Dienstag, September 16, 2008

Reality intrudes redux...

Been busy with the real world: reality intrudes. Hence the lack of posting. Sorry.

There's a lot to say.


I'll be brief: the banking meltdown that we saw on the weekend is not the result of deregulated markets, but much more the result of government interference in markets, specifically the government-regulated requirement that banks grant sub prime loans.

Search on this blog for "sub prime" to see what I mean.

What Obama and the Democrats are doing is desperately trying to paper this over: they have royally fucked up the US banking system by forcing banks to give loans that no bank would have done otherwise. The Democratic Party and its candidates understand little or nothing of real-world economics, and their failed policies will continue to make things worse.

The real bad guy in the closing of Lehman Brothers and the tragicomedy of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Congress, specifically Barnie Frank, who has made a career of blocking any kind of reform of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Them chickens have come home to roost.

The economy is fundamentally sound. But the Democrats desperately want it to be bad, and they are doing their best to make it so. Watch them try and persuade people that it's all Bush's fault.

But they're not running against Bush. That is their first and fundamental error: they can't make this a referendum about Bush, because he's not running.

My call right now? McCain/Palin with 52% of the popular vote and more than 70% of the electoral college. That's right, a landslide. The Democrats will be able to take 3-4 seats in the House and 1-2 seats in the Senate, but not more than that. The American people have never liked giving one party control of the White House and the Congress. A Republican president and a Democratic congress will remain so for 8 years, with a Palin - Clinton contest in 2012 that Palin will win hands-down in the middle of a significant economic upswing. It's gonna be tough for the next couple of years with the upcoming severe credit crunch - the banks will have to batten down their hatches and be extremely conservative in lending, given the excesses of the last 20 years, and only when the stupidity of the sub primes is eliminated can it really recover - but the economy is and remains fundamentally sound.

My worry now is the rise of a new radicalism, financed this time not by the Chinese and the Soviets, but by NGOs out of control with rich non-government backers. The fact that their golden boy - who will remain Senator for Life from Chicago, the party machine will guarantee that - failed to win even a game of one-on-one with a white boy who can't even jump will drive many of the loopy left into further derangement, and we may well see the attempt at developing a revolutionary movement dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a "just social order" or other similar drivel.

It remains, for me, incomprehensible that anyone can seriously espouse the tenets of socialism or capitalism today. The historical record shows so clearly the absolute failure of that political system, let alone the pseudo-economics behind it, that only a fool or a cynical power-hungry opportunist (sorry, I repeat myself) could espouse such a philosophy today.


Keine Kommentare: