@rmsimc:

Quote: ‘ Without the bailout the Left would be stuck in the mud.’

It seems the entire system will be stuck in the mud. If Obama gets his way now, it will probably be stuck on the port side of the channel which is still relatively unknown. Should the Republicans get their way, then it will be stuck on the starboard side of the channel which ist very well known since 1930. Maybe the ship will touch ground first on one side and be frantically steered around to end up on the opposite side. But I think the final outcome will be more or less the same in all these cases.

Quote: ‘As for healthcare, any businessman can see that the numbers do not add up without a significant degree of rationing.’

The point ist: How many resources go into the system and how many ill people get out of it cured. I think there are lots of private amd public (and private/public) health systems which do much better than the US health system. And better than the health system in my country which is not far behind in the race for waste. Or should we call it not waste but economic progress, if health system money flows straight into the pockets of lobbyists instead of flowing into treatments of maladies?

Quote: ‘I’m surprised you are posting on a capatalistic financial website such as Rick’s.’

I think the debate of ‘Left’ vs. ‘Right’ ist a bit like a debate over the merits of a Bad King (sorry: bank) vs. the merits of a Good King (sorry: bank) shortly before the collapse of monarchy (sorry: bankruptcy). Quite the same is to oppose ‘capitalistic financial’ websites to ‘capitalistic non-financial’ and to ‘non-capitalistic’ ones. ‘Financial’ and ‘capitalistic’ lose all sense in a trillion to quadrillion dollar default. We need urgently a different way to get along – together.

Quote: ‘Unless you plan on growing younger, you had better be careful what you wish for.’

1789 in France they finally wanted the King’s head and got it. This project ran completely out of control as we know today. The Russian events in 1917 turned out even worse. It’s time to try a controlled way of change. Especially with the amount of nuclear weapons in today’s world.

K.H.

Rick…when I heard Cramer say it I dismissed it as his usual permabull BS…but you?

What grounds do you have for saying that the Dems losing their filibuster-proof majority will lead to a market rally? After all, the market rallied well over 50% on the heels of the Dems gaining that filibuster-proof majority…now you say it will go up more because they are losing it? Make up your mind…if you think the market is just going higher no matter what just say so…but to say it is going to rise because of this election makes you sound like a Cramer.

On a more fundamental basis…since much of the money flowing into the economy has come off the government printing press, I see any obstruction to this spending as putting a crimp on the economy. In fact, it is highly deflationary…and thus bad for the stock market, albeit in some abstract sense it might be good for America in that it could delay the inevitable hyperinflation that is in our future. BTW…don’t forget that we are just about $150 billion away form the revised debt limit, and the Republicans will now have some power by virtue of their option to filibuster an attempt to raise the debt limit. This should become an issue by March.

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What grounds do I have, Ben? I simply took a guess and guessed wrong. As I explained in this morning’s E-Mini tout, Brown’s victory evidently had been so confidently anticipated on Wall Street that it was a case of buy the rumor, sell the news. You could say I was correct about the implications of a Brown victory, but a day early. If I’d known Cramer agreed, however, I might have thought twice about it.

You may be right about the longer-term, deflationary implications of a more bipartisan Congress. Filibustering an increase in the debt limit sounds like a great idea, although it carries the risk of making the GOP seem too obstructionist. If the tactic is used to reorder budget priorities, however, it could be a winner.

RA

Well Rick, like you I expected some sniper fire, but surprisingly little showed up. (Thanks for leaving the comment up). People seem to realize that it is the system that is broken, no matter who is in charge. Big money runs the place, not the people.

It is not really Obama’s fault (as much as some folk want to demonize him), it is a system that required him to buy off big pharma and big insurance before anything even started (to avoid being savaged by attack ads on TV paid for by people’s insurance premiums and drug plans). It really is a disgusting mess.

Maybe a start is a 500% tax on funds spent on lobbying, and a limit to spending on election campaigns. But no that would limit free (oh, I mean paid for) speech.

