Some of my thoughts on the World News tonight on MSNBC:
David Petraeus replaced Stan McChrystal today, less than 48 hours after McChrystal criticized the President. What to say? Neat work for the president. He “nipped it in the bud.” Nice. If someone was telling me I was wrong, I’d nip it in the bud too. I can’t say it shows the President has good leadership qualities, it seems that most anyone would have done that. Perhaps it was to revive the sagging war enthusiasm in here in the States. It hasn’t made me feel any better though.
Housing numbers were down, a lot. I wonder why. Couldn’t be that any improvements were only superficial and now we get a peek into the reality of our economy, eh?
“No good news here in this poll for the White House.” 48% of Americans disapprove of the President’s actions. Hmmm…too bad they didn’t realize it before they voted for him. 45% of Americans what Republicans to control Congress. Ouch! I don’t know if we’d like that. It almost seems that the President is being portrayed as the Great Leader who has taken responsibility for the oil spill, has sacrificed his popularity, and has had the anger of the people imputed onto him. Yeah, okay. Kinda like a tragic Greek hero. On the other hand, perhaps he realizes that the government is responsible for the spill, because he read this article at Mises.org, and as the figurehead of the government, he is taking on all the blame. Just maybe.
300 passengers stranded on an airplane for hours with nothing, no lights, no water, nothing. I have a hard time believing this is the fault of the free market. How sad that this will be blamed on the free market instead of government intervention and red tape. People need to start thinking about what a real free market would be like, instead of mistaking this quasi-free, government-controlled economy as the real thing.
Concerning the housing prices, economics has given me greater understanding. I am so glad I looked into it. My wife and I were considering buying a house, and so many people I spoke to about it, including one of my broker friends, were discussing how it was unfortunate that I was missing out on the $8000 credit which expired in April. But then I told him that it was ok, because housing prices would just come back down, since subsidies cause prices of the subsidized commodities to fall. Sure enough, the house he was looking at to fell by approximately……. $8000. Surprise, surprise!
It really is sad to think of all the people who don’t understand economics and who go after these schemes, new houses, new cars, the whole thing, just because they don’t know basic economics.