[ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine"

[spike]

>. On Behalf Of John Clark
Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are
"asinine"

 

 


On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 6:57 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

 

 > John what do you make of this?

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/tea-party-science-98488.html?hp=r3

 
>.Not much, there are no details. I have some details, what do you make of
this?


>.TEA PARTY member and presidential candidate Senator Rick Santorum.

Etc.  John, it is much easier to paint your political adversaries as crazy
and stupid than it is to deal with their contentions.  Economics and biology
are two completely different disciplines.  Many biologists are clued in on
economics either.  We could likely find plenty of them who couldn't tell
Hayek from Keynes.

>>. the claim can be made that there is no evidence that the Tea Party is an
extreme wing of either end of the political spectrum.


>.No evidence of extremism??!! 18 republican senators (including all the
potential GOP 2016 presidential candidates) and the vast majority of
republican house members voted AGAINST averting a economic catastrophe.

 

Ja, and plenty of those were not extremists.  My contention is that we
cannot tell for instance which wing is Ted Cruz.  He could be far left as
well as far right.  Recall that the two farthest left members of congress in
2004 and 2006 were the strongest voices against raising the debt limit,
Charlie Rangel and Barack Obama.  When both switched sides, I was as
appalled but perhaps less surprised than if Christopher Hitchins and Richard
Dawkins had taken up creationism.

 

>.The difference between the government's debts and yours is that the
government has the power to print money and you don't, so yes, they are
paying off their debts by cranking up the printing presses.

 

OK then, we have discovered the basis of our disagreement.  John how could
you be right in the middle of all this debate yet still not realize the
government needs to borrow money in order to print it?  Printing money and
borrowing wealth are the same thing.  The debt limit is all about how much
money the government can issue.  The government needs to borrow real wealth
and stay within its borrowing limit in order to print money.

 

Of course they could theoretically print money without borrowing wealth.
This has been tried, in Weimar Germany and more recently Zimbabwe.  The
Germans supposed they would just need to make more sturdy wheelbarrows and
all would be well.  The Zimbabwe government assumed they could just print
new money every few months with an extra zero tacked onto the denominations.
I wasn't there, but I understand it turned out badly in both cases.

 

 

>>. Earlier I had an alternative suggestion to repeatedly raising the
government borrowing limit: we sell the gold in Fort Knox.  Every American
to whom I suggested this thought it a terrible idea.


>.If they're not tea party members I'm not surprised.

So why are we hording that stuff?  It isn't used for anything useful
anymore.

 

>>. is not that identical to selling the actual gold?


>.No.

Why?  If there is a good reason to hang onto gold, why not sell that new
aircraft carrier, the John F. Kennedy?  That one is said to have cost about
12 billion, so we can assume it would sell for about the same.  Stock it
with American made fighter planes gets it to about 15B.  At the current
rate, just one battle-ready modern nuclear carrier with planes would cover
US government borrowing for nearly a entire week.  Well, OK, five days if we
want to split hairs and quibble over a mere few billion dollars.

 

 >>. Are we admitting these IOUs are not as good as gold, but rather are as
good as paper?


>. And on October 23  2013 thanks to the Tea Party we came within 90 minutes
of that faith being destroyed forever.

The fact that there is a Tea Party is what keeps the world having some faith
in the dollar.  What if we had no one who thought there was anything wrong
with borrowing the cost of a nuclear aircraft carrier every five days?

> . the other cause by the room temperature IQ of congressional Tea Party
members.  John K Clark

 

It is far easier to declare your adversary a crazy fool than it is to
actually refute his actual arguments.  The Tea Party is gently suggesting
that we cannot sustain the endless borrowing and overspending the way we
have been doing for at least 14 years.  You are saying the Tea Party is made
up of crazy fools, therefore their arguments can be safely dismissed.  Does
that mean you believe we can sustain the borrow and spend indefinitely?

 

spike





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