Naive president has no sense of economic reality

[Daniel B. Kline]

By Daniel B. Kline

Now that president Barack Obama has taken over the auto and banking industries with shockingly little outrage from the American public he has an almost entirely free hand to pursue his anti-capitalist agenda. Not precisely a socialist, Obama is more a deluded idealist who believes that everyone can be middlingly successful but nobody needs to be especially well-off.

In Obama's fantasy land, everyone has a house, a decent job, health care and enough money to take a vacation now and then. It's a nice fantasy, as nobody (except maybe Dick Cheney) wants to see people fail, but it's a fantasy nonetheless as there cannot be success without failure.

Every Obama policy seem to reward people for failing, making bad choices or not working as hard as those of us who manage to get by without government help. Obama hands out tax credits for folks who don't own a house, authorizes billions to help people who default on their mortgages, and doles out government money to businesses that should have paid for their mistakes.

Instead of investing in failure, why not make government money available to successful people and successful businesses? Give General Motors and AIG a few billion dollars and they might continue to eke out an existence. This forestalls people losing their jobs, but it's throwing good money after bad and rewarding companies which did everything wrong.

Why not take the billions wasted keeping these companies afloat and make cheap loans available to people and businesses who demonstrate a pattern of success? In the private world, if you can show that you have succeeded before, than venture capitalists will give you money much more readily and on better terms than someone with a less-than-stellar record.

Basic logic dictates that money handed to someone who has spent money well before has a better chance of being repaid than money lent to someone who hasn't. Banks don't look at people who have declared bankruptcy and hand them more cash because they've had a rough go of it and the government should not either.

Obviously, the recession has caused tough times for some people who have made mostly good choices and suffer through little fault of their own. We should separate those people and businesses from the ones that gambled heavily, took unwise risks and generally behaved irresponsibly. But, the people who made bad choices and spent money well must not be bailed out.

President Obama must stop his reckless behavior and stop believing that everyone can be saved. He seems like a nice man who feels the pain of the people he serves, but being a leader involves making the right choices for the country in the long run not bailing people out in the short-term.

If Obama wants to be the great man so many people want him to be, he must make unpopular decisions now that make the country stronger in the long run. Invest in people and businesses with a track record of success. Allow bad companies to fail and let new, innovative ones rise from their ashes. Let people who can't afford their homes lose their homes and realize that in a capitalist society, not everybody wins.

It won't make him popular with the left-wing of his party, but it will be the right choice for this country.

Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at [e-mail] or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.

[John]

No success without failure-sounds like a poor attempt at Hegelian dialetics. But Hegel, the German Philosopher is much too complicated to discuss here.

"On the lack of noble manners"- by Nietzsche- would be a work to read if one wants to understand the appropriate distain the working class holds for the entrepreneurial class.

Also G.B. Shaws Pygmallion speaks to this appropriate distain.

If one believes in such concepts as fairness, equality, justice- or if these are only ideals never to be realized in Capitalism- Then you agree with Marx and Lennin's assessment of why the "State" is necessary. The sheer brute force of the State- maintains this unfair reality

[TYF]

The U.S. economy is shaky for pretty much everybody. Not only is it bad for Americans, but lousy U.S. economy hits the whole world hard. The U.S. bailout measures are good for everyone worldwide, if the cash advances being made work like they're intended to. However, some are insisting that the bailout is going to wreck the budget and make the deficit explode. Obama and others insist there will be cuts made that will make up for it. Regardless, let us hope that the short term loans we're making will help to bring back the U.S. economy.

[Lance Winslow]

How Long Does it Take to Get Out of a Depression?

If the United States goes into an economic depression then how long might it take to recover from it? Believe it or not, it would not take as long as you might think. Additionally, you do not need a "Politician" to be your savior, such inner strength comes from within, that's how you survive a depression.

You do it with the help of your family and community, look no further to any false gods. The other day a friend asked me;

Do you know if the there examples of countries that pulled out, how long did it take and what did it take, (Except for our "great depression")"

Well, I do not know how long it might take; in fact, it's possible that there will never be a recovery. But, we do have lots of examples to look at. Just going through the recent record, we could discuss; Argentina, Russia, South Korea, Vietnam.

But, I wouldn't compare those to the USA because, we have to believe we are in depression to make it so. Just because Obama and Company are all over the TV set telling us we are in a great depression does not mean we are.

Also, if you look at 1987, 1999, 1993 what happens is that once you do hit bottom you generally have year-over-year stock market growth of 8-12% which can last for nearly a decade or more.

The trick is not to allow your economic engine to overheat, although if your government borrowed a ton of money it may very well want it to over-heat slightly, as inflation is really bad for retired people, but it goes a long way to paying off the debt. Scary stuff, economics are so serious in personal terms, it's a game not for the weak.

Think on this!

Sincerely,

Lance Winslow