Unlike his heart-throb Obama, I’m not afraid to use the same gutter tactics mock learned in his days as a member of the Nazi, er, Republican Youth. I would have called him a piece-of-shit, but felt it rude for a header. To be clear, I stand by my claims. Now, Mockrates is not literally a dropping of excreta from a sewer rat, but he will be in the not too distant future. And he has decided to channel his unavoidable future in the here and now. Always ahead of the curve, that mock.
The tortured piety of the “necessary first step”. Right, the necessary first step was to tackle a problem by screaming: CRISIS, CRISIS, CRISIS: IF YOU DON”T PASS THIS THE ECONOMY WILL COLLAPSE. Somehow, the “necessary first step” was to throw away a trillion dollars on a coin toss. The question: Will it solve anything? The answer: “I dunno, but gotta try somethin.” If past actions are any indication, the plan—or the absence of a plan—was to improve the bottom line for the fat cats. It was doomed to failure, and was advocated using the same parasitic gambling mentality that seeks to socialize risk and privatize the profit.
The right approach would have been to, as I advocated, take a deep breath and think of the best way to lessen the blows to the economy. Our “leaders” should have said, there is a crisis brewing, but we are working on crafting a strong solution to the problem. One, the markets would not have become destabilized by the clown show in Congress, and might have been settled by a strong effort to seek serious solutions. Paulson’s screams of PANIC, together with the Congressional bungling both made the economic crisis worse. Voting down a bad plan only to vote for a worse plan a few days later. Your claims that it was a necessary first step are ludicrous. It is the same as claiming that the necessary first step to a potential fire in a theatre is to scream FIRE and run for the exit. Maybe there is a fire, maybe there isn’t, but causing a stampede helps no one. And there are credible voices, even now, saying there is no fire. If this is true, our Bozo the President and Congress of Stooges caused the market instability we saw all last week. To argue that Congress couldn't have passed a better bill is a strong argument against passing any bailout bill.
I assume we won’t hear from Mockrates again for another few weeks. Just as well. This type of apologizing for negligent governmental action beneath a veneer of “learned earnestness” was part of the problem, not the solution. If the Krugmans of the world had put forward useful alternative proposals and joined in putting the screws on Congress, then they would have been forced to anger the Jewish G-d, stay in session, hold hearings, and work the time necessary to iron out an intelligent solution. The country was united in anger at the leadership in a way we rarely see. It truly was a lost opportunity.
2008-10-12
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
Fortunately for Douche-ashov, calling me a rat turd at the beginning of his post will undoubtedly throw his loyal readers into such hysterics that they will be unable to continue reading, and will therefore avoid the crushing disappointment of finding out that the rest of his post answers none of the points in my earlier post, "Douchashov: Coward and Historical Revisionist."
Here's the closest he comes to making a factual claim:
"Our “leaders” should have said, there is a crisis brewing, but we are working on crafting a strong solution to the problem. One, the markets would not have become destabilized by the clown show in Congress, and might have been settled by a strong effort to seek serious solutions."
But Mockrates, you say, Does that even qualify as a factual claim; isn't it just more retro-speculation on his part? How in the world could he possibly claim to know that passing the bailout package (which is unlikely to cost anywhere close to $700 billion, let alone the trillion dollars he continues to imprecisely refer to) was responsible for the "destabilization" of "the markets"?
My answer is that when you use language as imprecisely as Douche-ashov does, it doesn't really matter what the meaning is anyway.
Douche-ashov assumes he won't hear from me for another couple of weeks. I'm going to assume this is an implicit promise that he'll take that much time to find out what the fuck he's talking about. Good for you Douche! I'll check back soon.
Bottom line is you supported a ridiculous bill on what amounted on a hope and a prayer that the single worst administration in our and possibly US history would do the right thing. They're barely now pulling their heads out of their ass, and plenty of prescient minds saw that the proposal was unworkable before the bill was passed. But you can keep to your strategy of clicking your heels in the belief that the goodness of the american project can be trusted to iron out a solution that benefits more than a few.
I'll respond to other claims as time allows, but I think the most intellectually dishonest claim in Mock's original post was his assertion that gross-over consumption was not a significant cause of the crisis, and a reduced standard of living is not a prerequisite for long-term economic stability. This from a man who can barely sleep at night because of the carbon footprint caused by his fellow americans. You should add the negative savings rate to the list of items that keep you up at night. There's no way that will be solved without reducing the trade deficit and reducing excess consumption. But that's all right, keep with the lemmings and only look for the short term solutions.
"I'll respond to other claims as time allows, but I think the most intellectually dishonest claim in Mock's original post was his assertion that gross-over consumption was not a significant cause of the crisis..."
Click my heels? Lemmings? Head up my ass? You must be *very* time limited--why else would you resort to substituting embarrassingly worn-out metaphors for concrete analysis on this otherwise fine blog?
But if you can spare a bit of that precious, precious time, please do actually read my original post, where I allow that over-consumption may be a fundamental cause of the crisis, but that plummeting stock values and commercial paper scarcity required attention to proximate causes, which I specifically listed.
So, take some time and connect the dots for us Douche--unless you think it would be more productive to spend your time at your local congressman's office, convincing him to become a "socialist."
Post a Comment