Costanza Can't Stand Ya pass the chips

I can’t help but think that Seinfeld is once again representative of life.  As our economy perilously hangs close to falling back into recession, the famous Season 4 episode “The Implant” comes to mind:
Timmy:                        What are you doing?
George Costanza:   What?
Timmy:                        Did, did you just double dip that chip?
George Costanza:   Excuse me?
Timmy:                        You double dipped a chip!
George Costanza:   Double dipped? What, what, what are you talking about?
Timmy:                        You dipped a chip. You took a bite. And you dipped again.
George Costanza:   So?
Timmy:                        That's like putting your whole mouth right in the dip. From now on, when you take a chip, just take one dip and end it.
George Costanza:   Well, I'm sorry, Timmy, but I don't dip that way.
Timmy:                        Oh, you don't, huh?
George Costanza:   You dip the way you want to dip. I'll dip the way I want to dip.
Timmy:                        Gimme the chip!

Robin Harding in today’s Financial Times shed some much needed light on the recent deficit reduction/debt ceiling rising compromise.  For instance, the discretionary spending cap for 2012 amounts to only $25billion on $1,043billion amounts to a whopping 2.3%.  I doubt that amount of spending cut will truly inhibit job growth or decrease our debt.  Did you know that 2/3’s of the total spending cuts occur 2017-2021, and 1/3 will occur over the next five years?  In other words, it will be up to future congresses to make the tough cuts.  Who knows where our economy, our political landscape, and the global picture will be in six months, let alone six months.  In other words our big deal wouldn’t even make Carol Merrill show us what’s under the box.  As Harding concluded: “The long-term deficit, meanwhile, will have to be addressed in terms of the factors that truly influence it: tax revenues and spending on health and support for an ageing population.  For all the sound and fury, the real fiscal argument in Washington has barely begun.”

If what the pundits tell us is true, that American businesses are not hiring because of regulatory uncertainty, who is to blame?  Healthcare reform and financial reform were already passed and the only uncertainty is whether Republicans will continue to push for out and out repeal or simply defund the new regulations.  As for tax reform, all parties agree that flattening the code is necessary and the only reason why it hasn’t moved further is special interests are jockeying to make sure their clients aren’t adversely affected by any changes.  So the uncertainty is coming from the very people who blame uncertainty.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Secular American Jew and a Love for Israel

As many of you know, I have dedicated many postings to the State of Israel on a range of topics including: it’s history, the present day government, the Jewish-Palestinian question, and the region in general.   Growing up in a liberal conservative Jewish household (the oxymoron is quite common as American Jews were almost exclusively political liberals and the conservative branch of Judaism the most common) and attending Hebrew school as a kid you obviously build an affinity for the State of Israel.   I do not remember the Six-Day War of 1967, but I have vivid memories of celebrating Israel’s 25 th anniversary in 1973 and the Yom Kippur War later that year.   As a ten year old attending Yom Kippur services I saw the worried looks on my parents and the other adults at the shul as members of the congregation would periodically step outside to get news reports from car radios and transistor radios (We still drove and used electrical appliances during the high holidays, though several fam
Read more

September 10, 2001 was a Monday

Where were you on September 10, 2001?   What were you worried about?   What occupied your thoughts, worries, hopes, and dreams?   What were you excited about?   What were you interested in? September 10, 2001 was a Monday. Cindy and I were still laughing about the recent visit from the Three Amigas: Leah, Roseanne, and Valerie, and the adventures of Sedona, a certain screen door, a forgotten carrot cake, and breakfast for champions.   We were also dealing with a 1995 Chevy Blazer that seemed to be on its last legs, surviving our first Arizona summer, thinking about what to remodel in the house, dealing with the concept of a Home Owners Association, thinking that my best shot at a World Series game maybe with the fledgling Arizona Diamondbacks, and looking forward to a visit from Scott, Lori, and the boys. But what about America?   We knew nothing about a tiny town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville; Guantanamo Bay was the setting for A Few Good Men, and we still taped shows and listene
Read more

Sunni and Shia: So who are the bad guys again?

Baby faces vs. heals?   Cowboys vs Indians?   Good guy always where the white hat.   “Dig is he a good guy or bad guy?”   Bad guys always, looked, well, bad. You’re either with us or you’re against us.   Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are the axis of evil. Americans, for the most part, have a pretty simple outlook on conflict: just tell us who the bad guys are and we’ll know who to root against.   We tend to lump similar races and peoples into larger buckets, mostly due to the media’s inclination to treat us like potential Jeff Foxworthy competitors.   But the world is anything but simple and as I have written previously, the Middle East is as confusing and confounding place as you can find.   During the Iran and Iraq war of the 1980’s most Americans took the position that “…as long as they kill each other, I’m good.”   When civil war ravaged Afghanistan, we joined the side of the Mujahedeen because they were fighting the Soviets and the Soviets were our archenemy, a position they occupie
Read more