Stop! Could We Just Stop?

"Stop!  Could we just stop?"

Sometimes I feel like Stan Marsh of South Park when he gets fed up with the ridiculous behavior engendered by the storyline, and puts his foot down, rhetorically.

Right now I'm just about fed up with G. Gordon Liddy and his doom and gloom advertisements endorsing investment in Gold.  If you hated Liddy during the Nixon administration, just wait 'til get a load of him now.  He's a one-man confidence undermining operation, and the armies of emailers are sometimes unwitting accomplices. I receive an endless stream of emails from well-meaning people about the upcoming End of the American Era, and Collapse of the World Economy, citing "signs and portents", calamity and catastrophe, and prognosticating the End of Times. 

Folks, an important part of our economy is confidence.  After all, money is just paper.   Nobody is saying it loudly, but we are in Deflation.  The price of oil is rising because the price is dollar-denominated and our dollar is deflating.  That's why other prices are rising.  It isn't inflation, it's deflation.  That said, the entire situation can be turned around with judicious action by our Congress, led by a coalition of Senators or by the White House. 

Right now, the U.S. Treasury is being funded by the actions of the Federal Reserve Bank.  Quantitative Easing is the euphemism.  The Fed lent 3 trillion dollars to someone.  They can only lend money they have, and since they don't have it, they print it.  3 trillion is apparantly the quantity in quantitave.  The Easing part is much easier to understand.  They are Easing it out of our pockets in the form of deflation. 

We need to cut government spending on everything.  We need to encourage rich people to spend their money, rather than hoard it in Gold, T-bills and commodity futures.  We need to take a little more tax money from everybody who can afford it.  Yes, that means people making "less than $250 thousand a year." who are imagined to be "not rich."  Plea-yuz!  Only 5% make more than 100 thousand.  If the top 5% of earners in our economy are not rich, then who is?  Only Bill Gates and Warren Buffett?  They haven't got 2 trillion dollars between them, so fuggedaboutit.

No politicians have been laid off in the making of this movie.  Washington is doing fine.  Staffs are bigger than ever.  Agencies are bigger than ever.  There is no sense of urgency except in the usual struggle for political power, that is, the next election.

We need a Constitutional Amendment  to lay off Congressmen.  The census-driven apportionment of the House should have an economic component to expand or contract the House based on the national economic outlook.  The size of the House was set at 435 in 1929.  It's time to let it be more directly representational.  In the beginning, the a Congressman was to represent no more than 30,000 citizens.  If we had that ratio today, the House would have about 10,000 members.  That is a little big, but they should have no problem with 1000 to 2000 members.  With a larger House, we could have smaller staffs, as the workload is lessened.  The Constitution says nothing about a staff 20 times the size of the House.   The House has around 8700 staffers who get salaries from $30K to $90K with benefits.  Lobbyists would have to convince more politicians.  It would raise the total price of bribes, excuse me, campaign donations. 

In addition, we could follow NH in paying only a token salary to our representatives, rather than the $165K we pay them now.  Congress spends $4.9 BILLION just running the business.  How much of that 4.9 billion is spent on foam-backed presentation posters?  Did you ever have something mounted on foam?  It costs a fortune.  These guys are posting a couple of hundred of these things a week.  Have they not heard of PowerPoint?  Is it too undignified for the floor of the House? Heck, the whole NYSE only costs $1.6 billion to operate, and they make a profit.  

Of course, Congress's $4.9 billion dollar budget pales when compared to the total budget of $2.2 trillion they appropriate for the President to administer. 

So how do we get rich people to spend their money?  Do we give them rebates?  How about an "Adopt an Entitlee" program?  Throw in a Ford for the Poor with every luxury car sale?  Threaten to send them to Libya?

Confidence, that's how.  Increased confidence will make the rich spend.  Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. That's the spirit we want, not this save it for a rainy day crap.

Now, if we can only convince the Chinese to spend their money.  After all, they are the rich ones now.  Maybe we could tax them,