Keynesian Economics Does Not Work

[Bush92]

Obama s stimulus package 5 years later Dems defend Republicans ridicule - Washington Times
When are liberals going to understand that spending taxpayers money on public works projects is not the answer to our economy. These are short term boondoggles that go to Congressional districts where senior Democrats have the seat. Conservatives, however, must get off the income tax cut trip that they are on. We do not manufacture big ticket items in America anymore. If an individual gets a tax rebate and goes out and buys a washing machine, refrigerator, microwave, television, computer, etc. it stimulates the Chinese economy when factory orders go up. JFK's tax cut of 1962 was a success because orders went up for American factories due to the fact these big ticket consumer items were manufactured in the USA.

With all due respect, Bush92...saying that Keynesian Economic Theory doesn't work based on what politicians have done WITH that theory isn't fair to John Maynard Keynes!

What Keynes advocated was spending by government in economic slowdowns to stimulate economic growth but what he also advocated was raising taxes to pay back the debt that would create during economic surges.

Unfortunately our politicians spend vast sums of money during economic slowdowns but then do nothing to pay down that debt during economic booms...choosing instead to spend all of the increased revenues coming in from such a boom on more government programs. Keynes would have been horrified by what has been done with "his" theory!

But is government stimulus ever needed under a true capitalist model?

 

[LoneLaugher]

Anyone that thinks there's a perfect theory really needs to go back to playing monopoly or knitting.

You have to look at which is the lessor of the evils instead of all or nothing, black and white.

Well....you are sounding very professorial. The depth with which you approach this topic is startling.

 

[Oldstyle]

Not really but we do know what did happen.

Before you post it, your come back will be, it prevented a depression. Which is just a guess, just as it would be a guess to say what would happen without the stimulus.

The entire theory for enacting the stimulus was what happened in 1929 when the stock market crash similar to 2008. The (GOP) government did nothing and just let things work themselves out on their own ("the market will adjust"). There was no stimulus, no government actions...nothing.

Guess what happened? The depression got much...MUCH....worse...the economy went from being bad to totally falling off a cliff. It led to the 1932 elections with Democrats taking over the government and the peak of the depression didn't occur until 1933...a full four years after it started.

So yeah....we kinda have a good idea what would've happened without stimulus. The central government was the ONLY creditable name out there to get money flowing...it had to take action, and it did.

Saying that the Government did "nothing" is not exactly correct, Nyvin...one of the things they "did" was enact the Smoot Hawley Tariff...an example of well intentioned legislation that had the opposite effect than was intended.

 

[LoneLaugher]

I agree with Bush92 but occupied matches reality.

I'm sorry........what?

Are you admitting to ditching reality in favor of an argument that does not match reality?

 

[Oldstyle]

Obama s stimulus package 5 years later Dems defend Republicans ridicule - Washington Times
When are liberals going to understand that spending taxpayers money on public works projects is not the answer to our economy. These are short term boondoggles that go to Congressional districts where senior Democrats have the seat. Conservatives, however, must get off the income tax cut trip that they are on. We do not manufacture big ticket items in America anymore. If an individual gets a tax rebate and goes out and buys a washing machine, refrigerator, microwave, television, computer, etc. it stimulates the Chinese economy when factory orders go up. JFK's tax cut of 1962 was a success because orders went up for American factories due to the fact these big ticket consumer items were manufactured in the USA.

With all due respect, Bush92...saying that Keynesian Economic Theory doesn't work based on what politicians have done WITH that theory isn't fair to John Maynard Keynes!

What Keynes advocated was spending by government in economic slowdowns to stimulate economic growth but what he also advocated was raising taxes to pay back the debt that would create during economic surges.

Unfortunately our politicians spend vast sums of money during economic slowdowns but then do nothing to pay down that debt during economic booms...choosing instead to spend all of the increased revenues coming in from such a boom on more government programs. Keynes would have been horrified by what has been done with "his" theory!

But is government stimulus ever needed under a true capitalist model?

The answer to that would be no. Under a true capitalist model the economy contracts...people suffer...and the economy rebounds. What Keynes (and many other economists and politicians) attempted to do was find a way to lessen the severity of the economic downturns and the suffering. As I said before...great intentions...but as happens so often with great intentions the result was not what they anticipated.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Of course there's a mixture but if you're not leaning EXTREMELY far toward supplyside theories and away from Keynes, you don't know much economic history.

