Charlie Rose

doodah  07/08/2011 07:29 AM Report

@ aj617 07/07/2011 12:19 PM

Something's going to have to be figured out, or this Reality that you mentioned Will quite frankly lead to a condition known as 'Armageddon'. And when it manifests, All the Money in the world that the privileged FEW have in their bank accounts won't do them an ounce of good. by then it will be to late for all of us all (non-believers AND believers) as the heavy hand of humanity flushes the toilet to oblivion.

aj617  07/07/2011 12:19 PM Report

Worldwide there is Overcapacity in the means of production

for almost every conceivable category - too much on the Supply side. At the same time Automation is destroying

millions of jobs (ex: Lloyd's terminates 40000 back room

positions) - too little on the Demand side.

Maybe its time to dust off the old copy of Das Kapital from

Economics 101 and look for clues about how to save late-

stage Capitalism.

doodah  06/25/2011 07:07 PM Report

Thanks 'Coach'. But if you're playing Warren Buffet in a game of Poker (your bank account against his); I'll have to bet on Warren Buffet; and I WILL win.

Hell, even if you were playing a drunk Jimmy Buffet; I will win. The bet

You see, "winning is possible" is not really true. Tiger Woods would never be able to beat Michael Jordan in a game of one on one; And Michael Jordan would never be able to beat Tiger Woods in a serious round of golf.

It is what it is, my friend.

..and it's Not REAL Democracy, when Money dominates the system. But as long as I have the right to own my guns, I will remain American and civil.

NeilMacCallister  06/25/2011 02:31 PM Report

"..hanging by a thread", doodah?

I remember watching a boxer lay against the ring's ropes, ..taking pounding after pounding to his midsection from fists that I was sure must have been breaking ribs. But the boxer waited and watched, surviving the blows, counting-off the rhythms. Then it came, a slowing of his competitor's tempo. The boxer saw a gate opening, ..so he stepped out to the side and punched forward with his own glove. It landed once, and then again. That boxer's choices led him to a victory.

Another man saw a social landscape he believed could be bettered. He too knew it would be a toil; but he chose to take his steps forward, and soon others came to join him.

I believe our "perfect union" is when we all share our views of society, we take a vote, and the results become our future. I think that is what we have. While most of us DO "hang by a thread", many people have shown us that winning is possible.

doodah  06/25/2011 10:03 AM Report

... and the little piggy went, "we we we all the way home".

AND if, "WEEEE" had elected John McCain (or any repub), 'We' would be EXACTLY where we (a Big chunk of the middle class) are today, Alive, but hanging by a thread. A thread being provided to us by the 'SocialistsElite' (the too big to fail club) (the Keepers of the $Plutocracy$).

And they were put in that position, by yes, 'We'. Because 'They' used big $$$ (other peoples$$$, btw) smoke screens to sucker us all along.

And still are today, why should they suffer?. or even 'risk' an ounce of precious lifestyle. Hell No, not them.

NeilMacCallister  06/25/2011 02:32 AM Report

NO! ..doodah!!!

WE elected Obama, ..who then gave whatever public money there was to these bankers!

WE buy the products their corporations churn out! ..paying their bonuses!!

WE have given them our hopefully "tax-deferred" retirement-savings to "invest" for us, no questions asked!

WEEEE are the ones who continually beg them to give us "more, more, more!" ..at whatever the cost!!

This IS a democracy!!!

This is US!!!!!!!!!

doodah  06/24/2011 08:29 PM Report

Exactly, Neil. They ARE 'Elitist-Socialists'. Even though they refer to themselves as democrats and republicans. Giving the appearance of a "democracy", so they (and their agents, the media) can brainwash the people to think there actually is a democratic competition for power. Nonsense! It's a Plutocracy.

NeilMacCallister  06/23/2011 01:57 PM Report

Did this seated audience really "take a dent in their portfolios", stephen?

Didn't President Obama gather every dollar America had on hand, and every dollar that America will be able to beg and borrow for the next quarter of a century, ..and give it to these bankers so that they would NOT have to take that dent in their portfolios??

These bankers are just more public-paid "children" of the government.

stephen614  06/23/2011 11:27 AM Report

Nice to see that Alan is doing better then the economy he helped to wreck. Listening to him talk about the state of the economy and its future or lack of is like listening to Casey Stengel talk baseball. Mr. Rose I love watching your show but next time try to get Mr. Greenspan to do an interview in front of those who are struggling to pay bills or are unemployed today instead of in front of those who only took a dent in their investment portfolios.

