The sigh of incredulity accompanies Stimulus revisited as Mr. Obama and his economic advisors assure themselves, for all time, the label: The Lost Administration! In years to come, historians will reference this time as the quintessential example of intentional failure. A spellbinding malaise conjoined with a persistent pathology whose viral intention can only be characterized as deliberate. Never, since the time of Napoleon, has a nation witnessed such complete dedication to a collapsing aperture of infinite potential and possibility!
Okay, I’ve had my rant, now let’s get down to business and permit me to introduce a few key reasons for why government Stimulus Programs never, EVER, work. Before doing so, let me introduce three foundational observations:
- The U.S. Economy has degraded to such a degree that teasing a result will produce no measurable result. To continue this approach will serve only to illustrate how dysfunctional and non-responsive the system has become and evident of severe structural defects.
- Government, presently, has no such acumen from which to draw upon in order to cultivate, define and/or institute a functional remedy. Wisdom, prudence and creative mind has affectively been bread out of the artifice of government and what is left is merely and purely a political organism incapable and unwilling to repair the damage. And,
- The concepts of Physiological-Sociological Economics (PSE) identify the process of how government vacates the components necessary for an economic system to be both viable and sustainable. I refer to these components as Tortional Economic Tensions. These two concepts, combined, acutely define the causal forces which have merged to create the evolved role of government. It is also the reason for why point #1 above has been made manifest.
Now then, let us move to key aspects of predictable consequence along with brief commentary relating to each. By the way, we discuss many of these points in greater detail throughout each of the volumes in the Blind Vision Series. If one has a genuine concern as to these and other equally important issues facing this nation, you will want to read each of these volumes and become quite familiar with their content.
Government Stimulus Programs (general)
Comment: These programs always fail for one primary reason; they produce no productive incentive. They are always selective entitlements and never designed to be economically self-sustaining. Thus, they are perpetually and exponentially consumptive. They are, as experience illustrates, proven disincentives.
Corporate Incentives (specific)
Comment: Incentivizing productivity is a perverse form of the double entendre. Think of it: Government provides corporations tax-credits in an attempt to induce resource expenditures for exciting productivity whose nascent income is then offset by the very same tax credits. In effect, what you have is a taxpayer subsidized entitlement program for business. If the prospects of an economic return isn’t sufficient elixir to entice a business concern, then what possible reason could there be for incentivizing lethargy at the expense of the taxpayer? The practice of government has been to penalize productive income of the Individual and insulate the non-productive income of the inanimate corporation – mind numbing stupidity. This, by the way, is not the practice of the free markets of capitalism. It is quite the opposite; the actions of corporate governance fearing the independent forces of free markets.
Predictable & Conspicuous Failure
Comment: Presently the U.S. Economy is floundering at around $15 Trillion in GDP yet only $3.3 Trillion of which is productive (Manufacturing and Agriculture). The balance of approximately $6.7 Trillion represents government spending and the balance being the service sector. Ignoring unfunded mandates, off-budget spending and the Federal Reserve’s global disbursements all of which are at unrecoverable levels, considering a productive inversion such as this, how can any sane individual expect an outcome different from what we presently observe? With government spending, for decades, at multiple levels in excess of the productive component of the economy, not a one can rationally explain this fundamental flaw as reconcilable. There is no such thing as distributive wealth aggregation with this massive level of non-productive debt accumulation. To be sure, this is not a Democrat or a Republican problem, no this rather unique malfeasance is assigned to both – the accommodation of which has been licensed by the American People. Spending more money on a mistake doesn’t remedy the error in judgment it simply accelerates and assures greater consequence.
Monetary/Financial Policy
Comment: The concept of Globalism is the direct result of domestic economic predation. Once the business of this Nation became the practice of predation, the Globe became the fields from which to plunder. Money, being an inanimate object, has neither a conscience nor intuitive ambition. It becomes only a tool and a very effective one at that. In the absence of domestic productivity, the tool has no function and thus becomes free to search elsewhere for targets of opportunity including the machinery of government. With no conscience or environment willing to curb its tempting vice, this tool is able to define its own rules and its own mechanisms of creative propagations. In essence, it feeds on the cycle of predation and thus you have boom and bust cycles, transactional wealth creation and a host of wildly imaginative instruments of predation (e.g., derivatives). This tool not only becomes prophetic, it also becomes its own prophet (pun deliberately intended). Global treaties relating to trade are yet another example of a government stimulus under the guise of competitiveness and economic interests. If this is the case, how then Mr. Obama would your sage advisors classify the competitiveness of productive unemployment or its costs to the economic sovereignty of this Nation? Perhaps you might ask Mr. Soros.
Financial Markets
Comment: The supreme illusion. What has become known as the Financial Markets are simply an extension of the previous item and the enabling mechanism of the cycle of predation. Nothing created, no real value exchanged, profits secured by the principal assured that any losses will be absorbed by the host government and ultimately, the taxpayer. The cash which Corporations are confidently flush with is more a function of predation than of productivity as the government is more efficient at taxing the productive Individual or Small Business largely because these folks haven’t the resources of representation necessary to keep the bureaucracies from doing so. Oh yes, and then we have The Wall Street Reform Act, the creative genius of global banking under the cover of a selective stimulus, how simply brilliant!
Sorry to say folks, there is no warm and fuzzy feel good in all of this. The truth of what I comment upon, whether in my books, postings or public presentations, is made most conspicuous in the silence and abject poverty of discourse over the economic and political realities facing this Nation. Protectionist? You bet! If your own Government is unwilling to protect your Sovereign Interests and Unalienable Rights then to what or for whom is their favor directed if not YOU?
Do pay close attention to the dialogue of the politicians and notice how obscure their message is. If you’ve the occasion to hear any of these individuals assert the need to “create jobs” and you have the chance, ask them what it is they will do. Demand specifics! If any part of their answer says “…the government needs to do…” and none of it includes directly addressing any of the points identified above, please feel free to send them home!
There is a certain destiny of which I am sure. Let’s make it be one that will attest to our better sense of Valor, Courage and Character! Stand4 a Cause worth Preserving and Perfecting, after all, it’s what give meaning to all things worthy of being meaningful.
“Man must be Free for Independence to be at Liberty to be Expressed!” C. Greco
Curtis C. Greco, Founder
