As luck would have it, standing next to the press enclosure were two Alaskans, the Hudsons. David was a state trooper there and now is a high ranking official with the National Guard, living in Virginia. And yes Palin was his commander-in-chief in Alaska. He rattles off a list of her responsibilities: sets policy, makes sure they are equipped, deploys them, visits the troops. As for the fired trooper at the heart of “troopergate” Hudson says, “It’s unacceptable for any trooper to be unprofessional. . . The union doesn’t always let you do it[fire someone].” As for Palin, he smiles and says he’s thrilled to see that ” an unknown Alaskan politician can make it to the top.” He and his wife are delighted–each will receive a check for $3249 from the permanent oil fund plus another tax refund for $1200. They attribute this to Palin’s management of the oil fund and state budget.
The McCain camp is saying 23,000 people showed at the rally. It was large, but maybe only three-quarters of that. On the way out I chatted with Russell Paige, 49 years old, from here in Fairfax. He is a self-described libertarian who wasn’t thrilled with McCain because of McCain-Feingold, but he likes his stance on earmarks and tax cutting. Palin? “I like everything I’ve heard about Sarah Palin.” Among his female friends, he says, all of them are buzzing abut Palin. “I think there is a hidden tidal wave of women who would have voted for Hillary for the wrong reason and will now vote for Palin for the right reason.” The McCain camp hopes he is right– and the Obama camp is fearing that he is.
If the United States is in the midst of a nascent depression, and I believe that to be the case, then I would advance the thesis that this depression is a reaction to the looming Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate, and not a depression that requires intervention by them.
The tail does not wag the dog.
Every single run-of-the-mill recession is declared to be worst since Hoover. This one is no exception.
Gordon, here are two working definitions of national bankruptcy,(1)The nation cannot meet its everday obligations without borrowing more (2)The nation cannot pay the interest on its debt without borrowing it. What aspect of Bankruptcy do we not meet?
Wow, Gordon you’re sounding more like RCAR every day!
RCAR, are those really the definition of bankruptcy?
I guess to nail this down we have to stop talking Apples/Oranges. The Recession/Depression part of this equation results from the insolvancy of our government,at all levels,and the insolvancy of our financial system. It’s our denial about insolvancy that’s the problem;it’s as if when the economy recovers,our government deficits will dissappear,our trade deficits will disappear,the toxic debt-shadow banking problem will disappear,and the degredation of our currency will disappear. To think that those wonderful things will happen is serious denial.
Wow. I thought Bush’s legacy would be that he ruined America. In fact, he may have sunk the entire world. I apologize to those of you who said historians would have to re-evaluate Bush. In light of the worldwide depression, you may be right.
Only three things can pull us out of this nosedive:
1) Card check
2) Fairness doctrine
3) War crimes trials
This is clearly an issue of national karma. Let’s pull together and get this done. We must begin income redistribution immediately. We cannot afford the luxury of partisanship.
Al, are you saying this “recession” is no bigge?
Oh, and the military is too expensive. Let’s see what we can get for it on ebay.
RCAR-
Your first definition is the definition of a deficit. We’ve operated under a deficit for just about every one of the last seventy years. So that can’t be a working definition.
The second definition doesn’t work either, because the government doesn’t borrow money for interest separately from other debt. It’s all lumped together.
An undersold Treasury auction-where the government cannot raise sufficient funds to cover its expenses-will foreshadow a national bankruptcy. Even then, bankruptcy can be avoided if Congress reduces spending to within the means that the government can borrow.
RCAR, the United States is not insolvent as a going concern, but I agree with you when you write this: “To think that those wonderful things will happen is serious denial.” We have failed to think about these issues, and, incredibly, we are not really thinking about them now. Thanks for raising them.
There is no definition of a that would distinguish between a depression and a recession.
Every economic downturn used to be known as a depression. At least I think that wa sthe case for 1893, 1913 and 1920 (the latter could also be called the Great Deflation when prices dropped by nearly 50% – first wholesale prices around May and then retail prices in December)
When the depression that started in 1929 came along it was, after a while called the GREAT depression. There was a reason for adding the word “great”
Then in 1937. when Franklin Delano Roosevelet, following some bad advice, agreed to a reversal of some of his policies including policies at the Federal Reserve Board (which only became really independent again on March 4, 1951) caused a sharp economic downturn – they decided to call that a recession. Ever since taht time the word recession has been reserved for economic downturns.
