it's the consumer credit situation that is going to fuck us.
house of cards finally falls. YAY!
house of cards finally falls. YAY!
I appreciate Saunder's comments and concerns. While I'm not a Clinton or Obama supporter, I honestly can't understand Saunder's arguments about the American economic situation. We can blame Bill Clinton for NAFTA but that treaty is merely a symptom of what I like to think of as a long simmering American disease called free market capitalism. When are voters going to understand and politicians going to admit that this country has never had free markets; furthermore, there are no free markets anywhere in the world. That being an established fact, I'm astonished that our so called leaders--all of them--continue to view free markets as a sort of economic Holy Grail. For decades we had a reasonably balanced economy based on the Fair and New Deal agendas. These policies were abandoned in 1980 in favor of Milton Friedman's free markets. Bill Clinton merely continued policies begun by Reagan and enhanced by Bush I: Bush II accelerated the march to purported free markets. Saunders may not like Hillary Clinton and I can accept and respect that but he had better find a more defensible reason than NAFTA for fighting Clinton's nomination. I suggest he begin arguing against the failed policies of free markets more generally. Friedman's free market ideas may work but the problem has always been that there are no free markets. What our government has done is give away the US economic base in the hope that the rest of the world might see the benefits of free markets. While purporting to endorse free markets our government has selectively discriminated against certain industries in favor of others (specifically the national security complex). In my view, the whole notion of free markets is bull pucky. If we look back at every significant American economic downturn since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, abuses by banks and industry as a root cause. Free markets cannot and should not be expected to regulate themselves; that is the role of government. Almost everyone Democratic politician is guilty of supporting free market policies and until these leaders, including Obama, Edwards, and just about everyone else, publicly rejects the policies that got us where we are today, I can't see that picking on any one Democrat is fair or reasonably. In sum, the problem isn't Hillary Clinton: The free market problem is practically endemic in our political establishment and since they don't historically exist and never will, it would be nice if our leaders took a look at our history and buried these ridiculous ideas once and for all. We need government regulation and we need to establish the same sorts of industrial policies that the rest of the world uses to enhance their domestic economies. This isn't rocket science. -Roger H. Werner