"Anyone who has read a good economics book would be quickly reduced to laughter and tears by George Bush's ridiculous economic address to the nation. He put on his 9-11 suit and tried to warn Americans about the impending disaster: that their access to an infinite stream of paper money might be imperiled if they don't cough up hundreds of billions immediately. It is very tempting to go line by line and shout back.
"I'm a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business." And this is why he nationalized airport security, created huge new bureaucracies, spent more than any president in American history, centralized control of education, put up more protectionist barriers than Clinton and his father combined, bailed out airlines, presided over the Sarbanes-Oxley reign of terror, unleashed anti-trust regulators, intensified health-care controls, and pretty much used every headline as an excuse to demand more money and power? "The FDIC has been in existence for 75 years, and no one has ever lost a penny on an insured deposit, and this will not change." But the penny itself has lost 94% of its value in those 75 years precisely because of institutions such as the FDIC and the Fed. Does he really think we are that foolish? Here is my favorite: "The problems we're witnessing today developed over a long period of time. For more than a decade, a massive amount of money flowed into the United States from investors abroad because our country is an attractive and secure place to do business." So those nasty foreigners did it to us, huh? Maybe it was Bin Laden who sneakily tried to create a credit bubble by investing in U.S. stocks! And here is his description of the grave calamity we face: "As uncertainty has grown, many banks have restricted lending, credit markets have frozen, and families and businesses have found it harder to borrow money." Imagine that! We might have to live within our means for a bit. That would actually be a wonderful thing. Maybe a recession would last a year or 18 months, and then we would be back on solid footing again. He very nearly admits that too much credit is what created this mess. So he proposes more credit so that we can continue to live on too much credit. And then what happens next time? Ever more credit? This path ends in Weimer-level inflation and total destruction. What is striking here is the level of public opposition. It is somewhere between 55 and 90 percent, depending on the way the question is worded. Also, it is wide and deep opposition. It is made up of Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, blacks, whites, rich, poor, men, women - just about everyone, with no systematic bias among the polled groups. In other words, we have here a wonderful thing: a clash of group interests, as Mises would say. It is the state and its friends vs. the American people. That doesn't mean that Congress won't pass something or other. The administration is prepared to pay off every member. And yet the proximity to the election complicates matters. A lost election means no payoff, no matter what. If public anger is intense enough, these guys might balk in the end." http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/bush-socialist-destroyer.html [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