In popular culture, with time, the Great Depression became simply the Depression
What is the ifference between a depression and a recession?
There is an old joke – a recession if when somebody else loses a job and a depression is when you lose it.
A better idea might be, say, an unemployment rate of over 10% (except that there’s been a bog secular trend up and there are changes in measurement)
In reality a depression is whatever you feel comfoprtable saying it is.
The most that anyone can say is that we are NOT in a Depression now, but we could be heading that way. The economy has declined quite a lot since September 15, and it is going very fast and unlike let s say 1957, the Federal Reserve Board and everybody doesn’t quite know how to reverse it. In truth, tehy don’t understand it.
Wha
Harry, I agree that card check is not going to get us out of this, but President Bush deserves a large mesaure of responsibility for the global crisis. He allowed global finanical imbalances to get larger and gutted regulatory oversight. He went on a spending spree when it was clear that would be disastrous. It’s no coincidence the downturn started during his administration.
Sammy Finkelman, thanks for the historical info. One definition for “depression” is a downturn of five years or more. That’s the direction we’re headed, especially because Obama appears determined to make this crisis worse.
It was interesting when a few of the major bank CEOs today (just a few minutes ago) showed amazement and chagrin at just what Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would be doing with the TARP II monies given that they expected to pay off the TARP I money on time or early and had no need for additional TARP loans (unless they looked cheap).
Is the economy really getting worse or is the Obama administration just blowing it up to look better when the economy eventually comes around ?
#10,” It’s all lumped together.”
And we have to borrow to pay interest on the whole lump
“An undersold Treasury auction-where the government cannot raise sufficient funds to cover its expenses-will foreshadow a national bankruptcy.”
Exactly,but before that happens,the printing presses will run 24/7,and then Bankruptcy will appear with clarity.
Deep recession. Not depression. We’ll pull out of it by early 2010. Dont’ panic. We’ll be okay. Politicians are self-serving scum.
When unemployment reaches 25%, when carloads of families leave their homes looking for jobs that are not there, when the middle earth of Kansas is blowing away in dustclouds, when children go to bed hungry at night in America, that’s my definition of depression.
Gordon, there was no regulatory oversight that Bush reasonably could have done that would averted this. The root problem was not lax regulation but overly low interest rates after 9/11. Congress and the Bush Admin was all too happy to have a bouyant housing sector post 9/11. They weren’t about to stop their own efforts through regulation. Even now the gov’t wants to prop up housing by forcing banks to lend. It is similarly wrong of you to blame Bush for not being able to stop “global imbalances.” Really, how was he going to effectively do that? I concur with you on his spending, however. That was inexcusable. But the real problem was an overreaction to 9/11 in the form of absurdly low interest rates for far too long. That was the mother of all other problems. You can actually make an argument that Sarbanes Oxley and mark to market accounting (examples of post-Enron regulation) exacerbated the problem, while the partial repeal of Glass Steagel (an example of de-regulation) helped. So, I really think you are barking up the wrong tree.
#19,
Without the explosion in the volume of the money supply,what used to be M3(M3 as a category disappeared a few years ago,and for good reason;it was an embarrasment to the FED),the low interest rates couldn’t have caused the damage.
RCAR-
Actually, that’s part 2 of Obama’s 1-2 punch on the economy. He’s already said said that the failed policies of the last eight years got us here. I’m sure he’s not talking about the profligate spending during the Bush years, so it’s got to be the tax cuts. Step 1: spend a trillion dollars as fast as you can. Step 2: Raise taxes to cover the interest payments and additional services that were added in the bill.
#20: Probably true. Underlying problems were monetary/fiscal, not regulatory. No regulator would have been smart enough to avert all this mess.
Bush gutted regulatory oversight? Where? Both the budgets and staffing of regulatory agencies soared during the Bush years.
#21,Actually, that’s part 2 of Obama’s 1-2 punch on the economy.
The economy is already a corpse,Obama punches can’t resurrect the dead.
RCAR: We are not really insolvent because our liabilities are self induced. Most of the 100 trillion you refer to as liabilities are really political, not legal, obligations. This means that we really can’t “default” on all the “debt” because it is not really “debt.” It is stuff like Social Security and Medicare which, while politically untouchable, could, in theory, be cut off like that. So, insolvency is not the right concept here.
You’ll know it’s a depression when Starbucks closes up all its stores and you can’t buy a $4.50 cup of coffee.
You’ll know it’s a depression when the satellite TV dishes in the neighborhood are replaced with the old antennas.
