Modern Political Thought is Lazy

[DaShuckster]

Trillions of dollars were redirected into the stock market instead of going into capital improvements.

My gut tells me that a President McCain would have done the same thing.

Money talks in Washington.

 

[UCFKnight85]

The stimulus was fascism at its best. Trillions of dollars were redirected into the stock market instead of going into capital improvements. This alone tells me that Obama was inept at best and corrupt at worst.

The stimulus was terrible, terrible legislation that wasted most of the $1T but I don't get your point about that going into the stock market. I think you're referring to Quantitative Easing which was done by the Fed, and basically just made money really cheap which of course propped up equities (which was kind of the intention).

 

[DaShuckster]

The stimulus was terrible, terrible legislation that wasted most of the $1T...

As long as our 401Ks went up again, we didn't care.

 

[UCFKnight85]

As long as our 401Ks went up again, we didn't care.

As I just explained, the wasted money in the stimulus had little to do with the stock market. That was the Fed.

Which makes the stimulus even more horrendously shitty.

 

[DaShuckster]

As I just explained, the wasted money in the stimulus had little to do with the stock market. That was the Fed.

Which makes the stimulus even more horrendously shitty.

Yep, I was agreeing with you. As long as our personal investments stopped tanking, we didn't give a sh*t about where the stimulus money went.

 

[Knight_Classes_begin_7pm]

I suppose I should have known better than to expect any kind of thoughtful discussion of this subject from the Usual Suspects here. Clearly this concept flies over most of their heads.

Here's a question for you: Name a position you've taken that is contrary to what most of (your team)ers believe?

Thoughtful discussion??? ...from people that follow the orange cheeto with his 9th grade vocabulary. Does FOX or FAUX news use thoughtful discussion? Absolutely not. They are a right wing propaganda machine.

 

[UCFKnight85]

Thoughtful discussion??? ...from people that follow the orange cheeto with his 9th grade vocabulary. Does FOX or FAUX news use thoughtful discussion? Absolutely not. They are a right wing propaganda machine.

The guy that can barely form a coherent sentence is writing this?

 

[Crazyhole]

The stimulus was terrible, terrible legislation that wasted most of the $1T but I don't get your point about that going into the stock market. I think you're referring to Quantitative Easing which was done by the Fed, and basically just made money really cheap which of course propped up equities (which was kind of the intention).

The stimulus was QE at its very finest. The idea sold was that dollars would be used for infrastructure but in reality they didnt have stringent requirements for how dollars would be spent and the vast majority of that money ended up being invested in the market. The FED knew it from the beginning and thats why they wanted it so badly. Would they really have loaned money to fix a bridge or an airport terminal? You can't exactly foreclose on or even account for something like that on a balance sheet, but you sure as heck can get that money back if its in the form of private stocks.

 

[DaShuckster]

The stimulus was QE at its very finest. The idea sold was that dollars would be used for infrastructure but in reality they didnt have stringent requirements for how dollars would be spent and the vast majority of that money ended up being invested in the market. The FED knew it from the beginning and thats why they wanted it so badly. Would they really have loaned money to fix a bridge or an airport terminal? You can't exactly foreclose on or even account for something like that on a balance sheet, but you sure as heck can get that money back if its in the form of private stocks.

Here in the WC, Crazyhole and I don't agree on much. But when he starts talkin' money, I listen.

 

[YourWifesBoyfriend]

this thread has been brought to you by someone who calls people that disagree with him a racist Nazi.

ironic.

 

[Crazyhole]

Here in the WC, Crazyhole and I don't agree on much. But when he starts talkin' money, I listen.

Just think about what the FEDs balance sheet looked like in 2008 and it makes sense why they did what they did. I don't blame them either. At that point, they had loaned so much money to the gov't that ended up eventually being tied up in inflated assets that it could have brought them to their knees. Bush proved to them that QE on a small scale could work if the money went into the hands of people who needed to spend it, and they saw an opportunity to inflate their own wealth by getting the treasury to print money and give it to rich people who would throw it into the stock market. The FED is in great shape now, but its on the backs of the people with mutual funds and retirement accounts. When it crashes, and it will, the FEDs balance sheet will look even better.


I'm not a FED conspiracy theorist, but they are not good actors in any of this.

