Boehner brings the stupid

Well, not everyone can be smart, well spoken and understand economic realities. We’re certainly glad that for those people, there’s Speaker Boehner, the dumbest little packaging salesman ever to burst onto the scene in Ohio.

The jobs number is out and, frankly, it’s ass. Of course, it’ll get revised upward but the drag of a reducing public sector is already being felt and the headline total was 36k jobs. That’s it. In a nation of more than 300 million. Now, imagine how bad it would be WITHOUT the paltry amount of action the government has already taken. Imagine how horrible it will be when state and local governments start start firing even larger number of workers.

Of course, Speaker Boehner being a believer in some kind of magic, advocated for CUTTING government spending.

“The president’s ‘stimulus’ spending binge isn’t working and has failed to deliver on its promise to keep unemployment below eight percent. The spending binge is hurting job creation — eroding confidence, draining funds away from private investment, and spreading uncertainty among job creators. And now the president is asking for an increase in the national debt limit, without any commitment to stopping the spending binge that has shackled our economy

Now, knowing you gotta make things easy for the stupid, look no further than the UK, Ireland, Estonia and Greece for proof that cutting spending ABSOLUTELY CRIPPLES economic growth. Why? Because in a recession following a financial panic, credit is extremely tight and businesses either can’t expand (because of borrowing restrictions) or are too frightened to expand. Something has to break the cycle of depression and it’s usually the government that finally gives everyone the reassurance that things won’t get worse. Usually, the government is the only entity able to borrow freely and cheaply, one of the reasons government deficit spending in a recession has such a massive positive impact, starting with infrastructure spending and aid to states/the unemployed. The stimulus with the least impact? Tax cuts. Of the three stimulus packages passed, all were too small and too long tailed (in terms of time to hit the market) and had one very stupid feature which the Republicans demanded… they were overweighted to tax cuts which have the LEAST amount of impact but, even still, they help and that’s the cause of the anemic growth we’re seeing now. It’s not the failure of President Obama and the Democrats, it’s the failure of the Republicans.

Of course, you’re asking, why didn’t the Democrats force more spending rather than tax cuts? Well, the honest answer is that the Democrats in Congress are, on balance, pretty ignorant. With the Republicans, you have ideological blinders that forbid any contradictory theory or information which keeps them focused, in every single economic situation, on tax cuts even if in a given situation they may be completely ineffective. The Democrats, on the other hand, are just completely ignorant of basic economics in many cases or are receiving bad advice and information from sources they stupidly trust (que Larry Summers) and don’t have the educational background or knowledge base to even know that someone like Summers is feeding them bullshit.

Now, depending on the size of cuts, we may not see a fall back into recession. But it’s certain we will see far slower economic growth. Which is why you don’t play politics with the deficit or spending. Boehner, with every utterance, digs himself deeper in the hole. And no, it doesn’t give me any pleasure since it’s causing me economic pain, just like the rest of the country. And just like the rest of the country, I’m disappointed in both parties and their responses.

But, at the end of the day, the idiot minority out there who think the budget deficit should be a priority, are at least well served by Speaker Boehner. The question is, who will they blame when they get their way and it fails?

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