You’ll know it’s a depression when you start seeing “Room for Rent” signs in the suburbs.
#25,”—could, in theory, be cut off like that.”
You not making a point,we owe the Medicare,Social security just like we owe Widows’ benefits to the wives of our dead soldiers.
jayteee, how can we pull out of this when the rest of the world is now headed down? In our globalized economy, this is going to be a long, long downturn.
JohnR223, who knows? War in the Middle East, a clash between China and Japan, another Russian invasion, and we could have a depression by your definition. And we just might get there without death in great numbers.
Los Angeleno, thanks for your perceptive comments.
I agree that global financial flows were going to overwhelming regulation at some point, but Bush helped gut regulation, which accelerated the crisis. Moreover, he helped create the imbalances that helped create those flows. You can’t be President of the United States for eight years and not be largely responsible for what happens.
SukieTawdry, one can both increase budgets and gut oversight. I’ll take your word on the budgets, so I guess he did both at the same time.
Gordon, which regulations did Bush “gut”? Respectfully, that is an urban (liberal) myth. I don’t think you can point to any, whereas I can point to many that he added or stengthened. But I do agree Bush bears much responsibility, just not for the things you are claiming.
RCAR-
When I said Obama had a “1-2 punch” I meant that these would be hits to knock out the economy, not help it.
#29 RCAR–I don’t think you are right. The promises we make under Social Security are not legally binding. Same with Medicare. These are not like sovereign debt that must be repaid on pain of default. Read your social security statement. It makes very clear that benefits may go down, or congress might raise the retirement age to 127 or whatever. These are entitlement programs, not true debt. Now, I agree with you that these are serious obligations anyway, and they must be reformed in a big way. But it is an analytic mistake to confuse these with true “debt for money borrowed” or other unconditional legal obligation. To put it another way, we would improve our financial situation by “defaulting” on much entitlement spending, but if we defaulted on our T Bills, it would be disaster.
#36,” but if we defaulted on our T Bills, it would be disaster”
Respectfully, this is inevitable(in my opinion). We will continue to borrow,but one day,there will be no more for us. Then the Printing Presses will run,(you know the scenario;it’s happened many times before us). It will be a disaster,but disasters do occur from time to time.
Regarding Social Security,in one way you’re right,if it takes a wheelbarrow of dollars to buy a loaf of bread,it’s a legal default. Germany did it to us after WW1;their “default” was the most important reason for our financial collapse in the Thirties.
Los Angeleno, I don’t think the SEC was on the job, for instance, as the Madoff incident shows. And where were the bank regulators in all this? For chapter and verse, I will have to hit the books and get back to you.
As mentioned, regulators did not have a chance when there was so much money, but Bush apparently made it easy to defeat regulation.
Gordon, respectfully, you are misinformed. The junior levels of the SEC blew it on Maddoff, and simply did not inform the 5 Commissioners until it was too late. Bush can hardly be responsible for that. The SEC enforcement budget has grown too. As for bank regulators, what were they supposed to do? Do you really think that they were going to ask banks to make borrowing harder for weaker quality credits? That is not the American way. We have all kinds of laws and incentives to do the exact opposite. If you consider for a moment that even the geniuses at AIG did not really know their own true financial position, then how were the happless regulators supposed to know? Granted, there were signs, but no one thought there would be this kind of mass, system wide drop in prices. And the real proof is that EVEN NOW, the government is still encouraging banks to make loans despite credit risk. You really can’t blame Bush for a political/cultural bias in favor of extending credit. Other countries are much tighter than we are with credit. I really think you will find after hitting the books that there were no regulations that Bush could have enacted, or that he guttted, that would have made a real difference. The one counterexample I know of is that he actually tried to reign in Fannie May and Freddie Mac, but the Democrats (Barney Frank) killed it. The other counterexample I know if is that there was some loosening of capital requirements. But that was approved by the SEC and was not a high level presidential issue. All in all, regulation was a boogey man. And worse, when you say that there was not enough regulation, that implies that the way out of this crises if MORE regulation, and nothing could be farther from the truth.
Respectfully,
Los Angeleno
Los Angeleno,
In 2004 the SEC abandoned the rule that required investment banks to hold cash reserves against certain assets. Under the net capital rule, broker/dealers had to have a 6% cash reserve for stocks, corporate bonds, and mortgage-backed bonds. It was after this rule was abandoned that investment banks like Lehman and Bear began to acquire huge amounts of mortgages and mortgage-backed securities at 33 to 1 leverage. At the end Lehman and Bear were both basically mortgage investment vehicles with a relatively small broker/dealer, money management, and advisory businessess attached.
