From Bloomberg. So the G7 may bail the US Dollar out

[coogebeachhotel]

What are we some third world bannana republic that needs bail out like the peso, bolivar, lira were bailed out. What the heck is going on with this country.

 

[cargoflyr69]

What the heck is going on with this country.

The only Bush I trust is my own

 

[fly4surf]

Ron Paul who?

 

[IronCityBlue]

The only Bush I trust is my own

Dude, you got a Bush? :laugh:

 

[Max Powers]

Thank you GWB....No energy plan - people still buy SUVs and trucks 53 percent while 47 percent buy cars./....Need a gas tax to change people ridiculous behavior.

Great Britain gets gas for much cheaper then we do but taxes the hell out of it. The benefits are immense. Gas in the UK is now 8 dollars a gallon.

 

[jke406]

next you're going to want to copy their rationed national health care system too, right?

 

[JoeMerchant]

Great Britain gets gas for much cheaper then we do but taxes the hell out of it. The benefits are immense. Gas in the UK is now 8 dollars a gallon.

.....yeah that's exactly what we need now...8 dollar a gallon gas....let's throw in some higher income taxes to boot...Those two ideas will really help the economy......

 

[JoeMerchant]

Ron Paul who?

http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/inflation-tax/

 

[skyaddict]

Good ol' Ron Paul had a lot of great ideas and was the closest to being a true and pure straight talker. While personally I will take a market-based Republican over a big government solutuion Democrat any day of the week, the biggest Republican failure under dubya has been *gross* irresponsibility on controlling spending. It is why the Republicans actually 'deserve' to lose in November. However, the Dems most certainly don't deserve to win- both Obama and Billary mock how the Republicans (and they have a point since it was for a while a Rep majority) destroyed the budget surplusses but themselves, instead of fixing things, would squander every gain with massive new government programs.

Conversely, though, Republicans have become guilty of believing that they can fund tax cuts by deficity spending or bubble growth. The tech bubble and the RE bubble were both phony creations of wealth that eventually burst to shambles. Creataing growth or shortening/minimizing recessions requires real fiscal conservatism.

We need an iron-clad Gramm-Rudman style cap on spending no matter what. If the budget isn't balanced, there should be across the board spending cuts - even defense shgould not be immune. Let every piece of government priortize of need be.

It will take years and years, not any quick fix, to dig ourselves out of the hole we have dug in this country, spending way beyond our means for around 10 years. The place to start is firm fiscal conservatism. Replace big government with market based mechanisms, but don't have any tax cuts that cannot be financed by spending cuts either. Tax cuts financed by deficit spending are just another form of printing money.

 

[IronCityBlue]

Ron Paul was great for 90% of his domestic ideas and 2/3 of his foreign policy ideas. He ruined what could have been one of the best presidential candidacies of modern time by being dumb enough to believe in the Neo-Chamberlain pacifist/appeasement model for any and all foreign issues. He then blamed the US for Bin Laden's reaction because we had troops on his holy land. YGTBMFSM. We had troops in Saudia Arabia invited by the Saudian Arabians, a nation that kicked Bin Laden out. So according to Ron Paul's logic, anything that makes terrorists mad should stop immediately, and then we will have peace in our time.

He also lost me when he said he believed in the Dennis the kook Kusinich model of foreign policy. Dennis repeatedly said he would never, under ANY circumstance, EVER use force. Um, yeah. 1933 called, they want their brilliant pacifists back.

Again, Ron Paul was dead on on so many things, yet so embarassingly way off on a few critical things that he ceased to be a viable candidate once enough Americans heard him open his pie hole enough times. He even blamed the US for bringing WWII on ourselves, and no, he wasn't talking about waiting too long to act either.

Ron Paul was 90% the perfect candidate but 10% so incredibly incapabile to hold the office that it ruined the other 90%. What a shame. Especially since he was really the only semi-viable candidate on either side in a very long time that has raised issues on the US soverignty to the level he did, bringing back the gold standard, etc. Oh well.

 

[skyaddict]

Well said IronCityBlue, Ron Paul was overall pretty much an isolationist loon on foreign policy- even though he had some good points to make there too. (Eg when McCain- whom I happen to support as the best of all evils- said to Ron Paul that we never lost a battle against the Viet Cong/NVA, Ron Paul responded -"Senator, with all due respect, that's irrelevant.") But even if someone combined a sensible foreign policy with a libertarian domestic policy (and a true libertarian should not be an isolationist- does the word globalization mean nothing?), they would never stand a chance with the electorate. With the majority of voters basically stupid, looking for handouts and analyzing cause-effect cycles in at most weeks or months rather than years, any politician in the end has to pander, as well as sell out to their party ideologues.

But forcing the federal budget to automatically adjust (contract) during deficit spending, the way some states and counties have started to do, would at least either pressure hard choices to be made, or simply force the hard choices automatically if business as usual, pigs at the trough government continues unabated. Granted, it probably will never happen until even more severe financial shocks hit the system though.

 

[Smacktard]

Thank you GWB....No energy plan - people still buy SUVs and trucks 53 percent while 47 percent buy cars./....Need a gas tax to change people ridiculous behavior.

Great Britain gets gas for much cheaper then we do but taxes the hell out of it. The benefits are immense. Gas in the UK is now 8 dollars a gallon.

Really, I didn't realize the President was the authority in determining what I can and can not buy or drive. If I want to drive a Hummer (which, coincidentally, has less of an impact on the environement than a Prius) I'll do it. Next thing you know you're going to tell me we need taxes on the number of TV sets (ala Britain) so that you feel better about what ridiculous shows we watch. No thanks man, if you like GB so much, move it on over there!

 

[fugghedabowdit]

If I want to drive a Hummer (which, coincidentally, has less of an impact on the environement than a Prius) I'll do it.

OK, I'll bite...how?

 

[Andy]

OK, I'll bite...how?

Dude, hummers are lawn ornaments. People actually drive Priuses. How much environmental impact does a lawn ornament have?

 

[AA717driver]

Congress--BOTH parties are primarily responsible for spending us into the poorhouse.

Combine that with Bush being a closet Liberal and signing every piece of pork-laden legislation that floated across his desk and you have us where we are now. (I'll not even go into Iraq. That's what we get for electing someone who stuffed his cabinet with his Dad's cronies--cronies who were the reason Bush I was a one-termer...)

The coup de grace is an American public that doesn't pay attention--and doesn't even want to hear it when reality is presented to them on a silver platter AND thinks THEIR party and 'Congress-whore' is a "Great American" so they won't vote them out, regardless of how big a scumbag they are.

This country DESERVES to spend a few years as a Third World nation. Frankly, I doubt many would notice...TC