We've been running supply side economics since the Reagan years (with the lowest tax rates since then to show for it...)

Why is income inequality still rising faster then ever?

Kill the rich, it's the only way to your Workers Paradise

 

[Bfgrn]

Obama s stimulus package 5 years later Dems defend Republicans ridicule - Washington Times
When are liberals going to understand that spending taxpayers money on public works projects is not the answer to our economy. These are short term boondoggles that go to Congressional districts where senior Democrats have the seat. Conservatives, however, must get off the income tax cut trip that they are on. We do not manufacture big ticket items in America anymore. If an individual gets a tax rebate and goes out and buys a washing machine, refrigerator, microwave, television, computer, etc. it stimulates the Chinese economy when factory orders go up. JFK's tax cut of 1962 was a success because orders went up for American factories due to the fact these big ticket consumer items were manufactured in the USA.

Public works projects and infrastructure spending is NOT short term. Tax cuts are short term.

In some ways you are right. Government spending creates jobs for federal bureaucrats that taxpayers must foot the bill for until retirement. Then pay even more in their twilight years. So yes, you have highlighted another negative to socialism.

Construction companies are "federal bureaucrats"? You clearly know nothing about public work projects and infrastructure spending.

 

[Oldstyle]

Obama s stimulus package 5 years later Dems defend Republicans ridicule - Washington Times
When are liberals going to understand that spending taxpayers money on public works projects is not the answer to our economy. These are short term boondoggles that go to Congressional districts where senior Democrats have the seat. Conservatives, however, must get off the income tax cut trip that they are on. We do not manufacture big ticket items in America anymore. If an individual gets a tax rebate and goes out and buys a washing machine, refrigerator, microwave, television, computer, etc. it stimulates the Chinese economy when factory orders go up. JFK's tax cut of 1962 was a success because orders went up for American factories due to the fact these big ticket consumer items were manufactured in the USA.

Public works projects and infrastructure spending is NOT short term. Tax cuts are short term.

In some ways you are right. Government spending creates jobs for federal bureaucrats that taxpayers must foot the bill for until retirement. Then pay even more in their twilight years. So yes, you have highlighted another negative to socialism.

Construction companies are "federal bureaucrats"? You clearly know nothing about public work projects and infrastructure spending.

I think the point that was being made was that too much of the growth of the Federal Government over the past fifty years has taken place with middle level and upper level bureaucrats.

 

[Bfgrn]

Obama s stimulus package 5 years later Dems defend Republicans ridicule - Washington Times
When are liberals going to understand that spending taxpayers money on public works projects is not the answer to our economy. These are short term boondoggles that go to Congressional districts where senior Democrats have the seat. Conservatives, however, must get off the income tax cut trip that they are on. We do not manufacture big ticket items in America anymore. If an individual gets a tax rebate and goes out and buys a washing machine, refrigerator, microwave, television, computer, etc. it stimulates the Chinese economy when factory orders go up. JFK's tax cut of 1962 was a success because orders went up for American factories due to the fact these big ticket consumer items were manufactured in the USA.

Public works projects and infrastructure spending is NOT short term. Tax cuts are short term.

In some ways you are right. Government spending creates jobs for federal bureaucrats that taxpayers must foot the bill for until retirement. Then pay even more in their twilight years. So yes, you have highlighted another negative to socialism.

Construction companies are "federal bureaucrats"? You clearly know nothing about public work projects and infrastructure spending.

I think the point that was being made was that too much of the growth of the Federal Government over the past fifty years has taken place with middle level and upper level bureaucrats.

Public works projects and infrastructure spending is handled almost exclusively by State and Local government agencies.

 

[Freewill]

Even Krugman agreed with the prediction. He said it was too weak, but that the CEA estimates were close to his own.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/20...stein-on-stimulus/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

So both the White House and the left's favorite Economist thought that the unemployment rate would spike and then recover without any stimulus, the only difference was the time it would take the get there. Neither thought the stimulus would actually make things worse, and neither said that without the stimulus the US would fall into a depression.

Thanks.

And might I point out that neither predicted 2008, as far as I remember.

