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A Monetary Policy For the Tea Party Movement -
by John Tamny, Toreador Research and Trading (VE Guest Contributor)
Last night's returns confirmed what past polling data had long predicted, that voters have lost patience with a political party that lacks even the most rudimentary understanding of how economies - meaning individuals - prosper. For that we should all rejoice.
But as the polling data also revealed, voters are almost as disgusted with the Republican Party as they are with the GOP's reliably dim adversaries on the other side of the aisle. Indeed, not long ago frustrated voters largely fired a Republican establishment so addicted to power that it had forgotten why voters put it there to begin with.
Lest we forget, it was the Republicans who first foisted on the electorate nosebleed levels of spending, regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley that turned enterprising CEOs into accountants, a weak dollar that robbed workers of their earnings, and bailouts of banks and car companies that should have been allowed to die. Republicans claim to love capitalism and the Constitution, but when the capitalist system sought to cleanse itself of failed concepts on the way to a healthy economic recovery, the GOP ignored strict constitutional limits meant to restrain federal power on the way to propping up businesses that the markets had left for dead.
Worse for the country, once the Republicans were properly shown the door, the Democrats took over and remarkably proved even more inept than their predecessors in the areas of spending, regulation and dollar policy. Last night's results revealed in living color just how hopeless their governance was.
Turning to the Tea Party movement, understandably exasperated by the unwillingness of either party to hold down spending, to let businesses and individuals fail, and with their almost complete disdain for constitutional limits, a movement was born. The Tea Party movement, through rallies, constitutional study groups, and stricter vetting of candidates for ideological purity, surely influenced yesterday's elections in ways that give at least some of us reason for cautious optimism.
As for the Republican Party, for good or bad it's been given a new lease on life by the Tea Parties through what would appear to be a loose, uncertain alliance. Skeptics would credibly point out that the Tea Parties merely chose the lesser of two evils.
But the good news is that perhaps chastened by their past failings, the Republicans know to whom they owe their good fortune. The Tea Parties saved them, and here's hoping they pay them back through renewed interest in a Constitution that first authorizes the federal government, and then strictly limits its power.
If so, much of what Congress "gives" to us with the money of others will quickly be deemed unconstitutional on the way to big spending cuts, followed by even bigger tax cuts. As for bailouts of businesses and individuals, assuming what's not true - that the bailouts saved the economy - there's no enumerated power in the Constitution that allows Congress or the president to use tax dollars in order to save others from their mistakes.
Despite the undeniable good that will result from the Tea Party movement hopefully forcing the political class to show spending discipline wrought by strict constitutional limits, there's seemingly a big hole in the platform. Specifically, it's hard to discern any interest in stabilizing the value of the dollar.
This is important, and it's also a constitutional issue. Indeed, the Constitution empowers Congress "to coin money, regulate the value of", and this line in the document if properly read says that Congress must legislate the issuance of dollars that hold a specific value today, tomorrow, and ten years from now.
In short, the Tea Parties, to be successful, must demand that the political class get serious about redefining the dollar in terms of gold. If not, all their spending, tax, pro-Constitution and anti-bailout protests won't mean a whole lot, and the economy's full recovery will remain a distant object.
If it's true what the Tea Parties say about government spending representing a very true tax on the people, then it's also true that persistent devaluation of the dollars we earn by both the Bush and Obama Treasuries has trumped what's occurred on the spending side. Inflation is a pernicious tax that has revealed itself over the last decade through record prices of commodities (think gasoline), reduced job opportunities thanks to investors going on strike, and the mother of all financial crises.
Simply put, the dollar is the most important price in the world, and if the dollar had been stable this decade there's quite simply no way that Americans would have rushed into real estate in the frenzied way that they did in the decade past. Housing is commodity-like, it's an inflation hedge that we can live in, and absent the dollar's collapse that began in 2001, there's no property boom. The unfortunate bailouts of profligate homeowners were to a high degree a symptom of a weak dollar that made housing so initially attractive to begin with.