NeilMacCallister  06/22/2011 03:26 PM Report

The "Housing bubble" is our GOVERNMENT house,

It has "added-on" room after room, wing after wing, ..and then crammed those wings with friends drawing higher-than-average public-wage paychecks.

Then it slap-happily adopted 40 million American voters as the "children" of the 'Unannied States of America'.

("It takes a family" said Hillary.)

***

But there is a grave problem!!

Our "head of household", the government, has no job!

Our government does not actually WORK! ..it has NO earned income!!!

It can pay no FAMILY SUPPORT to those voters it has adopted!!!

Our government can only take money from those private citizens who DO work, ..or it can SELL-OFF government owned real estate, ..like Yosemite, Mt. Rushmore, or the Washington Monument.

But the U. S. government itself has no JOB, no employment INCOME, ..and it has obstinately REFUSED to learn from those who DO have jobs and income!!

(..but thank you for trying Steve Forbes and Allan Meltzer!)

Without a job, our government CAN NOT FULFILL its family obligations.

It should have thought about that BEFORE having so many children.

karenrd  06/22/2011 02:37 PM Report

Have to agree with many others. Obviously Charlie didn't see the Frontline piece, among others, or why else didn't he challenge Greenspan when he claimed he had NO CULPABILITY in the current crisis? That's total bull, and anyone who has been paying attention at least since 2006 knows this. Also, why no real questioning of his actions on derivative deregulation?

It was also irresponsible and frustrating to hear Greenspan say we were on the edge of the double-dip cliff, esp. because of Greece, etc., but then he constantly changed course by saying the US Govt's investment in stocks would save the day!?! Charlie, you would have been better editing this interview short, and showing more on the summer movies. This panel showed more intelligence than Greenspan and was far more entertaining.

Sheldon  06/22/2011 05:31 AM Report

Ugh, can't stand this guy. I didn't like him before, and after reading Griftopia, I hate him. Why anybody takes his prognostications seriously I don't know. He has been wrong about everything. For all her insanity, Rand was right about Alan. Really, he's just a social climber.

CRMH  06/22/2011 03:14 AM Report

Not a political perspective, but an audio one.

The annoying 250-400 HZ resonance of the microphones in the venue distracted from the content.

Sorry to rain on the production crew, sure they were trying their best, but apparently lacked the proper tools until very late in the interview.

Now back to the intelligentsia.

michael54  06/21/2011 11:05 PM Report

It would have been interesting to have included Matt Taibbi in the discussion.

keegck  06/21/2011 04:45 PM Report

It was a very disappointing interview in my view.

Mr. Greenspan's attempts to distance himself from any responsiblity for the financial crisis went completely unchallenged. Charlie even seemed to hew to the conservative narritive that minority and low income homebuyers were largely responsible for much of the crisis.

An event of this magnitude shouldn't have taken a back seat to the proprieties of the interview.

Ellen_Dibble  06/21/2011 10:18 AM Report

I am trying to remember if Greenspan is a Democrat or Republican, or which I am.

Remember at the end he was saying that the idea of the decade was to get as many middle class/upper lower class into home ownership as possible because he wanted a broader swath of Americans to have assets? He didn't use the word assets, but I'm thinking this well-intended objective is precisely parallel to the objective of privatizing Social Security. Everybody would own stock on the stock market, and everybody's personal interests (and votes) would be exactly aligned with those of Wall Street (in case widespread support from the voting public were to become necessary, as indeed it did, circa November 2008).

Well, homeownership, to me, is hardly an asset, not to the individual, not to the nation as a whole. Not unless that is exactly what is needed. The analyses of who does the work in maintaining the house displays that of the 7 hours or so a day that is required, mostly women do it. Regardless of who does it, most of us have paying work we could be doing for the benefit of the planet, rather than manicuring our lawns. (Sorry, I'm trying to make a point.) Furthermore, owning a home might employ contractors for 6 months while they build it, but the same money could be spent to help build a biochemistry research facility or a solar-panels factory. In other words, more jobs could be created by having the masses who make the average of about $45,000 a year putting their investment money into -- yep -- the stock market. The part of our national investment in infrastructure and new technologies needs the inputs of everybody. And that will pay back to you and me and everyone. The house just sits there, and it sucks up time and energy, and costs a lot in upkeep, heating, taxes...