 

[Freewill]

One thing we can all agree on Kenyan economics don't work in the USA.

 

[bripat9643]

Obama s stimulus package 5 years later Dems defend Republicans ridicule - Washington Times
When are liberals going to understand that spending taxpayers money on public works projects is not the answer to our economy. These are short term boondoggles that go to Congressional districts where senior Democrats have the seat. Conservatives, however, must get off the income tax cut trip that they are on. We do not manufacture big ticket items in America anymore. If an individual gets a tax rebate and goes out and buys a washing machine, refrigerator, microwave, television, computer, etc. it stimulates the Chinese economy when factory orders go up. JFK's tax cut of 1962 was a success because orders went up for American factories due to the fact these big ticket consumer items were manufactured in the USA.

Public works projects and infrastructure spending is NOT short term. Tax cuts are short term.

True, they are long term boondoggles. We are still paying for the interstate highway system.

 

[Oldstyle]

Obama s stimulus package 5 years later Dems defend Republicans ridicule - Washington Times
When are liberals going to understand that spending taxpayers money on public works projects is not the answer to our economy. These are short term boondoggles that go to Congressional districts where senior Democrats have the seat. Conservatives, however, must get off the income tax cut trip that they are on. We do not manufacture big ticket items in America anymore. If an individual gets a tax rebate and goes out and buys a washing machine, refrigerator, microwave, television, computer, etc. it stimulates the Chinese economy when factory orders go up. JFK's tax cut of 1962 was a success because orders went up for American factories due to the fact these big ticket consumer items were manufactured in the USA.

Public works projects and infrastructure spending is NOT short term. Tax cuts are short term.

In some ways you are right. Government spending creates jobs for federal bureaucrats that taxpayers must foot the bill for until retirement. Then pay even more in their twilight years. So yes, you have highlighted another negative to socialism.

Construction companies are "federal bureaucrats"? You clearly know nothing about public work projects and infrastructure spending.

I think the point that was being made was that too much of the growth of the Federal Government over the past fifty years has taken place with middle level and upper level bureaucrats.

Public works projects and infrastructure spending is handled almost exclusively by State and Local government agencies.

State and local government has seen the same growth of bureaucrats as the Federal Government has, Bfgrn. Our "solution" to problems over the past fifty years is to create a new "department" or increase the size of existing governmental organizations to deal with those problems.

As for who handles the "spending" on public works projects and infrastructure? Let's be honest with ourselves here...if my local or State funding depends on Federal grants then who really controls spending...me...or the Feds?

 

[Oldstyle]

Even Krugman agreed with the prediction. He said it was too weak, but that the CEA estimates were close to his own.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/20...stein-on-stimulus/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

So both the White House and the left's favorite Economist thought that the unemployment rate would spike and then recover without any stimulus, the only difference was the time it would take the get there. Neither thought the stimulus would actually make things worse, and neither said that without the stimulus the US would fall into a depression.

Thanks.

And might I point out that neither predicted 2008, as far as I remember.

Setting the Record Straight Six Years of Unheeded Warnings for GSE Reform

For years, George W. Bush predicted financial difficulties with mortgages if Congress didn't reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

 

[bripat9643]

Not really but we do know what did happen.

Before you post it, your come back will be, it prevented a depression. Which is just a guess, just as it would be a guess to say what would happen without the stimulus.

The entire theory for enacting the stimulus was what happened in 1929 when the stock market crash similar to 2008. The (GOP) government did nothing and just let things work themselves out on their own ("the market will adjust"). There was no stimulus, no government actions...nothing.

Guess what happened? The depression got much...MUCH....worse...the economy went from being bad to totally falling off a cliff. It led to the 1932 elections with Democrats taking over the government and the peak of the depression didn't occur until 1933...a full four years after it started.

So yeah....we kinda have a good idea what would've happened without stimulus. The central government was the ONLY creditable name out there to get money flowing...it had to take action, and it did.

They claim that the government did nothing during the Hoover administration couldn't be more wrong.

