Mismatch wrote:So this is the post I promised Username. Before I actually start I'd like to point out (since it does seem to be sensitive) that what I write is from a european perspective as I am not an American. But I do like to pretend that I have basic knowledge about the world.
Nigga you just wrote an essay.
Also, I am no economist mr username, but I like to think that I know the basics. Which is what we are going to discuss. Yeah, and I do simplify things a bit, because I'm not writing some serious chit.... I'm posting in a forum.
Nigga you just wrote an essay.
Do note. This is a big post and I can't be arsed to read through it all. May be typos or even errors.
Nigga you just wrote an essay. And it's great that you do not bother with the typos and minor errors of sorts. I like you already, let's see how long it will last.
Code: Select all
1. E-cum-onme
Lets start with the economy part shall we Username?
To examin whether Obama has handled or mis-handled the economy during the recession, let's go back to the beginning.
The seed of the recession was planted, not by Bush or capitalism as many would say, during the Clinton years when the government decided that everyone should own a home. This splendind idead was realized by forcing banks to lend people money even though their ability to repay the loans was in question.
Forcing eh? I was under the impression that they de-regulated laws just like they did in Sweden. Clinton de-regulated alot, like allowing for corporate conglomeration in the media sector for example. I did a quick google and it seems I'm right. If I'm not then I'm sorry but I'd like you to source this stuff before further commenting.
Of course I am in favour of increased regulations. Further more that isn't the root of the crisis. I wish I could bother going deep into things but clearly the root of the crisis is ordinary people not having the purchasing power to buy a home after working for 10 years. Working families living with their parents in the 30's is a sight not to uncommon in the US. Part of the reason is the decreasing wages in relation to inflation and part of the reason is the housing bubble created by ever more lax banking rules.
The banks, now being forced to do things they didn't want to, soon realized that these loans were not a secure source of income. The banks needed to limit the hazard and their possible losses (after all, their purpose is to make a profit) and did so by bundling these loans with other less insecure loans and selling them off.
Oh no, there's no chance banks were forced to give loans to people without incomes. What happend was that a recession of dubious forms occured and this got people out of work (like it always is). Then they couldn't repay their morgages. A more protectionist market that actively combats outsourcing and foreign cheap goods would have protected the nation against such events and people would have loans and banks would still be making huge profits.
Code: Select all
So what happend next?
Jörg bush, mighty pirate, came swooping in with... Tadaaaa, a stimulus package!
What these packages do, really, is artificially helping compåanes that should have gone down. Now they can stay in business, and keep loosing moneys. Great.
Now, a stimulus package doesn't HAVE to be a bad idea (imo) provided that your country actually has the money to do it. In this case the US of A did not. Bush financed his package by loans, and printing money.
So now we have the government doing what was a bad idea for individuals. Taking loans to consume.
Jumping over some mumbo jumbo since you got the crisis backwards.
I tend to agree here. But I'm not smart or educated enough to comment on shit my professor wouldn't know about. Look. Today we have an evil, wicked, neo-capitalist economy built on non existant money. So if a bank was to suddenly collapse because it reloaned its savings capital 10 times or 100 times fold then you'd have an even bigger crisis on your hands. EVERYONE would take money out of various banks but not everyone would make it.
Soon bank after bank would collapse and peoples savings would evaporate.
The result of no stimulus packages would be a radical leveling of the economy. Which is in fact good. But I say that as a radical leftist.
The rich, who had savings and capital funds would see them disappear while the poor who had loans would see those loans disappear. Possibly taken over by the government which would facilitate national recovery.
So indeed what you are seeing is the last dying breath of the capitalist west, pumping itself full of printed money, devaluing it for everyone else.
The only risk is that it might also create an extremely rifted community.
The elite usually have their funds in stocks and other valuables, not in banks or funds (collective investment schemes - had to google this translation) . The upper middleclass and lower upperclass would cease to exist and you'd have an elite and a very broad working class. Then again this would help make apparent the class struggle and a revolution might occure.
This is not just a rambling. Re-examine the text and try to find what isn't true if you can. The stimulus package saved the capitalist system for now.
So we have a crisis caused by government intervention (at least made worse, there's no saying that no crisis would have occured without clinton, but he sure as hell made it worse).
And the government responds by more government intervention in the market. And yeah, they actually keep things afloat for awhile longer. But at what cost?
No the crisis was caused by a recession (which occures naturally in a deregulated market economy) - the ups and the downs -. The crisis was intensified by the chain of reactions you mentioned when people lost jobs, couldn't pay loans, investements went broke etc, etc. The government package kept the boat floating and assured that peoples savings weren't destroyed. The easiest solution to this problem, at least in short term, is to do everything you can to remove fractional banking. Fractional banking makes these chain reaction-recessions possible.
This way you'll save capitalism far longer than through stimulus packages.
Code: Select all
Enter Obama.
A time for change? Yes we can... but you didn't, did you?
Obamas economic policies for crisis handling are more or less the same as the ones Bush had. But MORE, and BIGGER... more EXTREEEME! Does this make Obama the Todd howard of politics? Obamas stimulus packages are bigger, and there are more of them. And guess what... they're still funded by loans. And by stealing from american citizens.
How you say? By printing money.
We have the FED, they're printing money. This makes the dollar worth less (surprise!), which means than the average amwerican actually has less money. With the printed money the FED buys bonds. Which means that they print money, and lend it to themselves. Then they hand it out as stimulus.
