Posted on 02/01/2009 10:27:05 PM PST by FocusNexus
Later in the day when I interviewed Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, he agreed with Shelby that the stimulus plan should be shelved. For the first time -- as far as I know -- McConnell pledged to vote no on the package.
And in what may prove to be the biggest stimulus-package hurdle of all, news reports suggest that Team Obama is contemplating as much as $2 trillion in TARP additions to rescue the banking system in one form or another. That would be $2 trillion on top of the nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.
Government spending, deficits, and debt creation of this magnitude is simply unheard of. So the added TARP money will surely imperil the entire stimulus package as taxpayers around the country begin to digest the enormity of these proposed government actions. Financing of this type would not only destroy the U.S. fiscal position for years to come, it could destroy the dollar in the process. What's more, the likelihood of massive tax increases -- which at some point will become front and center in this gargantuan funding operation -- would doom the economy for decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
So what's new and "change" to the usual tax and spend Dem approach, except the magnitude?
Guess what... From what I have seen, Obama is planning Stimulus #3, even before #2 gets through Congress. That one could be 2 trillion dollars as well.
Kudlow's now "in with the incrowd!" You know, like Schwartzenrenegger, McLame, et al... the guys you used to support in your past FReeper life, remember???
LOL. See Rome. See Wiemar Republic. This isn't "new." This is more of the historical same, pawned off with cries of "Que Surprise."
“At the same time, the (Bush) budget ... would help add $4 trillion to our nation’s debt.”
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-02/Democrats-Criticize-Bush-Budget.cfm
2/21/2004
“The deficit is going to be a symbol of their credibility problem, and the budget is going to be the document we use” to make that argument, said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., a member of the House Budget Committee who in the 1990’s was a White House political aide to President Clinton.
“It’s kind of like Bonnie and Clyde complaining about banking laws,” countered Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles, R-Okla., evoking the 1930s bank robbers.
“I don’t think they have a lot of credibility about deficits” because most Democrats want to raise spending, he said.
The numbers are stark. A record $237 billion federal surplus in 2000 under President Clinton lurched abruptly to a $375 billion deficit last year, the largest ever in dollar terms. The administration expects a worse-still $521 billion shortfall this year.
Bush sent lawmakers a budget on Feb. 2 that proposes halving the gap to $237 billion by 2009.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-21-budget-democrats_x.htm
May 2, 2002
In a plan to fix the $100 billion federal budget deficit...
http://badgerherald.com/news/2002/05/02/democrats_criticize_.php
Remember when the Dems thought $100 billion deficit was too much?
Well, it is CHANGE, isn’t it? From the worlds richest an robust economy to something on the same level as Zimbabwe.
“public support for the humongous stimulus package has dropped to 42 percent.”
But most still drink the Obama-ade.
Go figure.
Democrats have countered that Bush did little to curb such special-project spending when Republicans held control of Congress. Democrats also point to controls they’ve already put in place to make those spending measures more transparent.
In addition to the slower growth, the $150 billion price tag for the stimulus package of tax rebates and other measures will add to this year’s budget deficit.
Bush’s funding request for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for 2008 totals $193 billion and is another source of upward pressure on the deficit.
While most of Bush’s Republican allies in Congress have supported the stimulus package that the administration hammered out with leaders in the House of Representatives, some have expressed wariness about its effect on the deficit.
Sen. Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire conservative and senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said the stimulus legislation would “aggravate” the deficit and he voiced doubts about its effectiveness.
http://www.blnz.com/news/2008/01/31/PREVIEW-Rising_budget_deficit_Republican_woes_9157.html
January 31, 2008
The Democrats—and Gregg—don’t seem to think the problem was too BIG a deficit, apparently.
You get what you vote for.
It’s gonna be a wild 4 years folks...
http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/MunroUsuryFinRevIHR2003.pdf
(BOLD text is my addition)
So here we are, three of the six fundamental components of modern organized public debts are collapsing before our very eyes. The US Congress is borrowing record debt levels with no undertaking to fund that debt by levying specific taxes. the government’s creation or sale of these Treasury debts are taking place under the direct threat of state coercion through the Treasury's printing presses , and in particular performing force majeur wealth destruction through hyper-inflation, making those higher-interest short-term debts into lower-yielding perpetual annuities by creating new debts to pay the interest on current debts. And lastly, buyers of Treasuries now must be concerned the interest payments will be made through worthless debased currency in the future. I don't see how the United States can fund this past a few months until the world credit markets just stop playing the game due to fear of massive government default through hyperinflation.JOHN H. MUNRO
The Medieval Origins of the Financial Revolution:
Usury, Rentes, and Negotiability
EARL HAMILTON observed many years ago that a ‘national debt is
one of the very few important economic phenomena without
roots in the Ancient World’.