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp122.pdf

Hoover did anything but stand idly by after the onset of the Depression. There are several major examples that one can point to where Hoover extended the size and scope of the federal government in order to fight the rapidly worsening Depression. To set the stage for those, I start with a quick look at the overall level of federal government spending during his presidency. The 1929 budget was $3.1 billion, and Hoover’s first budget in 1930 had $3.3 billion in spending, followed by $3.6 billion, $4.7 billion, and $4.6 billion over the following three years. In nominal terms, he increased spending 48 percent over the last budget of the previous administration. However, this period was one of significant deflation, so if we adjust for the approximately 10 percent per year fall in prices over that period, the real size of government spending in 1933 was almost double that of 1929.

The budget deficits of 1931 and 1932 represented 52.5 percent and 43.3 percent of total federal expenditures. No year between 1933 and 1941 under Roosevelt had a deficit that large. It is hard to reconcile those data with the claim that Hoover was a defender of “austerity” and “budget cutting” in the name of laissez faire. In the immediate aftermath of the stock market crash in October of 1929, Hoover extended federal control over agriculture by expanding the reach of the Federal Farm Board (FFB), which had been created a few months earlier, as well as calling for public works expenditures. The idea behind the FFB was to make government-funded loans to farm cooperatives and create “stabilization corporations” to keep farm prices up and deal with surpluses. In other words, it was a cartel plan. That fall, Hoover pushed the FFB into full action, lending to farmers all over the country and otherwise subsidizing farming in an attempt to keep prices up. As is the case with such arrangements, it failed miserably, as subsidies only encouraged farmers to grow more crops. That exacerbate farm commodities surpluses, and eventually drove prices way down, sending more farms into dire circumstances. Hoover responded by proposing the further anti-market policy of paying farmers not to grow crops. Hoover also quickly proposed an expansion of public-works projects as a way to address unemployment—an idea that he had not only championed throughout the 1920s, but that was, contrary to perception, agreed upon as worthwhile by a majority of economists at the time, well before John Maynard Keynes’s The General Theory was published in 1936. Hoover sent a telegram to state governors asking them to cooperate on state-level public-works programs. Hoover and his secretary of the treasury, Andrew Mellon (himself often wrongly portrayed as a defender of laissez faire), proposed $400 million in new federal buildings as well as $175 million in public works through the federal Shipping Board. These proposals met with approval from the professoriate as examples of “constructive industrial statesmanship.” They were also ridiculed as “pump priming” in a New York Tribune editorial cartoon of April 8, 1930, reproduced in Figure 2. The cartoon showed Hoover pouring buckets of water labeled “millions for public roads,” “millions for public buildings,” and “millions for public construction” through a water pump labeled “U.S. Business.” Observers at the time understood exactly what Hoover’s program was all about. Most significantly, Hoover revived the business-government conferences of his time at Commerce by summoning major business leaders to the White House several times that fall. His agenda for these meetings was clear: he wanted businessmen to promise not to reduce wages in the face of rising unemployment. Hoover believed, as did a number of intellectuals at the time, that the cause of prosperity was high wages, even though the truth is the reverse: prosperity, thanks to the accumulation of capital that increases the productivity of labor, leads to higher wages. He argued that if major firms cut wages, workers would not have the purchasing power they needed to buy up the goods being produced. As most depressions involve falling prices, cutting wages to match falling prices would have kept purchasing power constant. What Hoover wanted amounted to an increase in real wages, as constant nominal wages would
be able to purchase more goods at falling prices. Presumably out of fear of the White House, or perhaps because it would keep the unions quiet, industrial leaders agreed to this proposal. The result was rapidly escalating unemployment as firms quickly realized they could not continue to employ as many workers when their output prices were falling and labor costs were constant.

Of all the government failures of the Hoover presidency, excluding the actions of the Federal Reserve between 1929 and 1932 over which he had little to no influence, his attempt to maintain wages was the most damaging. No proponent of laissez faire would have used White House pres sure to intervene in the private sector this way. Hoover’s high-wage policy was a clear example of his lack of faith in the corrective forces of the market and his willingness to use governmental power to fight the Depression. The promulgators of the myth of Hoover’s commitment to laissez faire will find it difficult to explain away this point. Later in his presidency, Hoover did more than just jawbone to keep wages up; he signed two pieces of labor legislation that dramatically increased the role of govern ment in propping up wages and giving monopoly protection to unions. In 1931, he signed the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandated that all federally funded or assisted construction projects pay the “prevailing wage,” (i.e., the above-market-clearing union wage). This had the result of both shutting out non-union labor, especially immigrants and non-whites, and driving up the cost to taxpayers. A year later, he signed the Norris-LaGuardia Act, whose five major provisions each enshrined special provisions for unions in the law, including a prohibition on judges using injunctions to stop strikes and making union-free contracts unenforceable in federal courts. Hoover’s interventions into the labor market are further evidence of his rejection of laissez faire.

