Throughout the rule of Dubya, the game was about denying the cancer eating at the economy: the lack of job growth, the exploding debt, the declining revenue. We saw articles proving that it was the "Liberals" who were endangering the economy with their gloomy predictions. Fox told us that the predominance of negative economic reports was proof, not of negative economic implications, but of the Liberal bias of the media. When a certain amount of reality was unavoidably showing through the flimsy screen, it was Bill Clinton's fault.
As with the 11 year sunspot cycle, each resurgence of activity arrives with a reversed magnetic polarity and of course the game now is to show that any signs of recovery that can't be ignored, repressed or misrepresented will be buried under hyperbole and deceitful numbers. Since employment levels only begin to fall long after a recovery, we will hear no end of talk about it from the fair and balanced folk and of course we will hear about reckless government spending -- as we always do under a Democratic administration, even when the budget is balanced. The recovery will not be televised, if it's acknowledged at all.
The bulls are loose on Wall Street following increased consumer spending and investor confidence in the recovery. Banks are beginning to lend to small businesses again. Leading indicators are up for three consecutive months now, the wild and reckless TARP program is returning a profit while the folks who brought about the nosedive are still howling about Nancy Pelosi's Job Killing Bill, making fictitious claims about spending levels and other hypertrophied hyperbole as though we hadn't lost more jobs and shipped them overseas when they last had the reins and were telling the Liberals to stop 'whining.'
They're never going to admit that a catastrophe has been avoided, that we could have had 25% unemployment again or a decade of deep depression and a poverty level we haven't seen since the 1930's. No, not until they get back into power, that is and we can return to administrative bloat, runaway defense spending, borrowing against the fatuous promise of increased revenues from top bracket tax cuts and giving Wall Street and banking pirates, mining, drilling, food and drug and insurance companies free reign. Things will be all right then and we can be sure that doing what caused 1929 crash and the more recent crash will not happen again even if we do the same things that caused both. Only a stupid liberal would believe such a thing.
Captain, the arrogance of those who think mendacities to secure a short term election gain will pass historical muster. History will judge them in harsh terms; at least I am confident about this.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, our side should learn how to throw sand in their faces.
There's history and then there's history. There's one that showed Roosevelt's efforts to ease the effects of the Depression showed some success, the employment level tracking his "profligate spending" and the massive spending the attack on Pearl Harbor permitted as finally ending it. There's the history that says FDR exacerbated the Depression; there's the history that says he caused it and there's one that says tax cuts and lack of regulation caused it, but we can dismiss that one as "Liberal."
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned in my lead balloon the other day, things in nature can't be shown to have a unique history and things that happen in human affairs will always have been what benefits the historian's goals.
Words no longer have specific or unique meanings either so what is spending to one, is investment to another and confiscation or redistribution to a third, so when you try to examine what really happened or what was really said, it all dissolves into that quantum foam and cimmerian mist I was talking about.