Hey, sorry I've been inactive lately. I took the whole week off for Thanksgiving and I just had absolutely no motivation to update this blog. But I'm back now and I'll be cranking it out like I usually do.
We've got yet another TIME columnist who seems to
think that it's just the Republicans that prevent government from making good policy decisions.
She makes a very good point highlighting the problem between 2 and 4 year election cycles and the fact that business cycles and policy making have shelf lives that are far longer and how that mismatch creates suboptimal responses from politicians. But she never references the Democratic representatives and twice references Republican legislators when making her argument.
Here are the relevant bits:
But Washington exists on a different planet than Wall Street and that planet has different laws of gravity. The first law is that while finance is global, politics is local. Wall Street looks at Europe and sees what three years of delays and half measures in dealing with the Eurozone budget crisis has wrought — another recession. Surely, the thinking goes, leaders in Washington won’t let that happen here. But a new set of possibly more conservative House Republicans isn’t looking across the Atlantic, but to their home districts, where they’ll be facing the next round of primary elections in two years.
Politicians working on four-year election cycles have little impetus to make those changes fast enough or thoughtfully enough, as the last few years have shown. Indeed, a new batch of arguably more conservative Republicans in the House has even less impetus than they did before the elections, which took the number of crossover districts down by half.
The biggest drivers of Federal spending have been Medicare and Medicaid. And yet it's the Democrats who remain most intent to prevent any meaningful reform to those two programs. If the Republicans are intransigent on the revenue side, the Democrats are equally stubborn if not more so on the spending side.
But
Washington exists on a different planet than Wall Street and that
planet has different laws of gravity. The first law is that while
finance is global, politics is local. Wall Street looks at Europe and
sees what three years of delays and half measures in dealing with the
Eurozone budget crisis has wrought — another recession. Surely, the
thinking goes, leaders in Washington won’t let that happen here. But a
new set of possibly more conservative House Republicans isn’t looking
across the Atlantic, but to their home districts, where they’ll be
facing the next round of primary elections in two years.
Read more:
http://business.time.com/2012/11/21/the-widening-divide-between-wall-street-and-washington/#ixzz2DIBQT5p
But
Washington exists on a different planet than Wall Street and that
planet has different laws of gravity. The first law is that while
finance is global, politics is local. Wall Street looks at Europe and
sees what three years of delays and half measures in dealing with the
Eurozone budget crisis has wrought — another recession. Surely, the
thinking goes, leaders in Washington won’t let that happen here. But a
new set of possibly more conservative House Republicans isn’t looking
across the Atlantic, but to their home districts, where they’ll be
facing the next round of primary elections in two years.
Read more:
http://business.time.com/2012/11/21/the-widening-divide-between-wall-street-and-washington/#ixzz2DIBTS7fJ
But
Washington exists on a different planet than Wall Street and that
planet has different laws of gravity. The first law is that while
finance is global, politics is local. Wall Street looks at Europe and
sees what three years of delays and half measures in dealing with the
Eurozone budget crisis has wrought — another recession. Surely, the
thinking goes, leaders in Washington won’t let that happen here. But a
new set of possibly more conservative House Republicans isn’t looking
across the Atlantic, but to their home districts, where they’ll be
facing the next round of primary elections in two years.
Read more:
http://business.time.com/2012/11/21/the-widening-divide-between-wall-street-and-washington/#ixzz2DIBTS7fJ
But
Washington exists on a different planet than Wall Street and that
planet has different laws of gravity. The first law is that while
finance is global, politics is local. Wall Street looks at Europe and
sees what three years of delays and half measures in dealing with the
Eurozone budget crisis has wrought — another recession. Surely, the
thinking goes, leaders in Washington won’t let that happen here. But a
new set of possibly more conservative House Republicans isn’t looking
across the Atlantic, but to their home districts, where they’ll be
facing the next round of primary elections in two years.
Read more:
http://business.time.com/2012/11/21/the-widening-divide-between-wall-street-and-washington/#ixzz2DIBTS7fJ
But
Washington exists on a different planet than Wall Street and that
planet has different laws of gravity. The first law is that while
finance is global, politics is local. Wall Street looks at Europe and
sees what three years of delays and half measures in dealing with the
Eurozone budget crisis has wrought — another recession. Surely, the
thinking goes, leaders in Washington won’t let that happen here. But a
new set of possibly more conservative House Republicans isn’t looking
across the Atlantic, but to their home districts, where they’ll be
facing the next round of primary elections in two years.
Read more:
http://business.time.com/2012/11/21/the-widening-divide-between-wall-street-and-washington/#ixzz2DIBTS7fJ
But
Washington exists on a different planet than Wall Street and that
planet has different laws of gravity. The first law is that while
finance is global, politics is local. Wall Street looks at Europe and
sees what three years of delays and half measures in dealing with the
Eurozone budget crisis has wrought — another recession. Surely, the
thinking goes, leaders in Washington won’t let that happen here. But a
new set of possibly more conservative House Republicans isn’t looking
across the Atlantic, but to their home districts, where they’ll be
facing the next round of primary elections in two years.
