An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
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Friday, February 25, 2011
"Pro-business" Republicans elected and businesses savagely cut spending
The Republican gains in last year's midterm elections were the largest seen in 80 years. Remember, they were the pro-business party. Prior to the elections you heard all kinds of stories about how the economy wasn't doing well.
We were told that businesses were scared to make a move because they had an unfriendly White House and Congress. They warned us that the expiration of Bush tax cuts were what was keeping entrepreneurs and CEOs from making spending decisions.
These admonishments came despite the fact that from time that Obama and the Democrats took power, business investment increased by over $400 billion in real terms. All in just a year and a half!
Yet sadly, the White House and the Democrats were so inept at communicating their successes that the public ended up getting brainwashed by the the Republicans' line of tripe. They bought it hook, line and sinker.
And what did the Republicans get as a result of their successful, yet totally twisted propaganda campaign? Huge electoral gains.
The "pro-business" party was elected by a landslide in November 2010. In December we got the extension of the Bush tax cuts and other tax cuts that the Republicans said were necessary to get business investment flowing again.
So what happened? Did all this open the flood gates to massive amounts of new business investment?
No. On the contrary...business investment collapsed in the fourth quarter of last year. Companies cut their spending by over $100 billion. Taht's right...they reversed more than a quarter of their investment spending that occurred over the prior 18 months in a mere three.
It didn't end there. Now the states under these remarkably economically savvy Republicans are cutting budgets in order to grow. But, ooops!...those cuts are resulting in shrinking economic activity.
Where is the president? If I were him I'd be all over this. I'd be shouting it from the rooftops! The pro-business Republcians take over and what does business do? It cuts their spending and investment. You got that...CUT!
More of this madness is yet to come as Congress gets set to unleash their own "Wisconsin" on the entire nation. With the evidence piling up all around that this austerity is a disaster, you mean to tell me that there is not one person out there capable of explaining the folly of all this? I mean, God, there's certainly enough evidence to make the case.
This is the swan song of Thatcherism/Reaganomics. It will result in Great Depression II, either as a result of this crisis, or the next, occurring within about five to seven years.
ReplyDeleteNot to worry though. We will be pulling out of it in fifteen to twenty years and then things should be good for some time. :o
Everyone swears the President is a man of very high intelligence, so either we must conclude that this is wrong, or, alternatively, we must conclude that his policies are bringing the outcomes he wanted. So, you'd be all over this because you want a return to prosperity and a fair distribution of the productivity gains since the 1970s. But, he, in contrast, may intend to manage the transition from democracy to plutocracy, with a minimal of disruption . So, for him it's all about getting people used to the "new normal."
ReplyDeletePRO-MONOPOLY NOT PRO-BUSINESS:
ReplyDeleteThe Democraps, Republipukes and Teabaggers take notice.
You are changing the US into a facist state, with the Lobbyist cementing the Governments, Local and Federal with the Corporate Elites, backe by an elite group of storm troopers (I mean state troopers). Of course Mein Fuhrer Walker ordered up the SS State Troopers (storm troopers) to round up political opposition. Meanwhile the Koch Brothers have their boot on the throats of school teachers, nurses,fireman, policeman, prison guards, security and snow plowers. According to the Republipukes, the middle class working families are all to blame for this mess. If they hadn't interferred, the corporate families could have squeezed a few more billions at the expense of our environment.It is the american families hoarding and dying on foriegn battles fields that are to blame for causing budget shortfalls. What to do? If you want to see the free market work, give one million dollars to every man women and child in the US and you will soon have the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison. The corporate elite have monopolized too much and are choking off the american idea. Achtung heir Walker.
It's only their way or the highway.
ReplyDeleteObama is being fed a gaseous lie that he is like Reagan, a patronization keeping him busy and diverted.
The dollar should be stronger but we know how that is rigged to support cocacola, pepsi, mcdonalds,
and others who make more money in euros and abroad - as well as the puritanical exporters.
But cutting spending and balancing budgets and stalling government if not shutting it down is all an extension of a power grab to stall the economy.
local PTOs are going to have to have bake sales everyday to get their schools running again.
ReplyDeletethey elected republicans who are cratering in to the Tea party charlitan puritan deficit hawks.
they elected people who march to orders that the Department of Education is unconstitutional.
Dept of Education is connected to the department of welfare, so it's all an easy target for them.