Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

[blazespinnaker]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-1...ion-gains.html

One new Fed opponent in Congress is Kentucky Senator-elect Rand Paul, who has criticized the Fed for imposing “the sneakiest tax of all -- inflation.” He joins South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, an advocate for Tea Party candidates who backed an unsuccessful bill to subject the Fed’s monetary policy to congressional audits.

Should be exciting to see what Rand Paul will get up to.

While I disagree on some things with the Pauls, they are probably among the most honest AND competent politicians ever elected.

[dbarberic]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

I mentioned this in another thread. The republican's are running on a strong "small goverment" and "budget reduction" platform. Is this just simply austerity by another name? If the people voted for "small government" and "budget reduction" did they vote for austerity not even know it?

[jpatter666]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-1...ion-gains.html




Should be exciting to see what Rand Paul will get up to.

While I disagree on some things with the Pauls, they are probably among the most honest AND competent politicians ever elected.

Ever watch "All the King's Men"?

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

"He gave you the impression of being a slow and deliberate man to look at him, and he had a way of sitting loose as though he had sunk inside himself and was going down for the third time and his eyes would blink like an owl's in a cage. Then all of a sudden he would make a move."

R.P.W.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2XJA...eature=channel

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

Well, actually, I think they *do* know about it. Tea party was about austerity .. though tax cuts might cut into that concept a bit. In the end though, Bernanke is going to be in the background trying to inflate our way out of this mess. The question remainds .. Will Rand Paul stand up to him? Or will the rest of the republicans keep him quiet.

Should be an interesting two years.

[don]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

Not Good News for Yesterday's 'Winners'

"“The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: Recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time."

Simon Johnson, Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund, 2007-2008

[ASH]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

I mentioned this in another thread. The republican's are running on a strong "small goverment" and "budget reduction" platform. Is this just simply austerity by another name? If the people voted for "small government" and "budget reduction" did they vote for austerity not even know it?

The Republicans promised not to touch entitlements or defense, nor to raise taxes. They are only giving lip service to "small government". I think that the Tea Party component mean it, but there aren't enough Tea Partiers elected to force motion in any of these budget areas (nor would they raise taxes). Anyway, the Republicans don't have the Senate or Presidency, so they wouldn't be in a position to force austerity measures. What we may get is a lack of fresh fiscal stimulus, but actual austerity would imply cuts relative to the baseline (anti-stimulus, if you will). We're in for gridlock and, I'd say, neither fiscal stimulus nor austerity. That leaves money-printing.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

Anyway, the Republicans don't have the Senate or Presidency, so they wouldn't be in a position to force austerity measures.

No. The president/senate can not raise the debt limit without the OK of the Congress.

[don]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

An Historical Review...

(thanks to Jesse's Cafe Americain)

[ASH]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

No. The president/senate can not raise the debt limit without the OK of the Congress.

Oh -- good point. I was thinking about the need to pass new legislation to trim down automatic expenditures, but hadn't thought about the need for new legislation to borrow more. (The debt limit hasn't meant anything for so long that it floated into my blind spot.)

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

1996 all over again..


http://www.cnn.com/US/9601/budget/01-27/pm/index.html

Next up in the budget battle:
playing the debt-ceiling card

January 27, 1996
Web posted at: 10:45 p.m. EST

From Correspondent Kathleen Koch

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The government is up and running Saturday, thanks to a short-term spending bill signed by President Clinton Friday night. The measure keeps unfunded departments and programs going until March 15, many with reduced spending levels. The next hurdle in the continuing budget negotiations is raising the debt ceiling, which the president insists is a must.

The United States has hit its debt ceiling of $4.9 trillion, and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin says that around March 1 the government will run out of borrowing power.


In his Saturday radio address, Clinton called on Congress to stop playing politics on the issue. The consequences of default, he said, are grave.

"Interests rates could also go up for businesses, consumers, and homeowners. And for tens of millions of Americans, the unthinkable could happen. The Social Security checks they count on would not be able to be mailed out," Clinton said.


Budget director Alice Rivlin said that's no exaggeration. "If we do not raise the debt limit, the Treasury will not be able to pay the Social Security checks. That is a fact," she said.

During debate over keeping the government funded, Republicans assured jittery financial markets that they will vote to raise the debt ceiling.


But in its radio address Saturday, the GOP said giving the government a blank check is unacceptable. "It is wrong -- immoral, really -- to be borrowing against our children's future. The national debt is $5 trillion. A child born today will have to pay $187,000 just in interest on the national debt," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-New Hampshire.

