Conservatives have been trying to blame Obama for the market drop ever since he won the election. What a shock, right?
Neil Cavuto and Ben Stein got into a screaming match over the state of the economy after the bailout Saturday morning on Fox's Cavuto for Business. I've never seen them go at it like that before. It started immediately when Cavuto opened up the segment by saying we've spent 2 trillion dollars so far to fix the problem, which is patently false, and Stein called him out on it. (rough transcript.)
Stein: The $2 trillion dollar number you cited at the beginning is a completely made up number, I don't know where you got it from.
We asked, no, no no Ben.,..
Cavuto: What do you think it is?
Stein: Closer to $300 billion...
Cavuto: Oh, no, no, no, Ben I gotta stop you there...
Stein: Could I answer your question?
Cavuto: When you are supporting one institution after the other ...
Stein: You are doing the classic post hoc ergo prop drop fallacy. You may as well say because there was a World Series, the market dropped 4000 points. The Federal government has to stabilize this economy.
Cavuto: No it doesn't, Ben. No, no, and by the way, we were pre-hocking on this ...
Stein: The Federal government is the only one that can stabilize this economy.
Cavuto: It is a slippery slope Ben...
Stein: Then otherwise we fall into a great depression. Maybe not a problem for you, but a problem for everybody else.
Cavuto: Oh, stop the nonsense.
Stein: It isn't nonsense.
Cavuto: Where do you draw the nonsensical line.
Stein: We go in for as much Federal stimulus as it takes keep us out of a great depression. That is basic common sense ... We need to bail out the auto companies, we need to have a massive stimulus package. This economy is about to fall off a cliff. We need major stimulus.
Cavuto attacks Pelosi too....And it goes on from there. There is great fear among economists whenever they get honest. It's no joke. Obama has inherited a nightmare. Just so you know, Cavuto was yelling at McCain's people when they tried to play with the bailout, so he has no credibility when it comes to crying about things now.
Ben Stein favors the Paul Krugman plan or if I may say, the Keynesian approach to the depression-like state of our economy. He believes, as do a lot of us, that Obama should not hold back government spending at all and help rescue the auto industry, or Armageddon will befall us. It really is that simple. And when these Conservatives talk about letting actual cities go bankrupt, well, they are insane. And many of them like Steve Forbes, who is in that camp, can just move to another city. They really want to see things get worse in our country to help Republicans...