Tea Partiers properly resented TARP and the bank bailouts more generally, but what they're seemingly not talking about is how the dollar's ongoing weakness continues to prop up home prices, and serves as a backdoor bailout of those same banks that should have been left for dead. Not only does the sagging, unstable dollar create the nominal illusion of bank health, that the dollar remains historically weak means that limited capital necessary to fund company and job creation is still locked up in the houses on which dead-banks walking teeter.
To make plain what is, so long as the dollar continues to test new lows, there will be no discernable economic recovery. All companies and the jobs they create are the certain result of investment offered up by savers in our midst. But with the Obama Treasury mimicking the Bush Treasury's policies in favor of currency debasement, those with the means to do so will have no incentive to delay consumption if their parsimony is going to be rewarded with further dollar weakness.
Putting it in historical terms, the weak dollar discredited the Bush administration not long ago, and it's presently discrediting an Obama administration totally oblivious to the correlation between dollar strength and low unemployment. If the Tea Party movement ignores Congress's enumerated power to command a stronger, more stable dollar, it too will soon enough be discredited before an electorate understandably looking for answers elsewhere.
A
bout VE Contributor:
John Tamny
Mr. Tamny is a senior economic advisor to Toreador Research and Trading, columnist for Forbes and editor of RealClearMarkets.com. Mr. Tamny frequently writes about the securities markets, along with tax, trade and monetary policy issues that impact those markets for a variety of publications including the Wall Street Journal, National Review and the Washington Times. He’s also a frequent guest on CNBC’s Kudlow & Co. along with the Fox Business Channel
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rushin tea party
this argument has been ongoing since Hamilton/Adams vs. Jefferson/Madison. Hamilton believed that those who had money would invest in the country whereas Madison believed that the people were the investment the country needed.
today, those who have money are not aligned with being an "American" so they have no national pride in investing here, and since manufacturing is gone and we are country who is service orientated, for every $3 we send overseas for food products/gadgets/cars/machinery we get $1 back.
i've always wondered where the idea of global open markets came from and i've found it: Marx advocated free trade because protectionism builds up the nation state and free trade breaks it down. Free trade breaks down traditional culture as a prelude to the creation of a world culture and free trade exacerbates class warfare and through this capitalists will lose control of the nation state as they are defeated by impoverished classes with the help of their backers in the elite class.
Free trade - misery - social revolution
so let's look at china, the yuan and QE2.
China has for years fostered nationalism, protected the yuan and its manufacturing base, has been very slow to lower barriers to outsiders and is basically enclosed, isolated from social revolution EXCEPT the leaders see that the yuan is appreciating rapidly because they have bought our treasuries and our gov't is printing money like its fake - so the only way to take out china's manufacturing deadlock and reignite the USA's manufacturing base is to QE2 and cause chaos in the world so that its too expensive to buy that t-shirt from china.
Having said the above I am totally against destroying the dollar but if its war China wants by another name, then 42,000 manufacturing facilities lost since q4 1999 in the USA is enough I say and we need those job back instead of waiting on tables and speaking through microphones in drive throughs.
I am an indie who admires the tea party enthusiasm and hope when they said they want to stop spending they realize it meant stop spending on medicare/social security as those are the top 2 eaters in the budget.
I cannot recall what Marx said about free trade but I find it hard to believe a total central control guy would favor free trade over time.
Look, free trade is an extension of your own personal freedom and voluntary association. You own yourself and all you produce and you are free to trade your labor/productivity/money with anyone you choose...at least if you fancy yourself free. So, if I choose to trade my labor for a French wine instead of a Napa Valley wine, I can do it. You can argue I should buy American and Napa is as good as the Alsace-Lorraine but if my palate prefers the gallic grape, then its my choice. Maybe I will be swayed by your argument and buy more Napa. It doesn't matter either way. You are free to influence but not coerce me. The same operates in reverse.
It also an extension of voluntary associations. I am free to associate or not associate with whomever I wish. At the end of the day, free trade is simply I offer you two fish for six bananas. If I get tired of bananas or you I will try to trade for something else or someone else. We all prosper more when trade is free because the association is voluntary which means both parties must feel satisfied, unlike your coerced interactions with say...the DMV. Note the differences in the experience.
