Letters to the Editor
DrEast
Published Letters: 113 Editor's Choice: 1
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@ The Boreal Avenger
[Read the article: The simultaneous rejection of the bailout and a corrupt ruling class]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"My brother needs credit to sell houses. Ohio's automakers need credit to sell cars.
Is that what you want? For houses to stay on the market for a year instead of weeks? For my brother to have no commissions for the rest of 2008?
Are you willing to hold your breath until the automakers are swamped with excess inventory and they idle the plants? Damn us to double digit unemployment like the bad old days of 1982?
What's in it for you?
Paul Krugman endorsed the "bailout" package on Sunday before the vote. He's an professor of economics, you know. Not to mention a much better political writer."
Your brother does not need credit to sell houses. He could mark the houses way down in price, from 200,000 to 20,000, and people would be very interested in buying them.
He would then have to declare bankruptcy, of course, but liquidation is the natural result of malinvestment. In other words, there are too many people selling houses. Your brother needs to stop. He's hurting the nation.
Why the malinvestment? Because the nation is heavily dependent on credit. Credit is the problem, not the solution. Read Von Mises. Read Hayek. Heck, read Rothbard.
There are too many people selling autos, of a kind that people can't afford to drive. They need to stop, not drag everyone else into the bad investment through credit dependency. They need to declare bankruptcy and lay off their workers, so the workers can go to the places they're needed... farming, for instance, is currently heavily underinvested. That's why food prices are too high. Let all the auto workers go farm (it's not rocket science, you don't need a freaking degree in it), and food prices will come down. (Assuming, of course, that we can get the government out of agricultural price fixing... HAR!)
Alternatively, the auto workers can take wage hits. Same effect.
Of course, everyone involved would need to declare bankruptcy for all this to work. But that's how the system makes sure what is needed to get done gets done.
Credit leads to malinvestment. Your brother is proof positive of this. So we, as a nation, need to stop the flow of credit and let the adjustment come.
Adjustment. Sounds like "Apocalypse." But that's not a bad thing. Just a necessary thing.
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@Amerigo
[Read the article: Bipartisan bailout folly]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"This example shows just how we all live on credit."
Even those of us who utterly abhor being indebted? No, wait, we don't live on credit but...
How rare are we, then?
It used to be considered improper to be overly indebted. Has that propriety been abandoned?
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@UsedtobeKristen
[Read the article: Wash Post's Pearlstein: Anyone opposing the bailout is ignorant ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"And to Glenn, I fear that many members of the public would have the same reaction to a "bottom up" bailout as Shooter, without recognizing the inherent irony of their position."
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As of Monday, the majority of the public preferred the null option to the top-down bailout. That doesn't say anything about their preferences to a bottom-down bailout, of course. But I'd think, and apparently you'd agree with me, that they'd prefer the null option to that, too.
The majority of the public is opposed to ANY bailout, top-down or bottom-up, because the majority of the public, historically, has preferred a government that mostly lets them do their thing without hurting them too much. This becomes more evident in periods of increased tyranny, which I'd definitely rank the Bush years as.
Trickle-down economics belongs to that branch of the Reagan coalition (a coalition that is just about dead) which is NOT the populist branch, but instead those who benefit from trickle-down policies. The populist branch was always the small-government conservative branch (which is why Ron Paul can still call himself a Republican), and they prefer a truly unregulated free market... not a corporate welfare system like trickle-down. That's also the branch that was the first branch to be jettisoned when the Republicans came to presidential and dual-house majority, since they felt they didn't need it anymore. They don't have that majority anymore, and even what they do have is about to be taken away, as I'm sure we're all aware.
The inherent hypocrisy of the Republican party, so dwelt upon in this blog, is the fruit of efforts by the Republicans to get the benefits of being populist, small-government conservatives, which is how they win elections, without limiting their policy to what would be required to stay consistent with that popular rhetoric. It's corruption, plain and simple. And when suffering becomes widespread, it'll get shaken out, but, as always, far too late to avoid the suffering.
At that point I may well go back to being a Republican again. Of course, the Democrats are going through the same process, just the other way. Pelosi's a fantastic example of this, and I fear Obama isn't immune. But again, it'll become apparent with time, and hopefully we'll have a decent reckoning (as opposed to a shift to a purer totalitarianism).
One things for sure... we're not going to be solving any problems until politicians feel they have to vote from principled positions. It almost doesn't matter what the principles are, so long as they aren't "look out for Number One."
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@IitW
[Read the article: Wash Post's Pearlstein: Anyone opposing the bailout is ignorant ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"I remain unconvinced and would prefer a 'soft landing' to a 'hard' one."
And I bet you pull your band-aids off slowly and don't jump into cold water all at once when you're swimming, too.
Best way to get it over with is a short, sharp shock, dude. I'm TELLING you.