To donniemac:

With your statement:
“…many aspects of modern living are collectively so large that only the Federal government can realistically manage them. I used to think that we did not need laws to protect people from themselves, but I have finally come to the conclusion that those laws not only protect people from themselves, but also protect me from those unfortunates, and also idiots. who cannot save for their non earning years”

You have just provided much clearer and better definition for FASCISM than Don F. has found on wikipedia.
And you CLEARLY lay out why this development will sneak up on this country, with such complacency (complicity?) as you show here.
Sad to see this manifest in the one place on earth that once stood for liberty and individual rights AND responsibilities.

As to Keynesian ECONIMICS:
Far be it for me to criticze your spelling, I make plenty of typos-on-the-go here on Rick’s Picks, but this one of yours is a most APT typo, it says it all about the man’s crazy notions.

If you are wondering WHY the world is so expensive (as you point out too), then that man and his nut-job theories, is a root cause, no matter how many “economists” receive the Nobel Prize for regurgitating Keynes yet again (just see the 2008 recipient! as an example…)

If you want spot one, here’s your man.

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/01/taking-tea-with-the-lizards.html#more

An excerpt:

Taking Tea with the Lizards
By Joe Bageant
Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico

The Republican Party will beat the living piss out of anybody for a buck. The Democrats will fly the flag of FDR, even as they pirate the public coffers on behalf of Wall Street. Don’t think the American people have not noticed these things. After thirty years of pistol whipping and emptying of their wallets, they’ve started to figure out there just may be a public robbery underway, with both parties as accomplices.

And so Americans at both ends of the political spectrum are finally wising up to the need for a third party. Even if it is a third party within their own party, which is no third party at all, of course.

No matter which political party is in power, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Isn’t it about time you guys woke up to realize it doesn’t matter who is elected because there is someone behind the curtains pulling the strings?

Dusty

Tax policy? If you look at so called tax policy in isolation you will get a very skewed notion
of just how much you are paying as a result of the actions of your favored Republicans. They are costing you in so many other ways that make a mockery of the putative benefits of their tax policy.

Government may run public schools, but after a while, even the most unsophisticated voter will wake up when it hits the wallet and pocketbook. Here in Taxachusetts, I’ve recently witnessed life long liberals sending anti healthcare and anti Zer0bama emails and the like. Teddy got off lightly and did not live long enough to experience the impact of the destructive seeds he and the DemocRATS planted over the past 47 years. The compound effect of understating the cost of living by 5% since the Clinton years has finally caught up with us. Stimulus funds are wasted when they are not directed at self liquidating investments. The stench of the phony bonuses at Goldman and AIG type bailouts can’t be suppressed. Government can’t handle what’s on its plate and still wants more. There are almost as many Americans on the take as are paying taxes. Hopefully the nation can turn away from this socialistic destruction before it’s too late. I will not vote till this evening so that my wife, daughters and I can march to the polls and make a family statement. I challenge all Americans to begin using their influence – financial and personal – to help revitalize a spirit of Capitalism in the companies they work and on main street America.

All I know is the “one trillion dollar boondoggle” argument is a big fat red herring. Those who have insurance already are paying premiums for that coverage. That amount will offset the fore mentioned figure. If the argument that this is going to increase Federal spending by that amount, and that is what people believe, then the next suspension of all logic is that we, the USA, is planning on spending all of our GDP on health care. And that is not true.
The problem is we need to have a total overhaul of the Federal system, from how we raise revenues – IMHO more consumption taxes and less earning taxes- to how we provide basic services, defense, discretionary spending (national parks, etc.). Congress needs to take back the powers that it has deferred to the executive branch over the past 150 years and have the backbone to follow Keynesian econimics. Not just the spend like crazy part but the reduce spending by the government during the good times part.
We are in a world where many aspects of modern living are collectively so large that only the Federal government can realistically manage them. I used to think that we did not need laws to protect people from themselves, but I have finally come to the conclusion that those laws not only protect people from themselves, but also protect me from those unfortunates, and also idiots. who cannot save for their non earning years and do not have the earnings to provide healthcare coverage in this very expensive modern world.
Those 44 million who do not pay Federal taxes that you mentioned earlier are among the lowest on the economic ladder. 100 years ago, without the social net we have today, most of those people would be in abject poverty, and the hue and cry to house, feed, and provide care for them would be huge. 100 years ago, the poorest of the poor were out of sight, we did not have the media coverage we have today peering into each and every corner. This is the modern world we live in, and it has become more socialist. The struggle is to control both the need to give away the store of socialism with the complete stoicism of capitalism.

