[quote]Schlenkatank wrote:
sigh… i’ll admit quite readily that economics is not my strongsuit, and the quoted statement is very general. Although, I believe that you only need to analyze this situation through the common practices of D’s and R’s.[/quote]
Then you’ll get nowhere, because the differences between the GOP and the Dems is just window-dressing.
There is zero practical difference between the two parties, in terms of economic policy.
[quote]The failure of the economy took place because Bush removed regulations on the banks and financhial services of America, allowing for rampant greed and evil business practices.
The lack of government support allowed for greed to run rampant in the investment market, and ultimately caused it’s collapse.[/quote]
Wrong. This all occurred because the federal government has been far too squeamish about allowing businesses that made bad decisions to fail.
This didn’t begin in 2008. It didn’t begin in 2000, or 1992. It began, at an absolute minimum, in the 1970’s when the federal government decided some businesses were “too big to fail” and deserved government assistance.
That started the snowball, and we’ve been rewarding bad behavior and overly-risky investments for the past thirty-some-odd years, at least. We’re finding out now that we cannot possibly afford it, and yet the gov’t is still too frightened to imagine life without Citi, AIG, and GM. This despite the fact that the market has passed its judgment on these companies, and it wasn’t lenient.
If we had privatized gains and privatized losses, bad investments wouldn’t have been propped up and allowed to compound for years before we all got served with the bill.
While I’m 100% opposed to it, socializing gains and socializing losses would make more sense than our current system of privatizing gains and socializing losses (for certain entities, not all).
[quote]Hey tGunslinger, aren’t R’s known for their whole belief in “the government that governs least is the one that governs best”? Hrmmmm, I think someone famous said that. But you know, its not like Obama has inforced regulations and openly called out poor investment practices, right?
Oh wait, yes he did.[/quote]
And again, if you looked through a lens with a resolution finer than (D) vs. (R), you’d see that the (R)'s have failed miserably in living up to their stated convictions.
Yes, the government that governs least governs best. That is absolutely correct, and it’s tragic that the GOP has wholly forgotten the notion.
However, it’s incorrect to blame the small government philosophy for this current situation since no large-scale attempt to draw back the size, scope, and cost of government has been tried in the last century.
Even GOP-stalwarts like Reagan did not shrink the gov’t, they merely slowed its growth. Bush grew the gov’t more than most (D)'s that have had the White House. Now Obama has taken it to another level; that’s hardly “countering”. By Einstein’s definition, you’re insane if you think we’ll get any different result under Obama than what we got under Bush.
So how on Earth can you blame small government for, well, anything happening now? Blaming the philosophy of small government for this mess is like blaming Tom Landry for the Cowboys’ flops the last two years.
But of course, you’d know that if you looked beyond (D)'s vs. (R)'s.
Like a hole in the head, and 2000 points says I’m right…
