Economic Idiots

Probably the dumbest, most stupidest thing ever committed by a sitting president occured a couple weeks ago by, who other than George W. Bush.

Essentially, Bush sounded the alarm and scared the shit out of Americans and businesses regarding the economy. It wasn't that bad! Recessions are behavioral in nature - the reason why we have a credit crisis is because no one is willing to lend due to the uncertainty - add to that greater uncertainty when the President acknowledges that there's some sort of crisis. Stupid! It just added to it.

No less stupid is the fact that Paulson and Bernanke scared the hell out of Americans with their dire warnings about the fate of the economy. They shoved down everyone's throat this $700 Billion package and gave themselves superhuman powers: Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency. Are you fucking kidding me? Talk about absolute power - why don't we just put the crown on their heads?

The supposed cure that they set forth actually did much more damage than doing nothing. They should've kept their mouths shut and let the economy slowly roll into recession as it would have done regardless! Nay - we need to do something! The government essentially sent the a signal to the market that things were unneasy and that the markets should trust the Government to fix everything back up to the way it used to be. I don't think so!

Recessions are good. The correct for the market's excesses. We are effected by these market excesses every day - just look at Oil. Why do you think its slipped so far in such a short time? It was a market that was heavily manipulated by financial players - they used leverage (which conincidentally is no longer easily available) to jack the hell out of the price to an ungodly figure. Just to give you an idea - Oil prices peaked at the sky high price of $140/bbl. Wholesale gasoline prices rose to a peak level of $3.40/gal (no taxes included) which translates into the high prices we saw not too long ago of $4.30/gal at the pump. Do you know that the wholesale price of gasoline today is now $1.95/gal? Pretty soon we'll see gas fall under $3 at the pump! How fantastic is that?

Home prices are ridiculous. Give me a break - in order to afford a home on Long Island, half your monthly paycheck will have to go to pay your mortgage. This leaves little discretionary income for other types of economic activity - including shopping and leisure. That is ridiculous. That's not a balanced economy.

When the prices of fuel fall back down to a reasonable, appropriate level and housing costs correct itself - when people start anew, we'll have a better more vibrant economy. For god sake, all our supposed growth that we experienced in the past years was a result of housing - essentially, all our monies were being siphoned to financial institutions and real estate companies.

The bailout package is an attempt to keep housing prices high. Keep all those mortgage portfolios valued at the high prices they're at. Not going to work folks. We just wasted $700 Billion for nothing - giving financial institutions even more money. They're not compelled to loan out money now anyway. So we're still in the suppossed "Credit Crisis."

So we're facing the same consequences, with or without the Bailout package. I say bring on the recession and lets get it over with. We'll be all the better!