Marketing Advice For Mad Scientists

mikael pihlström says:
May 7, 2010 at 12:52 pm
“You overestimate their (CS) power by a factor of thousands. The US
deficit is 12 trillion dollars, caused by wars, tax cuts for the wealthy, the
Financial crisis…”
Dave Wendt [May 7, 2010 at 4:30 pm] is exactly right.
Mikael P says “my country doesn’t get any defense subsidies from you,” which is absolutely wrong. Were it not for the U.S. paying the cost for their defense, the Finns and plenty of others all the way to western Europe would be speaking Russian today. And regarding President Reagan, he turned a dysfunctional incompetent’s economy around, and ushered in decades of prosperity by drastically cutting taxes and implementing free market, capitalist policies [which are now being completely reversed by Obama].
Flooding the financial system with $1 trillion in liquidity when the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit was necessary to avert a financial panic leading to another 1930’s-style Depression.
But once the panic and the threat of a run on the banks had passed, the prudent course of action would be to allow the markets to adjust on their own, letting inefficient, ossified companies go bankrupt, to be replaced by new and energetic, fast growing companies, and allowing banks that gambled with their depositors’ money to be shut down and replaced by more prudent banks. Instead, our new Leftist government is now the biggest single owner of a U.S. car company, with seats on the Board of Directors, and it is pouring taxpayer funds into its favored banks.
The far-Left Obama administration has used the crisis as an excuse to unnecessarily print $4 trillion in new money, to be doled out to its supporters — including the banking industry. That certainly is not capitalism. Owning the means of production, such as a car company, is a combination of fascism and socialism. Anyone who believes we won’t pay a very heavy price for Obama’s profligacy knows nothing about either economics or history.
The U.S. deficit, which has skyrocketed under Obama, is now being made even worse because the Obama Administration is putting U.S. taxpayers on the hook for the Greek financial crisis: 40% of the IMF is funds come from US taxpayers, and now the IMF is being tapped to bail out Greece. You don’t hear that on the news.
The U.S. tax dollars in the IMF and elsewhere are being poured into new Greek bonds to rescue Greece from its profligate government spending [sound familiar?] — and that debt will be JUNIOR to current bond holders. What that means is that U.S. taxpayer dollars will vanish when the new Greek bonds default, which they will.
And the Euro itself is in great danger of collapsing. Individual countries print their own Euros. The “Y” prefix on Greek euros will make those notes nearly worthless; holders are already frantically converting them into other countries’ euro currency, and into dollars, yen and marks.
The IMF can bail out a small country like Greece. But Spain, Portugal and several other countries are in a very precarious situation, and there is not nearly enough money in the IMF to bail out even one large economy. At some point, there will be a reckoning.
Finally, the simplistic idea that “the rich” are at fault is a stale old Leftist canard. Show me a poor person who creates jobs. Further, “the rich” pay all federal taxes. The bottom half of the population pays zero federal taxes, and in fact collects a large portion of federal tax receipts in financial assistance. Without “the rich” paying taxes, the burden on the bottom half of income earners would be much greater.
Today there are no truly “poor” people in America. There are only the less affluent. No one starves in America; in fact the “poor” are the most obese. The “poor” also have flat screen TVs, cell phones, larger living quarters than comparable Europeans, medical care, cars, air conditioners, ipods, computers, etc.
Leftist political and financial policies, implemented under both Democrat and Republican administrations, are the cause of today’s problems. More of the same is certainly not the cure, as Reagan’s successful policies made clear.

mikael pihlström, May 8, 2010 at 8:34 am:
If you believe that without the opposition of the U.S. following WWII, that Finland, bordering the Soviet Union, would not have been annexed by the U.S.S.R, then you are completely delusional.
And it was President Clinton, not Reagan, who allowed banks to act as brokerage houses, selling derivatives that were rated AAA but were, in fact, junk. Banks, being new at the derivatives market, learned their lessons at the expense of shareholders [no bank depositors were hurt due to FDIC insurance; only the taxpayers were hurt].
