even though everyone was warned he was a left-wing loon. And two or four years is a long time to suffer. But we must make history by electing the first black president...duh.

It's part of the Dims being afraid of their own shadows for the past 45 years. Since Nixon squeaked out a victory, the Dims have acted like a bunch of timid pols trying to hang onto their jobs. Lust for "Campaign Contributions" (aka bribery) has become their primary focus. They are terrified of Rush & the right wingnut extremists, just like the regular Republicans have shown themselves to be in apologizing and kissing up to Rush lately.

Terminal corruption disease has infected the political system and its like terminal cancer. It has to be rooted out.

Timid liberalism? Ah, when was liberalism sensible except to proto-Marxists and pacifists? This guy is flailing around because he has done nothing in the public sector in business; never paid a paycheck and politically is a clone of Saul Alinsky. FDR was not a socialist. He threw stuff up on the wall with his Kitchen Cabinet and some stuff was declared unconstitutional, NRA , and others just failed but at least he knew that huge tax expenditures would fail. Obama does not. Neither does Timmy. Or Larry Summers. Say where is Larry anyhow? No, Rahm is leading this economic disaster and ACORN is cheering. When a writer who doesn't even remember IKE or Truman tries to tell readers that Obama is still trying to use the Markets, when the Prez himself thought the Dow was a tracking poll and not really important, this analysis belongs with profs like Chamberlain and Ayers; leftist loons. And oh yeah, over 52% of Americans are investors. Too bad liberals and Marxists don't understand that!

As an European guy living in America, I could make an analysis about the differences between more statist Europe and more capitalist America. But today I have a huge headache and my mental ability is disminished.

So I only wanted to say two things.

1. Obama is more right-wing that the right-wing political parties in Europe, when it comes to state intervention.

2. University tuition in America are ridiculous high. I have been teacher in European universities and it is not needed so much money to give a quality education.

Only my two cents.

Why can't I have a law or two? The keys to what you say are "short term" threats of inflation, and that you frame the problem as risk/cost to the feds, not as risk to citizens as taxpayers and as economic actors.

Views of economic history are largely self-fulfilling prophecies. We're now in a "Keynsian" period of increased "liquidity" (ie pumping money with unrealized value into the economy) which must be followed by "expansion" or tight monetary policy (ie value increases and/or money supply decrease in growth). Keynes is the father of Friedman is the father of Keynes and so on.

Who am I to wake anyone from these dogmatic slumbers?

I'm simply arguing that cycles can be moderated by increasing value and liquidity at the same time, and that cap and trade represents a colossal opportunity to do so. Here is an opportunity for the government to create economic value by creating fiat scarcity (and not incidently encouraging technological innovation). Environmental liability is economic opportunity. Lind fundamentally misunderstands cap and trade as a cost added program. Actually, the government-directed research he suggests is the cost added program. Cap and trade can GIVE average people the value to meet higher environmental standards.

What Obama could learn from FDR, and what would make cap and trade clearer to Lind, AND what would provide better stimulus than the, um, So-Called Stimulus, is if the environmental credits were distributed to the lowest-level economic actors. People could conserve gas and make money at the same time, and then put that money in a bank that they think is half-way likely to survive the next couple of weeks, increasing the amount that bank could loan, etc.

The tired old debate between Keynes-Friedman approaches ignores that cap and trade is both and neither. A well-maintained and regulated cap and trade system can be an antidote to they cyclicism that results from our aging, brain-dead, incurious economists and politicians.

because I think she just became Obama's "Colin Powell." Whatever made you think that Barack Obama actually stood for liberal policies and would enact them? He never said he would.

The problem with electing a guy like him (and we've actually seen this before with George W. Bush, another inexperienced guy who thought he was different too)is that there's no gravitas. He's done nothing so he has no idea what will work. All he's working on right now is saving his ass for a second term.

It's fun to think it makes any difference what any of us thinks, but it doesn't. The train has left the station. The new world of global trade has rendered any and all national trade regulations irrelevant, anti trust laws as quaint as they are useless. Firewalls have still not been replaced in USA banking, despite the obvious catastrophe following the repeal of Glass/Steagall in 1998 (thanks to BOTH parties). Revealing the names on the purported 500,000 American secret bank accounts in Switzerland might be amusing (since celebrities from both parties would be equally revealed), but would it matter? The powers needed to reveal them are also heavily invested in Swiss banks. Don't think the truth will ever come to light, there's too much money and power invested. From BOTH parties. Higher taxes mean more government control, which always sounds just fine as long as your own party is in power (it isn't fine, it just seems like it). The question is...is one world order too big to fail? For those of us who hate the idea of 10% of Americans controlling 90% of the wealth, how is it going to feel when 1/100th of 1% of global wealth controls the whole world? Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be more boring than suburbia on a Sunday, and twice as faceless. Where's Waldo time. This crisis could have been the opportunity of a lifetime to revise all our national priorities, but the vicious infighting in the USA has rendered our populist voices null and void. Check it out. WalMart and McDonald's stock are up. Global suburbia here we come.