On the Contrary

“I have a theory that if the economy keeps tanking, the middle is going to get a lot more capitalist and get very angry.”  This was Chris Mathews on Thursday and all I could think of is the man is an idiot.  He, like the rest of the panicking hoards watching the Dow continue to drop, want instantaneous results on the economy (See It’s My Money and I Want It Now).  They still don’t want to understand that problems we face have been building up for 30 years, there are massive bad debts and over valued equity in the system, and the only way out is a slow deflation of our economy (we had better hope it is slow).

What most amazes me about his idea is that those capitalist policies that he thinks people will lean more toward are the same capitalist policies that Herbert, Let Them Fail, Hoover put in place in 1930 and ran unemployment up to 25%.  The idea of withdrawing and letting many of these banks and industries fail has a real chance of destroying our economy.  Hopefully, he has this exactly wrong, which would not be that uncommon for Mathews.  He has a tendency to run populist anarchist, meaning he reacts to how someone or something looks and overreacts emotionally instead of rational consideration of an issue (form over substance).

But what gives me hope is that Jon Stewart in his wonderful way of using humor to point out the inconsistency and illogic of the conventional wisdom.  He first took on the Economic pundits on CNBC in this wonderful piece on how their advice is the last thing you want to be listening to:

Then he got tired of listening to the moronic idea that the DOW reflects instantaneously whether the economic moves of the Obama administration are the correct ones: