Either decrease our demand, or increase our supply.

In a way, as boring as that is to me, it goes to the muscle car topic from a few days ago.

Not muscle cars per se, but the bigger thing that they stand for (or against, depending on how you look at it):

An unwillingness to adapt. An unwillingness to drill more. Or deeper. An unwillingness to design our cities, suburbs, and communities in such a way as to reduce our need for oil.

And an unwillingness to make carpooling, the train, bus, bicycle, or sneakernet more appealing.

On any given trip that I take, I see most other cars also with ONLY ONE PERSON IN EACH. Yes, from my all-seeing perch behind the wheel in my own car. I was going to mention it to my passenger the other day when I realized that I too, was a single solitary human in my single solitary vehicle.

Well, at least it’s a Prius, and at least the gas engine was off at that moment. I was at a red light…

Unfortunately, a barter based economy is relatively inefficient, but currencies work only if everybody has confidence in the currency itself. Borrowing from some outside source (not necessarily abroad) and paying back the obligations with regularity and minimal hassle gives lenders confidence that the government is a reliable borrower and will repay debts. That, in turn, leads to confidence in U.S. currency and it is this psychological phenomenon that allows the economy to operate on the basis of dollars.

If the U.S. started to print out money recklessly, we would end up with rapid diminution of the value of the dollar with subsequent hyperinflation (Zimbabwe, anyone?). That’s my try at answering jurisb’s question.

I’m not an economist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express (well, actually Townehome Suites by Marriott).

50merc- if that was so why would US even bother to borrow abroad?

As interesting as this political thread is (no–Really!!) I’m dying to see some response to jurisb’s question. Anyone?

great post, for the most part. One small correction, though.

As an amateur historian, and a huge student (although not necessarily an admirer) of JFK, I can state with high assurance that, for the last two years of his life, he was most certainly NOT an ardent supporter of the Vietnam conflict. AAMOF, Kennedy kept looking for a way to get out of Vietnam, even though Diem had been a friend of the Family since the mid-50’s. Had JFK lived, it is an open question whether he would have been able to extricate the US from the Vietnam conflict, but he most certainly was not a gung-ho supporter of US involvement.

Also, it was a previous poster who said that Eisenhower gave up Korea to the French. Sorry, that was Truman.

OK, as you were.

The Democrat and Republican representatives in Congress are two sides of the same coin. on 90% of the issues, they agree. They talk like this disagree vehemently on television, then join in to give their big company contributors handouts. Case in point: the Detroit 2.8 auto industry, which will soon get itself billions of taxpayer dollars, from your paycheck. Don’t kid yourself.

In World War I, it was the politicians who branded themselves as “progressives” who agitated for American intervention – Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. The conservatives wanted no part of it (although neither did many who were socialists).

Prior to World War II, it was the isolationists, who were either Republicans or conservative Democrats, who did not support U.S. involvement until Pearl Harbor made U.S. neutrality impossible to maintain. The true “flip-floppers” were the left-wingers. They wanted no part of the conflict until Germany attacked their darling, the Soviet Union.

The Vietnam conflict was ardently supported by President Kennedy (who also supported an invasion of Cuba to overthrow Castro – google “Bay of Pigs”) and escalated by Lyndon Johnson. Last time I checked, President Kennedy and President Johnson were hardly right-wingers.

During the 1990s, President Clinton led the intervention in Bosnia, and later apologized for the U.S. not doing anything to stop the genocide in Rwanda. Those of us with at least a passing knowledge of history realize that “doing something” to stop this type of conflict means intervening with our military.

(Generally, third-world dictators aren’t deterred from doing bad things to their own people just because George Clooney says mean things about them on Entertainment Tonight. They also aren’t quaking in their boots over the thought of being the subject of unflattering conversations at dinner parties held in Manhattan penthouses or Georgetown townhouses. Stopping them will inevitably involve either shooting them and their supporters, or threatening to shoot them and their supporters, and to be credible such threats must be backed up by a military presence, either in said country or nearby, where it can be rapidly deployed. I know that this is hard for left-wingers to accept – especially those based in Hollywood and Manhattan – but the truth must be spoken.)

People also forget that, in the run-up to this war, many Democrats were saying, “right war, wrong president.” They wanted Saddam out, but they didn’t want the effort led by George Bush.

I’m certainly sympathetic to those who don’t want an interventionist foreign policy, but to suggest that this will end by replacing the present occupant of the White House with a Democrat could charitably be described as “naive.”

And, no, the South Vietnamese government was nearly as bad as the North Vietnamese government, and to suggest otherwise is just plain wrong.

You’re right. It is our duty as taxpayers to fund stupid wars, police the world, treat foreigners like lower life forms, and get our soldiers killed so we can listen to speeches telling us how patriotic we are because we support our troops.

Lisa Ling for President.

50merc: “They can’t admit South Vietnam had acquired by 1973 the ability to defend itself if provided adequate assistance”

“Adequate assistance?” Which means that the South Vietnamese could not defend themselves, unless we were willing to keep troops and dollars there for another ten years, like Bush said we should have.

The South Vietnamese Government was a corrupt, undemocratic regime that treated their people almost as badly as the communists. Is it any wonder that a large majority of the American people had enough?

Ironic, though, that not even the Bushies want to be called Bushies anymore.

Sure we could. We’d just have to print a single One-Trillion-Dollar Note. Luckily for us, our debt is denominated in dollars (not Euros, Yen, gold or whatever.) Actually, we wouldn’t even have to crank up the printing press. The Treasury would just write a check on the Federal Reserve. You know, this is how most money comes into existence. (Currency is a small part of the money supply.) A borrower executes a note payable to the bank (which becomes part of the bank’s assets), and the bank credits his checking account (which becomes part of the bank’s liabilities.) Presto! The borrower now has money that didn’t exist before.

tonycd – I object to your term “Bushies”. It’s uncalled for.

What is it about automotive enthusiasm that its adherents apparently skew right-wing?

Between Bedard, Yates and the Bushies who come out of the woodwork here… and don’t even get me started on the flat-out wingnuts who monopolize that big auto site’s non-automotive topics forum.

I like cars AND I dislike America’s military interventions in both Vietnam and Iraq. There, I said it.

The Civil War wasn’t universally popular in the North, especially in New York City, which was wracked by anti-draft riots in 1863.

Well into the summer of 1864, Lincoln actually expected to lose that year’s election, but some well-timed Northern victories strengthened his case, and he was re-elected.

ihatetrees: Yeah, Enron. I recall the bleating in the press about poor Enron employees who “lost” their retirement (that had been growing at 80+ percent annually). Not a word about diversification (and stupid investing).

I agree about the need for diversifying one’s portfolio, but, as I recall, weren’t Enron executives touting the stock to employees even as they were dumping it themselves, and weren’t employees forbidden from selling during crucial periods while executives weren’t?

Those were the biggest points of controversy during the whole mess.

2. At this point, the only person I can think of who is probably qualified to even try to dig out GM is Sergio Marchionne from FIAT. Mulally is taken.

Maybe they might learn to embrace outside ideas on how to make money?