Wake Up Maggie

This time historical whimsy might be on our side. Bill Clinton walked serendipitously smack dab into the biggest technological bull market in world history and then retroactively claimed his policies and higher taxes on the rich triggered that economically beneficent time. Now, after two dark Decession years, the economy is poised for a rebound and with the return of the Republicans to power in the House and perhaps the Senate, the stupid party might similarly reap the rewards of that same whimsical historical mistress as the mere fact of their being elected and the predictable resulting modest restraints on spending get credit for the next recovery. The voters might, if we get real lucky, attribute the coming recovery, however anemic, to divided government and realize that, similarly, it was the Republican congress from 1994 'til 2000 juxtaposed with a Democratic president, and the resulting legislative gridlock then, that supplied the lack of magic ingredients for that prosperous period. But, it would clearly be too much to hope for, that the supermajority of voters will ever make the ultimate connection that gridlock is good because government can’t really do anything major to help the economy in the first place and the less they do, the better off economically we all are – that government tinkering and programs really have next to nothing to do with creating overall economic prosperity – that for every good thing they can impose or create, an equal or greater bad thing occurs – that succinctly, the government that governs least governs best.

Sadly, it may be that government and the deficit are just too damn big now for gridlock to work by itself and it will be necessary to roll back government spending in proportion to GNP for the mojo to escape from the the bottle; a daunting proposition. Government’s effete efforts to stimulate a recovery with Keynsian shovel-ready spending obviously can’t work with debt levels as high as they are. Every borrowed stimulus dollar clumsily spent is a dollar that will not only have to be repaid with more borrowed money but money, more than likely, borrowed at a higher interest rate. We’ll be paying more to refill the hole than it cost to dig the hole. Or to phrase that in Obamaspeak, 'It will cost more to refuel the bus with green gas than it cost to fill it.' Or, ‘You business folk gonna have to ride in the back of the bus now while we drive!’ But then again, they don’t teach at Harvard Law that in the real world the drivers of the economic recovery bus are those that know that a better way is, and has always been, a cheaper way... a more efficient way. Or, in Taylorspeak, 'If you want to drive the big bus daddy, you first better pass driver's ed at a vocational school* that doesn't get any government subsidies, vis a vis, the school of hard knocks, aka, the free market.'

*Where's our Margaret Thatcher? Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you. It's early November and time to send the demos back to school.

M.D.T.