The President stepped on a bug! OH NOES!

[Hyraxylos]

So I've not been online much lately. But I've been occupied with my classes which have now wound down completely. One of those was Game Simulation Programming 380, an absolutely fascinating class covering DirectX and OpenGL, both crucial for producing video games. The other was Economics 312, which covers one of the most confusing and eye-glaze-inducing subjects known to humanity. I finished the latter with an A, and I feel like I've just about doubled my knowledge of economics since taking the class. Along the way, I've learned a lot more about the mess that America (and, by association, Europe and China as well) is in right now. Which brings me to my latest angry rant.

I can't believe that I'm actually stepping in to DEFEND the United States Government now, based on something really irritating me among the American populace about the economic recession. Nobody wants to shut up about President Obama for even two seconds. Here's a sample of the nonsense that I'm seeing.
Memo to Obama: Scolding Never Works
It addresses that the President recently put pressure upon bankers to start giving out loans, and claims that was wrong of him. Now, I won't go into the painful details of financial circulation in society, but I'll just say that banks are, indeed, at fault for the present stage of the recession in America, because they won't give out loans. Everything is hinging upon our banks doing their job properly and lending money out to small businesses again like they're supposed to, and both the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are doing everything in their power to help motivate them to do that. Now, since banks aren't doing their job, and since government can't (and SHOULDN'T!) just step in and take over the banks in order to FORCE them to give out loans, what else is there to do? Simple: all there is is to remind banks of what needs to happen and why, which is what the President did.
The article I linked does not address any of this though, and doesn't say why what he did was wrong or what he should have done. What it does instead is say that it was the wrong thing to do on the "basis" of previous cases of past US Presidents stepping in on issues and making mistakes, to the extent they even did make mistakes. And it doesn't even talk about how the things older presidents did were wrong either; it just gives out a dumb list that makes no proper attribution. So in summary of what this is:

1. The article shies away from its own main point and sets up a straw man.
2. The article decides not to go after its own straw man either, and instead sets up another straw man FOR the straw man.
3. The article tries to knock down THAT straw man and fails.
4. People applaud it and attack anyone who calls the article out for its faults.

That last part is the worst of all. Of course it's unreasonable of me to expect any differently given that the intended audience isn't going to question something that's templated in a professional-looking way, but "criticisms" like these are unfortunately all over the place. I honestly just wish people would shut up about the government while talking about the recession, or failing that, give out some actual solid attribution for how the government or the President is at fault rather than the banks or businesses.
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[SkieFireYokana]

Hear, hear. Hehe.

But of course, people who know me realize I won't be satisfied with that. No, I'm going to play devil's advocate and argue against my own position for my amusement. Yay me. :3

Okay, so let's see here... banks need to give out loans to small businesses. Okay, I'm with you so far, I can sort of grasp how that's a problem. Not an economics major, but I assume you might be, and if not you're certainly knowledgeable, so I'll take your word for it. Banks need to give out loans to small businesses.

Next... Obama can't, and shouldn't, step in to take control of the banks to make them give out loans. Well, I suppose if you insist... I do like to think that it would solve the problem, though. It just has a high probability of bringing another problem down on all our heads.

So the only thing left to do is to remind them they need to do that.

... Wait, what? No, no, no. No, that's not the only thing left to do. Not an economics major, but maybe Obama could redirect some tax money--from the people, that's where tax comes from, I might add--into creating some actual loans for small businesses? I don't know if it's necessary for banks to be the ones giving out these loans to small businesses, but it wouldn't make sense to me if it is. Government gives money to small businesses. Small businesses start to make more money again. Small businesses pay their taxes. Small businesses pay their loans. Government gains money in the long run--we can always just, I don't know, stick it in the military if we have too much of the stuff.... like that'll ever happen, with our three trillion debit....--and small businesses gain money in the long run. Doubtless there's a flaw here somewhere. Maybe it's that the banks would collapse or something. Well, they aren't doing their job. If the government started giving out loans, then maybe they'd realize "Hey, wait a second, Obama's taking our jobs!" and they'd actually start to give out loans again. Tentatively, maybe, but eventually fewer people would go to the government for their loans than do go to banks. Government can cease giving out loans, banks would fill the gap, and those who still owe the government would pay them back. No problems, at least not as far as I can tell. Now I'll let someone who actually knows what they're talking about tell me where I screwed up here.
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Happy Fourth of July everybody! The funniest thing about this signature is that I wrote it on the fourth of July, 2010, and it's probably going to be here for several months.

[CB]

You know honestly I hate how people complain about Obama in general. How much power do you think he actually has? Not that much, he is just a figurehead. People just blame him because he's an easier target to hit; if you try and ridicule the government in general you just come off as a complainer. In the 80's and 90's it would get you labelled as a socialist.
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