The Most Dangerous Woman in America

[Link to the full article is to your right]

I remember an episode of Family Affair wherein Jody was struggling with the "new math." I remember that time and had difficulty too. I also took economics in high school-- a mandatory course requirement then. But nothing of what I learned then, seemingly, is understood today. The Keynesian Model is fundamentally flawed, yet everyone with access to policy-makers in Washington, who accepts the Keynesian Model, is granted an imprimatur-ish status in the development of our national fiscal policy.

Bad as our economy now is, it didn't get where it is without the guidance of both parties. Washington DC is more than just a seat of our federal government, it is also the seat of power of the Washington establishment, which has nothing to do with parties and everything to do with keeping the wheels turning in Washington no matter who is in power-- parties rise and fall, but the establishment is eternal, so to speak. Control may pass from one party to another, but the policy wonks never leave, and Washington today, no matter who controls the reins, is decidedly bent toward Liberalism in all its quirks, misconceptions and flaws. And nowhere, today, are those flaws and misconceptions more pronounced than in the managing of our economy:

Because the Keynesian Model is both a sham and a failure.

Anyone wishing to understand the way economies really work-- if government could only take its hand out of the mix --and how capitalism... unrestrained capitalism... could fix the mess we're in need only read The Case For Legalizing Capitalism by Kel Kelly. It's so simple even a neolithic-minded Liberal cave-dweller can understand it... and it's a free download.

But to the most dangerous woman in America, Christina Romer. From the article referenced above:

In a recent New York Times editorial entitled, “Dear Ben: It’s Time for Your Volcker Moment,” Romer publicly tries to goad Ben Bernanke into doing MORE to fight the great contraction.

It’s not enough that Mr. Bernanke has expanded the money supply by an amount never before seen in the history of the world. It’s not enough that he’s nearly exhausted every policy tool at his disposal. It’s not enough that global confidence in the dollar is fading rapidly.

Romer wants Bernanke to take things to the next level.

Say one thing for the Keynesian deranged, they are consistent... consistently wrong.. and unable to fight the urge to double down. If it were Christina's own money and livelihood I'd say let her hit rock bottom, then she can seek help from a gambler anonymous support group. But it's our livelihood she and the rest of her liberal 'cadre of the deranged' are playing with.

In her editorial, Romer draws comparisons to past economic difficulties and expresses admiration for those who employed extreme tactics to deal with them. She praises FDR for abandoning the gold standard and allowing the dollar to depreciate.

She also erroneously recounts economic history, suggesting that Roosevelt’s actions led to “the most impressive [economic] swing the country has ever seen from horrible contraction to rapid growth.”

Swing? That’s a bit revisionist. The Great Depression languished for years. And years. Perhaps if we’re speaking in terms of a geological timeline in which millions of years are a drop in the bucket, the recovery could be characterized as a rapid ‘swing’.

Anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty understands that the Great Depression lasted as long as it did BECAUSE of FDR and government interference in the economy. Now history is in the process of repeating, unrecognized by the those who esteem themselves as the best and the brightest, and now advising the Obama administration on how best to solve our debt crisis. In effect, doubling down on stupid.

In Romer’s world, paper is wealth. And hey, why should she believe anything else? She’s been in academia and politics for her entire life. She’s never actually had to DO anything and has been free to live inside a consequence-free Keynesian bubble throughout her entire career.

The scary thing, though, is that this woman has VIP access to the halls of power in Washington DC. She advises the decision makers who set policies affecting hundreds of millions… even billions of people. And she has no clue how the world actually works. This is incredibly destructive for the rest of us.

This blog has, from the very beginning been an attempt to fight, as meagerly as we knew how, what we knew was coming from the moment we learned Obama had won the White House. But I've come to learn a thing or two in the last three years... specifically, that people tend more often to cling to their tropes and paradigms than allow them to be modified or altogether cast aside in favor of clearer, truer understandings. If anything, they double down on stupid. And when it's Washington that does it, we all suffer.

You can only blame your predecessor for so long. You can only continue down a failing path for so long before the economy wrecks peoples lives and those people begin to get resentful.

I honestly don't see how Obama could possibly get reelected, but stranger things have happened and, I've come to understand, people tend to get the kind of leaders they deserve. Now, as to what that says about the American people, I'll leave that to someone else. Suffice it to say, however, that the longer we allow the genuinely uneducated and 'ignorant-to-real-world-truths' individuals decide economic policy (among other things) we deserve whatever they cram down our throats.

After all, we allowed them to wipe their collective asses with the Constitution, so we shouldn't be surprised that our country is now in a world of hurt; the kind from which there is no real avoiding the coming shit-storm of consequences. It won't matter if a Republican wins next November, that shit-storm is coming regardless-- the only caveat being, how long that storm will last compared to the policies currently administered by the Obama White House.