Voter___ Wrote:
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> Republicans used to believe that prosperity
> depended upon the regular balancing of accounts —
> in government, in international trade, on the
> ledgers of central banks and in the financial
> affairs of private households and businesses, too.
> But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican
> policymakers for decades now, has amounted to
> little more than money printing and deficit
> finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the
> ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.
>
> This approach has not simply made a mockery of
> traditional party ideals. It has also led to the
> serial financial bubbles and Wall Street
> depredations that have crippled our economy. More
> specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused
> four great deformations of the national economy,
> and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to
> each one.
>
> By fiscal year 2009, the tax-cutters had reduced
> federal revenues to 15 percent of gross domestic
> product, lower than they had been since the 1940s.
> Then, after rarely vetoing a budget bill and
> engaging in two unfinanced foreign military
> adventures, George W. Bush surrendered on domestic
> spending cuts, too — signing into law $420 billion
> in non-defense appropriations, a 65 percent gain
> from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years
> earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in
> a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy.
>
>
> It is not surprising, then, that during the last
> bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of
> Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street
> casino — received two-thirds of the gain in
> national income, while the bottom 90 percent —
> mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking
> economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth
> gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying
> fruit of bad economic policy.
>
> The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will
> not have a conventional business recovery now, but
> rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and
> downsizing — as suggested by last week’s news that
> the national economy grew at an anemic annual rate
> of 2.4 percent in the second quarter. Under these
> circumstances, it’s a pity that the modern
> Republican Party offers the American people an
> irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when
> the old approach — balanced budgets, sound money
> and financial discipline — is needed more than
> ever.
>
>
> David Stockman, a director of the Office of
> Management and Budget under President Ronald
> Reagan, is working on a book about the financial
> crisis.
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockm
> an.html?pagewanted=1&sq=stockman&st=cse&scp=1
I would like to see them change the tax cuts to what was suggested - only letting them expire for folks that make over $250K per year.
If you can’t model the past, where you know the answer pretty well, how can you model the future? - William Happer Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics Princeton University