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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (64034)	2/14/2008 12:09:41 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Its all coming out now......how the Ayn Rand approach to gov't and letting capitalism run free led to the subprime debacle: The Ayn Rand approach? Seriously what planet do you live on? That approach has never been tried here. The government has been heavily involved in this from day 1. The fed pumped money in to the economy, federal , state and local governments pressured banks to lend to minorities and poor people even if they where bad credit risks, the feds give a tax deduction on mortgage interest that they don't give to interest in general (although they used to, and I'm not calling for them to return to that). And after all that (and more) you say its the fault of the "Ayn Rand" approach because one governor, who used to be an activist attorney general, blames a specific federal office for doing a poor job. Even if the office did a lousy job (and that hasn't be established), that doesn't mean doing a better job would have prevented the problem, and it doesn't even come close to supporting an argument that "the Ayn Rand" approach caused the problem. (Actually the fact that the office exists at all is one more sign that we never came close to anything like an Ayn Rand approach.)

To: tejek who wrote (64034)	2/14/2008 4:22:41 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Thanks! We've located 2 idiots now- -you and Spitzer. Spitzer always was a headline hound much more interested in setting up a run for guv than acting as an unbiased AG. The story is far more complicated and bipartisan than that and I suspect you know it. Or maybe you're so ignorant you don't. Your hero Billy Bubba is as guilty in this as anyone else. Spend some time and find out what actually went on, then come back. I'm not going to tell you. You need to learn how to do some work and even more important, your own research.

To: tejek who wrote (64034)	3/25/2008 2:39:37 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 90947

Averting a Crisis By the Editors The journalistic consensus of the moment is that we are in the middle of an economic crisis. But it is not clear that we are even in a recession. It is worth remembering that financial commentators have predicted ten of the last four recessions. In the winter of 1995-96, the chatter was about downsizing. Republican politicians accused President Clinton of causing a “middle-class crunch.” In 1998, the worry was about “Asian contagion” spreading to our financial markets, and the federal bailout for the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management was supposedly a sign of troubles to come. The price of housing has been flat or dropping for a year now, and the economy has kept growing. The last few months’ worth of jobs numbers have been disappointing, and probably mean that we are having sluggish growth. But the numbers were just as bad in early 2003, and they did not signal a recession then. The housing bust is in part the result of misguided government policies. Restrictions on homebuilding have made the market less responsive to price signals, and thus more volatile. The Federal Reserve, by keeping monetary policy too loose during the boom, encouraged inflation in that market. We understand that politicians feel the need to “do something.” But what they most need to do is get out of the way of a market adjustment. Housing prices need to fall far enough for people to start buying again. People who cannot afford to own homes should go back to renting. The Federal Reserve, too, should be careful not to make things worse. It loaned the money for J. P. Morgan Chase to buy out the brokerage house Bear Stearns. That intervention may have made sense as a way of stopping a panic-driven run on Bear Stearns. The Fed’s new “lending facility” will be worthwhile only on two conditions: that it be used sparingly and temporarily, and that it serve as a substitute for the ever-looser monetary policy that Wall Street has been demanding for the last year. The Fed’s defenders argue that it makes no sense to tighten money just because oil prices are rising, and they have a point. But it is time to announce that the Fed is not going to loosen money any further. Just as homebuyers need to see that housing prices have hit bottom, so do would-be borrowers need to know that interest rates are not going to be driven yet lower. Republican politicians should meanwhile avoid the temptation to lean on the Fed to pump up growth this year at the cost of inflation in years to come. If the Fed inflates the currency and Democrats allow a tax increase, we will be back to the unhappy policy mix of the 1970s, the one that produced the stagflation of that era. Republicans ought to be guarding against that possibility and standing instead for growth. But that is only half their job. Much of the country thought we were in a recession even when the economic indicators showed that growth was strong. Wages have been flat during this boom, a victim of rising health-care costs. The extra cost has not bought improved security. Republicans have policies that can address the public’s anxieties. They will have to talk about them day in and day out, recession or no recession. article.nationalreview.com