Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] why our economy is a mess

[Jack Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 17:30 -0600, Mike Miller wrote:
> Explanation:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/opinion/03krugman.html
> 
> Summary:  Neocon faith in the free market allowed "innovation to get ahead 
> of regulation."  

Let me get this straight: he thinks that the U.S. economy is down
because of too MUCH innovation and too LITTLE government regulation?
Wow...

> In other words, ideology trumped logic

Economics is largely based in logic- actions are done to optimize the
amount of money somebody or some group has. Regulation is done though
politics, which is driven primarily by ideology. Wow again...

>  and we allowed our 
> Republican leadership to do a little experiment on us, kinda like the Iraq 
> invasion.  Well, also like the Iraq invasion, this experiment was a 
> failure.  

Unless you define "anything less than a completely perfect outcome" as a
failure, neither the actions in Iraq nor the economy are failures.
Iraq's stability has progressed significantly since the time we ousted
Saddam a few years ago. It is certainly still a work-in-progress, but
deposing a dictator and then handling the power vacuum that ensues isn't
a trivial task by any means. It takes considerable effort and several
years, just like any other large-scale project. The economy is even less
of a "failure" than the war in Iraq. Sure, it is not perfect. But it has
remained relatively stable even though periods of stress placed upon it
(such as the most recent fiasco where banks made risky loans and got
defaulted upon.) Perhaps the 1929 stock market crash would be classified
as a failure, but what we have had even in not-so-recent memory has not
been *anwhere* close to that.

Also, consider the alternative. Would you prefer that we end up like
Europe, where it is very hard to even find a job? Very high taxes and
governmental regulation kill an economy similar to emptying an entire
belt from .50 Browning M2 into a deer kills it. It's not only dead, but
there's nothing even remotely salvageable. 

> I hope we can at least learn something from this!

Yes, Krugman is absolutely delusional and the New York Times op-ed page
is funny in a melodramatic, over-inflammatory kind of way.

--Jack


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