If we can just agree on a general plan to get our resources to work for us again.

Maybe we need a Sec. of Def. who has a Libertarian tendency to cut spending then we would have some cash to pay down debt.

Of course, we’re going to have health care reform and there’s no telling whether that will be a big cost or a savings over time.

We need to invest in new energy sources. Perhaps a competition between car companies and university student groups and other researchers to produce new auto energy systems.

Ending the wars will save money big time.

Better tax policy (as I wrote above).

There are a handful of very important economy transforming policies. Many can be agreed upon regardless of party or ideology.

Whitney is right in that there is very little real asset backed underpinning to financial wealth. This is a problem when real asset backing for financial claim to wealth is questioned as it is now. The world financial market until recently has not questioned the credit ratings granted by investment bankers to tradable financial derivative packages that were bought by many countries’ central banks. As these countries see the devaluation of their US$ holdings, their assets, they are beginning to do the asking that they probably should have done five years ago.

Too much cash, too little assets.
Foreigners own our debts (and we’re spending the cash on war) and so can’t buy goods & services.
We spend eternally for oil.
The Rich take all our nation’s profits.

This is terribly unbalanced and dysfunctional.

We need to pay down some debt, sending cash overseas.
We need to export more to those who would then have cash.
We need other sources of energy than oil.
With that we could ease the drain oil costs put on our economy.
We need to build infrastructure instead of letting the Rich get richer.
What do the Rich do with all that wealth? They invest.
What do they invest in? Is it foreign companies?
Where do those foreign companies sell their goods?

Fix a couple of problems and a lot of economic power in the world could free up and begin to really chug faster.

I suggest that we increase taxation on the Rich to pay for the war, to pay down some debt and to cut back on the huge wealth disparity.

Corporations would benefit tremendously from lower taxes. That could really boost their profitability for a sustained period of growth.

Shifting taxation towards individuals should also encourage more reinvestment which again would boost corporate productivity and profits.

Not only were we more or less right, we did ourselves and our clients a good service by countering panic with analytical input.

Cool! Competence, it’s the new ‘black’.

I see your Margaret Thatcher and raise you Golda Mier.

Wasn’t Catherine the Great supposed to have been quite beautiful?

What about Indira Gandhi of India?
Or Corey Aquino of The Phillipines(sp)?
Certainly Ms. Peron wasn’t bad looking.

What’s all this worry about a politician’s looks anyway? If they’re sending you off off die in an illegal war, does it really matter what they look like? Does it really matter if someone would like to have a beer with Dubya?

Forget the superficialities and move on to what effects these people might have on the nation and individual’s lives.

Just a thought.

I am an Aussie who has spent more than four years in the USA as a Federal Australian Public Servant (APS), seconded to the UN and a number of years in Geneva seconded to the OECD, both in executive research officer positions. I have now retired from the APS, on medical grounds but really to work for a Labour victory to oust that misbegotten bigot Howard and it was a sweet victory of sorts. I still work for issues that concern me and do my damndest best to keep the bastards honest.

You talk about Disneyland and I wrote about a consumption driven economic system. My comment was really a shorthand way to say that consumption power needs to be generated other than by credit. All economies have been driven by consumption from time immemorial but the ability to consume needs to be generated by real assets, including skills that can utilise those assets. If you cannot generate the wealth to fuel consumption and resort to gambling casinos to make money out of nothing, you got problems.

I am an economist and think Laffer was a con who never produced any empirical evidence to validate his idiotic hypothesis.

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No doubt the the US economy has enormous potential to recover from this but the implications for other countries are dire. China and India can look into their own consumption bases but both, China particularly, will have to adjust their production to suit internal consumption demand. India has not invested in manufacturing, nevertheless, an introversion towards the demands of its own peoples would be welcome and perhaps less deforestation and dispossession of its aboriginal (adivasi) peoples.

I still maintain that it’s hubris to use these countries to justify 4% of humanity being responsible for 25% of carbon emissions today. I am using these figures from a previous FDL post by Dr KJ Murphy.

I am also sceptical about carbon trading because it’s so open to scams from the word go. Who polices? Who Enforces? How do we account for deforestation with natural disasters like bushfires? Sure you can replant or the bush regenerates but a sapling is not as effective a carbon sink as a grown tree. The only way to reverse or halt global warming is to reduce emissions of noxious gases, including CO2.

Believe me, in Australia we are experiencing global warming as summers get hotter and drier, bushfires more frequent, greater restrictions and prices for water usage and warmer seas than 20 years ago.

The stock market has gone to financial capitlism rather than roduction capitalism. Derivatives are little more that the fiscal version of turning lead to gold, and the carying trade is an anti-gravity machine. In the real world they do not work. Great ammounts of money have been “made” but you can not run an economy on making money from money, something of value has to be produced for real growth. Derivatives are just gambling and the stock market has become a large casino without the booze and good food.

The result is a dollar based upon not much. We are detroying our military in dead end wars and our economy is a paper tiger. Two of the three things that propped up our extravance are now in danger, and the last consumption based upon credit is threatened with the subprime mess.

We are coming up on hard times. It depends a lot on if we can get a leader with the vision and ability to get people to follow that vision of a New American Economy that is based upon a lot of old valid economic ideas.

Good to hear that others see this. If we can just agree on a general plan to get our resources to work for us again.

Oh right – momma.