Bush is damned stupid

The "Mental" mania of the Republicans just keeps coming. Where from? From the idea that all economic problems are basically mental problems. If you think you are doing fine then you are. This is really fucked up since that is the logic that says just because you have colon cancer and are a-symptomatic you are doing fine. Or that you shouldn't worry about falling off the cliff since you have not hit the ground yet.

This lamebrained idea goes all the way back to the Great Depression. The thinking was that if people just kept spending and did not take their money out of banks there would have been no depression. This is so horribly wrong.

First of all the Great Depression started in centeral Europe as a result of WWI. It took time for the terrible economic effects to reach the US. Rampant stock speculation and banks willingness to put more and more of their capital in such speculation meant that when the downturn hit the US in 1929, the banks had nothing to fall back on. People were losing their jobs, they took out their saving to live on. Banks, who had no cash assets left folded up. Businesses who's solidity was based on bank investments suddenly had the rug pulled out from under them because the banks had to dump more stock to reclaim cash. More people lost their jobs. blah blah blah.

But the Republicans still think, after all these years, after all the Democratic regulations designed to stop something like that from happening again, that if we just wish for good times they will happen. So Bush trots himself out onto TV this morning to say that off shore drilling is really designed to get people to feel better about their energy future. This is the essence of Conservatism made clear yet again. Just feel good and you are good. In a post last year I said that Marxists and Neo-cons have more in common than either would like to admit. Both think that economic good times for all is basically a philosophical argument. That you can get where you want to be economically by getting people to think a certain way. Bull shit!

The economy is not human, and does not act in a human way. It is a very complicated math problem and if certain portions of that equation dictate Depression then it is up to humans to react to stop it. Not just by thinking "There is no place like home. There is no place like home..."