Landcrusher is a genius. I thought about this a long time ago, the president is only one person and congress is supposed to slow him down if he’s doing a terrible job. We can see that hasn’t been done. It may not do anything, but I’m not voting for any incumbent politician, they’ve done a crappy job.

“I thought we were talking about cars…………..? Damn,I can read this s_ _ _t on many other forums…”

I would love to find another place that is even a tenth as civil as this one. If folks want to talk about the economy here, I’ll enjoy the reading. A lot of bright minds visit this place and I welcome the mind-meld.

“Everyone seems to find someone to blame,but really the blame is on us!”

BS… most of the folks in my neck of the woods don’t do the things you mentioned from this point forward. I’ll spare you the details except to say that most of the people in my neighborhood are not the ostentatious Joneses of the popularized media. Why we here in Deliverance, Georgia proudly display our pimped out clotheslines, our occasional bouts of hygiene, and always arrange our picks in proper working order (guitar, tooth, nose).

“Talk about the issues with them!
Realize that the American Dream is A state of mind,not a GIVEN RIGHT to intercede when you fuck up!!!”

I find a well thought out answer goes far further than caps, exclamation points, and grammatical mistakes ad nauseum. Your mindset may obviously vary. But then again, I think Billy Carter used to write like that. On second thought you may want to run for mayor in my town. The last one got greased for too much moonshine and shooting an angry rabbit that had once chased former President Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately, the rabbit represented all of our tourist dollars and worked for cheap as the local hedge fund manager. From what I hear we’ve got all our savings invested in the great commodities of carrots and cabbage.

If it fails we’ll all here be waiting for the ‘Great Bunny Bailout’.

For further understanding of how people keep getting into messes like the current one, Charles MacKay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” is useful.

Rating agencies have come in for a lot of criticism, and understandably. They really blew it. But how about the experts that annually spend weeks if not months scrutinizing the books of AIG, Washington Mutual, et al, looking for signs of trouble? Did any–even one!–independent auditor warn in Spring 2008 that AIG, Washington Mutual, etc. were at great risk of collapsing in the near future? None I’m aware of.

From what I’ve read of Paul, I’d feel far more comfortable with Hank Paulson’s scrutiny of female private parts than I am with Paul’s notions about the economy.

Here’s a suggestion — run like hell from anyone who starts prattling on about “fiat money.” Or if you are unable to flee quickly enough, quiz them instead about US economic history and see if such people realize how many depressions that the US has had and how gold standards contributed to their occurrence.

Unlike Paul, Ben Bernanke has studied the history of economic downturns, so he has a strong sense of the mistakes made in the past. There is a reason why the Treasury is doing what it is doing now, and why Bernanke supports it.

Ron Paul clearly doesn’t comprehend any of this stuff. I wouldn’t want him to be president of the local chess club, let alone the one in the White House.

As a Ron Paul supporter (at least we tried), I have to say that he is much more involved (several decades) and knowledgeable in economics than Paulson in gynecology. Come on guys, even Wikipedia will tell ya that. Paul is just too radical for most of America. They don’t want to hear about eliminating these huge institutions (read: money/power) that we’ve all grown so accustomed to. There is a lot to recommend in someone like him who has, for years, stuck to his guns and has a common-sense approach to things like the ridiculous War on Drugs, the behemoth that is the IRS, the so-called Department of Education, etc.

There is far too much hidden in the mind-numbing details of legalese than can be deciphered by most of America. We trust someone’s reading the fine print. Well, looks like they’re not. Or if they are, they’re in bed with those that they are supposed to be regulating for us.

I agree with certain regulations – what is government but that in its essence? It is when these regulations are an impediment (Sarbanes/Oxley) to doing business that they become ridiculous – like many government agencies themselves that seem to exist only to complicate and mire the process in red tape.

As for the candidates, I cringe to vote for someone so liberal as Obama, but can’t bring myself to vote for that train wreck of a ticket that is McCain/Palin. That just scares me too much.

