Will the Republicans care about sound money in 2012?

[Lemon law]

The worst thing that could ever happen to the GOP is to get back in charge again.

It took GWB many years to totally screw up a sound economy even though the steady decline was evident immediately. But in this tenuous economy, the GOP would almost certainly have the USA in a full blown depression inside of a year if they ever got back in charge. The GOP still has not figured out why GWB screwed up, and hence still advocate the same proven failed GWB policy.

 

[sao123]

agreed. Why do people keep thinking this is a horrible thing? China intentionally keeps it's currency devalued so that their economy can boom.

sure... lets underpay our workers, and give them a weak dollar so that everyone short of a millionaire cant afford to buy a house, a car, and raise a family. Thats an ideal situation there...

 

[Darwin333]

The worst thing that could ever happen to the GOP is to get back in charge again.

It took GWB many years to totally screw up a sound economy even though the steady decline was evident immediately. But in this tenuous economy, the GOP would almost certainly have the USA in a full blown depression inside of a year if they ever got back in charge. The GOP still has not figured out why GWB screwed up, and hence still advocate the same proven failed GWB policy.

Exactly what has Obama changed concerning our economic policies? Hell, he still has basically the same damn people running the show that Bush did.

 

[Darwin333]

This is more a problem of the people than of the government. If people wouldn't spend money they didn't have, consumption would fall and prices would have to fall with it until they were in line with something more sustainable.

You have half a point as people are ultimately responsible for their own actions but the government also encourages people to do exactly that because it makes things look better, at least for a while. Cash for clunkers? Home buyers credit? FHA loans with virtually no down payments and DTI ratios that are way to high? Bush telling people to "spend spend spend"? The list goes on.

 

[Darwin333]

sure... lets underpay our workers, and give them a weak dollar so that everyone short of a millionaire cant afford to buy a house, a car, and raise a family. Thats an ideal situation there...

Doesn't matter because it will never happen. Take Social Security alone, its pegged to inflation and that isn't going to change anytime soon. The additional cost of SS alone (we are talking 10's to 100's of trillions) is many times more than any benefits we might see.

Its the same reason we won't inflate away the debt. Getting rid of a few trillion costs a hundred trillion in additional entitlement spending. Didn't we even send SS recipients a check this year because the inflation numbers didn't go up so SS payments didn't rise as expected?

 

[soccerballtux]

You have half a point as people are ultimately responsible for their own actions but the government also encourages people to do exactly that because it makes things look better, at least for a while. Cash for clunkers? Home buyers credit? FHA loans with virtually no down payments and DTI ratios that are way to high? Bush telling people to "spend spend spend"? The list goes on.

yep. Why else do you think I'm a proponent of less government? I just had to spend $7000 to buy my first car, why didn't they subsidize my purchase? They just soaked up a bunch of the used vehicles on the market, removing all my options.

 

[Mursilis]

The worst thing that could ever happen to the GOP is to get back in charge again.

It took GWB many years to totally screw up a sound economy even though the steady decline was evident immediately. But in this tenuous economy, the GOP would almost certainly have the USA in a full blown depression inside of a year if they ever got back in charge. The GOP still has not figured out why GWB screwed up, and hence still advocate the same proven failed GWB policy.

The economy wasn't that sound when GWB took over - it was nearing the end of a speculative tech bubble. Issues with long-term unfunded liabilities remainded, among other problems. True, GWB did almost nothing to address these problems, other than a poor plan to reform SS, and he actually made it worse with the Medicare drug benefit, but plenty of long-term economic issues predated him.

 

[Darwin333]

yep. Why else do you think I'm a proponent of less government? I just had to spend $7000 to buy my first car, why didn't they subsidize my purchase? They just soaked up a bunch of the used vehicles on the market, removing all my options.

I agree, I am just stating fact. Not only do programs like that wind up hosing a lot of people they also encourage irresponsible behavior like getting into more debt than you can reasonably handle. As usual, there is a reason for everything though. At the end of the day most of these programs are designed to help the people who have bought and paid for our politicians. One of them being the Banksters, who are the sole reason we are artificially inflating housing prices, while only pretending to help the consumer... In a ton of cases that "help" will eventually result in a foreclosure or being significantly underwater on your home loan.