Okay, but We Also Ordered “Hope”

Can you believe the Dow is dropping AGAIN?

We might as well start using the “D” word. “Depression.” It looks very likely, and unlike the first Depression, it will probably end with an overall level of prosperity that is permanently reduced.

Congratulations, Obama voters. Thanks to you, we have spent everyone’s grandchildren’s college tuition, and we are getting nothing in return except exacerbated economic injury. This is what happens when you elect a wet-behind-the-ears Chicago-machine bagman instead of a leader. And just to make you happy, I’ll admit that McCain would not have been appreciably better. We needed a conservative, but there were no conservatives on the menu. I hate to say this, but because the economic mess is so important, we might have been better off electing the lunatic Ron Paul. Sure, he would have caused horrible problems. But he would not have put our overgrown government on steroids, nationalized banks, and put the Big Three on methadone.

I still blame the left, because were it not for their growing numbers and the pressure they apply to the political parties, the GOP might have had enough of a spine to run a conservative.

The things that are happening in the market right now do not reflect the wrongness of trickle-down economics implemented under George Bush. They reflect the investing public’s knowledge that Obama’s socialist approach to ending the recession will make it worse. This is why people are selling stock, and selling is what makes the Dow drop. No one with any common sense believes we can fix this mess by rewarding the institutions and individuals that caused it, yet that is exactly what Obama is doing, and even Bush got into the act at the end of his term. If you want to criticize Bush, don’t yammer about his supply-side ideas, which were very sound. Complain that he gave in last fall and decided to give leftist economics a try. And complain that he wasn’t man enough to rein in and regulate the GSEs that espoused leftist policies which caused the housing bubble.

I don’t know if people understand the magnitude of this catastrophe. The Dow peaked at above 14,000. That wasn’t all that long ago. Now we’re headed for 7,000, after months of frantic, pants-wetting government first aid (consisting mainly of tourniquets applied to the neck). This didn’t happen after the 1987 crash or the tech meltdown. This is much more like the post-1929 era. At a similar point after the 1987 crash, the market was much healthier than it is today, on a percentage basis. In fact, the same is true of the 1929 crash.

We’re printing money to ward off deflation, and we have to pay interest on that money, because we issue bonds to justify the printing. Will that stop deflation, when people no longer have jobs and can’t afford to spend? Won’t sellers drop their prices in order to get money to stay in business? I don’t know. Here’s another question: will that money end up in circulation? Sooner or later, won’t foreign governments get wise and stop buying bonds? I don’t know enough about the Fed to say, but it sounds like printed money only ends up in circulation if we can find someone stupid enough to lend to us. If that’s true, maybe deflation is unpreventable.

China is hard to understand. On the one hand, they want us to do well enough to buy their products, so they need to buy our bonds. On the other, they want to keep increasing their output, which means crushing American industry and wrecking our economy. Maybe they’ll eventually realize we’re not going to recover, and they’ll decide making products and marketing them to the rest of the world is smarter than keeping us on life support. What they’re doing is a little like giving your son an allowance so he can support your family by buying products you make in the garage. It seems inherently inefficient and lossy.

Who would have thought that a community organizer with virtually no experience wouldn’t be able to solve all the world’s problems? Gee, electing him seemed like such a great idea. Socialism worked so well in North Vietnam and Cuba.

I guess I should quit poking the left. They’re the symptom, not the disease. The disease is turning away from God and slicing up the Promised Land in exchange for promises from murderers and liars. I suppose that if conservatives were in charge, the curse we have brought on ourselves would still bring us down. Leftism is inherently evil and ungodly, because it presumes that man can usher in the Messianic Age without God’s help. It’s just as idolatrous as the Tower of Babel. But godless conservatism is equally vain.

I’ll bet that nine months from now, I’m a hundred miles north of here, planting things on a big lot and driving a truck instead of a Thunderbird. In times like these, things with intrinsic value become precious, and small homes in big cities don’t fit that description.