...which is pretty much where The Leader and the aggressive left wing of his party is headed as the battlefield over the debt limit is being prepared.
Our friend, Carter, suggested last week that Little Paulie got one thing right in asking how can the Congress refuse to fund a budget that it approved. Eh, what budget, Carter my friend? The Leader has not delivered a budget in three years which somewhat complicates the funding process--sort of like trying to figure out how much water it will take to fill a bucket with no bottom. The government is being run by executive action with the Congress...or to be more precise the House of Representatives, being asked to fund expenditures after the fact on which it, despite having the power of the purse in accordance with the Constitution, never acted. Today this became ever more clearly defined as Mr. Harry Reid suggested to The Leader to simply ignore the House and do whatever he wished.
Now we can argue the politics forever but this is not a political blog as I have often said. However, when, for the last three years we have moved further from being guided by the law of the land and have reached a point where the ignoring of law and tradition is being called for on a daily basis, some commentary must be made. I hope we do not get too far down the road with this newly discovered theory of a "government of laws...provided they are convenient...and not of men," because the one, single advantage we have had in our development over all other nations was the Rule of Law; and it was the codification of our laws not the "make it up as you go along" kind of legal system that provided the trust and respect that made us the most successful nation in history. What has worked for 200+ years simply cannot and should not be rejected because in interferes with the political dreams of some. If that is to occur let us use the methods provided to us to make those changes, rather than destroying that which made us so unique.
In the mean time, I'm having a personal problem highlighted by the "solutions" mentioned in Friday's piece. What is the value of money? Oh yeah, I know, it is determined by what it will but but that really isn't "Value" in the true sense. If a Nobel Prize winning economist can put forward the notion that you can take a coin..oh hell, take ANYTHING...and proclaim that it represents a trillion dollars worth of purchasing power, and expect that the rest of the world is going to believe it, we are in fairy coo-coo land. And when that fact is recognized and the solution arises as it did today that to solve it the President should simply "order" the Treasury to print a trillion dollars and the hell with Congress, we are accelerating rapidly into fiscal and legal anarchy. My problem is that I am beginning to believe that the stupidest thing Richard Nixon ever did--and he may have been a lot of things but one of them wasn't dumb--was to cancel Bretton Woods and take the world off the gold standard. From that moment, the value of nations and nations' currencies became an exercise subject to whims and adventures of leaders far less capable than he. We have the reserve currency and we have the printing press, but where pundits and economists alike are oft in agreement that with the rise of China that advantage will soon disappear, how at the same time can there be no sense of peril as to our financial future and the economic future of generations to come? I'm just an old, average guy but I'm stumped. Of course I'll have tons to write about until the Christmas season ends in Euroland and things get back to the usual craziness, but my word, we are certainly giving the folks Over There a good run for who's more nuts.
Big week for Bank earnings beginning tomorrow. Let's see if we can find some fun in that.
Oh, Thanks Prof Ed wherever you are. Nice things to read but frankly, I think you had better change your brand...or get back on it.
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