Read more:
http://business.time.com/2012/11/21/the-widening-divide-between-wall-street-and-washington/#ixzz2DIBTS7fJ
But
Washington exists on a different planet than Wall Street and that
planet has different laws of gravity. The first law is that while
finance is global, politics is local. Wall Street looks at Europe and
sees what three years of delays and half measures in dealing with the
Eurozone budget crisis has wrought — another recession. Surely, the
thinking goes, leaders in Washington won’t let that happen here. But a
new set of possibly more conservative House Republicans isn’t looking
across the Atlantic, but to their home districts, where they’ll be
facing the next round of primary elections in two years.
Read more:
http://business.time.com/2012/11/21/the-widening-divide-between-wall-street-and-washington/#ixzz2DIBQT5pY
"The biggest drivers of Federal spending have been Medicare and Medicaid. And yet it's the Democrats who remain most intent to prevent any meaningful reform to those two programs. If the Republicans are intransigent on the revenue side, the Democrats are equally stubborn if not more so on the spending side."
ReplyDeleteHave you been living under a rock the past 4 years?
No. And I don't think the cuts in baseline spending increases means the Democrats are willing to tackle the actual spending issue. A cut in the increase of growth of spending is considered a "spending cut" in Washington. Frankly it's unbelievable.
DeleteOf course spending is projected to grow, we have a growing population that needs government services, both in number and in age.
Deleteand why are you even bitching about deficits anyways? Under current law our deficit "problem" is already solved. The only driver of our long term structural deficit is health care, and that was already taken care of with the ACA.
Now you can dispute the efficacy of the ACA of course, but to suggest that democrats have been intransigent on the spending side (despite agreeing to 3:1 spending cuts to revenue increases during the debt ceiling fiasco) is probably the dumbest thing I've read all week.
Spending has grown faster than the rate of population growth multiplied by inflation for just about every year for the past decade. The biggest driver during those years was defense, followed by Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
DeleteNow it's Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. And it's only going to get worse as more baby boomers retire and start drawing benefits.
Congress always says they want to do this and that, but it never happens. They'll probably reinstate all of the sequestration cuts.
"Both in number and in age"
DeleteI think I covered that.
"Congress always says they want to do this and that, but it never happens. They'll probably reinstate all of the sequestration cuts."
they'll reinstate it because we don't have a fucking fiscal crisis. It's completely made up voodoo bullshit.
Sorry for being rude, but its a bit flustering to see a smart guy like you actually fall for this shit hook, line, and sinker.
Obviously we're not in a fiscal crisis. However, Greece wasn't in a fiscal crisis either until it was. If we continue to go down the path we're going, we're going to see something similar once international and non-governmental domestic investors decide that holding US debt simply isn't tenable anymore.
Deleteno country that issues debt denominated in its own currency has ever been in a fiscal crisis.
DeleteThat's not saying I want to reach Japanese levels of public debt, but there is absolutely no need for urgency in this situation.
I think that the Tea Party people are the biggest thing wrong with the Republican party, but the fact that the Democrats believe that compromise means doing what they want is their biggest problem.
ReplyDeleteThe republicans had 4 fucking years in which the dems were completely open to compromise but the republicans went all in with obstruction to try and win the presidency and the senate...guess how that turned out?
DeleteThe "fiscal crisis" we face is a long term one. We have created an unsustainable system that promises too much to too many. The rest of the world is catching up to us and making our economy more and more incapable of generating the funds necessary to fulfill the promises we keep on making to everyone. Cuts must be made. It is inevitable. But if they are not made, then a true fiscal crisis will hit and it will bring the whole world down with it.
ReplyDeleteNothing you said is true.
DeleteEverything I said is true.
ReplyDeleteNot really. Last I checked we still had positive GDP growth.
DeleteDon't really see how the the solow catchup growth in much of the third world makes us poorer either.
Last time I checked we were 16 trillion dollars in debt. Our GDP growth isn't enough to keep up with population growth.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't make us poorer. But it makes the playing field much more competitive. We used to have an huge advantage over any other country on earth. And now we have to fight for the markets that used to be just gimmes. Industries that we used to dominate, we are now struggling in. Other countries doing well doesn't necessarily affect us negatively. But it can, and it has.
so you're a mercantilist? lol
ReplyDeleteNope, not a mercantiliss, just a realist. We can't just sit by and thing that the "pie" just automatically gets bigger because it can. We actually have to create more wealth in order for that "pie" to grow. Piling on ridiculous amounts of debt impedes us from doing that.
ReplyDelete