Unemployment is up. The stock market is down. Let’s party.

The price tag for Obama’s inauguration gala is expected to break records, with some estimates reaching as high as $150 million. Despite the bleak economy, however, Democrats who called on President George W. Bush to be frugal four years ago are issuing no such demands now that an inaugural weekend of rock concerts and star-studded parties has begun.

Obama’s inaugural committee has raised more than $41 million to cover events ranging from a Philadelphia-to-Washington train ride to a megastar concert with Beyonce, U2 and Bruce Springsteen to 10 official inaugural balls. Add to that the massive costs of security and transportation — costs absorbed by U.S. taxpayers — and the historic inauguration will produce an equally historic bill.

In 2005, Reps. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., and Jim McDermott, D-Wash., asked Bush to show a little less pomp and be a little more circumspect at his party.

The Fed Creates a Crisis and Hampers the Recovery

by William Anderson (Original here)

When Ron Paul made eliminating the Federal Reserve System a centerpiece of his presidential primary campaign last year, media pundits and others scratched their heads in amazement.  After all, they reasoned, is not the Fed a collection of “conservative, buttoned-down” public officials who are given the mission of providing prosperity?

Indeed, whenever Ben Bernanke and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, have traveled to Capitol Hill to testify before congressional committees, they are treated as royalty, economic geniuses whose every word is treasured, even if Congress and the press cannot comprehend all of them.  If there is any criticism for these men, it is that they have not inflated enough.

However, in watching one exchange last year between Rep. Paul and Bernanke, I was struck not only by the lack of comprehension of economic logic that Bernanke possessed, but also his utterly wrong view of the actions of the Herbert Hoover administration.  In response to Rep. Paul’s criticism of the numerous Fed-oriented bailouts, Bernanke quoted Andrew Mellon, Hoover’s secretary of the treasury, who had advocated that the government permit weak businesses to go under in order to “purge the rottenness from our system.”

Unfortunately, Bernanke got it wrong.  After quoting Mellon, he assumed that Hoover had followed Mellon’s advice, which clearly is not what happened.  Instead, as Murray Rothbard conclusively pointed out in his classic America’s Great Depression, Hoover ignored Mellon and continued his attempts to bail out failing businesses and implement huge public works projects in order to “increase employment.”

The irony is that Hoover’s policies did “liquidate” the farmers, the bankers, and many others, despite the efforts of the government to keep it from happening.  Unfortunately, the liquidation was much worse than it would have been had Hoover done what his predecessors had done: not intervene into the economy during a downturn.  (President Warren G. Harding, although ridiculed by historians for his relative laissez-faire viewpoints, nonetheless understood the limitations of federal power in economic affairs and refused to intervene when the economy faced a serious downturn in 1921.)

No! Don’t Do It!!

It’s like watching a horror movie. No! Don’t do it!! Don’t open the door! You cover your eyes because you don’t want to look. You can’t believe they’re going to do it. But you know they are. Even though it makes no sense, and it’s obvious to everybody watching that it’s the absolute worst thing they could possibly do. They’re going to do it anyway. Why? In a horror movie it’s because it’s in the script. And ultimately, it doesn’t really matter, because it’s all make believe.

But this isn’t a horror movie. It’s real. And it affects every one of us, but we’re powerless to stop it. All we can do is write our Congressmen and say No! Don’t do it!! Don’t give them the bailout money! And that does about as much good as shouting at the movie screen Don’t open the door! Because you know they’re going to do it anyway.

First they said they needed $700 billion to bail out troubled financial institutions. Letters to Congressmen ran 20-1 against the bailout and, last September, Congress voted against the bailout bill. But they kept sweetening the pot with a little pork here and a little pork there until everybody in Congress had enough pork in the bill to lure them into voting for the bailout, in massive disregard of the indignant outcries of the people who elected them.

Then Bernanke and Paulson turned around and said, You know what? We’re not going to use this bailout money the way we originally said we would, because that would have been a really stupid thing to do. (Really? When did you figure that out, Mr. Genius? That’s what all the people writing to their Congressmen were screaming all along.) But, even after acknowledging the plan was hopeless, instead of rescinding the bailout, they decided to spend it on something else. After all, they already had the money; you could hardly expect them to just give it back! — Not that they actually do have the money. But that’s never stopped them from spending it before. Why should it stop them now? — So they voted to spend all this money they don’t actually have, and then decided not to spend it for the purpose for which they swore they needed it. So now they’re going to spend it on something else. They haven’t yet told us what, exactly. Why not? Because they don’t know. They don’t have a plan. But spend it they will.

They’ve put out the word that there’s $700 billion of free money on the table, and they’re going to give it all away. To whom are they going to give it? The criterion to qualify seems to be incompetence. But not just any incompetence, only massive incompetence will do. To qualify for some of this free money, a corporation or institution has to prove they’ve mismanaged their finances on such an unprecedented scale that they’re billions of dollars in the hole and have absolutely no way out, short of a federal bailout.

The three automakers deserve to go out of business. GM and Toyota each sold 9.37 million vehicles last year. Toyota made $17.1 billion. GM lost $38.7 billion. What more needs to be said? But, instead of letting economic Darwinism take it’s course, the government wants to compel the taxpayers to throw our hard-earned money at them so they can flush our money down the drain after their own. This is madness. Just say No! Don’t do it!! Don’t open the door!

And, of course, now everybody else is lining up for bailouts as well. Even city and state governments are getting in line. The economy is bad. An awful lot of businesses are losing money or going bankrupt, and local governments are losing tax revenue because their tax base is losing their jobs. So why not just stick a hose directly into the pockets of all the taxpayers in the country, and siphon out more and more money until the well runs dry, to keep businesses afloat that are unable to make a profit on their own merits? Surely, every business deserves to make money, whether or not they provide good value to their customers and investors. Free market be damned! Move over Rover, let Government take over. It seems the government is determined to prove they can waste even more money faster than the failures they’re bailing out.

Which brings us back to the horror movie. Everybody in the audience can see that disaster lurks behind that door. But the protagonist is about to open it. We’re all sitting on the edge of our seats, gripping the handrests, holding our breaths, and whispering through gritted teeth – No! He hesitates with his hand on the knob. Don’t do it!! (But we know he will.) He twists the knob. Don’t open the door! And then he does ———————–

Reblogged. (Original here)