Posted by
Steve on Wednesday, October 05, 2011 11:09:31 AM
The illustrious Ben Bernanke came out yesterday to give an account of the economy. His assessment, we are on the edge of more problems. The economy is not doing well because the unemployment is too high and people are not spending. World to Bernanke, you and your boss are responsible for the high unemployment and the fact that people are not spending.
Experts are predicting that we are on the edge of another recession. Or in other words, we could be entering a double-dip recession. The last time we had a double dip recession in this country, was during the 1930’s and called the Great Depression. Both situations were caused by the same problem, too much government intervention into the markets. The depression of 1920 was actually worse than the depression of 1929 or even our current depression. It only lasted a few months because the government stayed out of it and the markets corrected themselves. What the government did in 1920 was reduce its impact by cutting the budget almost in half. That resulted in the Roaring 20’s. Government intervention in the marketplace results in long-term high unemployment and a poor economy. What got us out of the government caused Great Depression was World War II. Let’s hope that we do not have to resort to a war to get us out of this double-dip recession.
Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama and the economic team in Washington have no clue how to fix the economy. They have tried everything that they know how to do and nothing has worked. In fact, everything they have tried to do has made things worse. I could have told them that before they started. Any free-market person could have told them that their “solutions” were doomed to failure. We have a free-market economy. The market corrects itself over time. When you intervene and select winners and losers, you distort the market. Right now our markets are so distorted, that it will be a major jolt to fix things.
I know that the interventionists will have a cow over my next statement, but what needs to happen is to get government out of business. We need to cut government regulations by at least 80%, probably more. We need to stop corporate welfare that selects winners and losers. That distorts the markets because it props up businesses that should fail and stops businesses that should succeed from taking their place. We should reduce the size of the federal government by at least 50%, probably more. That is the policy that Garfield and Coolidge used to solve the depression of 1920. They were so successful that people are not even aware that there was a depression in 1920.
If I was President, I would reduce government regulations by 95% and the size of the federal government by 75%. That would put us more in line with where we are supposed to be according to the Constitution. None of that could happen overnight, but in a 3-5 year span those kinds of cuts could be implemented with few problems. The unemployed federal employees would be unhappy, but the economy would be humming along so fast that they would have jobs. The annual deficit would disappear within 1-2 years; the overall debt would disappear within 10 years. Everyone would be happy except for the communists, socialists, anarchists and those dedicated to destroying the American economy. Unions would actually be happy because with the economy humming along, the pressure would be off the unions. So they might even see an increase in membership. They also might see a decrease as they lose all those federal and state workers that belong to the unions.
Even though this would be best for the country, it will never see the light of day. The Democrats and their allies will never allow this to happen. It is too logical and will be successful. Any party that implemented this plan would see themselves in power for the next hundred years or so. The party that obstructed this plan would be out of power for at least 1 generation, probably more.