Huh? The Fed manipulating intrest rates, money supply, and other banking factors does not mean 'our generation' will have to pay for it. Irresponsible fiscal policies combined with poor monetary policies caused the issue. If either group had the ability to pull its head out from under the sand our current recession would either have not occur or have been far less devestating. With the fiscal policy, the blame falls almost equaly (I'm not looking to get into a discussion about fingerpointing). However, due to the nature of the Fed, they recieve more blame then Congress for the recession. The blame for the Feds poor decisions can be traced to Greenspan dropping interest rates. (And leaving them dangerously low. Bernanke didn't help here and raising them now would be economic suicide while failing to address actual issues.) Greenspan dropped interest rates while at the same time establishing a precedent for 'bailing out' companies. In short, Greenspans (and other fed chairmen) policies of free cash for banks with the established precedent of bailouts laid the groundwork for our current issues while poor fiscal policy and banking regulations going back to Reagan laid the seed for our recession.
I don't disagree with any of this. I'm just saying that Keynesians and monetarists have been touting economic victories for decades now, but all they've really done is manipulate the economy and utilize debt as a foundation to do it. If you really examine all of the policies instituted once Europe emerged from the wreckage of WWII and as Asia became competitive, all of our policies to keep our economy moving forward have been rooted in the necessity for debt. All of it is debt. Social programs rely on debt, we fuel the military industrial complex on debt, we manipulate the housing markets to encourage more debt, we reduce regulations so people can take on more debt, we've had politicians that actively promote the acquisition of debt. Just YESTERDAY Obama was out telling people to BUY ARMS! Which is hilarious when you consider that Greenspan did the exact same thing just before he jacked up interest rates from historic lows to 5.25% and proverbially triggered the great recession. It's all nonsense, and it's all debt. Things started to slow in the 70s when the economic way of life we were comfortable with became uncompetitive in a globalized world with a competitive Europe. To get us out, we sought debt. Reagan sent us into debt. Clinton utilized the tech bubble. Bush sent us into MORE debt. The bottom line is that without any bubbles, and without any debt, our economy would have basically done nothing but tread water and we'd look like Bulgaria if we didn't. There's no victory for monetarists to be found here.
This isn't about alternatives. This is merely about distrust. Arwon asked why people would distrust the Federal Reserve. You have outlined plenty of examples that justify peoples distrust of independent, unregulated, monopolized central banking. That's all I care about in this discussion. Merely a justification of that distrust.
I will only pose one dark theoretical question for you.
You believe that getting rid of the fed will result in a rollercoaster ride of depressions every 10-20 years which may be a justifiable if unprovable position that relies on many conditions to be put in place. But it is indeed possible if you examine the economic turmoil of the 1800s.
But I would like to point out that America persevered all throughout the 1800s and through the depression. There were no real riots. The country didn't collapse. America didn't devolve into some apocalyptic dystopia. In fact, after each and every recession and depression we came out much stronger than we were before. American resilience and grit determination kept us moving forward and progressing past most European nations, and competing with the UK which was already developed and had a massive empire.
So what about now? When we have had decades and decades with only the smallest farts for recessions? Mild recessions. Tame recessions. Really short recessions. What happens when for the last forty years our society has kind of transformed into a people who cannot move backwards under any circumstance? A society entrenched in entitlement programs. A society that has been paying into government programs for decades with expectations that there will be some sort of pay off.
What happens if all this should one day come to an end? What if the feds current policies are setting us up for a decades long depression of 20-33% unemployment? What happens when the government can pay out social security or medicaid? What happens when nobody will lend to us any more? We can't lower interest rates any more. QE's effects have been minimal at best. We have gigantic federal deficits, and even more household debt. You posted graphs for me just last week showing how we've gone from a saving country to a debt filled country. All of these policies have been put in place to keep the economy moving forward and prevent or people from feeling negative effects.
BUT WHAT HAPPENS IF THIS FALLS APART!
I believe that the possible social side effects associated of not getting out of this current recession would be way, way, way worse than handling an expected depression every decade or so when you know you will emerge from it. If things get worse, if we have to cut back on social programs, if social security collapses, the crap is really gonna hit the fan.
The reason that the distrust exists is because it is manufactured by people who have an agenda. And so manufacture the distrust to support their agenda. You want distrust? Read Secrets of the Temple by Greider. That's as distrustful as it gets. But it's also based on reality, not the conspiracy theory crap that you see everywhere these days.