I already pointed out that the original need for liquidity was provided when the markets tanked. [George W. Bush was President then, try to pay attention.] But once the crisis had passed, and panic driven bank runs were avoided, Obama continued unnecessarily spending at a rate more than 400% higher than GWB. [And replying in all capital letters indicates your lack of any coherent, logical, and historically accurate arguments, which is anyway typical of most Leftists.]
I also note that almost 80% of the stimulus dollars have not yet been spent. They are being held in reserve by the Obama administration so they can flood the economy with a temporary stimulus leading into the 2012 election. In other words, Obama is going to use the stimulus money, intended to help the economy right now, to try and buy the election. He accepts seeing the country hammered financially, with U-6 unemployment at over 17%, if it means getting re-elected.
Next, your flippant ignorance of the effects of Greek euros becoming worthless is no surprise. That’s why you can hand-wave away the situation in Greece. Economic illiteracy aside, if the Euro fails in Greece, there will be little confidence in the euros of other countries, with only a few exceptions such as Germany. Each country’s euros will have a different value, so why even have euros, if they are no different than the national currencies they replaced? When confidence in a currency is lost, there are major repercussions. Look at the Zimbabwe dollar for a recent example.
You say there are government owned companies that are successful. Name them — and do not include any that receive direct taxpayer subsidies in order to survive. Name one. Before you go off on your usual tangents, name one “good state owned company” that doesn’t get taxpayer subsidies to stay in business.
There is no precedent in the U.S. for the government to buy a controlling interest in a U.S. automaker, and placing its partisan bureaucrats on the Board of Directors. But once again, you hand-wave away this astonishing precedent by saying “SINGLE CASE.”
The government is not guaranteeing a loan [which would be bad enough]; it has bought a major part of General Motors outright — for over $50 billion. That certainly violates the fiduciary duty of the company toward its shareholders, and favors the company’s union instead — a union which has not had to give up anything at all, and still has its high school graduates making $30+ an hour, plus enviable benefits, for rote assembly line work.
In a bankruptcy, the company would be reorganized, including renegotiating excessive union contracts to market pay rates, sufficient to allow the company to compete and succeed. But with the government’s ownership and control of management — including appointing Obama’s hand-picked C.E.O. — the entire burden of a giant failed corporation is placed on the taxpayers — who never had to bail out Nash, or Hudson, or American Motors, or any other carmaker that ever went out of business. It is *wrong* for the U.S. government to own a carmaker [or any other private business], and to compete with companies that have no access to unlimited government funding.
Next, you are wrong about the IMF, which is flagrantly violating its own fiduciary duty by in effect giving away its assets to a country that absolutely refuses to take any steps necessary to put its financial house in order. The IMF requires austerity programs to be implemented in every other country as a condition of providing funding. Why is Greece the exception? Why is Greece allowed to set the IMF’s terms? Why does the IMF not simply offer its terms, and allow Greece to take them or leave them, like it does with every other country? In fact, why is the IMF even involving itself in the European Union, which should be taking care of its member countries? Certainly the IMF did not financially assist Louisiana when Katrina hit. The federal government under GWB immediately pledged $200 billion in aid to Louisiana. Why shouldn’t the EU do the same for Greece? Why should U.S. taxpayers be made to bail out an EU country?
You are wrong, Mikael, in each of your rebuttals. Saying that European countries will also suffer is no answer at all. Saying that European countries will be affected most is likewise not a credible answer. And your ridiculous statement that 18,000 people died each year before health ‘reform’ shows the silliness of your arguments: how many people died with health insurance? Certainly many more than 18,000 out of a population of 307 million. Further, it is illegal for a doctor or hospital to turn away anyone for inability to pay. Your arguments fail, because they are based on emotion, not logic or credible facts.
Finally, President Bush, like any president, is to be highly commended for making any tax cuts. And it should be pointed out that the proportion of federal taxes that “the wealthy” now pay is significantly greater than prior to the Bush tax cuts. Try and spin that fact.