For any MASS voters reading Rick’s Picks, PLEASE look at and read this link before voting tomorros:

http://www.centerforsmallgovernment.com/feature/warning-to-tea-party-activists-and-supporters-town-hall-meeting-protesters-and-tax-cutters-living-in-massachusetts-who-are-even-considering-voting-for-scott-brown-for-us-senate-january-19th/

While it would be great for someone to help stop Obama’s healthcare folly, and to help provide a cloture-preventing margin,
Scott Brown is NOT IT!

Just look at his pro-Democrat voting record in his 11 years in the MASS statehouse:
>90% of the time with the Democrats.
And, he was INSTRUMENTAL in MASS’s own version of Obamacare, what has been termed RomneyCare.
This man is NO anti-government savior, he as gone so far as to state that he will work for the MASS version to be implemented in DC for us all. His bill does have the penalty tax for people not choosing to insure, just like Pelosi’s bill.

As the confused Martin above shows, people acutally still believe in the labels of the two parties and that they are different. THEY ARE NOT.
If the lefties above see Obama as “moderate”, it is only because he, LIKE his predecessor, represents the ONE party which has been in power for generations.

Please read the link, as to why you MUST vote for the Kennedy in this race, EVEN IF that will give senate seat to the Democrats.

Even a strongly showing by Kennedy can provide cover for enough in Congress to jump ship.

But please stop rewarding Republicans that don’t deserve the name. Only a Brown defeat will show this party that they can NOT win in November if they keep foisting these big government, big taxing candidates on us.

November is MORE important than the present health-care vote,. a loss in which we just need to consider the necessary and nasty castor oil necessary for a cure.

As to Martin:
“done something about gun control,”
The only thing needind DOING about gun-control is to get rid of IT, and to return to the second amendment.
Rather than bemoaning Obama’s stance, wake up and realize that you once more voted for a fraud, just like Republicans voted for a fraud in W (remember his condemnation of Clinton’s meddling in other countries affairs, a humble foreing policy, and smaller government?)..

Joe Kennedy on 2/19/2010 in MASS!

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Brown cannot do a bait-and-switch here. He won’t even be able to do an Olympia Snow because of the way he has campaigned. His vote in the Senate will be safely conservative no matter what he has done, or thought, in Massachusetts. RA

“As for going hard-left, I can only assume that you have no idea what direction “left” is. ”

Indeed. Obama isn’t remotely hard left, and his and the Democrat’s health care plan is deplorable, first and foremost, because it is just another giveaway to the I in the FIRE economy. Obama has already bent over to the F part of the FIRE economy-no one should be fooled for a second by his recent anti-banking establishment rhetoric- and, under his very Bush like watch, our Middle Eastern military expeditions continue unabated.

Those who engage in mutually assured demonization with respect to the two parties are completely missing the point, whether through ignorance or some less charitable excuse, that both Republicans and Democrats fulfill the same function. That function is to deliver the U.S. citizen as sheep to be sheared by corporate interests. The two parties simply differ in the manner in which they go about that process. All other differences between the two parties are wildly inflated at election time, and most Americans take the bait. Until we stop, nothing of consequence will change, at least not as a result of the efforts of the two parties.

In the meantime, the following video struck me as revealing. And I offer it as someone who will not be voting for either candidate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28u3vPExxp4&feature=player_embedded

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You don’t need a magnifying glass to see how the two parties differ on, for one, tax policy. Perhaps your 1040 return is among the lucky 44 million that pay no taxes at all? RA

I live in Western Massachusetts and in my travels today I noticed that 90-95% of all signs were for Scott Brown almost everywhere I went. This is highly unusual for this area and a very likely precursor for tomorrows polls.