printRepublikeynesians, 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.”
It’s hard to know what to say these days. Could confidence have turned Zim around? Mugabe believed there were “elements” (means white land owners) who were ruining confidence in his revolution. When I speak to friends about this mess it’s sooooooo incredibly wearying to hear someone say, “can’t you be positive?” It’s sickening to watch what’s going on because many of us believe that A will never be Negative A. In the word of Ayn Rand, “Evil requires the sanction of the victim”. We have plenty of sanction going on.
That line from Obama’s speech sounds like it came straight out of a movie.
“WE will rebuild, WE will recover”: There is a famous expression that goes, “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?” – well, one can now do a color inversion. {{the famous apocryphal quote is often attributed to the Tonto character in the Lone Ranger}}
It seems to me that we have a “crisis of confidence” because some folk are starting to awaken from their spending orgy-induced somnambulence and discovering that no, you really can’t spend forever. It’s a pity someone can’t get our government to listen.