This is the letter I sent to The Examiner on Sheppard’s article "What we have to fear is politicians peddling fear" of March 12. I am grateful to The Examiner for all the letters it has published me despite my very different point of view but, in case this time The Examiner does not publish my letter, I wanted to share it with you anyway
Dear Sirs:
It’s true that a 3.2% increase of the GDP may be too optimistic for 2010 but it is infantile to accuse Obama of being overoptimistic on one side and of spreading terror on the other and his parallels with the Russian Revolution and the Nazi Germany are delirious and revealing of a profound ignorance. Lenin overthrew not a capitalist democracy but a monarchy in a feudal economy and Hitler’s main tool was not financial security but the hardships and humiliation created by the Treaty of Versailles, to which Wilson opposed.
Actually it would be irresponsible to hide the terrible situation in which Bush left the economy. It’s true that the deregulation of the financial system comes from the Reagan era but the shrinking of supervision budgets and the appointment of lobbyists as regulators made possible, from FDA to EPA, from Labor to SEC, the environment that made possible the lowest correlation between Real GDP and the Dow in the last 50 years. This is the period in which the prices of stocks began to reflect the short-term goals of many well-connected executives more than the value of the companies; in which the unregulated credit default swaps jumped from $900 billion to more than $45.5 trillion; in which Paulson moved from lobbyist for increasing the leverage of investment banks from 12:1 to 50:1 to Secretary of the Treasury: Madoff’s heaven.
It’s not surprising that Sheppard, who recommends tax cuts based on his economic principle of "the desire to head to the mall," ignores that it is uncertainty what is at the core of recessive markets. Obama will later have to sterilize some of the stimulus monies in order to achieve a sustainable savings rate. This will mean a modest growth to compensate the overindebtedness of the Bush years but life is not fair. The Republicans who clapped Bush’s wild fiscal party now decry Obama’s 2% plan for repairs and caricaturize every foreclosed homeowner for the excesses of some but demand no accountability from their campaign contributors who ripped hard working Americans’ wealth.
Reading you,
Alfredo M. Bravo de Rueda E.
Gaithersburg, Maryland