So I'd say both the Social Security privatization and the urge-everyone-to-invest-in-a-home strategy were counterproductive. If you want a piece of the pie (stocks and bonds), feel free, but don't count on a house to "perform" the same way. That is a Ponzi scheme, and I guess Alan Greenspan still doesn't see it that way. Oh, dear.

mikesei  06/21/2011 10:00 AM Report

I have to agree with the last comment. Charlie did not seem aware of the great NPR Frontline report-

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/?utm_source=FRONTLINE+Bulletin&utm_campaign=e5da7cba6 9-the_warning6_14_2011&utm_medium=email

If he was he would asked much harder questions about Brooksley Born and problems that still exist which could cause a repeat of the same problems. Greenspan and his philosophy was and is a major reason the economy is in an unstable situation.

iltstt  06/20/2011 06:16 PM Report

Mr. Rose asked Mr. Greenspan if there was an decisions he should have made differently (maybe not your exact words) and Greespan responded, “No”.

Mr. Rose committed a serious grievance by not following up by asking why Mr. Greenspan fought Brooksley Born (then head of the CFTC) almost tooth and nail, when she attempted to correctly exercise her powers to regulate the derivative market.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/interviews/born.html#comments

iltstt  06/20/2011 06:14 PM Report

Mr. Rose asked Mr. Greenspan if there was an decisions he should have made differently (maybe not your exact words) and he responded, “No”.

You committed a serious grievance by not following up by asking why he fought Brooksley Born (then head of the CFTC) almost tooth and nail, when she attempted to correctly exercise her powers to regulate the derivative market.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/interviews/born.html#comments

tabs  06/20/2011 05:54 PM Report

(read posts in sequence of time posted)

Now we come to the meat and potatoes of Mr Greenspans assessment of current state of economic affairs. It is very interesting to note that Mr Greenspan talks about the dire affects of the "spillover contagion" to the Global economy if the European debt crisis should spread throughout Europe. However what was unspoken in the interview is the dire affects of a "spillover contagion" on the Global economy should a US Bond crisis occur. Here is where one has to connect the dots, that spill over would in effect cause at the very least a world wide Greatest Depression erg the Mother Of All Depressions.

There are 4 factors to consider that go beyond a European debt crisis:

1. The USD is the world Reserve Currency, thus everybody in the world is holding USD in reserve to purchase energy resources.

2. US debt is held world wide. Everybody is at risk of holding a worth less asset.

3. The US consumes the single largest part of the industrial output of the world and is the largest economy in the world (20% of output). If the US should implode it would in affect leave a smoking hole in the ground economically in the world.

4. The US is the provider of Global Security to the world erg acts as the "world policeman" to keep the peace. Thus to put it into the vernacular if the cat is away the mice will play.

Considering the ramifications of such a US Bond Crisis on the world economy one should be scared shyteless. Yet the political leadership in DC is playing games thinking that they have several years of time as Mr Greenspan states, meanwhile the house is burning down as everyday that passes the debt grows higher. Now the question becomes as stated by Mr Greenspan, "What if they are wrong?"

JohnGelles  06/20/2011 04:49 PM Report

Why do we not have the transcripts of these interviews? THEY COULD BE FULLY AUTOMATED.

They would have errors over homonyms. But in time even these would be minimized -- at very close to zero.

Why oh why is CR not perfect? No more transcripts? No post-send editing? No alternative moderate version that builds logical diagrams of useful science and social science models for political analysis? No real answers to anything important? Too much enthusiasm for brain blood flows and electrical measures. We will be talking to dogs before we read minds thinking in sign language as they down a gourmet meal.

JohnGelles  06/20/2011 04:38 PM Report

Suppose we enforced a SAFETY NET like Ronald Reagan claimed we had. It would supply EQUALITY with respect to all be equally NOT POOR.

There would still be inequality in wealth.

But if the safety net were as high as technology can make possible, there would be no joblessness or impotent middle class.

In time, everyone would watch the CR Show. And what is popular garbage today would be unpopular garbage tomorrow.

JohnGelles  06/20/2011 04:32 PM Report

Here is another way to look at it:

We believe in EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW.

