definitely directing blame away from the perpetrators of massive malfeasance.
The wingers have made a huge mistake!!! They have come out with a meme that is testable in reality, unlike most of their crap.
If they are right, we are in for massive inflation. If they are wrong, the economy will either tank, stagnate, or recover.
Unless we have massive inflation, they are wrong.
I'm with 'a'. Kevin, you briefly mention Krauthammer and then describe a "developing meme on the right" in which the government is overreacting to "free market heartburn." Krauthammer's article never states that the free market is not, in and of itself, in serious trouble. He is merely arguing that the long term effects of the cure are worse than the short term effects of the (admittedly horrible) disease.
Kevin, please read and write more intelligently. Your sloppy thinking on the bailout issue besmirches the good name of Mother Jones.
Submitted by Rugosa (not verified) on Fri Nov. 28, 2008 4:02 PM PST.
The market got what it wanted from the politicians - deregulation - with the predictable result - financial meltdown. Therefore, politicization of markets is to blame for the current crisis. Makes a certain amount of perverted sense. I vote for derisive laughter.
Who says they couldn't succeed? They convinced a lot of people for a long time that we could have "won" in Vietnam if the media and the liberals had only "let us."
Stab-in-the-back. You think people are too smart to be taken in by it this time? Think again.
Submitted by Nat (not verified) on Fri Nov. 28, 2008 8:21 PM PST.
Mike Jones: you just explained a lot.
Submitted by Rick B (not verified) on Fri Nov. 28, 2008 10:20 PM PST.
The people at National Review, Paul Gigot with his minions at WSJ, Phil Gramm, Dick Armey, Ron Paul, Grover Norquist and their ilk have made lucrative and socially satisfying careers out of arguing for the very free market fundamentalist, low-taxes passive small government ideology that has caused the current economic mess. They can't admit being wrong. It will destroy their world.
Is it any wonder that they are desperately looking for some semi-plausible explanation for the economic disaster that doesn't require them to take personal responsibility for the economic crisis?
These are not people who are famous for recognizing and admitting their errors. The few movement conservatives capable of that have already jumped ship and are paddling away with the rest of the rats.
The remaining ones, those incapable of admitting error and learning from reality, are instead searching for a common fantasy they can all spout in unison, hoping that their unanimity within their shrinking circle will allow them to continue living in their fantasy world and still act like big men in those circles. Like the NRO, they are going to purge those who don't go along with the common line.
These really are people for whom ideology trumps both expertise and a pragmatic understanding of reality. They live in an ideological fantasy world, and when reality is so unkind as to intrude on that fantasy world they frantically spend their time trying to create a new fantasy world the replace the one reality messed up.
Submitted by Rick B (not verified) on Fri Nov. 28, 2008 10:35 PM PST.
Mike Jones
An excellent description of Libertarians and Randians.
Why is it so often engineers, technicians and financial professionals who become Libertarians? I consider the ex-Air Force flight surgeon and later Ob-Gen specialist Ron Paul to be among the technicians.
Do they select their professions because the profession allows them to continue their Libertarian fantasy, or do people in those professions just tend to be more Libertarian? Or is there just a personality type that is likely to both become a Libertarian and similarly likely to choose those careers? I suspect that most adapt their profession to their Libertarian beliefs, but I don't know.
The problem with Krauthammer's column is not that he blames market volatility on political events. The frenzied maneuvering to get bailouts, avoid bailouts, or avoid looking like a bailout is necessary, is creating an environment where companies literally can't be trusted, and investors are reacting accordingly, and that kind of falls under the category of "duh."
The problem is that he lumps the need for a new energy economy in with that volatility. He suggests that the government is only going to exacerbate that market volatility by insisting that auto companies that want a bailout be more competitive and responsible in the future by creating cars that are more like the Prius -- which, by the way, is the car that a lot of people are buying instead of American cars.
Krauthammer doesn't seem to be arguing against intervention, but against a certain type of intervention. And he doesn't really have the courage to say one way or another whether the government should let the automakers fail or just give them tons of money with no conditions. He just says they definitely shouldn't try to force them to create a product that is more efficient and creates fewer carbon emissions. The dishonesty in his argument is that he uses one concept (market fluctuations due to "the political economy," as though the market has never fluctuated before due to external events) to argue unconvincingly about what to do with these companies that have driven themselves into a dead end and have asked the government for the money to do a U-turn.