But what happens when it falls apart? First, it only falls apart when those who oppose regulation win. It only falls apart when we have this "the government is the problem, not the solution" ideology that is pushed by libertarians and conservatives. That is the cause of it falling apart. It does not fall apart without that. Second, the worst you picture on "when it falls apart" is what will happen without it. So the worst possible picture of "when it falls apart" is still a better than not doing it. What you aren't seeing is that the worst case scenario of having a Fed is the the best case of not having one. So everything less than the worst case scenario of having the Fed is better than the best case of not having it.
Huh? The Fed manipulating intrest rates, money supply, and other banking factors does not mean 'our generation' will have to pay for it. Irresponsible fiscal policies combined with poor monetary policies caused the issue. If either group had the ability to pull its head out from under the sand our current recession would either have not occur or have been far less devestating. With the fiscal policy, the blame falls almost equaly (I'm not looking to get into a discussion about fingerpointing). However, due to the nature of the Fed, they recieve more blame then Congress for the recession. The blame for the Feds poor decisions can be traced to Greenspan dropping interest rates. (And leaving them dangerously low. Bernanke didn't help here and raising them now would be economic suicide while failing to address actual issues.) Greenspan dropped interest rates while at the same time establishing a precedent for 'bailing out' companies. In short, Greenspans (and other fed chairmen) policies of free cash for banks with the established precedent of bailouts laid the groundwork for our current issues while poor fiscal policy and banking regulations going back to Reagan laid the seed for our recession.
I would say interest rate policy matters more because the banks and lenders wouldn't have had all that extra money if the fed hadn't dropped interest rates. If they lacked that extra money, the subprime loans wouldn't have been as common.
I would say interest rate policy matters more because the banks and lenders wouldn't have had all that extra money if the fed hadn't dropped interest rates. If they lacked that extra money, the subprime loans wouldn't have been as common.
Again, I'm not here to spell things out for you that should be necessary knowledge for everyone discussing macroeconomic topics. I gave you some cues to start reading on. If you don't want to do so, fine.
The Constitution does not dictate economic policy. It does, however, specify which powers are given to the Federal government and which powers are reserved for the states.
That's the problem with positive lists ... they can't include things that were unknown at the time they're made.
See, the concept of central monetary politics was unheard of in the 18th century, so how should the constitution foresee you might need a federal institution to control, I don't know, a federal currency?
That's stupid. How would you back a currency with the gold that is currently being used for tooth fillings, electronics, jewelry, etc.?
What I am trying to say is that I'm highly doubtful that the amount of gold in the world would suffice to guarantee for every US dollar in circulation, much less all the other currencies, even with these sources tapped.
Your argument is a strawman. I never said either of those things.
By the way, a quick search revealed that the US-American GDP in PPP increased by 16 times during the same period, and remember PPP means it already takes your allegedly disastrous inflation into account.
Global Financial Crisis. I thought this would be obvious in the context of a thread discussing economics.
Correct. That was the fault of Congress for authorizing the printing of too many Federal Reserve Notes for gold to actually be worth $35/ozt, and the fault of Nixon for "fixing" this problem by abandoning the gold standard.
You're missing the point. Overall economic growth was clearly higher than inflation in any period of time you can invoke on that topic (like 1970-2010). So when the wages stagnated, all you can blame are shortcomings in employee-business relations which determine those wages, not the Fed. The Fed made the economic growth that allowed for increased wages possible, but it can't be held responsible for the fact it didn't happen.
That's okay. Most Americans make the same mistake. In reality, the state governments were supposed to decide what was or wasn't in accordance with the Constitution. This is why they, rather than the ignorant masses, were given the power to elect Senators. Thomas Jefferson was one of the most outspoken opponents of the concept of judicial review, whereas most of its supporters were Federalists, including John "The Constitution is a worthless paper machine" Adams and Alexander "Screw this republic stuff, we should have a monarchy" Hamilton.
For someone who seems to hold the constitution is such high regard, it's odd how low you think of the Congress that's legitimized by this very constitution. I mean, when the constitution says it, the founding fathers clearly must have intended for you to be ruled by an assembly of poop-throwing monkeys!
1) Gold, unlike energy, is tangible. If the whole economy collapses, you still have your gold, and you can still trade it for stuff, but those "energy certificates" or whatever are only worth the paper they're printed on.
