thank you...
Posted on 04/17/2011 6:51:27 PM PDT by AnnGora
During a pre-recorded commentary aired on CBS’s Sunday Morning show, right-leaning actor and economist Ben Stein - also a CBS contributor - blamed "excessive tax cuts" enacted by former President Bush and congressional Republicans for "starting the problem" of the current federal budget deficit, and advocated raising taxes on the wealthy in addition to "major spending cuts" and changes in Medicare and Social Security to get the deficit under control. Stein: "The Republicans who started the problem with excessive tax cuts in the Bush years will have to agree to raise taxes at least upon the truly rich of whom there are plenty."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
Anybody that supported him for any so called reason should have their heads examined!
In the immortal words of Roger Daltry : “I won't get fooled again!”
The dems want more spending and higher taxes and the pubs want less spending and lower taxes. The compromise (as always) will be more spending and lower taxes.
This surreality is about to be swallowed by reality.
Believe what you want. The country’s broke and neither political party has the guts and leadership to solve the problem.
We are soooo screwed!
“Stein has no credibility with me. None. He said there was no housing bubble. Then he said housing prices would not go down nationally. Then he said a small housing slump would not impact the real economy”
You must have heard his interviews on the KNX Business Hour like I did. He was absolutely clueless. The anti- Christopher Thornberg.
On March 18, 2007, in a column for CBS News’ online version of CBS News Sunday Morning, Stein famously proclaimed in the beginning of the subprime mortgage crisis that the foreclosure problem would “blow over and the people who buy now, in due time, will be glad they did,” the economy was “still very strong,” and the “smart money” was “now trying to buy — not sell — as much distressed merchandise” in mortgages as possible.[25]
On August 18, 2007, on Fox News Channel’s Cavuto on Business, Stein appeared with other financial experts dismissing worries of a coming credit crunch.[26] The lone dissenter was Peter Schiff, who predicted that the mortgage sector would create a crisis leading to massive recession, a view that produced laughter from the other experts. Stein strongly recommended investing in then-troubled financial institutions.[26]
Ben Stein: The credit crunch is way overblown. The [financial institutions] are being given away; they’re so unbelievably cheap...The subprime problem is a problem, but it’s a tiny problem in the context of this economy...It’s a buying opportunity, especially for the financials, maybe like I’ve never seen before in my entire life.
[...]
Peter Schiff: This is just getting started. It’s not just subprimes. This is a problem for the entire mortgage industry. It’s not just people with bad credit that committed to mortgages they couldn’t afford. It’s not just people with bad credit who are going to see their home equity vanish... This is going to be an enormous credit crunch...
Neil Cavuto: You must be a laugh-riot at parties.
(LAUGHTER)
[...]
Ben Stein: ...subprime is tiny. Subprime is a tiny, tiny blip.
Peter Schiff: It’s not tiny. And again, it’s not just subprime. It’s the entire mortgage market.
Ben Stein: You’re simply wrong about that... Defaults for the whole mortgage market are tiny.
[...]
Ben Stein: I think stocks will be a heck of a lot higher a year from now than they are now.
Thirteen months later, in the Global Financial Crisis of September 2008, global stock markets crashed, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the US government, AIG was bailed out by the Federal Reserve, Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America Corporation, and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs confirmed that they would become traditional bank holding companies.
In a Yahoo! Finance article written on October 17, 2008, Stein explained that his understanding of the debt obligations based on real estate loans was less than the “staggeringly large” amount of obligations that were created through trade in derivatives of those, and so why it wasn’t as similar to collapse of junk bond empire in early 1990s as he’d thought it would be: “Where I missed the boat was not realizing how large were the CDS [credit default swaps] based on the junk mortgage bonds.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Stein
Nixon, who brought us price controls. And the EPA. Nixon,the quintessential non-conservative. Oh yeah, and China as the new cheap labor answer. Stein’s dad was the architect of price controls- a product of the progressives era from WWII.
Holy cow! Could a person be off the mark anymore than Stein was on just about every damned thing?! I had no idea he was that clueless! I thought he was a pretty sharp guy! Man oh man was I off the mark as well!
Thanks for enlightening me!
True.
Ya think Benny was out putting his money where his mouth was telling us to put ours? Must not have since he doesn’t seem to be flat broke.
thank you...
he's a first class hypocrite and one reason I've tired of Hannity....Sean will feature clowns like Stein like they're some sort of conservative gurus...
no matter what these idiots say its what they don’t say that’s important...that our economy was running along just fine until democrats took over the house TWO YEARS before the financial meltdown.....
so go ahead..buy these guys records and movies and keep buying the magazines or papers that give them a platform....its only hurting US....
He looked and sounded a bit demented last time I saw him on TV.
Just my opinion, but $120,000 for a college education is a rip-off!My friend’s son went to community college for 2 years and then to a local state university with tuition around $5,000 while living at home. He found a part-time job in his desired future career field so he could get some experience and meet people in his field. He paid his tuition along the way-—no loans. He got a job immediately after graduating with good pay and benefits and I’m sure he beat out other candidates with more expensive degrees. He recently bought a house and has no debt and is on his way to a promotion already. He’s proof that you don’t need an expensive degree to get a good job.
That is disturbing. That completely creeped me out just reading that.
Wow...THAT was telling. Peter Schiff was the only one there being realistic. That black guy was definitely a shill for the Obama pov...
A large part of what he has done since taking office has amounted to paying off his cronies with taxpayer dollars, transferring wealth and control to democrat strongholds.
The only good news in all this is that if these people could manage wealth they would already have it.
The real danger is the institutionalization of these wealth transfers. The republicans are doing nothing to stop this.
And to prove your point: Total revenue to the Federal Government in 2001 was $1.99 Trilion. In 2008 it totalled $2.59 Trillion.
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/yearrev2001_0.html
You read the diary? It’s like that every month, lol! Sometimes even worse! He’s a complete neurotic.
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