And if you find yourself with a spare 20 minuites…
http://allabout-sp.net/?p=season13/1303
…The whole thing is worth a watch too.

I was a fan of “coup d’etat” and “run for the hills”.

I also see a “print money” option on the board. Perhaps even South Park is catching up to the idiocy of the Fed?

I think Trey and Matt deserve a lot of credit for this. The subtext is not Keynesianism.

For example, the first soapbox speaker is telling everyone how the federal reserve kept interest rates too low for too long, but the crowd proceeds to Randy, who says they have “angered the economy”. “This is the only guy who makes sense,” says a man. Anybody who has discussed economics with the average American got a laugh out of that.

Kyle’s sermon about money is a profound insight into fiat currency: it only has the value people imagine it to have. Once people renounce it, it really is just plastic and paper. When he encouraged people to spend again, he was simply advocating trade over autarky — not Keynesian fiscal stimulus.

Stan’s attempt to return the margarita blender satirized modern structured finance, also impossible without fiat currency. And the headless chicken scene was a milk-snortingly-hilarious metaphor for the insanity of central planning.

Yes, the townspeople started spending like idiots again once their debts were forgiven, having learned nothing. That too is right on the money.

Sure, the creators aren’t clobbering you over the head with sound money principles. They’re playing to a wider audience and leaving them to draw their own conclusions.

It may not be the 20-minute animated version of Man, Economy and State, but nevertheless, this was yet more brilliant satire from Trey and Matt which even Boobus can appreciate. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.

Stan:

I think this was the point. Of course the debt wasn’t actually eliminated. The actions Stan took mirror our own “stimulus” package, trying to get everyone able to spend again while putting the financial burden on future generations. At the end of the episode where Kyle expects to be thanked for his sacrifice, he finds out that the only person who is said to deserve credit is the President. We are similarly told to ignore the burden that this government intervention places on our children, as well as our future economic growth, and instead blindly praise the politicians who devised this spending spree. You point out that all that happens as a result of Kyle’s actions is the resumption of frivolous consumption, and that too will be the ultimate result of bailout bills. Rewarding the failure of private institutions does not by any means cause them to fail less, and they will use their federal funding for more malinvestment.

I liked that they showed the expansion of the Margaritaville market, despite previously mentioning that no one could really afford it. Sounds like the attempt to reinflate the housing bubble, no?

I think the episode hit the nail on the head. Just like with our government’s bailouts, the problem is left unsolved, huge debt is moved to from one group to another, bubbles are encouraged, and yet we are still told to praise the government action.

Because people listen to Randy, the town sunk into deprivation and into poverty which is incorrect, despite what Matt and Trey think.

The importance of savings in an economic recovery only works if people continue their patterns of spending and investment in response to the price decreases which follow the increased demand for holding money. Randy was advocating never buying ANYTHING ever again. The whole point of his part was to lampoon the irrational view most people have of the economy as an inscrutable, vengeful god which occasionally punishes us for our “sins” and, for that matter, to poke fun at the reputation many economists have of being akin to ancient soothsayers. I think the entire thing was perfect, a few niggling technical aspects notwithstanding, but you don’t think most people are going to sit through a preachy 22-minute economics lecture, do you?

The best bit is probably the dig at the end where, despite demonstrating that it’s PEOPLE who bring about economic recoveries, not governments, Obama gets all the credit, much to Kyle’s disgust. Hopefully that’s the lesson which primarily sticks in the minds of most laymen viewers.