1 The first evidence for organized
public debts is to be found in towns of twelfth-century Italy. But these
interest-bearing loans bore little relation to what became known as the
financial revolution in public debt, which, in its seventeenth-century
Dutch and ultimate eighteenth-century British versions, had six funda-
mental components. First, the national debt was ‘permanent’, in that it
consisted largely of perpetual annuities or rentes, which, however, were
redeemable any time, at the will of the issuing government authority,
in contrast to interest-bearing loans with stipulated redemption dates.
Second, the debt obligation was national, or at least provincial, and
not merely municipal or personal, that is, the personal obligation of the
prince, even as head of state; instead, it was created by the state
through representative parliamentary institutions. Third, the annual
payments on such annuities and their periodic redemptions were
authorized by that parliament or legislative assembly, which thus
undertook to fund that debt by levying specific taxes, usually on con-
sumption. Fourth, the government’s creation or sale of these annuities
took place without any elements of state coercion, and in particular
without any arbitrary conversions of higher-interest short-term debts
into lower-yielding perpetual annuities. Fifth, the public had complete
confidence that the government would always meet its obligation to
make the stipulated annuity payments on the promised dates. Sixth,
those annuities were freely negotiable through financial intermediaries,
in secondary markets, for purchase by any buyer both inside and out-
side the national state.
According to Peter Dickson, the British financial revolution (a term
that he coined) began in 1693, within England (before the Actof Union), during the reign of William III (r. 1689-1702) and Mary II (r.
1689-94). Forrest Capie, in referring to these events, remarks that ‘the
word revolution has perhaps been overused in economic historical stud-
ies, but perhaps this is an occasion when it is appropriate’; similarly,
Marjolein ’t Hart remarks that ‘currently the financial revolution in
England is being regarded as one of the hallmarks of the Modern
State, with England as the model country.’
1 James Tracy, in contrast,
contends that the origins of the financial revolution are to be found in
the sixteenth-century Habsburg Netherlands, with its full fruition in
seventeenth-century Holland. Hamilton, and before him, Paul Cawès,
had made virtually the same claim for sixteenth-century France.
2
That national debts arose from the sale of annuities or rentes is their
most striking feature: for they were not loans. Thus, they differed
markedly from the forms of national public finance, notably bonds and
debentures, common in medieval Europe and again in twentieth-cen-
tury Europe and North America. To explain the anomaly, one must
understand first the late medieval origins of the rente itself, and second,
the origins and evolution of fully fledged negotiability for all instru-
ments of credit. The foundations of the financial revolution are to be
found in the responses of thirteenth-century municipalities and mer-
chants to the increasingly severe obstacles that Church and State
were placing in the way of borrowing and international financial
transactions.1 P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit,
- (London, ); F. Capie, ‘The Origins and Development of Stable Fiscal and Monetary
Institutions in England’, in Transferring Wealth and Power from the Old to the New World: Monetary and
Financial Institutions in the th through the th Centuries, ed. M. Bordo and R. Cortés-Conde (Cam-
bridge, ), p. ; M. ’t Hart, ‘“The Devil or the Dutch”: Holland’s Impact on the Financial
Revolution in England, -’, Parliaments, Estates, and Representatives, xi (June ), .
2 J. D. Tracy, A Financial Revolution in the Habsburg Netherlands: Renten and Renteniers in the County of
Holland, - (Berkeley, ); Hamilton, ‘Origin and Growth’, pp. -; P. Cawès, ‘Les com-
mencements du crédit public en France: les rentes sur l’Hôtel de Ville au XVIe siècle’, Revue
d’économie politique, ix (), -, -; x (), -.
What a difference a week makes. Just days ago McConnell was saying “we’re close” to passing that welfare bill.
Wow—those emergency “detention” camps proposed by Hastings are going to be pretty plush, I guess. It’s hard to rebuild a country until you have completely destroyed the old one—part of alinskys thinking, I presume.
Still, no talk whatsoever on The Hill about cutting permanently wasteful gubmint programs and spending.....it's intentional for them to wreck what's left of the economy.
Cocaine Larry was all for giving the SecTreas a $750 billion slush fund, back when the SecTreas was appointed by a Republican president.
However, lest we forget, America's Political Royalty has a plan - a new currency. These will be called Obama dollars and are promised to save the day and our future.
These Obama dollars, just as ye olde Roman days, like Bread and Circuses will be distributed free to all comers. And the packaging will assure frequent use, two-ply toilet paper, tear off as many as you need.
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