{"id":2506,"date":"2008-10-10T22:39:03","date_gmt":"2008-10-11T03:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=2506"},"modified":"2008-10-11T05:35:16","modified_gmt":"2008-10-11T10:35:16","slug":"another-must-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2008\/10\/10\/another-must-read\/","title":{"rendered":"another must-read…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Reversal of Fortune<\/strong><\/a>
by Joseph E. Stiglitz<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n

Describing how ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, and sheer incompetence have left the U.S. economy on life support, the author puts forth a clear, commonsense plan to reverse the Bush-era follies and regain America’s economic sanity. <\/em><\/p>\n

When the American economy enters a downturn, you often hear the experts debating whether it is likely to be V-shaped (short and sharp) or U-shaped (longer but milder). Today, the American economy may be entering a downturn that is best described as L-shaped. It is in a very low place indeed, and likely to remain there for some time to come… <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Joseph E. Stiglitz<\/strong><\/a>, a Nobel Laureate Economist<\/strong>, weighs in on our current economic dilemma.Like most economists, his solutions involve regulations. The Free-Market Economy that we’ve had for now nearly thirty years [since Reagan] isn’t playing well in his comments, nor in those of other Academic Economists. He offers sound recommendations for what to do, but predicts that it will take a while. And like the others, he says:<\/div>\n
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What has happened to the American economy was avoidable<\/strong>. It was not just that those who were entrusted to maintain the economy’s safety and soundness failed to do their job. There were also many who benefited handsomely by ensuring that what needed to be done did not get done. Now we face a choice: whether to let our response to the nation’s woes be shaped by those who got us here, or to seize the opportunity for fundamental reforms, striking a new balance between the market and government.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I still don’t totally understand why making ‘bad loans’ allowed lenders to profit. Nor do I understand why the solution is to pump money into the lending institutions so that the ‘credit flows.’ I really don’t understand how Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II could use a national ‘credit card’ to run up the National Debt. We are told we owe that money to China. How and why did we get a Chinese credit card with that kind of limit? So I don’t see myself as having any special knowledge about this financial crisis – just questions.<\/div>\n
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But I do know something that I’ve been thinking about it. In 1929, our country had a come-to-Jesus wake-up call about a Free Market Economy. We came out of it with rules in place to regulate Banks and Credit Institutions. As we moved into a Free Market Economy world, we relaxed those regulations and, opportunized on the new arrivals into the world’s Free Market Economy. That isn’t going to sit well with the world…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reversal of Fortune by Joseph E. Stiglitz Describing how ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, and sheer incompetence have left the U.S. economy on life support, the author puts forth a clear, commonsense plan to reverse the Bush-era follies and regain America’s economic sanity. When the American economy enters a downturn, you often hear the experts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}