Credit cycle catching up to business cycle?

[Splashdown]

This morning on the way to work, I was listening to a Saturday morning investment show. The guy is pretty good, and he is by no means a moonbat. His gist this morning was that the current slump in the stock market is not the regular cyclical thing. It is basically the endpoint of the postwar economy, because of the mountain of credit businesses and people have been living off of and using since the 1940s, when government put into place the GI bill and made capital cheap to build neighborhoods.

He said we haven't put anything into our "infrastructure" in about 20 years, so our economy has nothing really to grow on. His big point was that it will take more than simple tax cuts an economic stimuli packages to get us moving again. All in all, some of the stuff he was talking about was pretty scary.

So that got me to thinking. If the feds were to free up places to drill for oil in ANWR and those giant shale deposits in Utah, if they allowed drilling off the Florida coast, if they allowed more oil refineries to be built, and if they allowed nuclear power plants to be constructed, wouldn't this lead to yet another economic boom that we could ride for another 50 years or so?

Good jobs, good money, a booming economy and economic growth at the cost of some slight discomfort to the porcupine caribou and a spotted owl or two. Hmmmmm.

Ok. Where am I wrong here?

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

It depends on what he means by infrastructure.

If he means interstate roads, etc so commerce can move freely then he'd be  basically right.

If he means--for example--gov't investment in the tech sector, he'd be wrong because the gov't is a poor judge of what the tech sector would need or even if the tech sector is the best place to invest. That's the market's job.

Our current economic slump is primarily brought on by piss-poor credit lending decisions. Back when rates were low people wanted to borrow so the banks fabricated reasons to loan money to people they shouldn't have. Perhaps this is an unintended consequence of Greenspan's monetary policy. His essential theory seems sound and he cannot be blamed for banks ignoring their own rules but the low rates used to bolster the economy of the 1990's and 2000's induced this situation.