Boehner desperate to find economists against stimulus
Steve Benen at washingtonmonthly.com picks up something Matt Stoller found:
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has made clear he's against the idea of a government rescue package in response to the financial crisis, but he's apparently having trouble finding economists who agree.
So, as Matt Stoller discovered, Boehner has gone online looking for help. This plea was published this week on Boehner's website.
Attention Economists: Are You A Stimulus Spending Skeptic?
A recent Associated Press article quoted transition officials for President-elect Obama as saying "[o]nly one outside economist" contacted by the President-elect's advisors had "voiced skepticism" about the President-elect's emerging plans for an economic "stimulus" spending bill with a price tag as large as $1 trillion, with the vast majority of that number going to new spending on government programs and projects.
House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) is compiling a list of credentialed American economists who would like to add their voices to the list of stimulus spending skeptics. If you are an economist who would like to be added to this list, you can join the list here and provide your comments.
As Benen notes:
. . . isn't this the kind of thing Boehner should do quietly? Call up the Heritage Foundation, AEI, and Cato, tell them you need some skewed reports showing that the economy's in pretty good shape and will get even better on its own, and tell the Wall Street Journal editorial page to repeat the talking points. Isn't that usually how this game is played?
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uh huh
They could find many economists against the way they are doing "stimulus" but that's probably not what they are looking for. In other words, there are many who were against the financial bail out and wanted an entire different system that would have paid for itself and many are saying to tie stimulus to U.S. citizens to U.S. jobs, in the U.S.
But they probably don't want to hear those economists, both sides.
Robt. Oak's recommendation to tie stimulus to US
Robert, no, no, NO! This protectionist thinking is precisely what made the Great Depression great. The economists don't agree on much but they are universal on this. Google Smoot-Hawley.
May I suggest you learn how to use the Internets?
Firstly Smoot-Hawley is not the cause of the Great Depression. There have been many studies showing how the United States was already a domestic economy and how trade was not a large component of GNP. The effective tariffs before and after show no correlation to the Great Depression. The monetary policies, the Federal Reserve are highly correlated.
That is pure corporate lobbyist spin to push more bad trade deals and it's economic fiction if one bothers to look at the economic indicators of that time!
Secondly, trading people is not part of free trade theory! If one reads the theory of free trade instead of believing some idiot on cable TV who cannot even do algebra, never mind has even taken undergraduate economics 101, the means of production are not mobile.
Thirdly if one bothered to read any undergraduate labor economics text, one would see clearly that the laws of supply and demand operate in domestic labor markets.
In other words, flooding a domestic labor market with an oversupply of labor will lower wages
Finally, there is nothing protectionist in putting U.S. workers preferred for jobs in their own country.
Protectionism is about tariffs. That is what the term refers to. I am not recommending tariffs, or even talking about them here at all.
So, people, turn off the idiot box, go to your local library, get some actual Academic texts and you can find watered down Academic texts for the non-econ majors and read up! It's absurd that you just believe some rhetoric without having the remotest clue on what the theory actually says.
Very true Robert.....
....but then this type of politician is about to go extinct. To stupid you see. While times where 'good' and the nation was awash in 'easy' credit etc. these sorts grow fat as the ticks on a dog who's owner ain't keepin[' an eye on 'im.
His hard to fathom stupidity works well for his 'handlers' as you don't need to know much to put on a clown show.
But now....
Not so much.
This is a great 'fly on the wall' moment though. It's always easy to fail to grasp how dumb Congress is. A good read of some Mark Twain will clue you in also.
$1 trillion bucks
I mean the money and it's not the classic Keynesian model, the money is not going into the hands of the citizens is incredible, so on that score they have strong points.
So, forget the partisanship, the issue is how they are spending the money.
But as far as I know Boehner isn't in those true conservative camps who would mention that. That entire trying to break the UAW was pure, absolute, pure foreign corporate lobbyists agenda, seriously. It was Toyota, VW, Honda, etc. getting their puppets to say that to try to further lower wages.
Note that Toyota reported a loss this quarter...
...I guess them Japanese can't sell cars without financing neither.
OT: Listening to Sen. Berny Sanders to night and he said the only chance the nation has to survive if simultaneously with the Obama admin comes in is if the citizenry rises up and demands that the Dem Leader$hip start moving towards rebuilding our manufacturing infrastructure and take other actions to bolster the middle class. Otherwise they are gonna sit on their hands. He also has some great cracks about how Senators have no problem with some 30 year old derivatives trader make $10 Billion a month but are 'outraged...outraged that an auto worker would make $60k.
John Boehner's "military" record
Back during the Reagan years, when it was fashionable to have a military service record, John Boehner was claiming he had "served" in the US Navy during Vietnam (1968). In fact, he once had it listed on his congressional bio.
Sadly, Boehner, as usual, is always the fraud. As it is a felony to fraudulently claim military service, and one had to have at least six months active duty to do so at that time, Boehner's having made it only HALFWAY through Navy boot camp - getting kicked out for bedwetting - didn't qualify him to claim ANY military service.
Boehner, always the fraud.....
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