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

[spike]

>. On Behalf Of John Clark



 

 

 >>>.  the Tea Party is the problem here

 >>. So what happens if we elect a bunch more of them next fall?

 

>.I think that is unlikely. For one thing there is a limited supply of
people that dumb.

John what do you make of this?

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

All is not lost for our embarrassed mainstream left wing, for 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.  Why could not they argue that the Tea
Party is actually the far left?  Then the Yale professor would be able to
more easily explain his results.

I don't see why not: two famous left wing figures pointed out several years
ago where this is headed, Charley Rangel in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2006.
Why not see the Tea Party position as extrapolating on what these guys
realized several years ago?

I still haven't been able to figure out why it is lunacy to point out that
the US is not only pretending to pay off debts with borrowed money, but that
we are admitting we have no way out.  We are saying by yesterday's action
that we are borrowing money to pay for what we already bought, and
simultaneously buying a whole bunch of new stuff, which immediately becomes
a bunch of stuff we already bought.  Remind me please, is it merely stupid
or both stupid and crazy, to point out that this plan is not just stupid, it
is stupid and crazy?

If it is crazy stupid lunacy now, how much crazier and loonier was it 7 to
10 years ago when the left wing rising stars were forcefully delivering the
same message, when the deficit was a quarter what it is now and the debt was
less than a third as much as it is now?  Those guys must have been some
really powerful brand of stupid.  How could they even stay in office?  Could
it be that the Tea Party has little or nothing to do with mainstream left or
right?  That the attitude that we must live within our means does not map
onto the traditional political spectrum in any meaningful way?

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.  So the obvious question is, if
we are issuing IOUs and the world is pretending these are money, is not that
identical to selling the actual gold?  Are we admitting these IOUs are not
as good as gold, but rather are as good as paper?

John your objection as I recall is that it would cause chaos by tanking the
value of gold.  I don't see why that is such a problem.  In fact it gives me
a great idea.  We sell several tons of gold, but only to those countries
which mint real money.  That dump causes the price of gold to go down.  Then
we buy it back at the lower price using US money.  We end up with their
currency, they end up with ours.  It is like ordinary currency trading, only
with the gold supply in Ft. Knox jacking the price around, we get a discount
for a while.  Cause chaos, and profit from it.

Of course that might create some new problems, but consider this.  We are
being told that the world's economy has become dependent on American
overconsumption, that markets will collapse without that factor, etc.  So we
as a species have painted ourselves into a corner: the world's economies
depend on the US to overspend, while the US depends on the world economies
to lend us the money to do it.

Remind me again please: is this scheme is crazy and stupid?  Or rather is
suggesting that this scheme is crazy and stupid crazy and stupid?

>.Gee, and I can't imagine why the risk is rising. 

>. John K Clark

 

I can, John.  Plenty of us can.

spike

 

 

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