Dick Armey Is Full of Shit

That Dick Armey is full of shit should not be a news flash to anyone. If you do not know who Mr. Armey is (and the extent with which he is a shit containing vessel), I would argue you need to be better informed.

Anyway, I wanted to address a quote from Mr. Armey on Meet The Press this past weekend where he was (sort of) debating lame duck Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm.

Mr. Armey had this to say:

I'll give you anywhere from a minimum of $2T to a possible $8T worth of real stimulus to the economy from the private sector if we can just relieve the private sector that's sitting on it's cash from the fear that this administration is going to screw up the future of this economy.

This gives me yet another chance to post this link from Mr. Barry Ritholtz and also this well written blog post from Furriners.

According to the Total Liquid Assets graph in the Ritholtz post, there is just over $1.8T of cash on the balance sheets of America's 500 largest nonfinancial companies. I am guessing that is where Mr. Armey is getting his suggestion that "a minimum of $2T" of stimulus could be given to the economy if not for Obama's policies. The problem is that the graph shows that the balance had already risen to over $1.4T as early as 2005! And that was when the economy seemed to be doing okay (and it was - provided you were already very wealthy).

While there may be a small kernel of truth to the private sector having some concerns about the implications of so-called ObamaCare, Mr. Armey has no interest in having an intelligent discussion of policy. Instead, he chooses inflammatory rhetoric with no legitimate factual basis. He is a partisan hack only concerned about his own self-interests (read: he is full of shit).