Not sure what makes you so fearful of a true democracy. That’s afterall the model the US exports to everyone else. Kinda like the IMF/World Bank model: Do as we say, not as we do!

He adapted it to the television age, and carried it to new heights. With Truman and Eisenhower, what you saw (in public) was essentially what you got (in private). Kennedy skillfully used the media, his family, his wife and his own public relations to create an image…and a big part of the appeal was his supposed intellectualism.

Engineer: Look, I admire the Founding Fathers as much as the next guy, but is it too early to say that MAYBE they got some of the details wrong? Are we forever going to be looking back at what the intentions of the Founding Fathers were? How about we step up to the plate and think for ourselves? Or is that too radical?

I don’t see where they got this one wrong. And, yes, we should be looking back to what the intentions of the Founding Fathers were. The point was to design a system that does not always submit to the “tyranny of the majority.” I’d say that it has worked pretty well, and continues to do so. Minority viewpoints often deserve protection.

Engineer: Too bad Idaho, you’re part of the union! WY and DE, that’s called democracy.

We don’t live in a pure democracy…and I’d like to keep it that way.

Engineer: BTW, have you bought any Ford stocks (lately)? Now would be a good time to get ‘em, what with oil dropping to 50% of its previous high…

I think that Ford is more likely to survive than GM, but at this point, I would only invest in Ford money that I can afford to lose.

We live in a celebrity age. What can you do?

What really grinds my gears are lame, ditz-level media questions that begin, “How do you feel about…”

The reply ought to be:
“My feelings are irrelevant. It’s what I think that matters. Next question!”

geeber: The electoral college seeks to prevent this from happening on a national scale. If we did abolish it, then what you complain about as a California resident versus the residents of San Francisco would happen on a national scale to residents of, say, Idaho, Wyoming and Delaware versus residents of California, New York, Texas and Florida.
Too bad Idaho, you’re part of the union! WY and DE, that’s called democracy. Is it my imagination, or are these three states getting ignored anyway? So remind me again, what good is the electoral college doing?

Surely having OH decide who the next president is is neither sensible nor what the Founding Farthers intended.

geeber: The fraud in places like Chicago (and Philadelphia) goes far deeper than getting a few drunks to vote multiple times.
Still irrelevant in the big picture.

John Horner: Rather than trying to ditch the electoral college, I would suggest a system where each state awards it’s electors proportionally by congressional district along the lines of what Maine and Nebraska do rather than the winner takes all scheme in place everywhere else. The overall winner of the state there still gets the two electors who are analogous to the Senators, so there would still be some bonus for taking the overall win in a state.
This works for me. Of course, a bunch of Republicans tried to get CA into this system, but the Democrats killed it. In fairness, doing so in CA only would have made it almost impossible for Obama to win, at least until the economy blew up. John, is there a way to do this on a national scale?

Pch101: Like it or not, their pursuit of risk forces us to socialize the losses. While it is not possible or even desirable to eliminate all risk, their risks need to be capped and managed.
Pch, I actually agree with much of what you are saying, for a change. Except this paragraph. Won’t it make more sense to force the players to have enough chips off the table, so that they can afford losing everything they choose to gamble? I don’t see the need to socialize the losses.

Oh yeah, on Ron Paul, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather see him in control of the economy, than trust Hank Paulson with the reproductive functions of any woman I know.

BTW, have you bought any Ford stocks (lately)? Now would be a good time to get ‘em, what with oil dropping to 50% of its previous high…

Oh, it goes back further than that. Much further. Harrison and Jackson come to mind, but there’s a lot of precedent when it comes to showboating in American politics. This is the country that saw David Crockett as a Senator.

Giving showboating credence as a leadership attribute can lead to some unfortunate excesses. Politics may be showbusiness for ugly people, but you don’t want to let it get too far.

It’s hard to say much about Kennedy: we really didn’t get much of a chance to know him. The handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis is about the only test we have, and there’s a lot of debate as to what actually happened. But I wouldn’t credit him with starting the Presidential cult of personality.

