Biased Media?

So I have to admit I am really glad this election season is finally winding down. However I got wind of this little news clip from my cousin, I'm not sure how many people that read this blog like Savage Nation but I have typically appreciated his take on things, the most interesting thing about this is the person filing the lawsuit is a fellow democrat. Check it out and judge for yourself.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvGtGitwMR0

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57C9b-ZoNTo

Who robs the house that can't even afford grass?

What a week! Well I am glad that is behind me.

For those of you that may not know this last week was probably one of the worst I have had in quite some time. I think it was really just in a matter of two days that most of the damage was done but anyway…
So we had our house broke into on Wednesday, the thief stole my laptop, Candi’s laptop, the Xbox (including all 4 wireless controllers, and the charger for the controllers but not the power supply), Candi’s iPod, our Safe (which had exactly zero dollars in it but had all of our titles, birth certificates, etc.), $60 in cash from Candi’s mom, and a few other items. It was crappy. The worst part is we lost photos, and work that can never be recovered, guess I learned my lesson (should-a backed up earlier)
Thursday didn’t really get much better; I was at best despondent the whole day at work. I had to keep busy with physical activities; I couldn’t focus working on the computer. On my way home I was driving along in my out-of-body state when I realized I was going like 45 mph in second gear, I think my tach hit about 6k rpms. Which is not good for the ol’ Jeep. Running the engine that high sent a lot of coolant toward the t-stat, which then blew a seal. So by the time I got home I was leaking about a gallon of coolant per hour. After walking in the house, Tom was getting started to work on the basement, and had just turned on my air compressor which then started to smoke from the engine area, not really ever a good sign. I am pretty sure that is toast now but I am going to try to dismantle it and see what I can find in there. Then we started looking at the bids for our badly needed new roof, anybody have a couple grand I can borrow or even better have ;-)

In other news, I have been working on a business plan that I think is really going to be big. I replaced my thermostat & gasket for $12, Tom is doing some good work on our basement, and my new classes start tonight.

Free Market, my eye!

So I am currently taking an Economics class, it has been an interesting time to be taking this kind of a class. I am not sure what my professor believes, from his tone regarding political situations I would have pegged him for a solid liberal, but then last night he said he was a proponent of supply-side economics. Supply-side economics is based on the idea that if you make the supply cheaper businesses will thrive and wealth will increase. It is generally classified as a republican doctrine; lots of democrats will refer to it as “trickle-down” economics. So now I don’t know what the heck he thinks, maybe he is just disgusted with the both options? I am not sure what doctrine the democrat party would like to have attributed to them but it seems closer to Marxian than Keynesian, in my opinion. The “new” plan proposed by Obama is based on the concept that if you increase the flow of money to the consumers you will increase revenues, I am pretty sure I have posted my issues with this concept on prior posts. I am not really keen on a redistribution of wealth, I think it discourages innovation and businesses suffer.
Either way I have been thinking a lot about our economic situation and I think we are in a very unique situation. I think we are headed for a recession in some markets and inflation in other markets. I don’t know what the economic explanation for this type of situation is but I don’t think it can be defined with traditional macro-economic theory. Because while many markets such as banking, housing, technology are all facing reduced prices other markets such as oil, food, and energy are still seeing record high prices (even with a massive drop in oil, it is still much higher than our overall inflation).
I was thinking about this because last night we had a discussion of actions that could be taken fiscally and monetarily to “fight” recessions and inflation. A recession is caused by and creates an environment opposite to that of inflation. The proposed solutions to recession can cause inflation and vice versa.
Another point that I thought was interesting was the fiscal solutions for fighting inflation are to increase taxes and cut government spending. The idea is to remove money from the “system”; based on basic supply and demand this increases the “price” of the money. Funny thing is that both candidates want to cut spending and taxes? I am not so sure about the governments ability to cut spending, and raising taxes hasn’t ever been a really popular proposition.
Finally my real point was that the “Free Market” is often blamed for our current financial crisis. I don’t see how it is any more the free market’s fault than the fault of those “controls”. It isn’t like we ever let the market run free, we are too concerned about market failures so we create these controls, fiscal and monetary policies to try to “correct” the market. If the market fails I don’t think any educated person can fairly blame the “Free Market” since there really isn’t such a thing. I think this claim is no more than liberal propaganda trying to vie for more social systems and government intervention and a further reduced free market. I am not convinced that a truly free market would suffer from any of the traditional market failures, since it has never really been attempted.

Partisan Politics

So I have been meaning to post on this whole financial meltdown for quite a while. I am amazed at what has happened and how mainstream media has pandered to Obama over the last week or so. The whole issue of McCain flying in as a stunt, and how the "Radical Republicans" are responsible for killing the bailout, etc. It is all pandering, the bailout was killed by both parties, and they both were lacking a significant number of votes. Sort of a moot point now though I suppose.

Granted McCain's flight back to DC may have had some political motivations but he wasn't the only one plus it was requested that he and Obama both attend the meeting. So why isn't it a White House political stunt by all parties? Because the media loves Obama.

I find most ironic the continued battering of Obama that this crisis is a result of deregulation. It is actually the opposite. It is the result of improper regulation. Here is a video link that explains it quite well though it does have some very obvious political overtones I think the facts that it presents are very valid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_597487

Here are some key facts out of this video that it blows over very quickly.

• The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was regulation designed to force banks (in order to get FDIC approval) to provide loans to low income. Initially created in 1977 this program was helpful and housing prices grew consistently with inflation.
• In 1994 under the Clinton administration the CRA was expanded and forced higher levels of low income "affordable" mortgages from banks. Housing "value" exceeded inflation by monstrous amounts for the next 10 years.
• Who gets money from Fannie Mae & Freddy Mac. Why are these "government regulated" companies making campaign contributions? Seems like a massive conflict of interest to me.
• There were attorneys who actually sued banks for not maintaining their minimum required "affordable" loan packages, Obama was one such attorney.
• It takes time for the effects of bad politics to make an impact. I think both Bush Sr. and Clinton were riding on the coattails of Reagan's fiscal plan. Unfortunately "W" got stuck with the mess that Clinton and company made. I think they were too distracted by scandal to actually take care of the economy.

In other news the stock market has been tumultuous at best over the last couple of weeks. I think it is going to get worse before it gets better. I am most concerned by Obama's supposed "economic plan". Can't say that I would personally hate having all my personal income exempt from tax, but I don't think many people realize what the other consequences of that "benefit" really are. Under an Obama administration businesses would be taxed to death, small businesses would likely suffer the most, since the tax burden would be proportionately larger. Obama's plan is a completely backwards form of economics. The Reagan administration has often been referred to as following the idea of trickle-down economics. Basically what this means is that if you reduce the tax burden on businesses they can thrive. When businesses thrive people have more job opportunities, more competitive pay, and the capital required to invest in further R & D. Obama's concept is "trickle-up" economics. By relieving the tax burden on individuals making less than 250k the idea is to give consumers more money so they can spend more then the businesses have more revenue to compensate for the higher tax burden. The problems with this philosophy are: it completely removes a huge source of tax revenue generated by illegal immigrants (since they don't file tax returns), it doesn't work if people don't spend money, and most of the products that would be purchased with additional expendable income are not manufactured in the United States (it would likely benefit China a whole bunch). The reason I draw the last conclusion is base on the tightening of the credit market. The US has primarily converted to a services based economy, the products that we do create are often very large and require credit (houses, cars, etc.), as the credit market continues to tighten it becomes more and more difficult to afford these types of products.

Alright well there is my political post for the last little while. I am sure everyone was just dieing to know what I was thinking.