What planet are you living on?

The notion Americans should become a nation of RENTERS will only foster one creative thought which may have slipped your mind. HOW TO REVOLT!!!!

Being free from monthly payment obligations such as rent is paramount to allowing the human being to create. The burden of debt only creates slavery and SERFDOMSHIP.

The fact that housing bubbled to the degree it did – was not only the result of the Fed allowing such an event to occur – but also of the American individual’s desire to be free – namely free, long at last, from monthly payment obligations.

Because the ruling class of this country would not allow a natural capitalistic depression to occur with the bursting tech bubble we now will experience a pseudo currency demise with yet another bubble the ruling class of this country will not be able to solve.

Get ready for the energy bubble five years from now. You’ll be walking to work regardless of your ability to afford a car, train ticket or any form of transportation you presently take for granted!!!

Regards,

Ryan Clarke

2– i’m not sure it’s a bailout culture, the government aims to make a lot of money off of these deals in the long-term much the same way that it did following the great depression. For better or worse, the federal government is the only institution with enough liquidity to ride out the storm and restore market confidence at the same time, ie, foreclose the panic

3–businesses that do not support public policy become more disadvantaged; the strip club and casino districts probably will not get funding, as gross examples. But I would not have the government supplant the private market, I would propose having them become substantially more proactive as economic developers and business funders.

I agree with your points on free community college and trade schools as well. We need the healthcare industry out of the control of the insurance companies without completely nationalizing it. Obama’s plan is nearly perfect. Hillary’s was too far left, McCain’s plan was great in theory but it ignored the tremendous bargaining disadvantage individuals and small businesses face against insurance giants that can afford to deny claims and drag claimants (sophisticated and unsophisticated) through the legal system until they surrender. Government needs to intervene in the current system to insulate against those tactics.

1) Since everyone doesn’t get “handouts”, who decides which businesses are financed, and who has input in the decisions about the criteria for qualifications ?

2)Is a bailout culture being created?

3) Are businesses that are not supported by the government disadvantaged in any way?

Your mention of student loans touches on what I said earlier about free community college. Education, health, etc are part of the social infrastructure that provides positional capital for all citizens. I’m not suggesting that the government fund law school, but imagine how much scientific, and technical knowledge could be disseminated….

I don’t care whether it’s left, right or center; the point is, what will work? Is the federally backed student loan program socialism? If so, I might be a socialist, because I couldn’t have gone to law school and later earned large sums of money that I paid tax on (and my student loans) without it.

Socialism implies handouts for everyone and government controlled businesses. I’m proposing government financed businesses and cutting out the middle-men (since all banks borrow from the Fed anyway). I’m proposing an enhanced public-private partnership model that creates revenue for the government in terms of interest payments that will ultimately allow it to stop taxing productivity and instead create more of it.

This is not a new concept, Alexander Hamilton and the federalists has the right in the beginning before the agrarians took them off path. And that duel thing.

I wouldn’t characterize Mexico’s problem as one of a weak federal government. They have very weak property rights and government owned monopolies in key industries, especially oil.

In another words, socialism is their main problem. Ironically, there is an elite in that country that benefits from the socialism, along with a peasantry that romanticises it.

Not unlike the Democrat party!

You have to explain that one to me. My recollection is that money was thrown at the formerly East German areas, to very little effect. The problem was the work ethic of the formerly East German people, not surprising given how they were conditioned for 45 years.

I don’t think that policy doesn’t matter. It does. But it usually matters in terms of unintended consequences. I’m not a liberal because liberals don’t ackowledge the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Has any one of you thought through your policy suggestions to think about what unintended consequences it might create?

I rest my case.

Great idea. The new market tax credit program for starting businesses in depressed areas (enterprise zones) is already in place, and in fact are another way that banks can satisfy CRA requirements, which were put in place to fight redlining.