Open Thread

Arkady, I missed the part where you were out, but I’m glad you’re back and on the mend. Sending good thoughts your way.

It may come as a surprise to some of you but this country is not NYC. There are millions of people in this country who do not have mutual funds, do not have civil service jobs, pampered or otherwise, who make up the bulk of the middle class population of this country who are really suffering. Suffering far worse than we are here. To say nothing of the poor, who aren’t even factored into the economic equation, but are also citizens of this country in need of jobs, homes and services. You guys may have lost some money in your portfolios, but your lifestyle hasn’t been impacted by this crisis, you can still do what you want, still get done what you need to do. You can still go to restaurants when you choose, still take vacations, get repairs done to your homes, and you have jobs.

And that’s all great, more power to you, but sorry, you have no clue as to what it’s like for people who aren’t you. People who aren’t as educated, as smart perhaps, or didn’t choose careers in fields that have been spared the ax for one reason or another. The rest of us are looking for our gov’t to do what it can to jumpstart the economy. Maybe that’s not posssible. It’s certainly NOT possible by extending tax breaks to the rich. Our programs may be bloated, but they are bloated by politicians of both parties who are trying to help their constituents. Not saying that makes it right, but it is at least understandable.

I don’t know how to fix it, other than to make it possible for companies to start hiring, for start ups to actually start up, farms produce, teachers teach. Make America self sufficient, producing its own goods again. If companies can’t or won’t do that, we’re never going to recover. That kind of massive effort takes a master plan with teeth. Government is the only entity that can do that, sad but true.

Arkady, it’s great to hear that you’re recovering. Welcome back and get very well very soon.

Yea, arkady! Glad you are home and recuperating.

As for legislation page counts — I imagine a bunch of those pages derive from lots of industry lobbyist requests for little legal curlicues that help their clients. Yes, we live in a world with lots of statutes and regulations and, for a new significant law to have its intended effect, its interaction with all of those existing laws and regs requires drafting. Not to mention even a minor change in definition can have all kinds of unintended consequences if you don’t put bandaids around in the existing laws. It takes a lot of text just to make sure a new law doesn’t do what it is not supposed to.

So no, I don’t find anything wrong with a complex financial industry bill being exponentially longer than,say, the due process clause.

DIBS — ideology and debate aside, what is your sense of what the market has priced in with respect to the expiring tax cuts. All extended? All repealed? Some mixture?

Tyur6, in the middle ages, they tried the “no growth” experiment. Let’s just return to that.