Monday, October 27, 2008

Oh, that Primrose Path!

The Bush administration ushered in bad economic performance at the time, and looks to leave in another economic horror. My partners in the Crime of economic journalism opine that it is important to stipulate that the Conditions promoting Recession were already in place before Bush’s entry, and that the economic conditions of Today are not due to any fallacy introduced by Bush economic policy. This assertion is highly debatable, but I do not wish to explore that avenue here. I wish to assert that George W. Bush has economically been without luck, whether it is a Case of Shooting himself in the Foot, or not.

You can adopt the position of a recent Nobel Prize Winner, or you can accept the contrarian position of myself, and proclaim that the Bush administration first flooded the Markets with Cash. The deluge of Cash was, in itself, the Problem. It presented an immediate impulse to Inflation, which could only be suppressed by destruction of old-style Wage Increase Incentives, working to stagnate all Wages except in the arena of Financial Credit and creation of new Technologies. The only Way ahead was to create some new thing, and encourage its adoption. It was immaterial whether the new thing was economically viable, or a Lemon from the word ‘Go’. Into the matrix came the counter-cyclical economic pressure for sustainable Profits from the level of Money invested, and the entire system was found wanting.

Now We are still maintaining the pretense that the huge inflow of Cash was an honest investiture, and that the Money was not drained off by the Charlatans who created the fancy new financial instruments to steal the Cash. The federal government has already spent over a Trillion dollars attempting to proclaim that the flood of Cash provided honest Investment, rather than Heartache. It disappeared like Water on dry Sand, and further inventive Steps are continually advised, no one actually suggesting that any Cure for the Mess has been achieved. I think I need to define a Concept of an economic Blackhole; all created by a group of individuals wanting immense wealth for little or no productive input, a tremendous influx of Cash not earned (think Government Spending without Taxation), totally erratic Expectations (think of Cellphones estimated to make a Trillion dollars, when a new version of a Cellphone comes out about every two months) of survivable Growth, and immense Marketing of Stock and other financial instruments. The basic underlying causation states that in order to meet all Profit Expectations out there, We need about $4 trillion more Profit per year than the economy will actually produce. That is the actual financial Crisis! lgl

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