Ameros being shipped to China? Well, if you have THAT information, then surely you have a picture of the Amero from a reputable news site? Because if not, then you're blowing farts out of your mouth and nothing more. Conspiracy theory, yay.
The 'hands-off' small-government free-market-knows-best approach that McCain advocated is the same approach we used all eight years of the Bush presidency. How'd that work out? Everything fine now? Ironically, everything *is* fine for me, because I knew that'd never work. When the regulators are MIA, the free market rapes the unwary. If you had a retirement account that's worth a whole lot less, you were one of the unwary who got raped when the regulators were taking a break the last eight years.
Bush left us in an interesting position: how do we NOT nationalize the banks? If we buy stocks with taxpayer money, we'd have to buy so much that we'd own the company. Republicans cannot stomach that idea (although it worked wonderfully for Sweden a decade ago and made their taxpayers gobs of profit). So, their alternative is this: GIVE the banks endless gobs of money until the banks say they're full. Their alternative to the Democrat plan to plug our economic production gap? Tax cuts. Same old same old. If you liked the outcome of the last eight years, then the Republican plan is to emulate those eight years all over again. (Except this time instead of starting with the budget surplus that Clinton bestowed on Bush, we'll be starting with the ginormous debt that Bush bestowed on Obama.)
We need New Deal 2.0. This package they're working on now is just too small. We need something BIG, like World War 2 sized (or even bigger), to fill our production gap and keep the economy afloat until recovery kicks in. The original New Deal worked just great. By 1937, unemployment had dropped from 25% to 10%. People say that it was WWII that really brought us out of the Depression, but that's just part of the truth. What happened was, budget hawks convinced FDR that the economy had recovered enough and we needed to start paying down the national debt, by cutting back on government spending and by raising taxes. That induced another (lesser) recession that started in 1937. Had FDR not caved to the budget hawks, we would have been sitting rosy when WWII began. Instead, WWII became the government spending program that brought us out of the second 'bounce' recession.
A tax cut now is basically taking our grandkids' credit cards and maxing them out with cash advances, then putting that money in OUR wallets. That not only sucks, it seems immoral. I'd much rather use the money to buy things that our grandkids will actually HAVE when they're adults: a revamped electric grid, buttloads of clean alternative energy sources, an improved transit system, better schools, etc, etc. You know, TANGIBLE goods, things that will benefit their lives for decades to come. We're still reaping the rewards of the New Deal today. That's the kind of thing we need to do now too.
Either way, I'll be okay. I thrive during crises, and this one is no different. But I have empathy for others, and when I see so many people hurting, well, that bothers me. If Obama lets Republican budget hawks wreck any chance we have for a recovery within the next decade, then I will be disappointed in him. He needs to think big and act boldly. If he has to muscle the Republicans aside for the sake of the country, so be it.