There you go again…

Reagan was a great leader. As a military officer, I studied leadership. He had all the traits down just fine. If you didn’t like his ideology, that doesn’t disqualify him. He also pushed some unpopular stuff, but he made it popular using great communication and influence.

Obama has much of the stuff to become a Reagan, except he is tragically flawed. He isn’t ready. He hasn’t earned the top office, and he doesn’t have the humility. I am afraid he may melt down at a bad time. He really, really needs seasoning and a chance to run something other than a campaign. He doesn’t know his limits.

Nixon was flawed in many ways. Primarily, he really wasn’t a leader. He knew how to act like one, but he really wasn’t one. It’s a fine line between wanting to lead, and really accepting leadership as a duty involving self sacrifice.

Carter looks better and better? What gives you that idea? The guy was a micro manager. A wonderful human being in most ways, but he rose above his ability. Knowing your own limitations is a key leadership trait.

Bush 43 has a lot of good leadership traits, but he is flawed in that he believes too much in abandoning principle for consensus. It must sometimes be done, but it’s not meat and potatoes. I don’t believe 41 or 43 was ever a conservative at heart. Certainly not a small government conservative. If they didn’t have the Texas connection, they would never have made it to office.

Lastly, being morally compromised is a tragic flaw for government and military leaders. Business leaders should be able to get away with violating many traditional western civilization taboos, but not those in government. You can’t do it without getting caught anymore, so doing it is simply a sign of bad judgement.

The only problem with your theory is that President Kennedy (and his immediate family) in many ways invented the modern concept of showmanship as a large part of the presidency. And part of the image created by that showmanship was his intelligence and “sophistication.”

People forget that during the famous televised debates, people who watched the debates on television thought that he had won, but those who listened to it on the radio thought that Nixon had won. Kennedy used his family’s money, his showbiz connections (his sister Patricia was married to actor Peter Lawford) and his good looks to create an aura of youthful glamor.

Kennedy’s appeal was based on his supposed intelligence and sophistication, even though a large part of that was because of his wife, who was smarter than he was and more sophisticated about things like the arts and history.

Carter, Bush41, Clinton, Gore, Kerry were politicians.

I think you’re equating showmanship and salesmanship with leadership, especially in the case of Reagan and GW Bush (and possibly Johnson). It’s actually part-in-parcel with anti-intellectualism.

Now, they’re not bad leaders per se, but their strength was selling an ideological package, not necessarily making the unpopular-but-necessary changes that a leader sometimes must. Bush is about the worst example of this: his administration’s worst mistakes were the result of his inability to lead and direct his cabinet; instead, he became responsible for selling his colleague’s policy to Americans.

He’s like an inverse Jimmy Carter, in that respect. Carter just looks better and better as time wears on; GW Bush is assuredly going to look worse and worse.

I certainly think you have HG Bush and Clinton in the wrong place; possibly Nixon as well. Both deserve a lot more credit than they commonly receive from their detractors, and for much the same reason: they did make some principled if unpopular and unpleasant choices. Clinton and Nixon suffer for being morally compromised, but HG Bush gets a raw deal from public opinion for no reason I can really determine, other than that he got stuck with Reagan’s legacymess. I think he, like Carter, is going to look better with time.

I believe the saying you are looking for is, “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job.” (or something like that).

You are correct that this is a great place to have a decent discussion for folks who are capable of it.

Psar,

I agree with your basic point. Surprise! Anti-intellectualism goes too far in the US.

PCh,
And, you are correct about the gold standard. Gold standards allow wealthy folks too much power. Under a gold standard, manipulators can play some awful tricks. Our present system may not be ideal, and it may violate the KISS principle, but I still prefer it over a gold standard.

I think people are misunderstanding me: I’m not saying that leaders should be academics, but that we shouldn’t be automatically discounting people because they’re smarter than average, or promoting stupidity–or at least the theatrical down-homeishness that masquerades as it–as some kind of virtue. It bothers me that, according to much prevailing public-relations thought, intelligence, or at least the appearance of it, is a detriment. It means, by inference, that we value stupidity.

