{"id":7234,"date":"2011-08-19T10:43:47","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T15:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=7234"},"modified":"2011-08-19T10:43:47","modified_gmt":"2011-08-19T15:43:47","slug":"the-tea-party%e2%80%99s-modest-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/08\/19\/the-tea-party%e2%80%99s-modest-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tea Party\u2019s Modest Proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here is one by Simon Johnson, <a title=\"Simon Johnson's post\" href=\"http:\/\/www.project-syndicate.org\/commentary\/johnson23\/English\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>The Tea Party\u2019s Modest Proposal<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The irony of the Tea Party revolt, of course, is that it undermines the private sector more than it reins in \u201cbig government.\u201d The S&amp;P downgrade resulted in a \u201cflight to quality,\u201d meaning that investors bought US government debt \u2013 thus increasing its price and lowering the rate that the federal government pays to borrow.<\/p>\n<p>It was the value of the stock market that fell sharply \u2013 which makes sense, given that counter-cyclical policy is now severely constrained. The government part of the credit system has been strengthened, relatively speaking, by developments over the past few months. It is the private sector \u2013 where investment and entrepreneurial activity are needed to generate growth and employment \u2013 that has taken a beating.<\/p>\n<p>Unless and until America\u2019s private sector recovers, investment and job creation will continue to stagnate. But today\u2019s atmosphere of fear and aggressive budget tactics are combining to undermine private-sector confidence and spending power.<\/p>\n<p>As Jonathan Swift put it in 1727, \u201cParty is the madness of many, for the gain of the few.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I highlight the above paragraphs partly because it expands on something that I have noted.\u00a0 The Republican politicians, the Tea Party, and Financial talking heads on &#8220;news&#8221; shows\u00a0 may not believe in Keynesian economics.\u00a0 Maybe not consciously, but viscerally, the market does seem to believe in Keynesian economics.\u00a0 The market sees the government austerity coming.\u00a0 They know this will lead to a second dip recession, and they want out of stocks and into safe US Government bonds in a big way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is one by Simon Johnson, The Tea Party\u2019s Modest Proposal. The irony of the Tea Party revolt, of course, is that it undermines the private sector more than it reins in \u201cbig government.\u201d The S&amp;P downgrade resulted in a \u201cflight to quality,\u201d meaning that investors bought US government debt \u2013 thus increasing its price [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7235,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7234\/revisions\/7235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}