- Sunday, December 20, 2009
- Sunday, December 6, 2009
- Sunday, November 8, 2009
- Sunday, October 25, 2009
Experience is the best teacher, but only if we choose to confront and learn from our mistakes and successes. Let's review what America has done this year, and my own analyses, to see who's been naughty and nice.
Afghanistan explains why I am your economic columnist, not war correspondent. I supported Obama's decision to do exactly the kind of back-country, civilian-supporting counterinsurgency strategy which seems to have failed. Score me for a miss on this one.
A begrudging economic miss for me was supporting the bank bailout. I now believe the country would be better off without the corruption of Bank of America and Citigroup. We should have let them fail, taking over their assets.
The worst government bureaucrats in their stead would have made a hundred times as many mortgage loans and modifications with our TARP bailout money than these clowns did, without the million-dollar bonuses.
That miss nullified one of my hits, when I said last April to buy a house because interest rates had bottomed. I was right, but so what, if the banks didn't make the loans? Arrgh! I myself failed in my rental refinance when giant BB&T screwed me silly.
Another miss was having faith in the states to use their stimulus money to create jobs. I expected the state bureaucracies to act slowly, but I did not expect them to avoid spending the money at all. They have pushed our federal money around in their state accounts, making their numbers look better instead of hiring workers to fix their infrastructure.
A double hit was on the stock market going up and the bond market not collapsing. I told you to buy stocks back in March, and if you did, you won big. Following similar reasoning, I also said the Chinese would continue to buy our bonds, no matter how scary those "deficit" and "printing money" numbers looked. The world has, indeed, greatly increased their holdings of our bonds, not cashed them in.
The question now is, what can we as a country -- right, left, and center -- agree upon to snap out of our continuing unemployment crisis? What have we learned?
I don't think tax cuts alone help enough, because people paying taxes, like me, already have jobs and are spending money. Would the center-right instead support a greatly increased stimulus check, say $5,000 for every taxpayer instead of the modest $250 or $600 of the past? Or a further doubling of unemployment benefits?
Small steps and bickering haven't worked. We must all learn from our hits and misses what to try to do to move forward as a reunited nation.
Rick Boettger was a business professor before writing his book and hosting a 25-state talk radio show on political economics. He has done tax and financial advising in Key West since retiring here in 1996. Questions, information and differing opinions are welcome at rd.boettger@gmail.com.