tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post7176151430752553343..comments2024-02-24T00:37:43.087-05:00Comments on The Other McCain: It's David Brooks Fisking Day!Robert Stacy McCainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03084541621503669804noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-38197489928898828722009-03-11T17:04:00.000-04:002009-03-11T17:04:00.000-04:00“So to your overall point, Stacy, is it that capit...“So to your overall point, Stacy, is it that capitalism has no shortcomings or weaknesses (as your sneer quotes suggest)? “<BR/><BR/>I am not Stacy but capitalism and the broader free market is simply people. People who do things not from force but from agreement. However since people are not perfect any free market will also not be perfect. They will make decisions that many will think are wrong and sometimes they themselves will think were wrong in hindsight. Sometime people will engage in force or fraud but that is why we have laws<BR/><BR/>The self correcting feature of the free market is that when someone does the wrong things enough time or bad enough then they take the bad consequences of those actions. If you buy a house or houses you can’t afford, you get foreclosed on. If you are a bank and yes even a “too big to fail bank” you go out of business if you lend too much money to those who can’t pay it back. Or if you leverage yourself 10x, 20x, 30x your worth in good times and don’t have enough actual assets to pay up when the bad times hit then you lose.<BR/><BR/>This is different from the government command economy since it is at best only marginally the will of the people and often the whim of the politician, bureaucracy and their politically connected friends and those decisions are backed up by government force whether you agreed with it or no.<BR/><BR/>Where government is suppose to come in is when someone is engaged in force or fraud against the people. Instead with the Bush/Obama bailouts the government is rewarding those who are at best incompetent and at worse were engaged in the biggest fraud in history. Banks like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs should be not be getting bailouts they should be getting the Madof treatment, arranging their guilty pleas in front of a judge<BR/><BR/>DJFAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-53485931084755151362009-03-10T18:14:00.000-04:002009-03-10T18:14:00.000-04:00Brooks:"That would mean supporting President Obama...Brooks:"That would mean supporting President Obama’s plan for global stimulus coordination, because right now most of the world is free-riding off our expenditures."<BR/><BR/><BR/>What are the details of said global stimulus coordination? <BR/><BR/><BR/>" That would mean eliminating all this populist talk about letting Citigroup fail"<BR/><BR/>Does Brooks own stock in Citigroup?<BR/><BR/><BR/>"because a cascade of insolvency"<BR/><BR/>Why would there be a cascade of insolvency?<BR/><BR/>" would inevitably lead to full-scale nationalization."<BR/><BR/>So we should adopt pre-emptive nationaliztion?<BR/><BR/>" It would mean coming up with a bold banking plan"<BR/><BR/>What are the details of said bold banking plan?<BR/><BR/>" rather than just whining about whatever the Democrats have on offer."<BR/><BR/>We were told TARP should stabilize the banks. It didn't. Why will TARP + pork stabilize the banks?adagioforstringshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05662017050067739695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-53150294441292000172009-03-10T15:49:00.000-04:002009-03-10T15:49:00.000-04:00Did you even read to end, because Brooks' last two...Did you even read to end, because Brooks' last two grafs read like something that frankly you yourself could have written?<BR/><BR/>So to your overall point, Stacy, is it that capitalism has no shortcomings or weaknesses (as your sneer quotes suggest)? <BR/><BR/>If not, then (1) why the sneer quotes; (2) what is bad or misleading about saying such things, including speculative bubbles, exist; and (3) what is wrong with Brooks' main point -- that a principled refusal to either deal with said shortcomings or weaknesses or even to acknowledge their existence will be used synechdochally by the anti-capitalist party to discredit capitalism per se.<BR/><BR/>If so, is that because (1) capitalism in every example throughout human history has always measured up perfectly to some already-externally-existing standard of goodness or morality that it could, in principle, fail to meet or (2) the workings of capitalism are in and by themselves the arbiters and measuring-sticks of what is good or moral in every case. (Hint ... if you want empirically to ... ahem ... have a prayer, you'd better mean #2.)<BR/><BR/>And is it your point, Stacy, that there is no difference between government's economic roles, competence and abilities in a depression and in a boom, between a time of frozen credit markets and a time of cheap credit, between attempts to affect the economy in aggregate and attempts to manage it in detail in the service of other social goals.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-11120983511193499832009-03-10T14:44:00.000-04:002009-03-10T14:44:00.000-04:00Did you catch this by Athens & Jerusalem on Su...Did you catch this by Athens & Jerusalem on Sunday?<BR/><BR/>http://athens-and-jerusalem.blogspot.com/2009/03/babes-with-arms.html<BR/><BR/><BR/>Mrs. PAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-16216410672348946932009-03-10T14:40:00.000-04:002009-03-10T14:40:00.000-04:00Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce "Bert," who...Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce "Bert," who is in fact a Samoan attorney otherwise known as Dr. Gonzo.Robert Stacy McCainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03084541621503669804noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-34321651798272691532009-03-10T14:25:00.000-04:002009-03-10T14:25:00.000-04:00The arguments are valid. Brooks knows nothing abo...The arguments are valid. Brooks knows nothing about economics. But he is in good company. Neither do Geithner and Obama. Only at the NYT could Brooks be considered a free-market conservative. He is anything but. He is decidedly to the left of where JFK was in the early 1960's. (Kennedy knew enough to champion tax cuts).<BR/><BR/>Brooks parrots the leftist canard that the current crisis has something to do with the failings of free-market capitalsm. When, pray tell, have we allowed free-market capitalism in this country since the last, Great, Depression? I'll answer for you. "Never." Booms and busts are creatures of monetary policy. Turn on the printing press, and people spend like drunken sailors until the inevitable realization occurs that the money isn't real. Bust follows.<BR/><BR/>It really is that simple. The present crisis, like all the others, is caused by government interference in the monetary system. Cheap money, loaned to banks, in an environment in which the Federal Government did everything possible to artificially encourage home buying, meant that the first evidence of the bubble's pop would be in the housing market. The "subprime lending crisis" (there is actually no such thing) no more caused what is going on than a toothache causes a cavity. Rather, banks that were drinking from a monetary fire hydrant miscalculated their real risks because their cost of funds was artificially cheap, thanks to Greenspan and Co. at the Fed.<BR/><BR/>The banks overleveraged because they were defrauded by inflation. That's what bad monetary policy is: a fraud.<BR/><BR/>But it didn't just fool banks. Every business in this country was given false information about values due to manipulation of the medium of value exchange. They all did things they wouldn't have done if they had known where reality lay. This is called "malinvestment." It's building houses no one needs; "investing" in infrastructure no one will use; building up employee ranks for the boom that never comes, etc., etc.<BR/><BR/>Brooks is willing to blame free-market capitalism for this because he is a statist. He makes his living from the government as surely as does a GS-12 at the GAO. He associates with politicians, and he doles out publicity, negative and positive, to those in government. He knows not the first thing about how to grow a crop, produce any useful item, market it, sell it, etc. He is a chatterer who profits from the governing class. Naturally, he thinks the solutions to all things are to be found among chattering people like himself.<BR/><BR/>So how about we all "just say no" and stop reading him? Life is too short to listen to the blathering of fools.<BR/><BR/>I'm not a blogger. I don't know exactly what "fisking" means, but I would venture to reply to Anonymous that it has indeed begun.E. Berton Spencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12210325589851786589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-81398462336102022832009-03-10T14:03:00.000-04:002009-03-10T14:03:00.000-04:00I thought fisking was supposed to involve valid ar...I thought fisking was supposed to involve valid arguments? Still waiting to see the fisking.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com