Wingers and the Economy

Just curious: why do you imply that Krauthammer has a high IQ?

Stupid angry little man, as far as I have ever been able to tell.

It was the free market that approached the government. Also the WSJ is now 'Murdoched' and will spew inane talking points of the fail upward crowd.

there is a third choice. blame it on idiots masquerading as intellectuals of great thoughtfulness, insight, and courage. liberal fascism. the book that is.

It gives far too much credit to Krauthammer to imagine that he is stupid. I think he well realizes that whatever he is peddling is is bullocks, but he just doesn't care. He pushes it because that's his job.

Malkin, OTOH, is stupid enough to believe her own crap.

Well, let's see:

Conservatives were successful in removing regulations that restricted what financial institutions could do and how they did things. The distinction between banks and other types of financial institutions such as investment houses substantially disappeared.

The people in those businesses looked to line their pockets rather than make prudent decisions that would ensure profits beyond the next quarter.

Things fell apart and an administration that got elected by exploiting the wedge issues that hard-line conservatives hold dear went and doled out money to its friends, rather nonchalantly ignoring how it told Congress it would use the money it was given.

Hmm, seems standard operating procedure to me.

Of course the Right has to deny any responsibility and blame Liberals, which is also standard operating procedure. Can't accept blame, no sir! That would be too adult-like.

So I carefully read the Krauthammer article, trying to find anything in it which might have sent Kevin off on this little bender and came up blank. Everything which he said was pretty obvious and uncontroversial.

Perhaps this is why Kevin didn't discuss that article's content at all - he just bounced off it into unsubstantiated speculation and smearing.

In all: a most weird posting.

The wingers have made a huge mistake!!! They have come out with a meme that is testable in reality, unlike most of their crap.

If they are right, we are in for massive inflation. If they are wrong, the economy will either tank, stagnate, or recover.

Unless we have massive inflation, they are wrong.

We have been concerned that people like Krauthammer would hit us with the old "stab in the back" myth over Iraq. Little did we know they would use it to cover their miserable asses over the financial blow up.

A simple "GOP, STFU" would suffice.

Who says they couldn't succeed? They convinced a lot of people for a long time that we could have "won" in Vietnam if the media and the liberals had only "let us."

Stab-in-the-back. You think people are too smart to be taken in by it this time? Think again.

The people at National Review, Paul Gigot with his minions at WSJ, Phil Gramm, Dick Armey, Ron Paul, Grover Norquist and their ilk have made lucrative and socially satisfying careers out of arguing for the very free market fundamentalist, low-taxes passive small government ideology that has caused the current economic mess. They can't admit being wrong. It will destroy their world.

Is it any wonder that they are desperately looking for some semi-plausible explanation for the economic disaster that doesn't require them to take personal responsibility for the economic crisis?

These are not people who are famous for recognizing and admitting their errors. The few movement conservatives capable of that have already jumped ship and are paddling away with the rest of the rats.

The remaining ones, those incapable of admitting error and learning from reality, are instead searching for a common fantasy they can all spout in unison, hoping that their unanimity within their shrinking circle will allow them to continue living in their fantasy world and still act like big men in those circles. Like the NRO, they are going to purge those who don't go along with the common line.

These really are people for whom ideology trumps both expertise and a pragmatic understanding of reality. They live in an ideological fantasy world, and when reality is so unkind as to intrude on that fantasy world they frantically spend their time trying to create a new fantasy world the replace the one reality messed up.

The problem with Krauthammer's column is not that he blames market volatility on political events. The frenzied maneuvering to get bailouts, avoid bailouts, or avoid looking like a bailout is necessary, is creating an environment where companies literally can't be trusted, and investors are reacting accordingly, and that kind of falls under the category of "duh."

The problem is that he lumps the need for a new energy economy in with that volatility. He suggests that the government is only going to exacerbate that market volatility by insisting that auto companies that want a bailout be more competitive and responsible in the future by creating cars that are more like the Prius -- which, by the way, is the car that a lot of people are buying instead of American cars.

Krauthammer doesn't seem to be arguing against intervention, but against a certain type of intervention. And he doesn't really have the courage to say one way or another whether the government should let the automakers fail or just give them tons of money with no conditions. He just says they definitely shouldn't try to force them to create a product that is more efficient and creates fewer carbon emissions. The dishonesty in his argument is that he uses one concept (market fluctuations due to "the political economy," as though the market has never fluctuated before due to external events) to argue unconvincingly about what to do with these companies that have driven themselves into a dead end and have asked the government for the money to do a U-turn.