You can't trade gold for things that are not made anymore. When an economy collapses and there is a lack of vital products like food, no one would accept gold as payment. Because he can't do anything with it. In this regard, even cigarettes do (and actually did) better.
I'm so proud of you. I hope you will show it to us one day, because then we'll all have to bow to the intellectual superiority of [the infamous image board CFC apparently censors] and surrender to you.
You didn't do anything better. You just kicked the can down the road and covered up the damage with unsustainable debt that my generation will have to pay for so you can all live comfortably. Don't flatter yourself or any monetarists. It's all a false house of cards. You'd have a point if we didn't have tens of trillions of debt.
It's foolish to look at public debt the same way as private debt. As long as everyone's confident the government will be able to repay each individual loan, there's nothing bad about it, no matter how high the numbers look like.
Can we please not have this side of the thread turn into endless partisan rhetoric? Everyone has their hand in this. Everyone. There are tons of entities out there that played their part that Libertarians would like to see go away.
This isn't about alternatives. This is merely about distrust. Arwon asked why people would distrust the Federal Reserve. You have outlined plenty of examples that justify peoples distrust of independent, unregulated, monopolized central banking. That's all I care about in this discussion. Merely a justification of that distrust.
Again, BEJ, nothing you've said points to any intrinsic problem with the concept of independent central banks, everything instead points to problems with the financial system as she is done in the United States alone. Yet, you continue to expand those specific and contingent ideological and regulatory failures into a much more generalised argument against central banks per se. But you simply cannot use such contingent, country-specific arguments to justify a generalised libertarian-Austrian nihilism towards the very concept of central banks, monetary policy and fiat currency.
So basically I'm back to concluding that the weirdly vocal American hatred of the US central bank I see on the internets is a product of ideology as much as anything, especially with Cutlass pointing out a lot of the actual failures of the American financial system actually stem from proponents of that self-same ideology dismantling regulatory structures and believing weird things about how economies work.
Again, BEJ, nothing you've said points to any intrinsic problem with the concept of independent central banks, everything instead points to problems with the financial system as she is done in the United States and the US alone. Yet, you continue to expand those specific and contingent ideological and regulatory failures into a much more generalised argument against central banks per se. You simply cannot use such contingent, country-specific arguments to justify a generalised libertarian-Austrian nihilism towards the very concept of central banks, monetary policy and fiat currency.
So I'm back to concluding that the weirdly vocal American hatred of the US central bank I see on the internets is a product of ideology as much as anything.
I don't know what you're trying to prove here. You're an Australian who doesn't understand American distrust of our central bank. And in order to justify your ignorance on the subject you've chosen to transpose the goings on in your quadrant of the world as opposed to looking at America itself, while also ignoring other central banking disasters that have occurred all over the planet. In America itself the institution has been used and abused by fallible people - repeatedly. This is what leads to distrust, and it's as simple as that. What happens in Australia is neither here nor there. The vocal hatred may be as much a product as ideology as anything. But there's a lot of validity and warranted concern wrapped up into that anything. Wouldn't you say? Look at berzerk countrygrls post. If it's indeed accurate that Alan Greenspan encouraged people to buy adjustable rate mortgages at historically low rates, and then proceeded to jack up interest rates, is that not a reason for anybody who was hurt by those words, and those policies, to be distrustful of the institution populated by fallible men?
Two years later his book Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life was published. In it he argued turbo-charged corporate competition, fueled by consumers and investors seeking the best possible deals from anywhere in the world, was generating severe social problems. But governments were failing to address them because big corporations and Wall Street firms were also seeking competitive advantage over one another through politics, thereby drowning out the voices of ordinary citizens. The answer was to keep corporations focused on making better products and services and keep them out of politics. "Corporate Social Responsibility" is essentially forbearance from activities that undermine democracy.
Sounds interesting. I'd pick it up. Especially with summer approaching soon. But what does this have to do with rampant debt spending and how monetarists hide behind it to try and claim their theories are successful in application?
It's an overview of structural changes in the economy that provide a valuable narrative on the economic history since WW2. I took his class this spring and almost everything worthwhile I got out of that class was in his book. Short book, super easy read too.
The issue is that the demand for money is in a near constant state of change. The supply of any commodity is not. So any possible commodity that you could pin the supply of money to would disrupt the economy. The goal is for money to be a medium of exchange and store of value and nothing else. Any commodity pegging would also make money a disruptive roadblock at times.
