I happen to think a government shutdown would be a good thing. People would find out the world will not end as Tim Geithner and the Obama administration seem to believe. Nor will the bond market fall apart as some at the Fed think. However, it is ridiculous for Republicans to be in this situation over a measly $30 billion, less than 1% of the budget.

Here’s my bottom line: after we get through spending our $1 trillion under ObamaCare, there is no convincing reason to believe that the bottom half of the income distribution will have more care, better care, or better access to care than they have today.

Whenever a candidate promises to “give the American people a government as good as they deserve,” I can’t help thinking, “no, no; don’t do that!”

Someone once said that a capitalist society is a friendly society. This is not surprising at all, since the essence of capitalism is mutual service, cooperation, and trade to the betterment of the whole. To take part in that reshapes who we are. It makes us better people.

It should really be no surprise that the banksters have the temerity to take a weak mortgage fraud settlement proposal, advanced by the 50 state attorneys general and various Federal agencies, and water it down to drivel. Since March 2009, when the Obama administration cast its lot with them, major financial firms have become increasingly intransigent. And this has proven to be a winning strategy, since Obama’s pattern over his entire political career has been to offer proposals that don’t live up to their billing, then eagerly trade away what little substance was there in the interest of having bragging rights for yet another “achievement”. The degree of exaggeration involved is roughly equivalent to him claiming he’d bedded every woman he had ever met for coffee.

Former central banker Willem Buiter once remarked that the Federal Reserve’s “unusual and exigent circumstances” clause, which enables it to lend to “any individual, partnership or corporation” if it can’t get the dough from other banks, allows the Fed to lend against a dead dog if it so chooses. It looks like the US central bank did precisely that.

All paper money systems in history ended in failure. There are no exceptions.

Blaming the Yuan is like blaming pimples instead of blaming oily skin that causes pimples. China is nothing more than a convenient scapegoat for failed policies of the Fed, the Bush administration, and the Obama administration. Unfortunately, governments do not want to fix the problems because they all want to print like mad and they all want to do what they want, when they want. Eventually however, the market takes matters into its own hands like it did with Greece.

The CRA certainly did not cause the financial crisis. However, it did contribute to it. Ironically, the very same people who insisted money be lent to people who could not afford houses are the very same people now bitching about those same “predatory loans”. Forcing banks to lend money is a piss poor idea. Piss poor loans help neither the lender nor the borrower. Yet, those who added fuel to the housing bubble have now whitewashed their role in the affair and beg for still more funds. President Obama want to expand the CRA. Instead it should be added to the scrap heap of history along with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD, HAMP, and thousands of affordable home programs all of which did anything but make homes affordable. Now that home prices are falling, one might think the affordable home advocates would be happy. They are not. The hypocrites now want to prop up home prices on the belief that falling home prices hurt neighborhoods. When dealing with misguided activists and self-serving fools you simply cannot win.