The Other McCain

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Santelli To Liesman: You Can’t Drink Yourself To Sobriety

Posted on | April 14, 2012 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

The title is a summary of Santelli’s point here:

Santelli points out that there is no way to keep Zimbabwe Ben from quaffing away at his bottle of Jethro’s 120 Proof Market Fixer-Upper And Hinge Lubricant. Liesman asks, metaphorically, what else Zimbabwe Ben should drink, and Santelli repeats that the market is going to take the bottle away.

Liesman seems incapable of grasping that there is any market left to force this turn of events.

Santelli’s facial expression seems to convey the dismay of being the only sane man on the show.

via Charliemax on Twitter

Update: linked at Sentry Journal

Category: Weimar America

Comments

6 Responses to “Santelli To Liesman: You Can’t Drink Yourself To Sobriety”

  1. Dandapani
    April 14th, 2012 @ 10:01 pm

    “I don’t believe in policy, I believe in markets, I don’t believe human hubris is smarter than aggregate personality.”  

    Amen.

  2. Adobe_Walls
    April 14th, 2012 @ 11:40 pm

    They just can’t comprehend that any forces exist outside of the government. When Santelli says that the fed will be forced to stop doing something they immediately congress and/or the WH. And this is a financial network! We are so boned.

  3. Adjoran
    April 15th, 2012 @ 3:32 am

    Santelli didn’t say the government or policy couldn’t stop it, he said he didn’t believe in it – I took that to mean more narrowly that he knows government isn’t going to try.  Obama and the Democrats are in enough trouble already, they would never go along with even closer scrutiny of the scheme that might panic the markets.  Republicans know they can’t force anything through on their own, and are afraid of being blamed for panicking the markets if they push the issue.

    But the markets will eventually figure it out, because that is what markets do:  they are the quintessential real-time self-correcting pricing machines.

    The Bernanke Bubble Scheme boils down to this:  at near-zero interest, it is relatively easy to hide obligations’ potential debt service costs.  In other words, they inflate the hell out of the currency by buying up federal debt paper with money that does not exist, and keep it all in Al Gore’s old Lock Box so nobody is the wiser.

    The Social Security “investment for retirement” scam has managed a good while, but it had the dual advantage over the traditional Ponzi scheme of being able to compel participation and owning the cops.  Bernanke depends on our credit rating staying close to golden so interest rates don’t rise – because if they go up even a couple of points, he has no way to service the debt he’s holding now, and at that point trying to keep the scheme going would panic the market.

    The only way to avert this pending disaster is for the federal government to go on a crash diet – the Ryan plan is a good down payment which will stave on credit downgrades for a couple of years, but more cuts are clearly needed beyond it, and soon.  This can only happen with a Republican Congress and White House  AND a willingness to take the political risks of enforcing austerity.

    IF that depended on all the Republicans having the political courage to do the right thing, I wouldn’t bet on it.  BUT the difference this time is our backs are really up against the wall, there is no way except the Ryan plan to kick the can down the road even a short distance, and there will be economic pain and wailing no matter which course they choose.  So, given no easy way out, I expect the GOP will opt for the only tough solution that has a chance of succeeding even in the short term.

  4. Laurence
    April 15th, 2012 @ 4:30 am

    As Europe is already discovering and we will soon become painfully aware of, their central banks and / or our Fed can only keep interest rates artificially low for so long.   Most economists are fixated with their formulas and have lost sight of the reality that those formulas were designed to portray.

  5. vermontaigne
    April 15th, 2012 @ 12:51 pm

    Oh, Santelli believes in change, all right. Just don’t invest in hope.

  6. Teeing it up: A Round at the LINKs (The ‘Buffett Rule’ edition) | SENTRY JOURNAL
    April 15th, 2012 @ 6:18 pm

    […] THE OTHER McCAIN: Santelli To Liesman: You Can’t Drink Yourself To Sobriety […]