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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mannie who wrote (83968)	8/29/2008 1:30:38 AM
From: Oblomov	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

I listened to the whole speech. The first part was a de rigeur attack on the GOP (fair enough, it's a political convention). Most of the second part sounded like old solutions to old problems. Enshrining unions in the remnants of the US industrial plant, for one. He pretends that we are still in 1950, that there aren't 3 billion hardworking people in SE Asia and the Indian subcontinent who know what Americans have, want what Americans have - and who are willing to work even harder (and with less strife for the employer). Or that we can just tell oil companies to make oil cheaper, as if this is 1971 and the oil supply is controlled by a handful of private US companies. Or that we can rescue the automakers through some new government program. Or that capital would not flee the country on a moment's notice if the returns on capital are not attractive enough. Or that the entitlement mentality itself were not a major contributor to the credit bubble. I heard the same tired nostrums, repackaged. But our problems are institutional, not instrumental. Among the broken institutions is the liberal democratic state itself. We are coming to the exact end that James Madison feared, which is that the people would learn to simply vote themselves money. An unsustainable practice to be sure, one that will eventually produce tyranny. It's our fault, for we dreamt we could have both luxury and liberty.