Comments on: American Mythstory¹

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:45:11 +0000

Recessions and Depressions end when people start to believe in the future and begin spending to make it happen. The key to Keynes is getting money to the people who will spend it and start the circulation of the economy moving. There is no point in producing anything, if there is no money to buy.

This one is going to be worse than others because there is no “cushion” in the system. Too many have no savings and have used all of their available credit. They have no choice but to stop spending.

If the Hedgemony hadn’t restricted its revenue with the unjustified tax cuts and increased its spending at the same time, this wouldn’t have been as bad as it is. All of those T-bills to finance the deficits have soaked up a lot of the available credit, so there is less real money in circulation. Anything they could do wrong, they did do wrong. This was Reaganomics on steroids.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:42:31 +0000

well, those are some of the things obama's been projecting [under the high-flying hope-and-change rhetoric] -- that he's a pragmatist, ready to listen to and use other people's ideas, willing to lean populist if we'll hold his feet to the fire and demand it of him... some other things too iirc, but i could be misremembering some of them. this campaign has in fact sounded very like fdr's first campaign if you only read obama's words [in general, without parsing them too strictly], and not those of his fan base. so yeah, i do think he wants to go down in history as the next fdr. the problem as i see it though, is that it looks like he's got the process figured out, but that the ideas he wants to try first will be clintonian, with probably a slight rightward lean. imnsho, though, it's the prescription [keynes, baby! keynes!] that saved us that first time, more than the process, and i'm not at all sure obama sees it that way. the truly scary thought, the one i don't let slither to my forebrain very often, is that obama may even buy into that whole it was really ww2 that ended the depression.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:40:55 +0000

After the primary, there wasn’t much choice left thanks to the entrenched two party system. You take your chances with what is there. I opted for a third party, but knew that people were already projecting their belief onto Obama and not listening to him. I don’t blame Obama, he wasn’t hiding who and what he represented. It was the Obamaniacs who distorted reality, not the candidate.

You would have to wonder who he thinks FDR was, Hipparchia. He has a misconception of Lincoln, so I think he has an idealized view of FDR. FDR was very free form. He would try anything, but dumped it if he didn’t think it was working. He was a very performance-based manager. He had idea people feeding him ideas, and always had multiple alternate ready if something failed to produce results. He has been pictured as some kind of genius with a clear vision of what needed to be done, when he was actually the ultimate pragmatist, willing to do whatever it took.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:18:03 +0000

obama has all along been making noises that indicate he'd like to be fdr2.0, but he keeps surrounding himself with all the wrong people if he wants to actually implement a new new deal.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:13:09 +0000

The main reason I voted for Obama is that McCain was more dangerous to the republic. I’m neither particularly proud of my vote nor particularly enthusiastic about Obama; I just have a commitment to vote strategically for the candidate I think will do the least damage.

This was all a great deal more fun when I was young…

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:57:53 +0000

Well, he might surprise us all and actually do something that is not to the right of Bill Clinton, but I’m beginning to doubt it.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:40:00 +0000

from frederick's link -- And if Obama really wanted change, if he really wanted to honor progressives who backed him early on and then did the grunt work against McCain, he’d nominate Dennis Kucinich as Secretary of State. actually, a real progressive would set up a whole new department and put kucinich at the head of it.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:53:25 +0000

I really don’t understand why anyone thought that Obama was liberal or progressive. I rejected both Obama and Clinton early on from consideration as they had more in common with moderate Republicans that Democrats.

I voted for Edwards in the primary, before Obama told Florida Democrats that they didn’t count and I left the party after 44 years. Progressives don’t disenfranchise voters.

Nothing he has ever done suggests that he will be a liberal. I think too many liberal Democrats looked at the “color of skin” and not “the content of his character” when deciding to support him.

I’m still waiting for something progressive to happen, but I’m not holding my breath.

By: Frederick

Frederick — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:16:55 +0000

Great links! Things are looking sideways...

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:14:51 +0000

But Stanton was a step up from the man he replaced, Simon Cameron, who had major ethics problems and could remember what belonged to the country and what belonged to him. No doubt Ted Stevens had a portrait of Cameron in his office as they had a lot in common.

Stanton and Thaddeous Stevens were real whackos who made the entire process of peace much more difficult to achieve. The US has never been very good about winning the peace.