How Soon We Forget (cont.)

TW: This is the stuff that drives me batshit crazy. One, you have CNBC presenting only one side of an argument led by a Larry Kudlow/Arthur Laffer acolyte, Dennis Kneale, and his panelists. Two, they are headed down the path of Regulation=BAD, Wall Street And Unfettered Capitalism=Good. The world is just not that simple. As evidenced by our freaking economy just about imploding last fall (and it is still very stressed), yet the same acolytes who got us there are back to beating their same old tired drums of Regulation=BAD, Wall Street And Unfettered Capitalism=Good.

Wall Street can be good and it can be bad like the rest of us hence the need for nuance.

The Chamber of Commerce is about one thing, monied interests. It is the ultimate conservative (small c) entity. They oppose any and all regulation and government intervention until of course they need their asses pulled out of the fire like last fall. There is nothing wrong with folks like the Chamber pursuing their own interests but to hear a panelist describe them as "in the trenches doing real business" as if no one else does "real business" makes me want to puke. They are spending $100MM to make sure no reform takes place and no measures are taken to reduce the chances of another "Great Collapse of 2008" occurs. Your grandchildren will be reading about 2008 as a seminal economic event but these folks want to turn the page as if nothing happened.

From Economist:
"...This comment, though, from a CNBC panel on the Chamber of Commerce's new "pro-capitalism" ad campaign, is of the sillier New Deal revisionism.

'We've seen this movie before. During the Great Depression, FDR put in place the New Deal, and while it did a lot of good, there were massive tax hikes, there was onerous regulation and it killed the animal spirits of the economy.'

This is foolish on several levels. "Animal spirits" was, of course, the phrase John Keynes coined to describe why consumers put aside doubts "as a healthy man puts aside the expectation of death". You can say a lot about the White House's plans, but you can't say it's tamping down confidence or rejecting Keynsianism. And if the spirits were "killed", why hasn't America spent the ensuing 75 years wracked by depression? This gets at why the Chamber's prospective $100m campaign doesn't make much sense. Who's in the mood right now for rote defenses of capitalism and rote attacks on the New Deal?

The CNBC host wraps this segment by grumbling that "it's almost an oxymoron: regulation and smart", which explains why he buys his meat from the black market instead of in grocery stores. "