The headline says it all: Bad Times Are a Boon For DC-Area Economy. For partisans of big government, the formula for success is time-tested: scare the pants off America. It worked on the president of the United States, who confessed that he abandoned his "free-market principles" once he was told the economic downturn "could be worse than the Great Depression." This may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the actual Great Depression was prolonged and deepened by the interventionism that was touted as the cure. Keep transferring money from hardworking Americans to federal bureaucrats and the recession may indeed become a depression. And then statists will point to the worsened economic situation as proof that centralization, bureaucracy, and intervention are needed now more than ever. That's the vicious cycle of liberalism. The lesson of this old trick, which worked on Bush with Iraq and with the bailouts, isn't lost on Barack Obama's incoming team. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel candidly professed to Wall Street Journal in November. "Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

Most people aren’t paying attention or do not take the time to be informed on issues that will effect their every day lives and/or long term futures. As in: Elections have consequences.

The MSM have done a good job conditioning those people to respond with sufficient hand-wringing whenever a mole hill becomes an imaginary mountain and considering that the MSM is a wing of the Democratic Party, the tactic dovetails nicely to help keep the populace off balance so that more money can be extracted from them in the form of greater taxes to help “solve” the “problem”.

The dumber and less informed people become, the better it works.

But what if there ain’t any problem? Really. Well then, manufacture one of course!

"This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." -- Emanuel

Like having the most expensive and extravagant inauguration events during an economic crisis than ever before...

Like chastising auto execs and challenging them to work for less when the congress wouldn't think of doing the same...

Like asking the American people to sacrifice as duty when our hardly even intimate let alone explicate how they will do the same on a personal level...

Yep, there's lots of opportunity.

That awkward line should have read...

Like asking the American people to sacrifice as a form of duty when our leaders hardly even intimate, let alone explicate, how they will do the same on a personal level...

I'm glad the "preview" button is an option.

"considering that the MSM is a wing of the Democratic Party"

you are so full of it.

Sorry horsey, but you're either not paying attention or numb. I would choose either.

"Many investors were surprised by the extent of the likely losses at Citigroup, which has already received $45 billion in government funds. Citi shares fell 17% and financial companies overall ended down 5%, at their lowest level since Dec. 1." - WSJ

No #$% Sherlock!

Maybe, just maybe, they should let the free market reign here and allow for these businesses to equalize by the natural progession of success or failure.

While there may in fact be "opportunities", the ability to actually do many of these things is lacking. The country already has a massive budget deficit. Sure the Government can turn on the printing presses and print more money but this only devalues the dollar even more. This would likely eventually lead to hyper inflation. Such a situation would likely lead to finanical hardships for Congressional members as well as the voting public. Sure Congressional pay and the Congressional pension plan is adjusted for inflation but it is likely they could not vote themselves raises fast enough to keep up with hyper inflation. As such, many of the more extravagent spending plans of the Obama Administration and the Liberals in Congress will not come to pass because they can't. The money is unavailable to afford these programs.

B. Poster: I had the exact same thought while thinking about this post. Then I came to the conclusion that the same argument could have been applied to just about every instance of government expansion over the last year, or even eight years. If the inability to pay didn't impede government expansion then, why would it suddenly do so now?

Dan,

Thanks for the reply to my post. I agree with you that the same arguments could have been applied previously but it did not impede government expansion. I think the differnece now is the massive national debt. I think it has pretty much doubled under the Bush Administration.

If we were looking at the kind of national debt we had at the end of the Clinton Administration or at other times in recent American history, I think the massive social programs envisioned by Mr. Obama and his allies may have been possible. With the current massive national debt I don't think it is possible. Maybe I'm wrong. Again, thanks for the reply to my post.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe once said that "The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation." Perhaps a more appropriate maxim is that the decline of readership indicates the decline of a nation, since perhaps if more people in government had read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged we might have avoided our current financial crisis.

"since perhaps if more people in government had read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged we might have avoided our current financial crisis."

Maybe Atlas did shrug, all the talented people with money just walked out, and the everyman has been left with a plummeting market and 401k. There's nothing we could do about it, and maybe it is for the better.

I never did like Rand however

People who are good at 'manipulating' money and markets do qualify as having talent. These are typically bright and driven people.

But consider that their quest is strictly for mo' money and they produce, really, zero.

They make money for themselves and sometimes others by shrewdly operating in the arena of monetary buys and sells but only use markets that are made up of real goods, services and commodity production to do it.

If they walked out tomorrow and the industrialists, inventors and service industry types remained to work toward the common good of society, who would miss them?

I think that they and politicians have much in common.

"If they walked out tomorrow and the industrialists, inventors and service industry types remained to work toward the common good of society, who would miss them?"

There is no research or innovation without money. There is no mining, logging, or drilling without money. There is no electricity without money. There is no industry for the industrialists to work in if there is no paycheck. Why should a server serve you lunch if you aren't going to pay for it?

Although investors may not appear talented, they are the backbone of our culture and innovative processes. They walked off because of greed, or self-preservation as Rand would call it. We depend on them, but they don't depend on us, as is demonstrated in the lack of capital in the market.