{"id":195378,"date":"2008-07-13T23:03:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-14T04:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/13\/amity-shlaes-is-an-idiot\/"},"modified":"2008-07-13T23:03:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-14T04:03:00","slug":"amity-shlaes-is-an-idiot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/13\/amity-shlaes-is-an-idiot\/","title":{"rendered":"Amity Shlaes is an Idiot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I have <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2007\/11\/i-wish-that-i-were-right-wing-moron.html\">blogged before<\/a>, Amity Shlaes is a complete pratt, which explains why this was published in the craptacular <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Washington Post<\/span> OP\/ED pages. <\/p>\n<p>I have no clue as to her basic level of intellect, she could simply be <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">that<\/span> stupid, or be paid to say these things, but in either case, the effect is the same, that I would not trust her with any implement sharper than a bowling ball.<\/p>\n<p>In this case, she is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/07\/11\/AR2008071102543.html?hpid=opinionsbox1\">offering a full throated defense of Phil Gramm&#8217;s calling the US a nation of whiners<\/a>, because people are worrying about the recession.<\/p>\n<p>She offers a number of defenses:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>That there is no recession because GDP grew in the last quarter measured.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Wrong when inflation is put in the measure, even the bogus core CPI that is used.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>That Phil Gramm subsequently said that he meant only politicians.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Again, disengenous at best, he said nation of whiners, and Gramm would never miss an opportunity to go after the now Democratic controlled Congress.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>She claims because people who lost their homes during the depression had only borrowed 10% of their home purchase, while people now borrowed more than 90% of that price.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Again, losing a home is losing a home, and the increased level of leverage is an artifact increases in the price of a home which have been driven upward by policies to &#8220;increase home ownership&#8221;.  <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Losing your home is losing your home<\/span>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Claiming that unemployment is still at historic lows when anyone who studies unemployment knows that the U3 numbers has been massaged over the past 30 years to near statistical worthlessness.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, as a wingnut, I would expect her to ignore that many of these problems came from legislation that was proposed by Gramm, so her ignoring the context, that the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">architect<\/span> of the policies that created this crisis is complaining that we are &#8220;whining&#8221; about the economy, is part of her job description.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I have blogged before, Amity Shlaes is a complete pratt, which explains why this was published in the craptacular Washington Post OP\/ED pages. I have no clue as to her basic level of intellect, she could simply be that stupid, or be paid to say these things, but in either case, the effect is &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,982,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-stupid","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}