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These financial institutions are almost as corrupt as the politicians. Chris Dodd made out like a bandit with his favorable loan terms with Countrywide. Is he is jail? Was he fined? Where is the justice? The SEC was completely asleep at the switch. Were they in the pocket as well? Hmm!
The financial institutions and large corporations are the politicians. The lobbying and Super PACs have this country being bought and sold daily. What we need is for this country to be run like a country, not like a business. Otherwise, fascism, here we come.
Planet, I agree with part of what you said, but disagree with part of it. There is no doubt that the big boy crony capitalists have a big say in what goes on in this country and are calling a lot of shots. People like Jeffrey Immelt, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and the Goldman Sachs guys get special favors like not having to pay taxes, favorable treatment in many different ways. We have fascism when government gets too large and tries to control every aspect of our lives like this current government is doing.
If this country were run like a busines, particularly small business and medium sized businesses, we would have a budget and live within our means instead of running trillion dollar deficits each year. I run a business and don’t spend a third more than I take in or I would be out of business in a short time. The government thinks they should be able to do that and just print more money when they need it or borrow it. My banker would laugh at me if I made a request to borrow money and had no plan to pay it back or balance my books. The government does not practice GAAP and look at the mess we have.
Agent, thank you for your insight. I see where you are coming from, but I respectfully don’t think anyone pretends that a federal budget is to mirror or run the same a personal household budget. They have T-bills to sell. A family does not sell goods and services to each other (government does and makes revenue off those) and the Fed can borrow at a rate below 2% right now. How many families out there, in good financial shape, can even get a loan? No, they don’t work the same and whereas I agree spending needs to be reduced, certainly not to the degree some of the pundits are suggesting. Now is actually a great time to borrow. When you don’t want to borrow is when rates go up. And, they eventually have to go up. Simple economics, what goes down must come up. The government also has the power to control the amount of money in circulation. How many families can say that? I personally don’t buy into the rhetoric that federal budgets and household budgets work the same. That’s hogwash to me.
Planet, you are talking about a personal household budget and I am talking about running a business. As long as you are talking about households, what if a family had 5 credit cards and had maxed them all out and wanted to keep borrowing and couldn’t make the minimum amount due each month? Should the credit card company increase their limit so they can run it up even higher? Should a bank grant credit to buy a car or house if their credit score is shot? This country has already been downgraded on their bond rating recently. What an embarassment for the greatest country in the world. We have leaders who think they can spend their way to prosperity and all they do is run up more debt and expect several generations in the future to pay the tab. Someone needs to cut up all the government credit cards or the debt will overwhelm the country. The signs of a double dip are in the air with the news that a paltry 69,000 jobs were created last month. Progressive liberalism does not work out for a country in the long run.
The government doesn’t run like a small business either. Nor is it supposed to. Business is for-profit. Government is spender of last resort. How can you plug a $3T hole with $800B? That, and the $800B was mis-managed in my opinion. It wasn’t spent in the right places. It helped a little bit, saved us from a depression. We have a long way to go. And yes, spending cuts must be initiated as well. Let’s take a look at The Pentagon. That’s where we’ll find most cuts right now.
Planet, Like a true liberal, you homed right in on the Pentagon for most cuts. The Department of Defense should be looked at along with all other departments of the Executive Branch, agencies, sub agencies who are all extremely wasteful and doing a lot of duplicative work. No more phony stimulus projects, cut out the Farmers subsidies for not growing crops, get rid of Obamacare and its $1.6 Trillion dollar price tag, no more goodies attached to legislation and that is a good start.
Planet, you made a good statement that the $800B Stimulus was mis-managed in your opinion. Actually, it went a lot further than just mis-management. It was pretty much corrupt political pay-offs for supporters of Obama. It was proven that the shovel ready projects were a myth. Now, the President came out and said that the private sector is doing fine and the areas of weakness was state and local governments and teachers. He wants another stimulus to do the same thing over again and hoping for a different result. Investment in government never helps the economy. It just keeps draining the economy with higher costs. The only way to pull out of this morass is to stimulate the private sector with less taxes, less burdensome regulation and to get the Oil & Gas Industry going by doing Keystone, release the leases in Federal Lands. We would see hundreds of thousands of new productive jobs being created in a short while. I know this is a foreign concept to Progressive thinkers, but it is the truth.