This is why Westboro Baptist Church is a joke

[Jester]

I'm just going by what the majority of studies have shown.

Oh, Larry, what a wacky guy you are.

Seriously, the "majority of studies" are correct, but only within a limited scope. As I said, providing benefits increases the first two groups, those who are unemployed because they prefer unemployment, and those who are holding out for the perfect job. (See: Labour market, German.) But that's not what exists right now. It doesn't matter if equilibrium unemployment went up from 4% to 4.5%, because *actual* unemployment is at 9.2!

I think there is also a big problem with structural unemployment. It seems too many of our jobs were ones of convenience that could be easily shed to tighten the bottom line as needed (e.g. greeter at Wall-mart). We need more doctors and nurses, but former greeter at Wall-mart is not enough of a qualification.

All sectors are down. I agree it would be nice to have a more educated population with awesomer jobs, but it's difficult to see how to change that in less than 30 years. It's not like someone sat down and said "Hey, how about we have Wal-Mart greeter jobs, rather than doctors! That would be great!" Those things are not substitutes.

It's called a simile.

"The government is like the worst venture capitalist ever. It's like we gave them some billions of dollars and they blew it on a big party, instead of careful investments in things that would grow the jobs market."

So, yes, it's like the federal government was sent out with a $Trillion to get us some jobs, and they blew it on a kegger. Yes. it's a simile.

It is a simile. Where the real event was "continued to fund unemployment insurance payments," you made the comparison of "kegger." So, um, yeah, I'm pretty much standing by what I said.

Cash for ____ only pulls future activity into the now, leaving a void in the future. Bailing out the states pushed the critical decision needed at the moment into the future, and there was great hope the recession would be a short term spike. They expected tax revenue to return within a year. Their remedy is a placebo. In the past the recessions were short, so when the economy got better everyone would say, "See! The placebo works!"

But, it doesn't. This is because the government produces nothing. It can only take from one pile and put into another, or take from our children's future by borrowing for today's malinvestments.

Not malinvestments. Quite the opposite. Future economic growth builds on the present economy. If resources lie idle, producing nothing (Oh, hello, 9.2% unemployment. Didn't see you come in!), they don't just produce nothing for today, but they also leave no useful residue (capital) for the future. These are people who could be building stuff that we need - bridges, houses, power plants, roads, steel, whatever. Instead, they're sitting on their butts. Criminal waste.

This is *exactly* the time when we want to pull resources from the future into the present. Why? Once again, idle resources. The choice is not between consuming now or consuming in the future. The choice is between making something, and making nothing. We can't save a slice of our nothing, we can't invest it. We'll never get those hours of labour back, that slack capacity that never went into use.

Yes, I would blame the mortgage originators, whether they be banks or not. But, just because a bank got caught holding the toxic asset doesn't mean it was their fault it was created. Still, I agree that "Buyer beware" applies to corporations as well as consumers.

Well, yes, it is. If you own an asset, it's because you bought it. If you bought it, it's your responsibility. That's how the free market works. If you are demand, you can't complain that it's all supply's fault!

What law was broken? It was congress who allowed CDO, and CDS (through Fannie and Freddie), who repealed Glass-Steagal, and who didn't reign in derivatives (or other junk investments). Is it the foxes guarding the hen house?

...

They probably should have temporarily nationalized those in trouble, and eventually fired the executives (without golden parachutes) and their boards of directors. Actually fix the debacle with the laws that allowed the mess to happen. Bring in financial resuscitation teams to clean up the balance sheets, then relaunch them as private.

Yes, exactly. Arrests only where crimes were committed. But did they show management the door? No. Did they come within a mile? No.

I agree, but as we discussed at the time, there was a serious downside to allowing the worlds largest financial organizations to collapse.

Saving the banks was the right thing to do. Painful, but necessary. What gets my goat is that it stopped there - once Wall Street had gotten theirs, the political momentum shifted quickly and irreversibly against anything further, aimed at helping anyone else. Further spending was derided as "malinvestment," to be compared with a "kegger," to use your preferred simile, and so nobody else was "bailed out." Only the banksters. Everyone else got salutary lectures on the value of belt-tightening, and sanctimonious heckling about how they must just be unemployed because their benefits are so generous, they'd rather stay on the couch.

What I like about the tea party republicans is that they seem to be acting to principles, but they bring much conservative baggage along with that.

(Well, at least we seem to have correctly identified where the Tea Party lives, politically.)

I don't think they've ever been given any serious test of anything. It's very easy to "act to principles" when all you have to do is grandstanding, but governing requires compromise, and they've so far proven incapable of even getting elected, let alone governing.

-Jester