All I See

Mr. Obama yesterday signed into law the extension of another two months of federal unemployment benefits. This will cost another $20,000,000,000 and will be funded through another round of borrowing.

We could argue all day long about whether we should continue these extensions, both sides have merit, but all I see is that we are borrowing to bail out a symptom of previous borrowing, namely high unemployment.

I see serious consequences for loan modifications and the like, if only because we are artificially trying to keep the housing market elevated above where it would be if we hadn't done anything, and where I see it going to go regardless. All I see is that we are borrowing to bail out a symptom of previous borrowing, namely the housing bubble.

Tell me...what's going to happen on June 15th if the next re-re-re-re-re-re-extension of unemployment benefits doesn't come to pass? What's going to happen to all that effort, time, and expense in processing thousands of loan modifications if housal unit values drop by another 10%? Will people be looking to re-re-modify their loans? All I see is that we are borrowing to forestall the symptom of previous borrowing, namely a depression.

On the radio yesterday I heard an economic commentator saying that the threat of a double dip (or any ongoing) recession is already behind us and that we are emerging from a V-shaped recession. We are on the / instead of the \, he says.

You could perhaps understand my contemptuous longing for a depression not because of the pain and hardship it would bring. I know it would suck, and it would suck even for those who are themselves employed and who carry low debts, but I want it for the prospect of what it would provide afterwards. We might become a stronger nation IMO. We might not sacrifice the future for the present. We might build places to live worth caring about, unlike my Elk Grove whose future expansion southward is predicated on the continuation of cheap foreign energy and the prosecution of foreign wars to support that importation. My feeling is that after a depression we'd likely jettison many of the habits and the conditioning that led to such piss-poor, anti-social, energy intensive living arrangements. If we are indeed on the backwards slope of that V, then we will have learned absolutely nothing, we will resume our southward blowout here in Elk Grove, and we will stick around waiting for the next bubble(s) and government bailout(s) while remaining in perpetual debt servitude.