 

[Bfgrn]

Obama s stimulus package 5 years later Dems defend Republicans ridicule - Washington Times
When are liberals going to understand that spending taxpayers money on public works projects is not the answer to our economy. These are short term boondoggles that go to Congressional districts where senior Democrats have the seat. Conservatives, however, must get off the income tax cut trip that they are on. We do not manufacture big ticket items in America anymore. If an individual gets a tax rebate and goes out and buys a washing machine, refrigerator, microwave, television, computer, etc. it stimulates the Chinese economy when factory orders go up. JFK's tax cut of 1962 was a success because orders went up for American factories due to the fact these big ticket consumer items were manufactured in the USA.

Public works projects and infrastructure spending is NOT short term. Tax cuts are short term.

In some ways you are right. Government spending creates jobs for federal bureaucrats that taxpayers must foot the bill for until retirement. Then pay even more in their twilight years. So yes, you have highlighted another negative to socialism.

Construction companies are "federal bureaucrats"? You clearly know nothing about public work projects and infrastructure spending.

I think the point that was being made was that too much of the growth of the Federal Government over the past fifty years has taken place with middle level and upper level bureaucrats.

Public works projects and infrastructure spending is handled almost exclusively by State and Local government agencies.

State and local government has seen the same growth of bureaucrats as the Federal Government has, Bfgrn. Our "solution" to problems over the past fifty years is to create a new "department" or increase the size of existing governmental organizations to deal with those problems.

As for who handles the "spending" on public works projects and infrastructure? Let's be honest with ourselves here...if my local or State funding depends on Federal grants then who really controls spending...me...or the Feds?

Federal money requires matching funds. I have a friend who works for the NYS DOT. They don't have enough people in the drawing room to keep up with project design. Over the past 35 years, the Republicans have tried to starve government. They want to castrate government and then blame liberal...

Wake the fuck up old man.

 

[Bfgrn]

Even Krugman agreed with the prediction. He said it was too weak, but that the CEA estimates were close to his own.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/20...stein-on-stimulus/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

So both the White House and the left's favorite Economist thought that the unemployment rate would spike and then recover without any stimulus, the only difference was the time it would take the get there. Neither thought the stimulus would actually make things worse, and neither said that without the stimulus the US would fall into a depression.

Thanks.

And might I point out that neither predicted 2008, as far as I remember.

Setting the Record Straight Six Years of Unheeded Warnings for GSE Reform

For years, George W. Bush predicted financial difficulties with mortgages if Congress didn't reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

THIS George Bush???

So Much for Bush's 'Ownership Society'
By Zachary Karabell
Filed: 10/10/08 at 8:00 PM | Updated: 3/13/10 at 5:03 PM

Remember the ownership society? President George W. Bush championed the concept when he was running for re-election in 2004, envisioning a world in which every American family owned a house and a stock portfolio, and government stayed out of the way of the American Dream.

These families were, of course, conservative, or at a minimum traditional and nuclear, consisting of a heterosexual married couple and at least two kids living in a stand-alone home with a yard, a car or two and a multimedia room with a flat-screen television. The latter was a new addition to this 21st-century simulacrum of the 1950s "Leave It to Beaver" idyll. But the dream was the same.

Such a country would be more stable, Bush argued, and more prosperous. "America is a stronger country every single time a family moves into a home of their own," he said in October 2004. To achieve his vision, Bush pushed new policies encouraging homeownership, like the "zero-down-payment initiative," which was much as it sounds—a government-sponsored program that allowed people to get mortgages without a down payment. More exotic mortgages followed, including ones with no monthly payments for the first two years. Other mortgages required no documentation other than the say-so of the borrower. Absurd though these all were, they paled in comparison to the financial innovations that grew out of the mortgages—derivatives built on other derivatives, packaged and repackaged until no one could identify what they contained and how much they were, in fact, worth.