Alan Greenspan is a libertarian. Appointing him to run the Fed is one of the key mistakes that lead to the economic collapse. Because he ran the Fed in accordance with libertarian principles. Which is to say, he refused to do his job.
This was correct up until the beginning of the second sentence. Greenspan predicted the bursting of the housing bubble a decade before he was made Fed Chairman. Afterward, he raised interest rates when he saw bubbles, and he lowered interest rates when those bubbles burst so that the economy could recover more quickly (i.e., he did what the Fed is supposed to do, and what a libertarian wouldn't do).
I'm not going to explain McCulloch v. Maryland again for you. The Federal Government has the right to establish a central bank as a result of the necesary and proper clause and the federal supremacy clause.
NO, IT DOESN'T. Since you didn't understand this the first time, I shall repeat it:
1) The Supreme Court has been wrong about a hell of a lot of things, and will continue to be wrong about a hell of a lot of things, so citing a Supreme Court decision is an instant fail.
2) Saying "the Supreme Court said this; ergo, it must be true" is an appeal to authority, making this a double fail.
3) Deciding what is or isn't Constitutional is for the state legislatures, not the Supreme Court, to decide, making this a triple fail.
As an added bonus...
4) There is no "federal supremacy clause". Congrats on your quadruple fail!
Your decision is simple: Do you overturn two centuries of precedent with a wave of your hand or do you continue spouting long-discredited constitutional and economic ideas?
The ideas that you call "long-discredited" were upheld by many of the people who contributed to the design of the Constitution itself. To say that the Constitution's authors have no authority on matters relating to the Constitution is inherently absurd.
The framers of the Constitution were all still around when Marbury v. Madison established judicial review. If they felt judicial review was a bad idea then they would have amended the Constitution.
The Constitution already said "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United State". Ratifying an Amendment saying "When we say all legislative powers, we really do mean ALL of them" would be absolutely pointless.
The fact that every state got equal representation in the Senate ensured that small states didn't get screwed over, but that's irrelevant. We're talking about the fact that Senators were originally chosen by the state legislatures rather than by Joe the Plumber, and THAT was established so that states could stop the Federal government from overstepping its authority.
An admirer of British political systems, Hamilton was a nationalist who emphasized strong central government...
...Early in the Convention he made a speech proposing a President-for-Life; it had no effect upon the deliberations of the convention. He proposed to have an elected President and elected Senators who would serve for life contingent upon "good behavior", and subject to removal for corruption or abuse; this idea contributed later to the hostile view of Hamilton as a monarchist sympathizer, held by James Madison.
You'll find no disagreement here, which is why dismantling the Fed and returning to an asset-backed currency are not cure-alls in and of themselves, but would need to be the last stages of a much larger set of fixes.
Sales tax and accounting laws come into effect here. If you try to purchase something with a 'Liberty Dollar' you almost always have to pay sales tax. Unfortunately, your 'Liberty Dollar' doesn't count when paying sales tax so you can't use it there.
Technically, it's the retailer who pays the sales tax, and passes the cost along to the customers. As long as those retailers have enough U.S. currency to pay those sales taxes, everything remains kosher.
So actively breaking strikes with federal troops, creating the ICC, increasing income tax, and spending money to keep people froms starving is now Libertarian? Good to know.
1) The Pullman Strike interfered with the operations of the U.S. Post Office, so Federal intervention was totally kosher.
2) The ICC is a legitimate use of the Commerce Clause, even if the dealings that got all those train tracks laid down in the first place weren't.
3) Contrary to what the libertarian movement's lunatic fringe likes to say, there's nothing fundamentally un-libertarian about an income tax.
4) He vetoed the Texas Seed Bill.
See, the concept of central monetary politics was unheard of in the 18th century, so how should the constitution foresee you might need a federal institution to control, I don't know, a federal currency?
What I am trying to say is that I'm highly doubtful that the amount of gold in the world would suffice to guarantee for every US dollar in circulation, much less all the other currencies, even with these sources tapped.
Ah. Well, from what I've been told, the USA controls only 6% of the world's gold, but that was enough to back 16-17% of its currency at what was then the spot price. This was when gold was approximately $1,000 per ounce, though, so now we're looking at more like 14%. The real trick would be cornering the global gold market when we're $14 trillion in debt...
Bottom line: no matter how great a gold standard might be in theory, it simply can't be implemented at the moment.
By the way, a quick search revealed that the US-American GDP in PPP increased by 16 times during the same period, and remember PPP means it already takes your allegedly disastrous inflation into account.
