"I don’t believe it’s too late to change course, but it will be if we don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years. The unemployment rate could reach double digits."
If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years.... and if something is done?
Posts
137 comments:
It's the 2003 State of the Union address all over again, but with a new crisis for us to fear.
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
If that is true, should we now fear Obama, who seems to want to make us fearful?
"While the speech was mostly one of generalities, Mr. Obama offered a few details about how he hopes both to save money and modernize the economy. "
LOL. I suggest the MSM save this phrase in its "autofill" function.
FWIW Obama has to get the banks to start lending money again. His constant talk of doom and gloom is not what a leader should do. Plus Obama is just making Rush Limbaugh's job too too easy. Heh.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! And only I and more big fat bloated government can save you!
Sounded a bit Carterish. Why does he keep talking about computerizing medical records!? Does a campaign supporter have a company that does this? Next he'll be worried about scheduling the White House tennis courts.
There will be a great deal of money sloshing around somewhere. But, where? Neither I nor anyone near and dear to me will be getting any of it. Someone is making a killing. Who is it? Can no one tell us? Why can't they?
I know of one bank that received millions from the first bailout and used the money to buy smaller banks. This may be the greatest scam in the history of mankind. This could make Bernie seem like a piker.
Is he going to start an economic threat level, kind of like the terror alert Bush started?
I wish he had hecklers. I miss them from the campaign.
Is he going to start an economic threat level, kind of like the terror alert Bush started?
That's brilliant.
Double digit unemployment? I thought he wanted us to be more like France.
"and if something is done?"
Then the waters will rise and lift all boats even though they will also recede, finally-- saving us all from gorbal warming flooding.
Don't ask... it's... Magic!
He is scary, but I think the word you were going for was "scaring".
The bailouts have already burned through most of a trillion dollars of deficit spending. And now Obama is worried that he can't get as much spending as he wants out of another trillion, and is worried about how it will look when they go over that.
Remember when a couple hundred billion a year in deficit spending to fight a war on terror seemed prolifigate? The same people who were screaming about that think that another trillion of our grandchildren's money is not enough.
he keep[s} talking about computerizing medical records!?
Oh, Lord! {buries head in hands}
Obama's big challenge is that with strong Democrat majorities in Congress, plus control of the Presidency, Americans are quite likely to saddle him with blame if things aren't remarkably better by, say, November 2010.
If the economy worsens in response to government intervention, and it very well could, there'll be no way to pin any of it on Bush.
My best guess at this point is that with gigantesque federal deficits the supply of Treasury instruments will completely overwhelm demand for them. That will drive the price down, hard, meaning that interest rates will explode to the upside and wreak genuine devastation amongst America's most productive small and medium businesses.
I can somewhat understand the theory that the Chinese and the Saudis really should buy our way out of our recession. After all, think of all that we have given them. Gun powder, printing,... oh wait.
But the reality is that the approach being taken didn't work in the 1930s, and isn't likely to work today.
Besides, what is seemingly missed in all this is the massive amount of money that has already been added to the money supply, and the amount that will likely be added because of the borrowing supporting this spending. Poor Carter and his Administration found that controlling the money supply was the key for controlling inflation - too late to save his presidency, but oh well. Since then, the money supply has pretty much been under control, until this year, and so has inflation.
Which brings us back to the Chinese, et al. Why should they loan us trillions of dollars, knowing that it will be worth significantly less when they are finally paid off?
We could lose a generation of potential and promise...
I wish he’d dispense with the obvious and get down to his ideas for rebuilding potential and promise.
But I thought the Republicans were the party of fearmongers?
Did I cast my vote for the wrong party?
Hmmm...
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
We LOST...and we just can't accept it.
It's all about growing the state and killing liberty.
I can't wait to hear the whining once the man is actually sworn in.
Good lord...you'd think Bush & Company had done a spectacular job.
But we ALL know that's not true.
I can't believe the world is ending again. Ugh! I'm tired of it.
I'm still getting credit card offers in the mail. And two nights ago, I found a credit card in my nighstand that I hadn't activated yet. It came last year some time after the previous card that I never used expired. When I called to activate the card, the lady told me my available credit is $35,000!! I had to laugh. That would be such an outrageous amount of debt for little ol' me. But I guess a high limit keeps your credit score high--which is good because we're refinancing the mortgage.
Yeah... I'm just not feeling this world ending thing yet.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
LOSERS .... get used to being responsible.
We'll be pulling out of this recession about the time the next Presidential election heats up, say, 2011.
A few weeks ago it seemed as though most economists were saying we'd be out of the woods in late 2009. Now I hear people saying 2010. The world being what it is, that means around election time.
