Is anybody going to stop Bushflation?

Seiler ^ | Nov 1 07 | John Seilef

[svcw]

Wow! I needed a good laugh.

[NeoCaveman]

Anyone else think Bushfaltion is a funny word, reminds me of Hillary for some reason.

[KarinG1]

[mass55th]

"A bad, expensive war."

Has there ever been a good, cheap war?

[SunkenCiv]

Oh pulllease ping.

[Alberta's Child]

I wasn't around during the American Revolution, but that doesn't mean I can't read about it and make reasonably educated statements about it!

I understood what it meant when you tried to buy a house at 20% prime rates, or tried to buy a car when the bank was so worried about inflation they wouldn’t loan money unless you paid for the car with cash first. I understood what it meant when inflation was pegged at 12% annual.

That's exactly the point of this article. Things may not get that bad, but they are probably going to get pretty close -- and for the same reasons, too.

Jimmy Carter may have been a terrible president, but he gets a bad rap on the economy. The conditions you describe were pretty much inevitable because that a massive inflation of the U.S. dollar was the only way the U.S. government was able to pay for the abject idiocy of the Johnson and Nixon administrations -- i.e., when those two (particularly Johnson) deluded themselves into thinking the country could engage in a major military campaign in Vietnam while at the same time implementing huge domestic spending programs here at home.

Don't say you weren't warned!

[Tarpon]

I’ll say, destroying the economy leaves you with a ‘bad rap’. Who knew.

[Alberta's Child]

Carter didn’t destroy it — Lyndon Johnson did. Carter just happened to be there when the pigeons all came home to roost.

[usmcobra]

Ron Paul will bring back bell bottoms, leisure suits and the Ford Pinto.

all Hail Ron paul

[Tarpon]

You missed price controls and the distribution of fuel which caused the long lines and strangled the economy. Interest rates and runaway inflation were the death knell, to this day, the fed remains deathly afraid of a repeat of runaway inflation.

I thought the Carter fireside chats were a nice touch. I also liked the “hey I’m a nuclear engineer” so I know about energy and we will be out of oil by the year 2000. I was there for Carter and Johnson, Carter was the screw-up, Johnson just started a war. Kennedy just chickened out when the going got tough and left them on the beach. Democraps all ... Nixon tried to fix it, then along came Jimmuh to really screw the pooch.

Kerry played the court jester and chief liar of the Vietnam war, a part many today are auditioning for, but failing miserably at it as we knock them on their lying asses.

Carter couldn’t formulate a policy that even made sense to him before he was done. Why do you think Carter lost in a landslide? Like with Louisiana, eventually even the dumbest figure them out.

Choose leaders wisely, you may regret it in the end.

[Edit35]

Can you name me one specific harm which has happened to you as a result of your alleged ‘Bushflation.’

I don’t mean the ‘deficit is high’ or ‘US debt is too big at XX’ — those are just numbers that chicken-littles have been gnashing their teeth at for the past 40 years.

I mean ONE specific awful thing that happened to YOU or a family member that has been caused by the current economic policy.

With job creation at record highs, the stock market at record highs, with the US and world economy booming, with gasoline at a reasonable $2.50 a gallon (all you can buy), with the success in Iraq and elsewhere -— I am asking for just ONE itsy bitsy harmful thing caused by this so-called Bushflation.

[fortheDeclaration]

The Fed is causing inflation under the guise of fighting inflation?

The Fed is causing inflation by cutting interest rates allowing banks to put more credit into the economy.

If inflation is any increase in the supply of money not matched by an increase in the gold or silver stock available, the method of inflation just depicted is called credit expansion—the creation of new money-substitutes, entering the economy on the credit market. As will be seen below, while credit expansion by a bank seems far more sober and respectable than outright spending of new money, it actually has far graver consequences for the eco­nomic system, consequences which most people would find es­pecially undesirable. This inflationary credit is called circulating credit, as distinguished from the lending of saved funds—called commodity credit. In this book, the term “credit expansion” will apply only to increases in circulating credit.

Credit expansion has, of course, the same effect as any sort of inflation: prices tend to rise as the money supply increases. Like any inflation, it is a process of redistribution, whereby the inflators, and the part of the economy selling to them, gain at the expense of those who come last in line in the spending process. This is the charm of inflation—for the beneficiaries—and the rea­son why it has been so popular, particularly since modern bank­ing processes have camouflaged its significance for those losers who are far removed from banking operations. The gains to the in­flators are visible and dramatic; the losses to others hidden and unseen, but just as effective for all that. Just as half the economy are taxpayers and half tax-consumers, so half the economy are inflation-payers and the rest inflation-consumers.

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap12f.asp