You're missing the point. Overall economic growth was clearly higher than inflation in any period of time you can invoke on that topic (like 1970-2010). So when the wages stagnated, all you can blame are shortcomings in employee-business relations which determine those wages, not the Fed. The Fed made the economic growth that allowed for increased wages possible, but it can't be held responsible for the fact it didn't happen.
For someone who seems to hold the constitution is such high regard, it's odd how low you think of the Congress that's legitimized by this very constitution. I mean, when the constitution says it, the founding fathers clearly must have intended for you to be ruled by an assembly of poop-throwing monkeys!
You can't trade gold for things that are not made anymore. When an economy collapses and there is a lack of vital products like food, no one would accept gold as payment. Because he can't do anything with it. In this regard, even cigarettes do (and actually did) better.
You can't trade paper for things that are not made anymore. When an economy collapses and there is a lack of vital products like food, no one would accept paper as payment. Because he can't do anything with it. In this regard, even cigarettes do (and actually did) better.
It's foolish to look at public debt the same way as private debt. As long as everyone's confident the government will be able to repay each individual loan, there's nothing bad about it, no matter how high the numbers look like.
Well, that's just the problem. NOT everyone has that confidence, and the number of people who do keeps getting smaller as the debt keeps getting bigger.
G-Max, I will never read your posts if you go line by line like that. Respect for Buckeye for writing things in one unit, even if sometimes it's a 0/6 wall of text.
@G-Max:
Just some points to avoid quote-walling which I'm admittedly guilty of myself (it's really difficult to get back from it once the discussion evolved that way).
1. You mentioned the Treasury Dpt. It is, as far as I know, directly subordinate to the government, so moving the Fed's current responsibilities there would severely damage its ability to act independently, and that would really be a danger to the stability of both your currency and federal budget.
I have no particular love for how the Fed is organized, and it seems there are a lot things that could be done better, but independence from the executive branch of the government is certainly something that should not change.
2. All you do when you rant about the Supreme Court is implying it's an illegitimate institution, while in fact it's the highest jurisdictional authority in your country. Don't act like your understanding of the law trumps that of judges who studied and operated within the law for years, just because you don't like it.
3. You continue to see today's macroeconomics through the eyes of the Founding Fathers. This is guaranteed to fail. Imagine they wrote a book about military tactics ... would you seriously advocate to return to line infantry with flanking cavalry for wars like the invasion of Iraq? And don't reply with "but they didn't".
4. I'm glad you admit it's impossible to return to the gold standard at the current prices. If that's not a serious argument against it ...
5. It's really arrogant to take your current standard of living for granted, a standard of living which was only made possible by this 16x economic growth we both seem to agree on, and then complain about the public debt and its evil stimulus programs.
Public debt. Isn't. A. Bad. Thing. There's not one serious doubt the US are not able to repay any of their loans, so you've got no problems. You're not Greece.
I'm not quite sure how to put this. Integral has the theory in much more advanced form then I do. There are various ways to measure CPI. And what the central banks try to do is pick a version of it, and then keep the price increase of it in check. So it's a basket of many things, and the composition of it changes over time. But it is a basket of nearly everything consumed. Not any one thing, or small selection of things. Because the quantity of any small selection of things would not change at the same rate that the demand for money changes.
And still, that is a targeting of the price level. Not a targeting of the money supply. The 2 are not the same thing, and do not change at the same rate. Attempting to target the money supply alone to anything is doomed to failure. Back in the 70s and 80s monetarists wanted a 'constant money supply growth rule' and assumed that meant constant economic growth and inflation. They were wrong.
That brings me back to my other point, the demand for money is variable. So the supply must be variable also. To try to keep the supply constant, it would be too loose one month, too tight the next. And that makes the economy less stable.
I don't disagree with any of this. I'm just saying that Keynesians and monetarists have been touting economic victories for decades now, but all they've really done is manipulate the economy and utilize debt as a foundation to do it. If you really examine all of the policies instituted once Europe emerged from the wreckage of WWII and as Asia became competitive, all of our policies to keep our economy moving forward have been rooted in the necessity for debt. All of it is debt. Social programs rely on debt, we fuel the military industrial complex on debt, we manipulate the housing markets to encourage more debt, we reduce regulations so people can take on more debt, we've had politicians that actively promote the acquisition of debt. Just YESTERDAY Obama was out telling people to BUY ARMS! Which is hilarious when you consider that Greenspan did the exact same thing just before he jacked up interest rates from historic lows to 5.25% and proverbially triggered the great recession. It's all nonsense, and it's all debt. Things started to slow in the 70s when the economic way of life we were comfortable with became uncompetitive in a globalized world with a competitive Europe. To get us out, we sought debt. Reagan sent us into debt. Clinton utilized the tech bubble. Bush sent us into MORE debt. The bottom line is that without any bubbles, and without any debt, our economy would have basically done nothing but tread water and we'd look like Bulgaria if we didn't. There's no victory for monetarists to be found here.