The aggressive post-2004 bidding by investment banks for mortgages, both for their own account and to be packaged for customers, was a major driving force in relaxing mortgage standards.
We mustn’t forget the Reagan Corollary to the adage Sammy Finkelman cites at #12:
A recession is when someone else loses his job.
A depression is when you lose yours.
Recovery is when the Democrats lose theirs.
I don’t disagree that Bush shares blame for our current financial mess. But in no way is he primarily responsible for it. The policies of hundreds of Democrats, and the failure of hundreds of Republicans to exercise reponsibility, over the past three decades, have brought us to where we are now. The basis of our problem is that borrowing has become a political and not a financial act, for both government and partisan advocacy groups: for the first, the dual-faced coin of pork and “stimulus,” for the latter, a civil “right.” Debt packaging schemes that were thought to be clever and profitable had to be developed, to oscure the extent to which the borrowing process has lost financial integrity.
I must apologize for yelling here, but it is necessary, because someone has got to hear this. NOTHING THAT I HAVE JUST SAID HAS CHANGED. Government, surreally, proposes to do even more borrowing, completely releasing the tether to any financial integrity. And instead of reversing the government policies that have treated borrowing as a “right” for individuals, over the last decade and more, and have utterly stripped the financial integrity from it, government proposes to publicly excoriate the banks — while continuing to require them to lend on the SAME UNSOUND BASIS that got us to where we are right now. NOTHING HAS CHANGED.
More of what got us here will not fix the problem. It will make the problem worse, and continue to be an obstacle to the people’s own efforts to recover. We had better all pray it is not as bad as the worst-case predictions.
#40
Contentions is no place for your facts.
This is a reality free zone.
Did you not get the memo?
Even Alan Greenspan admitted to erring on the side of the banks and the free market.
But save it for daily kos.
#40 Iguana and #42 SwampFox: Re-read my post. I allude to this very fact (so, there, SwampFox! Those facts are in evidence from a true Contentions fan even without the Daily Kos). But the change in net capital rules did not cause this crises, and were never viewed as “gutting” regulation. Rather, they were viewed as a “smart” regulation, because the SEC was going to do customized reviews of the banks to make sure they were well capitalized. In other words, they were ditching a one sized fits all approach for a custom approach. There is nothing “Republican” or “Democrat” about that, and in fact, at least one of the Democrat SEC commissioners voted to approve the change (I think Harvey Goldschid). It may well be true that the change in net capital rules was a very bad move, but don’t trump this up into a major Bush deregulation issue. It wasn’t viewed as a big deal at the time, and to the extent it was a problem, it was likely because the SEC did not do what they said by performing customized reviews. Again, that is not part of some Republican philosphy of deregulation. This whole thing is a side bar to the larger issues of massive liquidity added to the system post 9/11. You must know many of the people who you thought could never buy a house suddenly buying one much bigger than you ever thought. That problem, multiplied millions of times, is how this started. Not the obscure net capital rule. But if you want to blame an obscure rule, how about mark to market accounting?
So post-9-11 excess liquidity is the real culprit in this whole fiasco? Is that what you’re saying? Ergo, Al Queda destroyed the world economy by hijacking 4 passenger jets and flying them into some buildings? Or did we let our response to the hijacking of 4 passenger jets destroy the world economy? Which is it?
Our response. It was 100% natural that we thought we needed to juice the economy after 9/11. We just juiced it way too much. There are other factors at work too, but low interest rates and tons of money induced a credit bubble that has now burst. The excessive credit and liquidity is what got people to buy homes they couldn’t really afford, and led bankers to create instruments they thought were safe but weren’t. Add to all this Freddie and Fannie and a few other factors like a foolishly weak dollar, and you get to where we are now. Regulation was a minor tidbit. The last thing we need is to add more regulations to an absurdly regulated economy.
If what you’re saying is true, then Al Queda, the Taliban, and every other variety of jihaadi nutball have won. The fighting in the middle east is some kind of pointless diversion, like the last Roman legion to leave England. And our effort to combat Islamic expansion was to sell houses to people that didn’t have any money? I was unaware of this. Now I’m really bummed out.
