Side Tracked

Getting a little side tracked

Pat; Your trying to sell a bill of goods that I’ll never buy – your quicker, wittier and more up to date than most and pretty darn smart, evidenced by your baiting of me on the question of motive – I like it. We can go there.

Mike; Thanks for your contribution from Lord Keynes, I’ll touch on his calculation of the consumption function – his biggest contribution to economic theory and one of the basic principles of macro economic teaching back when I was in school. It’s all a load of crap.

Thanks to the comments on the blog, we are going to actually start having a conversation about something other than me writing into a blank space. Even though most of you understand the stuff I have been writing (probably better than I do) the human condition is to attempt linear algebra without understanding the fundamentals of math, I’ve taught middle school math, I know. So for the sake of my own sanity I have to make sure we are all on the same page because the folks who are running this show (the government) have way less than no clue. It does make you wonder about the people who elected them though.

This post was supposed to be about what all the facts and figures I’ve sited in the last few posts means to you. I’ve never built a house without changing the foundation at least once and I can’t remember a conversation I’ve had where I didn’t digress. So why would this blog be any different, it won’t. I need to cover the basics of U.S. political history, but before I do I’ve got to tell you about a story I just read from the National Home Builders Association.  Hot off the press-the Federal government has just issued new standards for banks on lending money on mortgages.  Here’s the new standard, the person borrowing money has to be able to pay back the loan.  That’s it.  That really is it, of course the banks will have to hire 20 people to handle the paperwork, that  really is the only thing they stipulate.  Starting tomorrow every bank in America will have people lined up outside their doors as far as the eye can see, oh this will change everything, wait a minute, the new regulation won’t take effect until next January.  That means that the current regulation which allows for subprime mortgages is still in effect until next year.  Who’s the culprit for this housing debacle anyway, Bill Clinton’s Affordable Housing Act. What’s this new regulation going to do for the housing market? Nothing.  Why do you think the banks aren’t lending money?  So much for that, let’s move on.

My sense of history is extremely limited, I was fed this information by the research scientist in this outfit-Barb.  Man has been a hunter gatherer for most of our 200,000 year history.  It was only 2000 years ago that China, Rome, Greece, Persia and India started to evolve into what we see today as modern society.  The United States has only been the United States for 237 years, so as far as modern societies go we’re the new kid on the block.  With the exception of the puritans the foundations of this country were laid by businesses from England, Spain and France.  Greed is in our bones and greed is what formed this nation.  In 1670 the Hudson Bay trading company owned 15% of the entire North American continent.  The English, Spanish and French governments fought over control of this country and in 1763, at the end of the French and Indian war, the British empire finally had control of the eastern part of the North American continent. By this point in history there were 2 million people in the colonies providing goods and services to the British Empire, 2 million business people, mostly 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th generation born in the colonies British citizens. Farmers, loggers and lumber businesses, mining operations, textiles, importers, fishermen, etc. and the services to maintain those businesses and the population. If it weren’t for the greed of King George III we would still be a colony of Great Britain.  You can see from this brief history that the United States did not become the United States because of some ideology about freedom or because it was a land of milk and honey, it became the United States as a matter of survival.  The American revolution started and 1775 and on July 4th of 1776 the Declaration of Independence was signed with a long list of grievances against the Crown all of which had to do with the misuse of government powers and the lack  responsiveness to the population. Essentially British citizens without the rights of British citizens. Dissension about the succession of the colonies from the British Empire almost caused it not to happen. The Continental Congress formed the Articles of Confederation at that point which was sent to the 13 state’s for confirmation in 1777 and ratified by the Continental Congress in 1781.  The American revolution was fought from 1775 until 1783 and on March 4^th, 1789 the articles of confederation were replaced by the Constitution of the United States.  Which essentially address the grievances on the Declaration of Independence. It’s a constitution framed by businessmen not politicians, volunteers not paid representatives, people who knew what it took to have a prosperous society and most importantly knew from experience that a large central government would starve and tax them to death – literally.

I can assure you that a vast number of politicians, including Harvard educated constitutional lawyers either don’t know or don’t understand the history of our country. It’s never been about politics, it’s always been about business. When taken out of that context we lose our uniqueness and become merely another country.

This post has run a little long so I’ll have to put off political motivation and academically challenged economist until next time.