Suppose we enforced a SAFETY NET like Ronald Reagan calimed we had. I would supply EQUALITY

tabs  06/20/2011 04:27 PM Report

(read posts in sequence of time posted)

Mr Greenspan becoming aware of his mistake in not assessing human nature correctly going into the Great Crisis is trying to quantifiy human natures affect on Markets with his "Econmetrics Of Human Nature" thesis as a means of avoiding making the same mistake twice. But like Mr Greenspans take on the Dodd Frank Bill his "Ecometrics" thesis will try to make point A correlate to point B as a universal panacea eg solution to the risk of his making errors of judgement. What Mr Greenspan is ultimately admiting to is his lack of knowledge and understanding about human emotion or those "Animal Spirts" in moving markets.

JohnGelles  06/20/2011 04:24 PM Report

So there was no hope for a healthy middle class ever UNLESS money to pay its bills can arrive from a bank-like payer to supplement what it earns on its job for an employer.

Today we know that such added monetized purchasing power ought to be debt-free tax-free money spent into circulation by Congress with the help of a national economic security data agency.

Such agency will have as much or more data that the National Security Agency that monitors our enemies as they communicate with each other.

As it turns out, our ignorance of this monetary data is our worst enemy. It has cost us more than all the terror and war that ever hit us.

If we had the data, Congress would be immune from DEFLATION. If that immunity taught them anything, they would avoid hyper-inflation using the rules of WW II brought up to date.

Our accounting power today is millions of times greater than that of 1941 to 1946. Yet we claim we cannot build a cost-accounting system to make free enterprise work they way it should.

Shame on us. Shame on Greenspan. Shame on Rose.

The experts on WWII-like FUNCTIONAL FINANCE, derived from Keynes and related sources, mostly written up by Abba Lerner and studied at the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability, at the University of Missouri Kansas City, have never been asked by Charlie Rose to answer all the questions raised by the current DEFLATION feared for the next INFLATION.

Why does Rose stay with MIT and Harvard, when they are so stupid? Because Rose does not know any better.

Why do we bother with Rose? Because the Abba Lerner school of thought has not caught on with our richest people. Why is that? Because they all intend to marry Chinese women and hope their kids are not ostracized as Eurasian trash.

Americans love Eurasians (go to any movie). But what about the Asians. Will they learn to love us whenthey have all our money? Maybe.

All of which says -- Obama ought to retire his Joe Biden and hire on Jon Huntsman. He knows all about Asia. And we can probably create a successor to Chimerica that will monetize output and end poverty forever.

tabs  06/20/2011 04:07 PM Report

Mr Greenspan admits to making the mistake of assuming that the Wall Street Bankers would have been risk adverse and not have put thmselves into a position of melting the system down. This mistake of assumption by Mr Greenspan is a reflection of his age and having lived through the Great Depression. What Mr Greenspan failed to realize is that the current generation of "Boomer" and post Boomer Wall Street Bankers only understood risk in the ABSTRACT sense as something that could happen but not as a REALITY of having lived through the consequences of taking that risk. In other words the current Wall Street Bankers have only lived through prosperous times in which nothing bad had happened to them.

JohnGelles  06/20/2011 03:58 PM Report

What I leaders should do (and should have done long before the deflation) is admit that the consuming public does not have enough income in dollars to buy its needs -- EXCEPT -- for those consumers with an income four times as high as the official poverty level.

..... (I recall a poverty level of $16,000 for a family of 4 -- 2 of whom are under 14 years of age. They need $64,000 if they are required to purchase enough at retail to keep themselves employed at this minimum income level.

You may gasp: "WHAT THE HELL IS GELLES SAYING -- WE NEED TO KEEP OURSELVES EMPLOYED? AMERICANS THINK BUSINESS KEEPS THEM EMPLOYED -- NOT CONSUMING CUSTOMERS SHOPPING EVERY DAY."

Well, under the rules of capitalist market fundamentalism, consumption drives the economy and, although some of that driving purchasing power can come from business and the super-rich, --BUT-- if the middle class is broke, they will bust the whole system UNTIL we become a banana autocracy with no real middle class at all.

Keynes announced this in his General Theory [of jobs, wages, profits, interest, taxes, and MONEY] -- actually shortened to employment, interest and money,-- near the end of the great depression -- following a stock market bubble that burst in 1929.