It wasn’t just 9/11 that we were reacting to. People forget that the stock market was already tanking, in the case of the tech stocks crashing, by 9/11. The economy was already going into recession – making it very difficult to say what was directly 9/11-related and what was the part of the continued unwinding of the stock bubble. In addition, many investors who had watched their equity holdings evaporate more or less before their eyes took refuge emotionally and transferred their sense of personal wealth into their appreciating real estate assets.
Hmmm… I don’t like the idea of a bubble unwinding… must find different cliches…
Los Angeleno,
Regulation was not a minor tidbit in the mortgage crisis. It was a principal driving force. When the SEC let investment banks go from 16 to 1 leverage on mortgages to unlimited leverage, many investment banks essentially transformed themselves into mainly mortgage investment companies. Also, because the Fed failed to place loan to value limits on commercial banks for mortgage-backed securities, as it does on corporate securities, it created a market for private unregulated mortgage investment companies like Carlyle Mortgage, which was leveraged at 33 to 1.
The managers of these enterprises got very rich by going broke with other people’s money. Regulation of borrowing is necessary to discourage such behavior.
Los Angeleno, thanks for the education. I will keep your words in mind when I hit the books on this subject.
Inagua, I knew there had to be something. Thanks for finding it.
Los Angeleno – “even the geniuses at AIG did not really know their own true financial position”
A couple of years ago Warren Buffet was famously quoted to the effect that derivatives were financial weapons of mass destruction. And, I’ve seen the tapes of those hearings wherein folks were trying to tell congress that Fannie and Freddie were out of control.
Nearly all of us were in denial, passing on the hot potato, hoping it would never be dropped.
And, in general, it’s patently ridiculous that people are making comparisons to the great depression when many millions of Americans were literally living hand to mouth with actual starvation a real threat.
No, but of course in our own day “depression” has a second meaning. The tech bubble, 9/11 and the WOT including Iraq, the housing/credit bubble: This patient is depressed, as one by one his great enthusiasms have left him disappointed and embarrassed – with Obama-liberalism soon to add to the string of humiliations, one strongly suspects. Apologies to John Sidney McCain and Ronald Wilson Reagan, but it’s sometimes hard to look at the record and say “I trust in the judgment of the American people” with any conviction.
There’s a point where current events pass into history. When that happens, and the ongoing unpleasantness is viewed from sufficient distance, I think it will be seen to have had a certain inevitability, that the things we now say might have been done to stop it would only have caused it to occur in a different way.
I would start with RCAR’s point about M3 not exploding. That’s because M3 has moved offshore. In a gloabl economy, in which we are running the largest trade deficit anyone ever ran, our trading partners’ money is part of OUR money supply. Those partners have dollars, and those dollars want back in like the zombies on the Night of the Living Dead. They will find a way. They must find a way. Otherwise, we can’t buy oil and toys, and G-d knows, we need our toys.
Our trading partners would ideally like to buy high-rated bonds with our dollars, but there is just so much creditworthiness to go around, and it isn’t enough to soak up all the zombie dollars. So we pretended to have more creditworthiness than we did. We had to. Otherwise, we couldn’t buy oil and toys, and G-d knows, we need our toys.
When M3 went offshore, its port of entry back into the economy moved from Main Street Bank to Wall Street bankers. Main Street Bank we knew how to regulate; Wall Street bankers, not so much. And anyway, we coldn’t afford to regulate them, because they had to bring all the dollars home. Otherwise, we couldn’t buy oil and toys, and G-d knows, we need our toys.
Everything else is just mechanics. Our trading partners needed good paper, and we needed to pretend to have some to sell. The only question was what kind of bogus paper we would create. Following the path of least resistance, we created bogus paper with the greatest political appeal: mortgages for people who couldn’t afford homes. Congress ordered banks o lend in bad neighborhoods, creating an incentive to lend to bad credits (not the same thing, but close enough for government work), and Fannie and Freddie were told to buy those loans, and then, thanks to the anomaly of competing ratings organizations (how many Underwriters Labs are there to serve the insurance industry?), we were able to get the bad paper past the ratings guys. And the rest, as they say, is current events.
I don’t think the Fed’s interest rates played too big a role in this drama. The bond market is independent of the Fed, and I suspect that the interest rate on mortgage-backed securities was driven more by our trading partners’ appetite for paper than by what the Fed charged for new money.
The lack of regulation – the CFMA of 2000 set the foxes to guarding the henhouse – added accelerant in the form of naked shorting and naked credit default swaps. And there’s a special place in Hell for the idiot who didn’t see that mark-to-market accounting is a two-edged sword. But at the end of the day, I don’t see how we could have kept the zombies out, and having nothing good to feed them, we were doomed eventually to be their food. Otherwise, we couldn’t buy oil and toys, and G-d knows, we need our toys.