 

[Crazyhole]

The stimulus was QE at its very finest. The idea sold was that dollars would be used for infrastructure but in reality they didnt have stringent requirements for how dollars would be spent and the vast majority of that money ended up being invested in the market. The FED knew it from the beginning and thats why they wanted it so badly. Would they really have loaned money to fix a bridge or an airport terminal? You can't exactly foreclose on or even account for something like that on a balance sheet, but you sure as heck can get that money back if its in the form of private stocks.

Wanted to go back to this. What made the stimulus a form of qe is how the money was allocated and where it went. Essentially, the treasury printed money and gave it to the FED, who in turn used that money to buy Tbills (see: they loaned it back to the government). TARP was similar, but instead of loaning it back to the government, they loaned it to the banks who in turn invested it into the stock market. How it works is that by creating that money out of thin air but then loaning it back. It allows the FED to loan money while keeping their balance sheet static.

To explain why the stimulus was used to prop up the market, look no further than the fact that the largest single line item in it was to secure state employee pensions. While it was sold as a jobs bill intended to improve infrastructure, in reality only about 8 billion of it went to that. For example, less money was spent on improving the electrical grid than was used for loan guarantees for tech sector start-ups like Solyndra. As we know, those loan guarantees accomplished nothing more than artificially inflating stock prices for those companies. Even money allocated to roads programs was largely used to secure pensions. The real question about all of this and the reason people like Ron Paul were calling to audit the FED is how much of their investments are in the stock market. Were they using the treasury to prop up their private investments? If so, is there a chance that instead of raising interest rates to contract the money supply they would just sell off their stocks and make that money vanish? Thats the real danger in all of this.

 

[UCFWayne]

Just think about what the FEDs balance sheet looked like in 2008 and it makes sense why they did what they did. I don't blame them either. At that point, they had loaned so much money to the gov't that ended up eventually being tied up in inflated assets that it could have brought them to their knees. Bush proved to them that QE on a small scale could work if the money went into the hands of people who needed to spend it, and they saw an opportunity to inflate their own wealth by getting the treasury to print money and give it to rich people who would throw it into the stock market. The FED is in great shape now, but its on the backs of the people with mutual funds and retirement accounts. When it crashes, and it will, the FEDs balance sheet will look even better.


I'm not a FED conspiracy theorist, but they are not good actors in any of this.

end the fed

 

[Crazyhole]

end the fed

We can't. We have a fiat currency now and there isnt enough gold out there even if we were dumb enough to try and go back.

 

[KnightedHusker]

Funny. I mention cutting the deficit -- something the Republicans kept wringing their hands about throughout the eight years of the Obama Administration. If I would have asked who's all for reducing the Federal budget during the Obama years, the answer here would have been a "Duh--Conservatives are the ONLY ones concerned about it; Obama and the Democrats certainly aren't."

But after Trump got elected, what's the spin now?


Where the hell did all that conservative angst about the deficit go?

It's just another example of how lazy our political thought has become. The deficit is SO yesterday's news now, right?

Lowering the deficit is hard - you have to have a set of stones to do it. And you need a big enough group of people that can stop peeing on each other long enough to find commonality and compromise enough to make darn near anything worthwhile to happen. People who are consumed with being reelected as their primary goal, will never get a balanced budget done.

I have a hard time voting for the extremists in either party, even more difficulty voting for politicians that promise just about anything, but are more concerned about talking versus doing.

Need term limits for Congress, need a law that Congress does not get paid their salary if they do not have a balanced budget, and 100% of all non-government pay must be identified by source and published annually. Seeing a Congressman have nearly nothing when first elected and 16 years later they are magically worth $26M, maybe it's legal or maybe not, but it stinks to me.

 

[KnightedHusker]

We can't. We have a fiat currency now and there isnt enough gold out there even if we were dumb enough to try and go back.

Worse yet, if the dollar is displaced as the world's primary currency the Yuan (China), we will no longer be able to print money at will. Our dollar will be devalued by 70% or maybe even way more within a very short window and we will be as economically miserable as pre-Nazi Germany.

We have to balance the budget and spend what money we have more wisely. Spending 1.3% of GDP on infrastructure when most of Europe is spending in excess of 3% of GDP will eventually make us a paper tiger. China doesn't need to beat us militarily to be THE dominant world power, they just need to crush us by displacing the dollar and leave us with a rotted and impotent infrastructure.