[continued next post]

JohnGelles  06/20/2011 03:37 PM Report

THANK YOU -- laupan 06/20/2011 -- FOR YOUR COMMENT:

..... ..... "What is the leadership in our country doing, where is the quality leadership when we need them and what do we do about the individuals still in power who are responsible for getting us into this mess over the last 40 years.

..... ..... "Why have these people not been held accountable and purged?

..... ..... Until we the citizens of this country hold the leadership responsible and accountable they will continue to do what they have been doing."

----- -----

Thank you. But No thank you. These are rhetorical questions with no answer UNLESS someone knows what we ought to do going forward that we should have done long ago TO PREVENT "getting us into this mess over the last 40 years."

Laupan -- do you know what to do now (that we probably should have begun to do 40 years ago)? Charlie Rose has given you the podium. What have you got to say?

REMant said a lot. So did Alan Greenspan. I accuse them both of internal contradiction -- of talking nonsense and gibberish. They are both nothing but two frauds.

Which leaves me with the task of talking common sense -- with little or no self-contradiction.

I will attempt this in my next post -- immediately. I cannot do it instantly because this system will crash (probably because my Time Warner connection stinks or is anyway unforgiving when coupled with this Show's forum software).

charlizecourriers  06/20/2011 03:25 PM Report

What actually is Greenspan responsible for causing? The host avoids the question and the guest avoids any responsible answer. Instead we have the usual tired blather, in a room with surprisingly tired woodwork. "Indeed," Alan!

anne4444  06/20/2011 03:04 PM Report

Charlie, Thank you for your great questions.

laupan  06/20/2011 12:34 PM Report

Mr. Greenspan stated recently…I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks, is such that they were best capable of protecting shareholders and equity in the firms ... I discovered a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works. I had been going for 40 years with considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well. The overall view I take of regulation is, I took an oath of office when I became Federal Reserve chairman. I'm here to uphold the laws of the land passed by Congress, not my own predilections.

Mr.Greenspan kept interest rates low in the decades leading up to the crisis, helping promote a bubble in tech stocks sector and then a “big bubble” in real estate assets. With money flowing cheaply, investors scrambled to buy products that later proved dangerously risky.

Even when other Federal Reserve officials expressed concern over the fast-moving economy, Greenspan held firm. With the two front we have been fighting in the Middle East contributing to the financial strain. Who was watching the store? There were countless times all this was being pointed out in the media however who listened?

Mr. Greenspan was also a strong supporter of derivatives, the financial instruments which many knew then as well as now these instruments were risky as the underlying home loans made to people who were not financially strong enough to pay them back.

For Mr. Greenspan to admit that he erred and was naïve about the Baking/Financial issues in the market is to his credit. He should as well as his staff and associates have seen this coming however everyone thought the gig could just keep going.

One thing I do not understand is how no one seems to notice the large “Pink Gorilla” in the room called “Inflation” This has been an increasingly growing issue which is on the threshold in a major way. Inflation data from December indicates the pain they're causing many Americans. Meat prices rose 5.5pc last year, while dairy products were 3.7pc higher. If a car was used to get the food, the driver would have found that gasoline was almost 14pc costlier. It's little wonder, then, that a growing number of people are relying on government-funded food stamps to pay for the basics. These numbers have been increasing for some time now. Look at the numbers for college tuition ay the better schools and you can see the costs are rising every year.

What is the leadership in our country doing, where is the quality leadership when we need them and what do we do about the individuals still in power who are responsible for getting us into this mess over the last 40 years. Why have these people not been held accountable and purged? Until we the citizens of this country hold the leadership responsible and accountable they will continue to do what they have been doing.

REMant  06/20/2011 12:20 PM Report

Wall St, and according to the Post, some at the IMF, are saying that the austerity measures the fund seeks to attach to the new Greek package threaten confidence, destroyed the effect of the previous bailout, such caveats threaten systemic world whatever, and besides, they won't like it. The Post is of course a bastion of Keynesian orthodoxy, but many of the financial institutions long ago fled the dollar for the euro and profited handsomely as they always do when the Fed prints money, and now IMHO it's time for them to pay the piper. (I note that Mr Greenspan blames this on our "current account deficit," not his interest rate action.) Bailing out Greece, et al, will simply reward bad behavior, just as it did when we bailed out Wall St ourselves. They do not deserve it, and I would certainly not worry about them losing anything. In that respect I'd have to side with the protestors, but the Greeks will still have to take their lumps. I recall telling an enthusiastic Greek friend, when they were awarded, the Olympics would cost a lot of money and no one has yet made a profit from it, which got me nowhere. This episode shows the change in the world of business and finance since the 1930's, when Wall St largely derided govt spending, and ppl are certainly right to ask why our bailouts haven't done anything either.