Where I will grant you points and partial agreement is the problem of rigged or managed trade when a country uses the State to rig trade in favor of their own industries. That is actually an international political problem and has to be dealt with like any other disagreement up to and including trade wars. Trade wars are economic wars and like physical war there are casualties on both sides and you cannot tell who will win, no matter what you think when you go into it. Like physical war you are wise to reflect and very carefully consider your actions before you fire the first shot.
Marx favored "free trade" (by the standards of the time) because he saw international import/export as just another system exploited by the wealthy oligarchy to control the consumption of the poor and exploit them by cutting them off from foreign resources. Marx's meaning doesn't compare very well to what we claim is "free trade" today, which basically consists of the ability for an individual to move *dollars* across borders with ease while having a fair amount of difficulty moving actual physical objects. Like cigarettes, Bibles, knives, fruit, whatever. Moving actual *goods* across borders is rather difficult for the proles, and is controlled quite effectively by large wealth-interests. Just try boxing and shipping a few cases of whiskey or a few laptop computers to a friend/relative overseas.
Also, Marx was no central planner.
Central control. No communist country ever gets beyond the dictatorship of the proletariat. I suppose I need to study my Marx a bit more as it has come back into vogue under different names and faces.
Fellas - all this talk about the TEA partiers being uneducated. You better reconsider... The numbers show higher percentages of post-grad degrees than "either" of the "parties"
And I will tell you what - perhaps not having 2-4 years of Markowitz crammed down your throat in a post-grad "program" will keep you a little more street smart.
I don't know what will happen to enthusiasm, but this is a shift. Regular folks do get it. They fear debasement.
Onto gold --- I agree. Just like every philosphical discussion must eventually terminate at God, every financial discussion must eventually terminate at gold.
If we are in agreement that the American people want improved government (not just change), then the huge turnout says that the American people have not given up and want participation. This is consistent with the last election. This says the American people are not as stupid or lazy as some say.
Can the problem be fixed quickly with a happy ending in the next decade? Maybe not. The impatience and attention span disorder and distractions of the media do present problems. You gotta go to work every day to support the family. You gotta exercize weekly to stay healthr. You have now gotta stay involved with your government to stay free and keep America strong. This is one HELL of a job, but you gotta stay at it.
To quote Michelle Obama, I have not been proud of my country but now I am.
Change the word “change” to improvement and throw the corrupt sons of bitches out of office, again and again. YES WE CAN
Look, I personally know a lot of the Tea Party people in several states. It was a spontaneous movement born of frustration at current events exacerbated by the sharp move left by Obama and pals. There are no specific leaders. It is not a real party like the Democrat, Republican or even Libertarian parties. You will not find Tea Party on any ballot. It is not coopted by anyone in particular although many might try to do so. Because there is no one officially in charge you cannot get all of them to do anything in particular...some of them, perhaps, but not all. Keep your perennial BS conspiracy theories to yourself. They're generally stupid and even ignorant. Also, beware of any one person who claims to speak for the Tea Party, especially nationally.
I've seen a strong libertarian streak in most the participants, but there are strong conservative religious types, agnostic libertarian types, traditionalists, constitutionalists, economically literate and economically illiterate and many just frustrated with a general sense of gloom and doom. There is no one party platform. They are like those spontaneous crowds that were popular. They come together for issues, events and candidates.
My personal impression is they have several biases, first, a strong bias against the status quo which means against most incumbents. That's why they trashed any incumbent that even remotely seemed to be part of the problem and went with relative unknowns. Cassel and Murkowsky were out and Miller and the witch were in. I submit to you this is good because they are actually open to listening to new unknown nonprofessional candidates. Second, they tend toward liberty versus socialism so they are unlikely to support democrats or any larger government program, even "free" healthcare. Third, they tend toward traditional fiscal austerity and accountability. So, market interventions, Fed games and exponential debt growth will be opposed. Last, they actually have no specific uniting ideology which is why many may oppose the term "socialism" and favor balanced budgets but many (not all) will not let you mess with social security very much. Many in the crowds are SSec recipients.
