Now for this notion that Keynesian economics has been disproved and rejected. This is blatantly false. Yes, Chicago had the upper hand for a while, but people are starting to realize that just because things are elegant doesn’t mean they are right (even Posener is back-tracking). Further, to suggest that new evidence doesn’t support the Keynesian view of economics is to channel Rip van Winkle. Were you asleep when the field of behavioral economics was created?

art

ps I’ll leave the issue of GM aside since you clearly don’t believe that timing has any impact on the economy.

The answers to modern scientific questions cannot be answered by outdated theories. The answers, if they are to be found, are in ideas that contain the rigor necessary to understand and model the modern economy.

GM was bailed out because otherwise, the unions who put Obama in office would be angry. This was a political move, not an economic one.

If it hadn’t been bailed out, the stockholders and debtors would have lost their asses when a foreign firm bought them for pennies on the dollar and revitalized them into a competitive, modern car company. Will that happen anyway? Maybe. But if big labor continues to drain GM, it has no future.

The Fed is a central bank, not a regulator. Obama’s plans sought to expand the role of the Fed far beyond anything it has ever done since its inception. To suggest anything else is a blatant lie.

Damn, where to start?

First of all Tim, the Federal Reserve does serve as a regulator; it always has. If you don’t like that, then that’s too bad. But you sound either uninformed or disingenuous when you say that Obama wants the Fed to serve as a regulator (I guess there is a third option, you could be both).

Now lets take a look at your other point, which can be rephrased as such: run for the hills, Obama is taking over everything is sight!!!!

As someone who continuously clobbers people over the head with the fact that you’re learning economics, you display a remarkably simple view of it in your comment. There is a reason Obama bailed out the banks and the automotive sector (more the automotive sector in a bit), and that reason is pretty simple: if the banks were to collapse that would have triggered a staggering depression. Most economists agree at this point that the collapse of Lehman served as a catalyst for the financial downturn. Now imagine if more financial institutions were to collapse. I really don’t feel like going into the details as I’m sure we can all figure out the consequences.

We can talk all we want about “personal responsibility” and “letting banks fail,” but it’s not as simple as that. The way our economy is setup it is absolutely depended on the financial sector (hence the increased volatility of out economy). Until this economic structure is changed, we won’t be able to let any important financial institutions fail as the externalities are just too great.

Now for the automotive sector, the other section of the economy under communist influence. Yes, we could have let them go down, and GM just recently emerged from bankruptcy, but to advocate such a view is to display a lack of understanding of Keynesian economics and the importance of timing. The economic mood around the time when the Big Three were begging for money was pretty bleak. People were loosing jobs left and right, and most consumers had very little faith in the stability of the system. Dropping the bankruptcies of two out of the three automakers into this environment would have been disastrous. Jobs would have been lost, consumers would have retreated even further into savings, thereby creating a downward spiral of more lost jobs. Welcome depression.

But let’s ignore all of that. It’s much easier just to call Obama a Nazis-communist-Muslim (the only such creature in the history of the world).

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Phrases such as “spreading around the wealth” aren’t Marxist — they’re egalitarian. Marxism is a criticism of the basic tenets of capitalism which springs mainly from the belief that capitalism makes people see each other as means to an end (that end usually being money) rather than other human beings in and of themselves. It’s far more complex than I feel like discussing here, but if you want to gain a more appropriate understanding of what Marxism actually is, I’d recommend reading the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts rather than the Communist Manifesto.

Also, Tim, there’s a fundamental difference between attempting to separate from a government in which you have no representation in the legislature and which is ruled by a monarch — i.e. a government that is undemocratic and not really a republican form of government — and encouraging the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of the United States.

Were the military to overthrow a democratically-elected president of the United States who — by the way — still has above a 50% approval rating, I would expect that most Americans would be horrified. Let’s not even get into the long-term damage this would do to America’s democratic institutions and the possibility of the peaceful turnover of power.

And, Tim, as a general rule, the structure of a revolution determines the structure of the government that comes after. If the government is overthrown by a military group operating without any democratic institutions, the result will likely be a government defined by its lack of military institutions (I point to the Bolshevik Revolution as an example). By contrast, if the revolution is not only defined by a commitment to democratic principles, but also makes use of representative bodies, the resulting government will likely be a republican one (for example, the American Revolution).

One of the main reasons that we have the Second Amendment in our Constitution is exactly out of this fear: the vast majority of Americans feared a standing army not only because they were concerned that it might be used to oppress them, but also because they were concerned that it would be use to overthrow civilian authority and impose a military dictatorship.

It’s easy to thrown around such ridiculous labels from the comfort of living in a free country. Your tacit approval of the kind of hyperoblic rhetoric that wants to overthrow our President is duly noted. At any rate, fantastic article Michelle.

“Disagreement with the President of the United States does not, under any circumstances, warrant an undemocratic military overthrow – period.”

Do yourself a favor. Replace “President of the United States” with “King” and see how far that would have got you in 1776. This country was founded by a violent, bloody revolution, and I fail to see how discussing the idea again takes anything away from our democratic process. The government should fear its people every day, so that they need not fear their government.

Our military swears an oath to the constitution, not the President. They have a duty to the American people to uphold that constitution even if it means going against elected officials.

Obama has made many “Marxist” comments during his time in office and before, including his famous “spread the wealth around.” His plan for the economy has involved nationalizing everything in sight and attempting to expand the power of the federal reserve so it can serve as a regulator.

Obama has wiped his ass with the constitution even more than Bush did, and that’s saying a lot. It’s absolutely shocking to see someone burn through so much political capital in such a short amount of time.

I absolutely cannot wait for this one-term president to finish his term and go down in history as the most ridiculous waste of time ever elected to public office. I thought Bush’s legacy was going to be bad, but this idiot is nothing but Bush foreign policy + Marxist economics (or Leninist if you prefer).