IMHO it's because holding down interest rates and running up huge govt and central bank debts discourages work, savings and investment. The problem with the markets is not irresponsible executives, but the use of a monetary and fiscal policy that undermines them, which we have done increasingly since the continent was settled. The American colonies had thoroughly experimented with paper money before the Revolution and while historians disagree sharply about the facts, it seems clear enough that you could print some paper money provided it circulated with a sufficient quantity of hard money (around 50%) and was fully convertible. It helped if the quantity was no more than needed to pay taxes. The problem for the colonies was that they were unable through foreign trade to obtain a sufficient quantity of coin to circulate. They could, of course, have made smaller coins, or priced their goods more cheaply, like any new country, but that means dependence, and would likely have hindered development. However, the risk of going it alone is that you make things no one wants, value them too highly, not acknowledging the comparative advantage others have. It's these kind of considerations that distinguish the classical and mercantilist perspectives, and to an extent their offspring, the monetarists and Keynesians. To an extent, because monetarism is an incompatible combination of the two, and I'm sure that's what got Mr Greenspan into trouble.

Rereading his apologia of a year ago, it seems a model of muddle-headedness, and despite a lot of fancy language, at bottom the kind of Wall St prescription he must have grown up with: easy money and small govt. It tries to defend that philosophy by pointing to numerous instances when markets did not regulate themselves, hints at, but stops short of saying outright that easy money is what made that impossible. We are instead, he argued victims of our own success. The global prosperity of the '90s leading to irrationality. But that not only ignores the collapse of Mexico and Japan (in no small measure exacerbated by his mentor Milton Friedman), and a series of monetary crises, but also his own admonition to Clinton to raise taxes and balance the budget. There is a jeremiadic quality about it.

The crux of the argument is that China et al's rise so lowered long-term interest rates that that there was nothing the Fed could have done about it, and that the lowering of short-term rates in the early 2000's had nothing to do with it. The Bush tax cuts are not even mentioned. But in crisis, when the Fed lowers rates, ppl rush to assets in expectation of inflation, and that has fostered an enthusiastic attitude that the problem is always not enough money, not enough spending, and not, what really is the case, enough productivity.

In this case China et al, even without their mercantilist policies, presented such a huge productivity differential, that coping with the structural problem, rather than considering it "prosperity," should have been the first order of business. Instead business turned to financing those assets. As Wanniski argued in the Reagan-era, we were too rich to manufacture. Mr Greenspan notes that a goodly portion of top engineering grads went into financial engineering, but it doesn't shake his own exhuberance. Had the US produced something for China to buy, they would not have had to invest in T-bills. And if the Fed had correctly seen that third-world development would necessarily lead to deflation, it wouldn't have, as it is still doing, printed money to counter it. The period of moderation Mr Greenspan alleges was actually one of American decline, living increasingly off the labor of others, the prosperity merely a windfall, during which we've almost lost not only a philosophy of thrift, but also our middle-class, the family, and a good part of the male population. These are hardly Republican values.

The problem with the monetarist position is that it is prone to consider money worth something apart from its usefulness; they tend to be hoarders. Less possessive, Keynesians, on the other hand, suffer from the idea that debt is always an asset, but are equally prone to forget that something of real value must issue from it. Both, which includes 90% of contemporary economists, at least those who consider themselves macro-economists, are trying to get around the Enlightenment's discovery of circular flow, and in this they echo the decline of natural law, and founding values in this country. Like their mercantilist ancestors, Keynesians allege excess money doesn't figure in inflation, but it surely isn't worth anything in hoards either, and any pickup in production quickly inflates prices and shuts itself down.

So what I'm thinking we ought to do with all that useless "liquidity" is simply tax it back like pre-revolutionary Pennsylvania, and use it to balance the budget. Wall St will scream bloody murder, but then someone will observe we have no deficit, and hopefully get to work. Don't, however, hold your breath. The idea of unlimited credit and welfare, on the one hand, and greed, on the other, is so deeply ingrained in the American psyche it may well have to burn itself out.