Monday, August 23, 2010

Dick Morris and the League of American Voters ... by gimleteye


The Florida Independent notes that an entity started by former Clinton, now Fox News spinner Dick Morris is supporting Bill McCullom's primary race for governor through a Florida-based independent committee. Morris' operation is the "League of American Voters", a spin of the League of Conservation Voters but what the heck: Dick Morris is one funny man. He made a pair with President Clinton, until he was spurned after a DC sex scandal. The Florida Independent notes League of American Voters shares an address with Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist, with Karl Rove, are generals for the Wrecking Crew that helped spin the US economy into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. They are all still hovering about, offering their expertise, whatever it may be-- and serving funders from the right, whoever they might be.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Damn he looks like Stephen Cody. Are they related? Maybe separated at birth?

Anonymous said...

Correction - this is the worst economic crisis since Jimmy Carter, not the Great Depression. And Obama's policies aren't getting us out of the ditch, except he seems determined to drive us over the cliff on the left. There is blame everywhere for the economic mess, so I don't pin all the blame on Rove, who is a political advisor not an economic advisor, or Norquist who favors tax breaks generally, but not mandatory lending to people who can't pay a mortgage.

David said...

On the economy;

The president has little control over the economy, and bears little responsibility for it, despite the best efforts of all the spin-meisters.

The Congress impacts the economy through its economic policy. They can either spend more or less money to stimulate or restrain, and they increase or decrease taxes to the same (though relatively minor) effect.

Any move the Congress makes with respect to spending and taxation can be and is sanitized, to the extent that economic policy is in conflict with the Federal Reserve's monetary policy. Don't think for a minute that the two are always aligned.

The Open Market Desk at the New York Fed has precise, absolute control of the supply of money in circulation on a daily basis. They do this by buying and selling US Treasury securities on the open market.

When the Fed buys these instruments, they create the money to do so from thin air. That money is new money, and is used by the banks that sold the securities as the basis (under the rules of fractional reserve banking) for creating more new money out of thin air in the form of credit.

When the Fed sells these instruments on the open market, they extinguish the funds the banks pay them for the securities in the same way they created it to buy them.

In this manner, the Fed has the final say. How can it be that with the gargantuan stimulus package, inflation has not skyrocketed? In fact, there has been substantial discussion of the opposite happening; deflation. How can this be. Deflation is a good thing for American consumers as the dollar's purchasing power would increase, but a strong dollar weakens exports and other factions of the economy not advantageous to the proletarian elite.

It would be interesting to know how much money the Fed has sucked out of the economy relative to the size of the stimulus package over a comparable period of time.

Credit should ease as the money supply inflates, but that hasn't been the case. Could it be that the money supply hasn't been allowed to inflate by the Fed despite the massive recent spending by Congress?

It's amazing how much power this privately owned non-federal, non-reserve organization has over the lifeblood of this nation, and how little we as a nation know or care about it.