I am sure many, mainly in the Republican establishment will try to use the somewhat undirected energy for their own ends. Welcome to the real world. Put on your big boy pants and fight for what you believe. It's always going to be that way. The socialists want to (and have) coopt the Democrat party to their ends, Ron Paul would like to pull the Republicans to the libertarian side (Go, Ron, go!)...everyone wants to influence things to their ends. Wall Street bankers, secret business cartels, etc.? Not likely. These people are not even remotely connected to those types. Look at the damn photos and videos! Do they look like the types that Goldman Sachs can influence and buy off?
I cannot guess what will happen with the Tea Party but I like them. My guess is they fade away if things improve. If things deteriorate they are most likely to lead or join a political revolt. They mix up the equation and prevent the gradually deteriorating status quo of irresponsible government and waning rule of law. They are relentlessly ridiculed by the self appointed intelligentsia, yet they endure. They will not go quietly into the night because they are inconvenient to some. They are very passionate, hold to their personal principles and do not want to be someone else's pawn. You might be able to fool or misdirect some, but not all of them. It is the strength of decentralization.
The fundamental problem with your piece, and likely your whole outlook on life, is contained right there in your first paragraph: "...prosper".
Maybe you define prosperity in such a way that it validates your libertarian view of the market by binding the concept to notions of wealth, specifically monetary wealth. The rest of your article details how best to sell the status quo, as if it can be fixed so that our consumer culture doesn't destroy us all.
Many people would define it otherwise, however, insisting that economies (and so, individuals) are prosperous when they're healthy, treated (and paid) fairly, when their children have a chance to gain a better education than they got, and most of all, that they have a voice in the fight. Your article does nothing to address the main problem in America, and that is that the people have lost sight of the fact that they are the government, and that government action is (or ought to be) designed to protect their interests, and not competing interests.
I don't know which Tea Party people you guys talk to, but the ones I know are very strong on ending the Fed.
I don't know which Tea Party people you guys talk to, but the ones I know are very strong on ending the Fed.
Do you mean like gone, pftt? That's it, gone with no other oversight of the US monetary policy?
Come on, provide at least one reco.
Ditto.
I posted the following to my Congress critters. Enjoy!
Cooter
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TO: Senator Cornyn
Senator Hutchinson
Representative Johnson
I am writing each of my Senators and my Representative in a hopefully fruitful attempt to get your attention. The last time I wrote each of you was back in the days of TARP when your phones were lit up with pissed off constituents who demanded representation. I am not interested in some BS excuses from my Senators on why they saw fit to vote for it. I thank my Representative for his opposition.
Since that time, I have been largely pleased with the position and votes from Representative Johnson. I have also been pleased to have the opportunity to denounce Senator Hutchinson in her recent attempt to come home to roost in Texas. I avidly argued against her candidacy amongst friends and family during the primaries. I know it was tough on her ego to barely place ahead of that tea bagger nut job Medina. Senator Cornyn has four more years to pull a sixties model Strom Thurmond and get with the program, however as chair of the powerful National Republican Senatorial Committee the clear desire for establishment candidates over tea party candidates has been duly noted.
Let me be very clear; the Republican party better understand their base is about to replace them if they do not start WALKING the WALK. Every conservative I know is PISSED. The ole us versus them isn’t going to hold up this time around. Everyone wants real results.
Now is not the time to be all giddy about that docket of pork projects and lobby authored legislation sitting on your desk. Now is not the time to cash those banking lobby checks and bail them out yet again. Now is the time to step up and face extremely serious issues that face our nation and threaten our sovereignty. Let’s review.
Federal Spending
I challenge any of you to point out the fiscally conservative administration/congress in this chart:
<<image of Current Expenditures and Current Reciepts dating to 1940>>
I am no longer interested in BS political rhetoric; I want results. Raise taxes. Cut Spending. Do both, but I want to see a plan to get it done in 2011.
