The warning that matches the headline of the story Soros Warns U.S. Could Be On Verge Of Dictatorial Democracy is pretty dire.
I found the following paragraph at the end of the article to be a nice complement to my previous post, True Motive For Tax Cuts.
In the U.S. Soros said that QE2 has created “bad side effects ” by pushing up the price of assets.
Industry won’t invest in new jobs, plant, and equipment because there is plenty of idle labor, plant, and equipment that could be pressed into service if there were sufficient demand. So where is all this extra liquidity going to go if not to new jobs, plant, and equipment? Where it always goes when there is too much liquidity, asset bubbles.
This is further proof, if we needed any, that monetary stimulus is no substitute for fiscal stimulus. Fiscal stimulus needs to be in the form of government spending on the $2 trillion of infrastructure repair that is needed within the next 5 years to prevent the country from falling further behind in required maintenance.
The way Mitch McConnell sees it, apparently, is that the country’s infrastructure should just be allowed to fall into disrepair so that the government won’t be spending so much money. I guess highways, railroads, airports, navigable rivers, and other infrastructure are not really needed if all you want to do is ship money around electronically. Even then, good broadband service might be needed.
Encouraging financial industry instead of manufacturing industry is exactly how we got into the current predicament. Maybe this is the old “Hair of the dog” remedy. If a little wacky financial mania has caused a hangover, the solution must be another dose of wacky financial mania.