I never really liked this guy, but his equation of Merrill Lynch redecorating with tarp funds = stimulus.
He’s right on the mark with that, isn’t he?
Well, it is stimulus, but is that what the TARP funds were for? Wasn’t ML supposed to prop up toxic loans or something with it?
I wonder if people are viewing this as you get money from your parents to pay your electricity bill, but you decide to put a down payment on a new car with it instead. I think ML is using the funds other than what the gov’t expected them to use them for. The borrower is slave to the lender, and if ML is going to take money from the gov’t, they should expect to be smartly rapped on the knuckles if the gov’t doesn’t like how they’re using the money.
Okay, if that is a good point, he’s in no position to object to the spending in the stimulus bill now, is he? Nor, I would suggest, are you.
In other words, we’ve now established what kind of economist Rush is, we just have to negotiate the price.
Not on this one, he doesn’t John Thain redecorated his office long before the Tarp funds were issued or even in the works.
Rush Limbah is a poo flinging simean that managed to get some in the toilet. I love how now he’s for fiscal restraint and personal freedom.
Regards, Rush, Regards
Rush can’t tell the difference between a toilet bowl and the ocean. TARP was a lifeline to financial institutions to avoid a financial collapse. The “stimulus bill” is a spending and tax cut initiative to reverse the current economic trend. Two entirely different animals. Rush is a mouth with no brain behind it but he has a following that just likes to hear the noise.
On a side note, there are two TARP programs. One is designed to save banks, the other is designed to save professional golf. From the Feb. 26th NY Times Sport section:
I’m certainly no expert on the stimulus bill, but isn’t the point of the stimulus bill not simply to spend money, but to spend it as investments that will eventually pay off?
Rush does not have a point. In fact, he is so reliably wrong that you should question what he says if you ask him the time.
Any kind of spending is potentially a form a stimulus but obviously you also have to judge the usefulness of the spending as well. IOW you could spend 100 million on a useless bridge to nowhere or on a much-needed bridge ; both are a form of stimulus but the latter is obviously far more useful. When it comes to judging government stimulus spending two things are important in addition to their stimulus impact: whether they help those who are truly in need and have been hurt from the downturn and whether they fund useful public goods and services. Almost of all of Obama’s stimulus does well on one or both of these criteria. Spending on decoration at Merrill Lynch not so much.
I don’t think so.
My understanding is that the first bailout, the Bush portion, had little oversight and some of the money could have been/is/ or was misused. We really don’t know for sure.
It’s appears as if some of the companies took the bailout money but continued business-as-usual except for actually loaning the money out and getting the credit market moving again.
So, Merrill Lynch or whomever paying someone or several someones to ‘redecorate’ (or take a las Vegas junket or whatever) is not the same as unfreezing credit.
The current White House occupant has made it clear that future money must be accounted for and used responsibly and as intended.
I’ve heard two sides; that yes, money was lent, and no, money was not. Which is true? I have a feeling its somewhere in the middle; that yes, money has been lent to those qualified, and no, money was not lent to those who cannot afford to repay it.
Either way, Merrill may have benefited with a nice room to conduct business in to gain further customers. But the those who rebuilt and reconditioned the room are likely regular guys that made a good buck, that will feed them and their families. As do the manufactures for the furniture and carpet.
No. He’s a stupid poopy-head.
The TARP bill wasn’t a stimulus bill.
Banks made lots of bad loans. Now they’re super-cautious and they’re not lending money even when it’s relatively low-risk. This is a Bad Thing, because if businesses and individuals can’t get credit the economy grinds to a halt – no new business start-ups, no new mortgages, no new car loans.
TARP was intended to get banks loaning money again by buying up their bad loans so they wouldn’t be so skittish. If they’re redecorating with the money instead of loaning it out to businesses and individuals they’re not using it for its intended purpose.
Except that he’s blaming the Feds for giving it, not Merrill for taking it (or misusing it).
His basic concern, and that of many others on the far right, is that public money not be allowed to supplant or supplement the functions of the private sector. Whether or not the private sector can, or will, fulfill those functions is irrelevant - *it must not be allowed, *come hell or high water.
Rush had a point in noting that roughly 40,000 households, out of around 4 million households total, contribute 50% of New York’s tax revenues: an amount of money that, were these people donating to charity instead of forcibly taxed, would make them saints. It’s a fair point that we should be very careful, and not so very smug, when considering the idea that taxing them more is somehow especially justified and right.
Of course, this is largely because those 40,000 are earning more than 50% of all income earned in the first place. So any change in tax policy that has any real effect on revenue just simply IS going to impact them most heavily.
The real issue is simply, in moral AND in practical terms, what’s the correct level of taxation for these people? It can’t be 0%, and it can’t be 100%. And no matter what it is, since the government runs on money, and money is extremely unevenly distributed in our society, it’s inevitably going to take more from the rich (i.e. the people with money) than from the poor. So how much is justified, and why?
The related issue is: what are we justified spending money on (thus requiring more revenue, and thus requiring us to tax mostly these people more).
I think one can make a decent case that merely returning the tax rates to what they were under, say, Reagan or even Clinton is not some sort of huge shift to socialism and wealth redistribution, and as such, Rush’s rhetoric is full of overblown hot air. But he still raises an important point about the stark reality of the tax system.
I think discourse about tax policy in this country would be better served if we decided that morality has anything to say about tax policy. There is no morally “correct” system and level of taxation. Roughly, liberals want a certain type of tax policy that would create certain economic and distributive outcomes in the community. conservatives desire a different type which aims for different outcomes. All across the spectrum, groups proposing different tax policies want to foster a different vision of how to gorw the economy and how the fruits of the economy should be distributed. Morality has absolutely nothing to contribute to this discussion, besides distracting policymakers from what really is at issue.
-Piker
Wonder how many of these made their money on wall street pushing crappy CDO’s?
I find that pretty hard to justify. Nearly every theory of why it’s important to tax people to then pay for other things involves some sort of theory as to why those government services are more important than what people might otherwise spend their money on. You can’t just pretend that taxing Peter to pay for something Paul wants/needs is value-free, or just something you do without any theory at all of why you are doing it and why it’s justified.
Perhaps the tax code should make this distinction then, no, if punishment is part of its purpose?