Fraud
The laws of this nation are being trampled by the banks. I would even go as far to say that the history of our laws is being trampled by the banks.
I could point out that MBS are not entirely in line with common law given MBS separate the note (packaged and sold to investors) and the deed (held by MERS). Hey, it’s just 900 years of common law precedent right? Clearly I am some over-reacting nut bag constituent and don’t understand the importance of securitization to the future of our nation. I am somewhat troubled by the fact that when the bubble pops and banks have to suddenly foreclose on huge volumes of bad loans, their solution was to set up document mills to forge key documents in courts of law across the country.
But of course, I am some dumb red neck who isn’t smart enough to know about the Senate voice vote on the out for banks on this precise subject just a few weeks ago which was subsequently pocket vetoed. Nope, I don’t have a clue!
It’s a good thing Congress is asleep at the wheel or the banks might be in trouble!
This brings me to the next point; who is going to eat all those MBS losses now that the whole framework is shown to be on shaky ground? Have you seen the fed’s balance sheet lately?
<<image of current fed balance sheet>>
So, let me guess how this ends; the taxpayers get stuck with the bill right?
Don’t give me this Frank-Dodd crap. I demanded in late 2008 the same thing I demand now; Glass-Steagall. The original was 17 pages. The reason Frodd (Frank-Dodd) was so big is because it was precisely that; a fraud. If ya’ll can put out thousands of pages of crap that hasn’t been read, then 17 pages should be a snap! Can we do that on the first day of our new session please?
Come to think about it, did we need even more new laws when we currently refuse to enforce our existing ones?
You know what I really want? I want PROSOCUTIONS! Get it? I want Neil Barofsky and a few battalion of legal piranha set lose on the financial oligarchy. Hell, let’s privatize this whole process and give the private sector a 5% cut on the take downs that result in hard jail time. Since when do the elite in this country brazenly violate the law and get bailed out on the tax payer dime? This is CRIMINAL! The crimes are so overt that no one even bothers to pretend to hide it anymore. The institutions which are to enforce laws are compromised. For example, the SEC ignores clear and repeated violations of existing securities laws on an almost daily basis. The list is too long to even begin to enumerate.
We are quickly becoming, if we aren’t there already, a banana republic; a nation without the rule of law.
Your job as my representation is to reverse this troubling trend and put white collar criminals in jail where they belong.
The Federal Reserve
Today, the 3rd of November, the world waits for Ben Bernanke to grace us with his decision to spend or not spend billions, or potentially trillions, of America’s dollars. In case you may have glossed over this point, let me single it out.
Today, the 3rd of November, the world waits for Ben Bernanke to grace us with his decision to spend or not spend billions, or potentially trillions, of America’s dollars. According to Wiki, The President's budget for 2010 totals $3.55 trillion. So this guy, ONE GUY, can opt to spend upwards to two trillion dollars OR MORE? Because he thinks it’s the best course of action? ARE YOU F’ING KIDDING ME? You folks in Congress will bicker and position for months over Obama’s budget and this guy gets a blank check to spend HALF that amount because he WANTS to?
It’s extremely clear that what is a clear mandate for Congress is being usurped by the Federal Reserve, which in no way represents tax payers. There are no checks and balances with the current central bank system. On top of this, the actions of the central bank helped create this crisis, and the central bank now uses this as a means to grab yet more power. The balance sheet of our government is being destroyed by this private corporation, as valuable assets are exchanged for worthless paper. There is a word for this type of government; fascism. These acts are criminal and should be handled as such.
Do ya’ll realize how completely bass-ackwards this whole process is? Did ya’ll ever take a moment at any point in your life to read “The Dying of Money” by Jens Parsson which is freely available on Google. If you don’t shut this maniac down NOW this whole shebang is going Weimar.
Now that the topic is broached, what is wrong with the alternative of having a bank holiday and just nationalizing all the big banks, blowing up their bond holders, giving the good assets to professionally run banks, and then clearing the bad stuff out through a separate entity?