Republicans vow any debt-ceiling bill will have strings attached, advancing their agenda. "We have to negotiate what can we put on a debt ceiling that helps us start to lower the deficit and move towards a balanced budget," said House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Republicans are promising cooperation, but their scheduling could push the debt ceiling issue to a critical point.

Congress is to adjourn next week until February 26, just days before the government is likely to default.

Related stories:

CNN Interactive's Budget Battle Page

[Munger]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-1...ion-gains.html




Should be exciting to see what Rand Paul will get up to.

While I disagree on some things with the Pauls, they are probably among the most honest AND competent politicians ever elected.

Maybe Ron. Not so sure about Rand...

It's taken three trips to Kentucky, but I'm finally getting my Tea Party epiphany exactly where you'd expect: at a Sarah Palin rally. The red-hot mama of American exceptionalism has flown in to speak at something called the National Quartet Convention in Louisville, a gospel-music hoedown in a giant convention center filled with thousands of elderly white Southerners. Palin — who earlier this morning held a closed-door fundraiser for Rand Paul, the Tea Party champion running for the U.S. Senate — is railing against a GOP establishment that has just seen Tea Partiers oust entrenched Republican hacks in Delaware and New York. The dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh.

"We're shaking up the good ol' boys," Palin chortles, to the best applause her aging crowd can muster. She then issues an oft-repeated warning (her speeches are usually a tired succession of half-coherent one-liners dumped on ravenous audiences like chum to sharks) to Republican insiders who underestimated the power of the Tea Party Death Star. "Buck up," she says, "or stay in the truck."

Stay in what truck? I wonder. What the hell does that even mean?

Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.

"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about — and nowhere do we see that dynamic as clearly as here in Kentucky, where Rand Paul is barreling toward the Senate with the aid of conservative icons like Palin.

Early in his campaign, Dr. Paul, the son of the uncompromising libertarian hero Ron Paul, denounced Medicare as "socialized medicine." But this spring, when confronted with the idea of reducing Medicare payments to doctors like himself — half of his patients are on Medicare — he balked. This candidate, a man ostensibly so against government power in all its forms that he wants to gut the Americans With Disabilities Act and abolish the departments of Education and Energy, was unwilling to reduce his own government compensation, for a very logical reason. "Physicians," he said, "should be allowed to make a comfortable living."

Those of us who might have expected Paul's purist followers to abandon him in droves have been disappointed; Paul is now the clear favorite to win in November. Ha, ha, you thought we actually gave a shit about spending, joke's on you. That's because the Tea Party doesn't really care about issues — it's about something deep down and psychological, something that can't be answered by political compromise or fundamental changes in policy. At root, the Tea Party is nothing more than a them-versus-us thing. They know who they are, and they know who we are ("radical leftists" is the term they prefer), and they're coming for us on Election Day, no matter what we do — and, it would seem, no matter what their own leaders like Rand Paul do.

In the Tea Party narrative, victory at the polls means a new American revolution, one that will "take our country back" from everyone they disapprove of. But what they don't realize is, there's a catch: This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change. The Tea Party today is being pitched in the media as this great threat to the GOP; in reality, the Tea Party is the GOP. What few elements of the movement aren't yet under the control of the Republican Party soon will be, and even if a few genuine Tea Party candidates sneak through, it's only a matter of time before the uprising as a whole gets castrated, just like every grass-roots movement does in this country. Its leaders will be bought off and sucked into the two-party bureaucracy, where its platform will be whittled down until the only things left are those that the GOP's campaign contributors want anyway: top-bracket tax breaks, free trade and financial deregulation.

The rest of it — the sweeping cuts to federal spending, the clampdown on bailouts, the rollback of Roe v. Wade — will die on the vine as one Tea Party leader after another gets seduced by the Republican Party and retrained for the revolutionary cause of voting down taxes for Goldman Sachs executives. It's all on display here in Kentucky, the unofficial capital of the Tea Party movement, where, ha, ha, the joke turns out to be on them: Rand Paul, their hero, is a fake.

Continued...

[Munger]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

+1. They chortle on about runaway spending and the deficit, but when asked what their #1 priority is they reply "no new taxes" (i.e., making sure the top 1% keep their Bush tax cuts). When pressed about what programs they will cut, not a one has named a specific. Not a one.

The GOP has shown its true colors for the last 30 years. Cuts? Not going to happen.

[sunskyfan]

Re: Republican Victory = Austerity + Money Printing?

I think that the election will have little effect except to force the narrative to a more direct tone. The theme of this election was vaporous except for the fact that the people were angry and that Obama had gone "too far". Hardly a mandate. The next "stimulus" and "money printing" is going to be in the form of bailing out more banks and the fantasy of the market. The most obvious change is that we will now start to bail out the States and municipalities.