Category Archives: Republicans

Voodoo Child Talks Up A Storm

Barack Obama, Economy, Political Economy, Republicans, Socialism

The excerpt is from my new WND.com column, “Voodoo Child Talks Up A Storm”:

“Because consumption is its be-all and end-all, consumer confidence is crucial to the Cult of Keynes. If the consumer is not crazy confident—even when he ought not to be—goes the ‘thinking,’ he’ll quit consuming until he drops”:

“We will act with the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money to lend even in more difficult times,’ barked Barack. ‘This administration is moving swiftly and aggressively to break this destructive cycle, restore confidence, and re-start lending.'”

“Our economic animists are hoping that the holy spirit of ‘confidence’ will enter the once bitten, twice shy lender, and make him lend. The same spell is supposed to mysteriously move the unemployed and penniless to spend.”

“In his wonderfully learned book, The Failure of the ‘New Economics,’ Henry Hazlitt (a favorite of mine, as you might have guessed) summed-up the essence of Keynes’ “General Theory”:

“The great virtue is Consumption, extravagance, improvidence. The great vice is Saving, thrift, ‘financial prudence.'” …

Read why the “Voodoo Child is true to the mores and methodology of Keynes,” in “Voodoo Child Talks Up A Storm,” now on WND.com.

Economic Animism

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Economy, Neoconservatism, Political Economy, Propaganda, Republicans

Republikeynesians, especially, have been demanding that in his first address to a joint session of Congress, Obama “talk up” the economy. “What Obama Should Do,” blared the typical headline in the neoconservative National Review. And the answers: “Be positive, if prudent,” instructed Bill O’Reilly. “Restore economic confidence,” advised Conrad Black, a conservative who also believes that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the champion of freedom. (Black, who, incongruously, combines a call for serious central planning with a condemnation of it, has, seemingly, learned nothing from falling prey to the same predators.)

This tired battle cry just goes to show the depths of this lot’s economic “thinking.”

Most Republicans have taken up economist John Maynard Keynes’ kooky concept of “animal spirits.” This was Keynes’ condescending reference to consumer confidence. Keynes believed that the fickle consumer’s biorhythms controlled the economy (I kid you not). Which explains why confused Republicans, like Democrats, keep kibitzing about “a crisis in consumer confidence.”

The implication being that “confidence” will galvanize the jobless and the penniless to spend.

I sincerely hope not.

By the way, the Voodoo Child has obliged. This is the first line in Obama’s pie-in-the-sky speech:

“[T]onight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

A Right In The ‘Value’ Of Your Home? I Don’t Think So!

Barack Obama, Democrats, Political Economy, Private Property, Republicans

Bubble or no bubble, a property is worth what the market will pay for it at the time of the sale; no more, no less. If you bought a house for $350 thousand and nobody will pay you more than $250 thousand now, you are not owed $100 K. Yet Republicans and Democrats continuously voice the quaint and vacuous idea that an owner whose mortgage is worth more than his house ought to be compensated somehow. Ditto declining property values.

You don’t have a property title in the perceived value of your property. Nobody does. Suck it up.

Recall, during the first evening press conference of his presidency, Obama had forewarned of his intention to “help homeowners that are suffering foreclosure or homeowners who are still making their mortgage payments, but are seeing their property values decline.”