Why don’t you take this moment and give William Black a call and say “Hey, I got this pissed off constituent who is supposed to a rube but seems to know how bad he (and his country) is getting screwed. I need a plan to keep my ass in office. What do we need to do with the banks to get this thing behind us?” I mean, after all he cleaned up the savings and loan crisis and probably has a pretty good idea how to go about this issue.
He won’t write you a big donor check or hook you up with a weekend of debauchery, but I know what his answer will be. That is what I want from my representation and doing it will ensure voters the next go around.
With this in mind, if each of you could be so kind as to reply with a response to my following questions:
Regards,
Crazy Cooter
Cooter. You rock. Can I plagiarize parts of your letter? See my comments above on Baynor and you'll see why I THINK that maybe they still do not get it. I hope I am wrong.
Ron Paul to Chair Monetary Policy Subcommittee http://slate.me/cON153
whoever owns it defines it.
zh loses cred pushing tp bs.
http://mostlywater.org/peoples_history_koch_industries_how_stalin_funded...
why bother starting a new party, just start funding the candidates you prefer, (you can control either party that way, look at the Democrats running so friggin far to the right since Clinton it makes their Progressives heads spin. Oh but we have to support the good Democrats against the evil evil Republicans, send money send money.) Goldman paid for Obama once, they won't need to buy him again. Who will they buy next time, teh sususpense is killing me.
hey, Forbes is a Neocon rag, and Kudlow is a bully pulpit for 19th century robber barron capitalists. That said I agree that the Tea Party is an idea which is yet to be defined. Whoever defines it, owns it.'
What do you think a strong dollar would do to the stock market, and pension fund managers, who are more incredibly stupid than those who think the Tea Party represents their interests. The Anti-Tea Party is the uniparty system already in place, it is in effect, the inverse of the historical event, Representation without Taxation, (opposite of the first Tea Party, which objected to Taxation without Representation, but this thing wasn't founded on any ideal really, except consternation. The Consternation of the United States and for which it stands, one loud ugly mob of effete rich bastards, who resent those rich bastards who have one up on them, invisible, for deregulation and government bailouts for all of me and those like me.) If you want to fight the Anti-Tea Party you should be advocating government paid for with taxes, which would render the political whores somewhat more accountable. A populist pimp bastard like Reagan would be the guy to run the show.
My solution would be to stop trading with the Commies and the Socialists, who subsidize, build with prison labor, and dump products at a loss on the world market. Lie down with the dog you get the Obama fleas. Secondly float the M1 (real dollar) against the shadow M3 dollar. We have to protect working people, since we allowed their retail savings bank to trade derivatives, olay caveat emptor, except the banks never opened their friggin books to anyone, and still don't.
which brings us to transparency, at the barrel end of gun if need be, lets see who's swimming naked, eh Ben B? And raid those Caribbean banks, a few marines a boat, a little holiday, for the Obamas. Open your books...
The Tea Party didn't like taxes, (know anyone who does?) but real Americans should take pride in paying taxes, and holding their government accountable.
Great, so what do they want to cut first? Defense, Medicaid/Medicare or Social Security?
Everything else is small beans by comparison.
Most inteligent people don't associate themselves with this movement since it was totaly co-opted by the religious right
And it only shows that all the people do is to follow empty slogans without ever bothering to understand what the meaning of it is, if those people gave a damn they would not let them selves get corrupted by dumb-bell Palin
Trying to say that "the tea party" has any coherent position (other than opposing every Obama policy no matter how good or bad it is) is ludicrous.
They are the modern version of the "know nothings" merged with the John Birch society and discredited supply side platitudes.
As a policy wonk, I find them wholly depressing - even though their rage against the machine is entirely appropriate.
You can't be serious. You call yourself a "policy wonk"? Where do you work, Burger King University?
I'm OK with a party that doesn't want to do anything. We have tons of laws on the books, I'm sure there are laws under which the acts committed by Magnetar/Paulson, AIG, Citi, Liar Loan applicants, Liar Loan Processor/Enablers, etc would be considered fraudulent. Lets make sure those are actually enforced, not further obscured by new Financial Reform Laws that only result in credit card companies sending me tons of mail explaining how they can charge usurious levels of interest and be well within the law. Wasn't SOX supposed to prevent all these issues? And the much ballyhooed new law is no SOX. (Which might actually be praise.)
