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May 31, 2009

Enabling Addictions

...makes the inevitable, delayed withdrawal even more painful.

..."The basic strategy appears to be to try to bring us back to 2006 by propping up asset prices and reflating the popped credit bubble, subsidizing bank creditors and shareholders, and delaying needed bank recapitalizations while hoping for an economic recovery," Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn said at the annual Ira Sohn Investment Research Conference.

..."Government intervention could draw this out much further than is necessary and is useful, although for some areas it may feel somewhat good in the interim," said Sokol, a contender to succeed Warren Buffett as head of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.




..."As any drug addict knows, if you stop using drugs you will go through withdrawal. Government is making the situation worse," said Schiff. "We don't need any more stimulus. We are suffering from the stimulus we have already been given."

He joked years of misguided U.S. fiscal policy has created a Ponzi economy, where new Treasury bonds must be sold to repay existing investors just to keep Uncle Sam solvent.

"I don't know why we have Bernie Madoff in jail," Schiff said.

"We should appoint him secretary of the Treasury."

Posted by tree hugging sister at May 31, 2009 06:05 PM

Comments

Obama and Geithner are doing exactly what Roosevelt and Morgenthau did in the 30's and the Japanese did in the 90's: the slightest hint of a recovery means an opportunity to indulge in policies that essentially recreate the reasons for the initial downturn, thus deepening and worsening it.

Except now they're doing it on a FAR more massive scale. This is total insanity. Sovereign default and hyperinflation here we come.

Posted by: Dave J. at May 31, 2009 09:36 PM

"Sovereign default and hyperinflation here we come."

Three to one Bush will still be blamed for it.

Posted by: Gunslinger at June 1, 2009 05:03 AM

Gunslinger, Obama will own it regardless of what the MSM tries to pull, because it will clearly have happened a year or more into his tenure. His core of zealous lunatic cultish followers won't abandon him, but the rest of the people who voted for him--the squishy middle who voted for "change" but not for socialism and economic disintegration--will.

Posted by: Dave J. at June 1, 2009 05:58 PM