Public debt. Isn't. A. Bad. Thing. There's not one serious doubt the US are not able to repay any of their loans, so you've got no problems. You're not Greece.
Anybody who trusts what monetarists tell them isn't fully thinking the about gravity of the problem through. We've crossed a very dangerous threshold by blending private household debt with public debt. They really are essentially one in the same now. If someone ends up losing the house, it's transferred from the private sector to the public. All of this debt, whether it is private or public, has to either come from future production, or be eaten by someone in the private sector. Any analysis that looks strictly at one form of debt versus the other is short sighted, as the monetarists and Keynesians have hammered home the idea that we can never again enter a recession and normalize the economy. At this point all they can do is hope that we can pay back the entire debt which totals many times our own GDP. The fragility of the situation cannot be overlooked in a globalized economy. Our economy rests upon the laurels of anybody else and their imprudent economic policies. Europe's economy is just as false as ours, and as the PIIGS go, so will the rest of them. They simply do not have any real money to lend to each other any more. The fundamentals of sound economics have been cast aside in the west for decades. This problem, to a certain extent, even plagues a number of nations in Asia. In short, you kick a leg out from under the chair and suddenly our ability to pay yesterday's debt becomes impossible. The best thing we can do at this point is stop kidding ourselves and stop pretending that this mess is okay. Because it isn't.
Theige said:
Few things:
"Without any bubbles, and without any debt" we'd be like Bulgaria, and that is somehow preferable to our current state of affairs?
The federal debt as a percentage of GDP fell from 1945 - 1981.
How exactly did Clinton "utilize the tech bubble?"
Yes, it would be a better state of affairs. Bulgarians are used to living in Bulgaria. America is not. Americans have expectations. Americans believe that there are jobs that they shouldn't have to do, so much so that they'll accept welfare checks as opposed to toiling in fields or cleaning hotel rooms. When our house of cards collapses it will be a disaster. The animal that lurks beneath this fragile broken society will come out. Make no mistake about it, there will be serious problems due to violence if cannot afford our social programs or refuse to subsidize debtors.
The federal debt as a percentage did indeed fall from 1945-1981. That's my point. Post WWII we essentially had a monopoly on technology and manufacturing for decades. We were able to profit an immense amount financing and rebuilding Asia and Europe. We saw huge GDP growth, made sound government investments, and reaped the benefits of it. Thankfully we took steps to cut down on government debts from the war and Great Depression then. The problem, as you said, starts in the early 80s (really the 70s.) As Europe came online, and Japan became competitive (beating us at our own game mind you), we stood still. We neglected continuous improvement. We kept believing that our society could be one where a high school drop out could walk in a factory and make $30 an hour. Well sadly this isn't the case, it's not reality. We've lost a competitive edge in Europe in many areas. China, Malaysia, and Indonesia have cut the floor out from under us when it comes to manufacturing. India and China are now able to compete with us on a technological basis. And we still stay put! With the same mindset that we had in the 60s! Unable to realize the follies of our ways! And instead of taking pragmatic, meaningful steps towards addressing the very real structural realities of a globalized economy, we masked our faults and the fact that we've stayed put by mounting up debt - both household and public. Which, again, is why I say if not for this debt we'd be Bulgaria. Outcompeted from top to bottom, unwilling to change, unwilling to face reality. Gut the social programs, make people learn and enter into the productive class, eliminate entitlement mentalities, and go back to a nation that saves instead of a nation that buys everything it owns on debt as their good economic engineers arrange for them, pulling the puppets strings so to speak. That's the only safe and sound solution. Taking on more and more debt and flooding the currency is only wishful thinking.
Clinton used the tech bubble to mask the reality of our economy. It was better than the 80s and the 00s, but it wasn't nearly what the numbers actually reflect. The vast majority of that growth is hidden in asset bubbles and hidden in household debt.
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