(Edit - too much meme.)
Sure, if they could describe even the faintest outlines of the "nothing" they wanted to do, the TEA Party would gain some credibility with those of us who think having some kind of plan is a better idea than yelling and "common sense."
Look at Santelli--this is a guy seen as the THINKING TEA Partier. He earned some cheers for bellowing like a 5-year-old on the teevee set.
What's his *proposal* as the way to "STOP SPENDING, STOP SPENDING, STOP SPENDING!!!!!!!!!!"?
It's been just mindless anger, and sadly, it's not going to bring anything but pain. Let just one them stand up and say we're going to defund the various wars. Or we're going to cut Medicare/SS benefits. Or we're going to default on our debts.
No matter what the solution--if someone would say something that suggests they have any clue what's going on, it would be encouraging.
I get so sad and frustrated when I visit the rural/small town area where I grew up, a Santellian rant is bound to come forth. There used to be actual manufacturing jobs there. The tech high school I went to turned out some of the best tool/die people in the world - tool/die went away with the manufacturing jobs. I don't know who to blame - the unions who realized too late their work rules had destroyed the profitability of the companies, management for not updating equipment, congress for free trade policies...
This is why I foresee midwest voting patterns sloshing back and forth between D and R, but always voting against the current party in power. The coasts will always be D. So we will have either heavy D or marginal R in power. As we just saw, people don't want heavy D - as I'm sure they won't like marginal (or heavy) R either.
US embracing austerity?
Exactly, austerity is for them fuzzy little foreigners.
Or:
Who needs austerity, we have a printing press - Doubledown Krugman
This article is spot on. However, most Tea Party participants are not terribly literate on currency issues. They do have a general sense that government is too big, too powerful and too loose with money...which is good, but I don't think most can nail down any connection to fiat currency, Fed actions or any particular economic-monetary theory. This is the role of leadership. Leaders within the Tea Party and also leaders nominated for office will have to have some knowledge and explain policies designed to address these issues. After listening to Baynor speak this morning I am not optimistic in the short run.
I agree, most teabaggers are actually illiterate, Sharron Angle, Michele Bachmann, and Christine O'Donnell are all battier than fruitcakes. They believe in dinosaurs, witches, and unicorns. The fact that anyone would ever trust any of these nuts to handle ribbon cuttings, let alone the economic policy of this country is truly terrifying. The libertarian economic model was just used as a cover for teabag craziness, these people care more about bible lore than fixing the Fed.
I moderately agree with you. However, I will take them any day over the establishment politicians and power structure that are driving us off the cliff. Barney Frank is actually pretty smart and he got reelected. Are we better off with him back in? I'd rather have Forest Gump.
" After listening to Baynor speak this morning I am not optimistic in the short run."
Last time I checked the politician you refer to was a prominent Republican, not a tea partier. Rand Paul on the other hand is overtly a tea partier, and like his father also has strong opinions about the Fed, that secretive private organisation that prints the, um, "dollar".
He's the new Speaker so we have to listen to him, Tea Party or not. The reason I am not optimistic is because he and others really do not reject our government as it is nor propose any profound reforms. To say you want to return spending to 2008 levels is Okay on a budgetary level but it really changes nothing. Now saying you want to eliminate several departments, Education, EPA, Agriculture, or end subsidies, audit the Fed, reform entitlements, pass a balanced budget amendment...that's real reform. To say you want to go back to 2008 is to say, "I am actually OK with our government as it is structured and all it promises to do. I just want a little cheaper version."
That is how the damn idiot establishment Republicans get coopted and spanked by the Dems. They fundamentally play by the rules and priniciples of the Dems/collectivists. As long as you leave the government as it is all will be OK for the modern liberals-Dems-collectivists-neofascists. If I were Obama, Reid and Pelosi I would be laughing my ass off right now and thinking or saying, "Stay tuned. We'll be back and continue where we left off!"