As we know by now, these instruments have brought the global financial system, improbably, to the brink of collapse. And as financial strains drive husbands and wives apart, Bush's ownership ideology may end up having the same effect on the stable nuclear families conservatives so badly wanted to foster.

Newsweek

 

[bripat9643]

Obama s stimulus package 5 years later Dems defend Republicans ridicule - Washington Times
When are liberals going to understand that spending taxpayers money on public works projects is not the answer to our economy. These are short term boondoggles that go to Congressional districts where senior Democrats have the seat. Conservatives, however, must get off the income tax cut trip that they are on. We do not manufacture big ticket items in America anymore. If an individual gets a tax rebate and goes out and buys a washing machine, refrigerator, microwave, television, computer, etc. it stimulates the Chinese economy when factory orders go up. JFK's tax cut of 1962 was a success because orders went up for American factories due to the fact these big ticket consumer items were manufactured in the USA.

Public works projects and infrastructure spending is NOT short term. Tax cuts are short term.

In some ways you are right. Government spending creates jobs for federal bureaucrats that taxpayers must foot the bill for until retirement. Then pay even more in their twilight years. So yes, you have highlighted another negative to socialism.

Construction companies are "federal bureaucrats"? You clearly know nothing about public work projects and infrastructure spending.

I think the point that was being made was that too much of the growth of the Federal Government over the past fifty years has taken place with middle level and upper level bureaucrats.

Public works projects and infrastructure spending is handled almost exclusively by State and Local government agencies.

State and local government has seen the same growth of bureaucrats as the Federal Government has, Bfgrn. Our "solution" to problems over the past fifty years is to create a new "department" or increase the size of existing governmental organizations to deal with those problems.

As for who handles the "spending" on public works projects and infrastructure? Let's be honest with ourselves here...if my local or State funding depends on Federal grants then who really controls spending...me...or the Feds?

Federal money requires matching funds. I have a friend who works for the NYS DOT. They don't have enough people in the drawing room to keep up with project design. Over the past 35 years, the Republicans have tried to starve government. They want to castrate government and then blame liberal...

Wake the fuck up old man.

How does that disprove his claim? You have to be brain damaged to believe that Republicans starved the government - any government.

 

[regent]

Not really but we do know what did happen.

Before you post it, your come back will be, it prevented a depression. Which is just a guess, just as it would be a guess to say what would happen without the stimulus.

The entire theory for enacting the stimulus was what happened in 1929 when the stock market crash similar to 2008. The (GOP) government did nothing and just let things work themselves out on their own ("the market will adjust"). There was no stimulus, no government actions...nothing.

Guess what happened? The depression got much...MUCH....worse...the economy went from being bad to totally falling off a cliff. It led to the 1932 elections with Democrats taking over the government and the peak of the depression didn't occur until 1933...a full four years after it started.

So yeah....we kinda have a good idea what would've happened without stimulus. The central government was the ONLY creditable name out there to get money flowing...it had to take action, and it did.

1929 and 2008 ave no comparison. WW II got us out of the Great Depression...not Keneysian policies.

Still government spending even if they were spending it on bombs rather than food and jobs.

 

[regent]

Not really but we do know what did happen.

Before you post it, your come back will be, it prevented a depression. Which is just a guess, just as it would be a guess to say what would happen without the stimulus.

The entire theory for enacting the stimulus was what happened in 1929 when the stock market crash similar to 2008. The (GOP) government did nothing and just let things work themselves out on their own ("the market will adjust"). There was no stimulus, no government actions...nothing.

Guess what happened? The depression got much...MUCH....worse...the economy went from being bad to totally falling off a cliff. It led to the 1932 elections with Democrats taking over the government and the peak of the depression didn't occur until 1933...a full four years after it started.

So yeah....we kinda have a good idea what would've happened without stimulus. The central government was the ONLY creditable name out there to get money flowing...it had to take action, and it did.

1929 and 2008 ave no comparison. WW II got us out of the Great Depression...not Keneysian policies.

Still government spending even if they were spending it on bombs rather than food and jobs.

Of course WWII was a form of Keynes but instead of internal improvements it was bombs,