Posted on 01/04/2010 6:21:12 PM PST by Captain Kirk
Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, Gary S. Becker, Steven J. Davis, and Kevin M. Murphy discuss how the government’s multifaceted efforts to “reform” health care, energy and environmental controls, financial regulation, taxation, monetary policy-making, and various other aspects of the politico-economic order have created such great uncertainty that business people are reluctant to invest or to hire new workers, and therefore recovery from the present recession, to the extent that it is occurring at all, is proceeding unusually slowly. As I read this article, I nodded yes … yes … yes … they are talking about regime uncertainty, all right.
I have been promoting this idea publicly since 1997, in articles, songs, dances (without wolves), stand-up comedy, performance art, and blog posts, not to mention my tedious lectures and my boring 2006 book Depression, War, and Cold War. I cannot say that the world has beaten a path to my door as I’ve sought to convince my fellow economists that this phenomenon was important in retarding recovery from the Great Depression and, in all likelihood, in retarding recovery from the present recession (although, to be fair, I must acknowledge that a few of my fellow economists and others have taken note).
Before I could write anything about the WSJ article, however, Brooks Wilson wrote a nice post about it at his blog, which I recommend. Wilson has artfully combined my crisis hypothesis on the growth of government with my regime-uncertainty argument to produce what he calls “the crisis paradox” — “crisis is the best time politically and worst time economically to enact fundamental economic reform.” Indeed. But, of course, that is precisely how things tend to happen, making political entrepreneurship the mortal enemy of economic prosperity.
(Excerpt) Read more at hnn.us ...
A more direct and less delicate way of stating the obvious...is that a Fascist State can not afford to support the rival of private enterprise. We are there.
When the economy of 2010 turns ugly (and I have little doubt that it will) I think people will be very confused. And I think Obama will declare an emergency and assert much greater control.
The difference is that the former ("cowboy") response was to muddle ahead and hope that history looked nicely on the effort (Truman) while the latter ("scholarly") shows signs only of tightening its grip in order to quell the uncertainty (Hitler or Mugabe).
It will be interesting to see just how much uncertainty will be hammered into the careers of 60% of congress during the Christmas hiatus - might make for a real interesting 2010.
Apparently, there are a lot of delusional morons out there. Now, one sees how Hitler was able to build his military machine for years in front of those that he later put on boxcars. And, in the end, those that were still alive were killing each other.
Yes. I am surprised and disappointed that people have not yet stared to decorate lamp posts with judges and politicians. It’s past time. We need open revolt in this country.
Enjoy this display of arrogance, in-your-face disrespect from a political hack that must be voted out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsGR83Imoto
That sounds right, and the greater control may be martial law at about election time so Obama can keep his promises to Congress made in secret sessions (which seemed to us political suicide on their part).
The same dynamics occurred throughout the Depression and FDR's reaction was the same, i.e., I don't care, I am going to redo this economy anyway.
One of FDR's speechwriters, Raymond Moley, came to the conclusion that his boss was maybe a bit crazy but for sure, he was dangerous to this country. And he was right.
History does often repeat itself.
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