AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

An AP article earlier today talked about what might be proposed by the GOP if they end up winning the House - which seems likely. There were quotes from Boehner and McConnell. Nothing real specific 5 days before the election, of course. Not at all unexpected or unusual.
The bullet points seemed to be:
* Reduce Federal government spending by $100Bn. Where the cuts would be was not spelled out.
* Reduce taxes.
* Undo parts or all of the health care and financial "reform" legislation passed in the last 2 years.
* Introduce legislation mandating "Congressional reform."

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An example is education, we need to transfer virtually all of the financial support and management of that function back to the people that know best what their own children need.

That is nothing but a shell game okie. Moving the cost from the federal government back to the local government doesn't eliminate cost. It simply changes who pays the taxes.

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I realize education is only one example, and cutting it will not solve the entire problem, but it can serve as an example of what we need to do with every issue.

It is a good example of what you do with an issue okie. You don't examine it at all. You haven't saved money.

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The other part of the equation is maximizing tax revenues. We do that by maximizing the economy to its full potential.

So if the economy is growing at 17% and the tax rate is 0% how do you maximize revenues? You don't seem to understand the trade off or anything else. The economy will grow maximum about 2-3% because the FED wants to control inflation. That means tax rates in a 17-22% of GDP has very little effect on GDP growth since money costs have more effect than the small effect tax rates do. To maximize the tax revenues you find the highest tax rate that allows growth of 3%. Anything else is NOT maximizing tax revenues at all.

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We do that by looking at all regulations and tax laws to figure out how we can unfetter the ingenuity and capability of free enterprise.

Sure okie. Why do we need the derivatives markets regulated? What could possibly go wrong?

I have never advocated 0% tax rates. Again you distort and misrepresent what I have written in my posts. I have advocated eliminating the income tax, but in conjunction with a national sales tax replacing it. This all gets back to the Laffer Curve. Anybody with any economic knowledge and math skill knows that 0% or 100% tax rates are inefficient or unworkable, so the most efficient point must lie somewhere between those two extremes to deliver the tax revenues needed. The curve would look somewhat like a parabola, just mathematical and economic common sense. It is up to us as reasonable people to construct a tax rate that is reasonable and fair. You apparently feel it is currently too low, but I believe as most people do that it is already too high to be an efficient and fair tax rate structure.

I am not an expert on derivatives markets, okay, and I am not advocating no regulations at all. In fact, I have been calling for the government to clean up its act and prosecute the corruption in their own house first, to enforce the regulations that we already have, which you and the Democrats seem to want to ignore. We need to put the crooks that presided over the cooking of books at Fannie and Freddie in jail, that would be a good start. Fannie and Freddie set the example and led the way for all the mismanagement of home loans in this country that helped create this financial train wreck. If you love regulation, then you need to also favor enforcement of the regulations, parados.

The collapse of the housing bubble, which peaked in the U.S. in 2006, caused the values of securities tied to real estate pricing to plummet thereafter, damaging financial institutions globally.

The immediate cause or trigger of the crisis was the bursting of the United States housing bubble which peaked in approximately 2005–2006.

Bush drive for home ownership fueled housing bubble (New York Times)

Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of home ownership, Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, "faced with the prospect of a global meltdown" with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed.

There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk.

talk, isn't it true however that those banks would not have done that if they did not know that Fannie and Freddie would not buy those loans? Fannie and Freddie served as enablers to fraudulant and irresponsible behavior.

okie wrote:

talk, isn't it true however that those banks would not have done that if they did not know that Fannie and Freddie would not buy those loans? Fannie and Freddie served as enablers to fraudulant and irresponsible behavior.

Oh, so because a Fence exists, you don't blame someone for stealing goods?

You can't remove blame from the banks for doing illegal and immoral activities, just because they had a buyer for those things - and what more, a buyer who they ASSURED they were doing things on the up-and-up. Cycloptichorn

Your analogy doesn't work, parados. The banks were making many of those bad loans and taking risks with non-credit worthy buyers because they knew they could sell them to folks like Fannie and Freddie. Not only were Fannie and Freddie involved in terrible loan practices, but they also encouraged the same irresponsibility with other banks by indicating they would buy those loans as well.

What would happen to the auto industry and the economy if the government guaranteed a loan to any deadbeat that wanted to buy a car, whether he had any money or a job or anything?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

okie wrote:

talk, isn't it true however that those banks would not have done that if they did not know that Fannie and Freddie would not buy those loans? Fannie and Freddie served as enablers to fraudulant and irresponsible behavior.

Oh, so because a Fence exists, you don't blame someone for stealing goods?

You can't remove blame from the banks for doing illegal and immoral activities, just because they had a buyer for those things - and what more, a buyer who they ASSURED they were doing things on the up-and-up. Cycloptichorn

I don't think it was fraud as much as it was irresponsible and stupid practices set up by government, cyclops.

Would it be corrupt to make a risky loan to somebody to buy a car, if you knew you could sell that risky loan to the government? No, I don't think so, maybe you do?

Apparently you did, because that is the game they set up for housing. It is my belief that the government engaged in very irresponsible and stupid loan practices, that enabled other banks to profit from it, and they did. They did until the house of cards caved in.

If you advertised in your yard that you would buy any junk car for $5,000, and when people hauled all their junk cars into your yard to collect the money from you, and then after you went broke you expect them to pay you back, who is being fraudulant or stupid, you or the sellers of the junk cars? It wasn't them, cyclops, just a hint.