This is a time I hope I am wrong and the Republicans will look to their libertarian principles and do some fundamental change. I ain't taking odds on it, though.
Ah thawt it wuz jus becuz thy height dem naggers
I thought he said "Boner".
Clearly, the author is yet another RepubliKeynesian fraud, selling debt.
The TeaBaggers won't have a clue on how to breathe life into the dollah, or how to correct the loss of manufacturing base over the last 40 years. They holler, they goad, but the only solutions on which they all seem to agree is cut entitlements. Teabaggers are going to end up holding the bag.
Teabaggers are going to end up holding the bag.
And when they fill that bag with the fruits of their labor they won't be giving it back forever. Tort reform is coming as part of the teaparty movement wiping out all white collar crime and inefficient and frivolous due process.
You are a dinosour.
+1
The plebes get more political theater.
The rich get more bonds and tax cuts.
The banksters get whatever it is they want.
Sarah(I can see Russia from my back yard)
- you are 3 deviations short of anarchy.
When the teabaggers become complacent with the complexity of economic policy, there will be others to oust them next time around. Those that forget history are bound to repeat it.
You think Rand Paul or his dad are going to get "complacent with the complexity of economic policy"?
You are wrong. They correctly observe that statist, keynesian, and Fed-monetarist economic policy is an unconstitutional disaster that needs to be ENDED, not fooled with. They'll get bored with it after they've killed it, not before. To wit, the mechanism by which (government) economic policy has become so complex (which is not to be confused with "intelligent" or "good") over the decades, is that government intervention creates problems in and of itself that government later corrects with more interventions meant to fix the previous ones, piling up layers of intervention and regulation and government, ad infinitum. The current entanglement of the Fed with every moving part of everything, worldwide, is the endpoint of that game. This is a Gordian Knot, the answer to which is to oh, End the Fed, and elliminate most departments of the federal government too, not just dial back entitlements in various ways.
Rand Paul is an angry little Napoleon, he is a racist, and will never promote the values of his father. Don't hold your breath thinking this little twirp is some type of hero.
This article sums it up pretty well:
To the Tea Party: Go Screw Yourself
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/denninger2.1.1.html
The guy talks about the Tea Party as if it is some 3rd party. It's not. It's just an extension of the Republican Party.
Like I said...
It is a movement in most places. No actual "Tea Party" most places but rather T.E.A. parties, plural. The Republican Party has parroted the messages brought forth by this grass roots movement, but reluctantly and with irritation, and actual tea partiers...just a lot of individual americans...are under no illusions about the perfidity of the GOP as regards limiting the federal government. McCain the unprincipled centrist and Bush the so called "compassiate conservative" are to most tea partiers examples of the sort of least-worst candidates the GOP keeps sticking to them.
No it isn't. It's more like the NRA. It will support ideological equals in the Democratic party as well as the Republican party. I expect the Blue Dog Democrats and Tea Party people are having lunch right now, planning on ways of profiting off wayward old-school Republicans wanting to belly up to the trough.
Seems a lot like "my team rocks, your team sucks!"
CH1 - Agreed, but the candidates that they have put forth are largely candidates of convenience. This process has not traveled far enough down the road to where the Tea Partiers themselves are actually running for office. IMHO, this will proabably happen eventually, but how soon depends on what comes to pass in the next 12-24 months.
The Tea Party-endorsed "Republicans" may be slightly more honest and/or Constitutionally-aware on average compared to a typical politician, But, all we know is that they say the things that Tea Partiers want to hear, and are likely clueless on Economics and Monetary Policy (as are most politicians, and some economists... *snicker*). I think that here was a rush to endorse on the part of the Tea Party groups, and it may cost them.
The battle will be one of public perception of the results that these so-labeled Tea Party candidates achieve, or end up bungling in the end. However, I am savoring the idea of the establishment Progressives and Globalist elites having to deal with all these Constitutionalists in the houses of Congress, it warms my heart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7JY-pn-OkM&feature=player_embedded
To Douchinger: Go screw yourself