"I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs. ... I think this economy is down because we built too many houses, and the economy is adjusting."
-- President George W. Bush, demonstrating his economic acumen
Notable quotable 7
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Posted 3:47 PM on 20 Feb 2008
by David Roberts -
Posted in
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David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/david_h_roberts.
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:00 am
20 Feb 2008
Hrmm
Maybe it's because we keep making too many high interest loans?
http://greyfalcon.net/debt2.png
http://greyfalcon.net/canadadollar.png
http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive/2006/Feb/17-883919.ht ...
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P140049. ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200510u/nj_schneider_2005- ...
_
And for a tangent, this popped up on my Googling.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200503/ai ...
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wiscidea Posted 9:43 am
20 Feb 2008
Houses, bombs, or... gee, I don't know.
What a !@#$ doofus!!!
What's the rate of return on investment in the Quagmire in Iraq Georgie Boy? And how long are those jobs going to last? Where's the money coming from to pay those salaries, extract material from the ground, and ship all that stuff to Iraq? What sort of long-term community-building jobs is your !@#$ war creating? What sort of warped family values are you trying to push?
If it is such !@#$ great idea, why not fund it by selling stock -- not insured by the Federal government -- instead of borrowing from the future???!!!
PRESIDENT JACKASS... and that is an offense to all four-legged jackasses.
(My apologies to the readers. It is sometimes difficult to suppress hateful speech.)
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falsecast Posted 11:16 am
20 Feb 2008
Tara, tara, the war on tara
Too dim to understand Bastiat's broken window fallacy (and many other things). What do the French know anyway?
Just goes to show that some really messed up clocks are not right even once a day.
I feel like that guy from Hogan's Heroes who was always asking: What is this man doing here?!!
Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:39 pm
20 Feb 2008
The African model
In the worst parts of starving, war torn Africa, ravaged by corporate induced massacres, the only steady, prosperous employment is war. Bush likes that model.
Check out this documentary. "Darwin's Nightmare", all about the eco death of Lake Victoria for the low down on how it is working there and how it might work in a permanently bushwacked america.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/2/7/3 ...
War is peace. In order to maintain peace, constant war must be waged, right duuuhbya?
Renewable energy policy would stop oil war, then where would our kids find work?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Sean Casten Posted 3:20 am
21 Feb 2008
Advice from WV
On a recent trip to West Virginia, I asked my hosts why it was that the WV economy is so poor. (And specifically why it ranks so low here. Thanks JMG!). The reply in part was "there's a culture here that says that if you want economic growth, you should lobby the federal government to build a road. There's little equivalent push to build things that people would want to build roads to."
I'm loosely paraphrasing, but it is the crux of the resource curse in WV... and consistent with Bush's view of economics. Yes, you can create jobs and GDP growth by spending federal dollars. But if that is the only test of sensible government expenditure, then we should all move to Pyongyang.
Ugh.
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PJD Posted 3:03 pm
21 Feb 2008
Worst time for broken windows
Not only is there the general applicability of Bastiat's broken window fallacy, but this also is arguably the worst time for this sort of military drain on resources. Wars always tend to have an inflationary pressure. This might be just what the doctor ordered if you're in a deflationary period such as the great depression. But when the U.S. is potentially facing the dreaded stagflation, this is adding greatly to the problem.
Printing money to build things, blow things up and pay people to do things that don't contribute to the rest of the economy, causes upward pricing pressure on all other goods and services. The money ends up in the economy but the products are stuck, destroyed or used in a war zone. So at home you have more money chasing after fewer goods... inflation.
Hopefully McCain, who admits he doesn't know anything about economics, won't plan on asking Bush for tutoring help.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:23 pm
21 Feb 2008
Stagflation rearing
One of the horsemen of economic apocalypse has made it's ghostly appearance on the New York Times front page.
Once the fed goes too low it blows its insurance policy. Can't go too near zero (because there is no negative interest rate), it destroys the currency.
So no more stimulation is possible through lowering. If inflation doesn't slow look out. Time to stock a cave and get in.
They will be called "bush bunkers", in the same way groups of shacks were called "hoovervilles" during the great depression.
Just kidding Barack or Hillary will save us with renewable energy revolution. Green jobs for all.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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