Yeap.
With a weakening dollar this actually means that when they get them money back for the bonds they will get less (worth less) than what they actually bought them for. This is what we call a bad investment.
On top of that, everyone else flees from the bonds because they can spot a bad investment.
More or less yeah.
So Obama is doing the exact same thing that Bush did.... only worse and more.
<i>He thrusts his fists against the post and still insists he sees the ghosts</i>
Again I'm not sure you'd call this bad. There's still alot of value to suck out of the dollar. It's still a decent currency. The stimulus might have saved the entire country but not in the way most people think.
Code: Select all
Now that was the economic part. People wanted a new more responsible monetary policy, but got more of the same bad one. See what people don't like?
Nah people mostly wanted free healthcare and less government surveilance and higher taxes on the rich to finance the first one. Most people don't know jack shit about monetary policy. Oh and nigga you wrote a bloody essay.
2. Grasp of reality.
Let's go to this part. Why are people not very happy with mr. Obama. Still I write this from a European perspective, so I might be wrong, but this sums of what I've understood from the current situation.
mkay.
As the newly freed people of USA threw of the shackles of their European overlords they wrote the constitution. The sole purpose of this document was to ensure that USA would never again become what it had been. The purpose of this document was to ensure freedom.
One part of how to do this was to limit the size of the federal government because, as firsthand witnesses of this, the founding fathers knew that the government (regardless whether it's a monarchy or not) is in fact the biggest threat there is to the citizens of a country.
Many of the things Obama is doing, like the healthcare program are bloating the federal state, and steals power away from the states. The healthcare program is one part of this, but I'm sure there are others (perhaps you americans could enlighten us).
the founding fathers weren't as unified as you think. Some warned very deeply for unwarranted and unwanted influence in terms of corporations and banks. Corporations were outlawed in america up until the 18th century. Others said that the government should be there to protect the affluent minority from the poorer majority. Americans paint a way to pretty picture of their cute little early poiticians and most people don't dig below the dirt to find out more.
Code: Select all
Now people are getting the impression that Obama is undermining the constutution when he is transferring power from the local to the centralized big government. Probably because that is what he's doing. With this people feel that their liberty is under attack.
And I agree. The last things you people should aim for is to become like Europe. The president of the EU is not even elected by the people (AND on top of that he's Belgian), and many european countries (I know mine is) are becoming more like Democraships (Democracies & Dictatorships) where people feel that anything goes as long as you vote for it... But it doesn't it's still WRONG, you can't vote about human rights. But we do, and they go away. What is great with the US constitution is the power it holds. Our european counterparts are not worth the paper they're written on. They are for show only and I envy you.
I hate the EU as much as any selfrespecting bloke out there. It's a massive bureaucracy. But the thing about the EU president is mostly false. He's elected by the elected party leaders of the representative nations.
Also the US is leading in the western world together with Britain when it comes to mass surveilance, governments and corporations breaking peoples integrities, pushing for RFID chips, bank transfer monitoring and so forth. And yes Obama made it worse. But as I said in my first post, this is one of the things the republicans would have done as well. They even started it under the Bush family. It's not a reason to vote for the other side and instead you should abstain from voting or waste yoru vote on a third party. If enough people waste their votes the votes won't be wasted. That's the only logical reasoning.
Code: Select all
As for the rest of the whole healthcare thingy, I won't get into that right now. Much of what I have to say has been covered already, and frankly... this post is growing too long.
But I do hope that this explains why some people are not happy with Obama. But as I said, I may be wrong.
Kinda...But still not really. Even if I would to agree with all your things they are still things that the republicans (exception healthcare) would have done.
Code: Select all
3. Morals - Taxes
This part is related to the previous one. Taxes is what enables a government to grow big. And at the heart of taxes we have a problem. The government force you to pay them. I think we all can agree that some sort of taxation is needed to enable us having a government.
And we need that (currently). A government doesn't need to be a bad thing. The state has one responsibility, and one responsibility only. To ensure the the rights of its people. That's it. That and nothing more.
What a person produces is his property. If you build something it's yours, and noone has the right to take it from you by force. Now in todays society, actual production has been repolaced with the monetary system.
When you produce something you get money for the value you produce.
And noone has the right to take that away from you against your will. So, with taxing being morally questionable from the start it should be kept to a minimum. This will also ensure a small government. However when we start taxing people differently depending on income we are even worse off. By what right? We do NOT, and will NEVER have the right to vote on whether we should steal certain peoples money. And yet that is what we do. Rich people should pay more (they already do, and I find the % of income system despicable). What's now stopping us from forcing black people to pay more. Or men, or women. Or how about we have a vote on killing all rich people. Or killing all poor people.
See what I'm getting at?
Why don't we have the right to vote to "steal" someones money? Rights are decided by one and other. If a community grows sick of their ever more greedy corporate elite then it is its duty to excersise its discontent through taxation, if not worse.
That was about it I suppose.
:aieee:
Roger!
Remember America was the promised land once. The land in which you could settle anywhere, take the land you need and build yourself a home from scartch. That's no longer the case. Someone owns that forest, someone owns that mine, someone owns that oil field and some people have way more than they need or can work on. That IMO was not what America was about once upon a time. That more resembles the old monarchies that the americans fled from.
Now I'm done. Thanks for reading