Again, I’m not saying that only smart people should be leaders, but that it shouldn’t even be on the table, let alone be the prima face reason for discounting someone.

To your example: sharing a foxhole is not the same as being the executive leader of a country because there’s a big difference between tactical and strategic leadership. I wouldn’t want someone in a foxhole thinking about the overall front and it’s progress over the next years, but I also wouldn’t necessarily want a paratrooper deciding troop placement and resource allocation for a hundred thousand troops over a five-year engagement.

Granted, the two skills aren’t mutually exclusive, but people tend to be strong in either one or the other (unless you’re a GM Director, in which case you probably are equally bad at both). I would hope that a president or elected federal politician or senior captain of industry would be strong strategically, with good tacticians working under him/her.

What I am seeing more often in politics and industry, is that we’re picking people who make us feel good about ourselves, not people who are necessarily good leaders.

Thanks for being in on the discussion, and to everyone else, too.

What’s really nice about TTAC is that the B&B are generally so civil. Nobody’s been on hear “shooting at the messenger because they didn’t like the message” (me).

I think recessions are cyclical, depressions are screw-ups, but I’m no expert.

Back in 1979 I recall people saying “the difference between a recession and a depression, is whether you have a job or not.” (I was in Michigan and Michigan nearly collapsed – over 50% unemployment in Flint, for example).

During the 19th century, the US experienced several depressions because of its gold standard. When there is a gold standard, governments effectively have zero control over their monetary systems. They cannot create liquidity, so their economies collapse during times like this.

If you want to learn from history, learn from that. There is a reason why we haven’t had a depression in many decades. If we had kept a gold standard, you would have already lived through a few of them. If these guys play it right, you won’t have to live through one at all.

I don’t think it’s pandering. Academics often make horrible leaders. They’re not the type of people you want to share a foxhole with.

Truman, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Bush43 were leaders and politicians.

Carter, Bush41, Clinton, Gore, Kerry were politicians.

Seems to me that if you go back to absolute basics in economics, that honest, sound money without it being manipulated, inflated (which is only slow theft of the people), or illegal/un-constitutional taxation (which is only fast theft of the people), then an economy can flourish.

Think of foundations of a home built on a rock (honest) rather than sand (lies).

Seems to have worked pretty well for thousands of years, off and on. It appears to me that when people behind curtains pull levers to and fro, that’s when things end up looking like a train wreck….

I don’t see what principles are at risk here. There’s nothing particularly patriotic about allowing bankers to do stupid stuff with will inevitably become our money.

In my view, an effective system would put constraints on the kind of stupidity that can destroy the rest of us, so that the likelihood of stupidity turning into action is low. We can’t force them to be smart or good, but we can make sure that their greed, ignorance or lack of restraint don’t hurt us.

If you mean that no one should be using this as a chance to gain turf in the contest for political offices, then I agree. If you think that we should be abandoning our principles, then I do not. I don’t expect Dennis Kucinich to change his, mind on what sorts of things will work or are best, and though I almost always disagree with him, I value his opinion. He believes what he says. OTOH, there are guys who run around trying their best to appear non partisan when that is all they ever do except when they are trying to get something for their constituents at the cost of the country.

Unfortunately, we have developed an instant gratification society that wants immediate results. That flows into the dumb money which is currently fleeing the markets.

That sort of immediacy is not possible. If it was, this would never have gotten this bad in the first place, because we could have pushed a few buttons long before we got here.

Markets tend to overreact, in both directions. That’s one reason why they surge and dive, because a lot of people buy high and sell low during the extremes.

The government needs to fix the credit markets, and to control the emotions of the stock markets just enough to keep them from creating a stampede. The liquidity plans need time to work, but once they kick in, they should ultimately be effective. Once it becomes obvious that the banks are going to loan again, the stock markets will respond accordingly. Stocks will be the lagging indicator for this, not the leading one.