Well, I’m not going to fault the regulators. I don’t bite on three card monte, don’t play with chain letters, don’t even buy lottery tickets. Caveat emptor. The idea that you can give somebody money just because they’ve got an 800 number and a nice web site and expect to make a profit is pretty naive. In fact, if you’ve got money and don’t understand the investment that’s being touted, maybe you should just leave it in your savings account.
I’ve just finished watching two amazing Akira Kurosawa movies, “Stray Dog” and “Drunken Angel”. The former was made in 1946, in Tokyo and depicts a police manhunt for a criminal and a stolen gun. The film is remarkable on so many levels, but to see the crime and squalor of that time and to compare it to just a few short years later, it has to make one optimistic. The latter is of the same genre, a 1948 picture of a netherworld surrounding a stinking pond in Tokyo where the yakuza have apparently inherited the feudal domains of pre-war Japan. If the Japanese could survive such a devastating and costly defeat and go on to prosper, why should we be worried? Shouldn’t this just be a challenge for a people that consider themselves perhaps the best in the world to handle this very thing?
Chuck: Good choice of movies, and the contrasts you mention which took place during the development of post war Japan are stark as well as fascinating to look at. But should it follow as you say, “why should we be worried”?
Or, is it now more plausible that due to existing constraints which all countries now face, such as environmental degradation, population overload, water constraints in many countries, an obviously changing climate, and the like, these things might lead to a different outcome than the miracle worked in Japan during the post war years?
Japan had a huge helping hand during the post war years. There were also plenty of abundant resources to be imported and finished goods exported. But, do we still live in the same world, now, as we once had from 1946 through 1970?
So, possibly we should be a bit worried. To say the least.
Maybe, as Gordon intimates, the next 5 years will tell the story. And maybe we should feel a great deal of envy for those post war people in Japan, with their bright future still ahead of them, compared to our lot, today.
You’ve got a point, we don’t have a MacArthur and a powerful conqueror directing the clean-up. But I’ll bet if you talked to some Japanese historians they could give you chapter and verse on the mistakes of the U.S. occupation. But circumstances didn’t lend themselves to a utopian political assault, after all the dems were in power.
Aside from that, we’ve haven’t had our infrastructure fire bombed, we still have extensive natural resources, and the majority of our male population isn’t missing in action on small islands across the Pacific. But most of all, worry won’t help this or any other problem. Defining the issues and implementing effective policies will.
Charles Martel – “worry won’t help this or any other problem. Defining the issues and implementing effective policies will.”
Now I’m really depressed. If our survival depends on 600+ congresscritters defining the issues and implementing effective policies we’re surely doomed.
chuck martel, America’s greatest strength is its ability to renew itself. Thanks for suggesting this in your interesting posting.
Sully, yes, we’re surely doomed. But there is always another election.
I predicted this, starting about 50 years ago, believe it or not. It was pretty far out on a limb to do that in 1960, but if you saw the dividing line among the pre- and post- 60s generations, on which I sat, you knew it was coming.
Now I have to go out further: President Obama will declare war in the Middle East; it’s the easiest way out (once we realize that inflating away the debt won’t work either), as the transition to another energy source cannot be done without INCREASED reliance on cheap oil for another decade, at least.. Neither Russia nor China will find it in their interest to oppose us if we leave a clear corridor to the south for Russian trade. But anyway, the historic irony of what will happen is pretty overwhelming to me, so I will pipe down now for another 50 years. I’m not sure what will happen to Israel in the event, but I find it hard to imagine anything very good.
I must register a peep of disagreement on unemployment insurance. Yes it can cushion the impact of job loss, but it also can be a 9-month incentive not to work.
Anecdotally, a friend recently explained that he will not look for a job for 9 months because its easier to sit at home and do nothing while collecting a check.
DABbio, I agree with you that the problems facing America are predictable when you compare the morals of Americans before and after 1960. We are lazier, less enterprising, more bureaucratic, and more likely to look to government for guidance. I say this as a 26 year old, and I know I am guilty of all of the above myself.
Guanaco, I understand what you say on unimployment insurance. But if people knew there was a limit to state support, they would start looking for a job immediately.
I can tell that this is not the first time you write about this topic. Why have you decided to touch it again?
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