To me, the scariest thing isn't the economy, it's the manner in which O is being cloaked in mythic potential. He's FDR. He's Kennedy. He's Lincoln. He's Martin Luther King. The sacrificial king.
If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years.... and if something is done?
It could linger for decades.
If you like experiments, you'll love this.
We've over-borrowed, over-spent and inflated our way to where we are.
Now we're going to find out if more inflating, more borrowing, and more spending will cure what ails us.
I admit, I don't think this will end well.
I hope I'm wrong.
Can we not let this thread become another embarrassing colloquy on Gene... I mean Michael's history of fellatio?
The economy is very sick.
Obama code for. . .
Get ready for some bloodletting.
When it's all over, we'll all be taking designer drugs and vacationing in space wearing thought helmets. Kids are getting brain-wave tech toys this fall.
As wild as TV in the 1940s.
It will be a beautiful new world.
Bruce,
We need more inflation hawks pushing for fiscal austarity. That's the lesson of the great depression. Could you send that brilliant analyisis to Bernanke?
Obama did an impressive job of laying the predicate for massive government spending as a way, no, the only way, to make things better for everyone.
He asks us to believe that the only way to a better life is through more spending and greater debt.
He's the mortgage loan officer; we're buying the third mortgage on our homes so we can take a better vacation and buy a new car.
We are suckers.
ricpic said..."It's all about growing the state and killing liberty."
Yeah, that's it. Obama wants to "kill liberty."
Back off on the meds, Dude...
As for AJ's inane comment: "His constant talk of doom and gloom is not what a leader should do."
How would YOU describe the current economic crisis? A ripple? Just a short-lived downturn?
Here are a few headlines from today's papers:
"Retailers report dismal December sales"
"Housing starts way, way, way down"
"Stocks decline"
"Continuing jobless claims rise more than expected"
"A profit warning from Wal-Mart today touched off fresh worries about consumers' willingness to spend and sent stocks lower for a second session."
Eventually the grandchildren are going to say, "Enough with this debt. We didn't make these agreements, our spendthrift parents did, and we're not paying." What then?
Oh noes!!! We have to do something now. Hurry before we are all doomed. Hi, I'm Barak Obama and I'm a sufferer of Do Something Syndrome. It's a terrible affliction by which I suffer from that manifests itself as a compulsion I have no control over. As you know, my other colleagues in Congress suffer from this affliction as well and in the end it exacts a terrible toll on families and business by making government larger, increasing burdensome regulation, increasing taxes across the board, lowers you standard of living, lowers your take home pay, increases the intrusiveness of government power into your life, and generally makes everything cost more to you while we privileged few sit up here and look down upon you unwashed masses.
I want to apologize to you in advance (even though I don't really mean it) that this horrid, dreaded disease will lead to splash over into your lives and will leave a trail of collateral damage that I'm afraid I won't be able to repair. God bless you all and God bless America.
The business cycle is nothing if not cyclical, and the progression through the cycle is beyond the control of any president. Obama surely knows that. So instead Obama is sandbagging us with scary economic allusions so he can take personal maximum credit for the recovery. Just in time for 2012. He's in full-tilt re-election mode.
What struck me about the speech, which I heard broadcast live in its entirety, was how insincere Obama sounded. He didn't a mean a word of any of it. He wasn't trying to scare us or inspire us. I don't agree with him about just about anything (I did like the part about rebuilding a more secure electrical grid), but I admit that in the past, I have been charmed by him. I've seen him at his charismatic best, and I understand where all the hopey changitude fluff that got him elected comes from. This speech wasn't a bad speech at all, but his delivery sucked. This could've been a firebrand, a call to arms, but the Obama who showed up today was the part-time law professor who came to drone at us. If he's going the fear-mongering route, he should step up his game and sell it.
He hasn't even been inaugurated yet, and it seems as if he's tired of playing president already.
Michael said...
ricpic said..."It's all about growing the state and killing liberty."
Yeah, that's it. Obama wants to "kill liberty."
Back off on the meds, Dude...
As for AJ's inane comment: "His constant talk of doom and gloom is not what a leader should do."
How would YOU describe the current economic crisis? A ripple? Just a short-lived downturn?
Here are a few headlines from today's papers:
"Retailers report dismal December sales"
"Housing starts way, way, way down"
"Stocks decline"
"Continuing jobless claims rise more than expected"
"A profit warning from Wal-Mart today touched off fresh worries about consumers' willingness to spend and sent stocks lower for a second session."
If you weren't one of the dumbest people on earth and more or less nothing but the simplest of stooges then you could see that in those headlines is another way to further diminish the outgoing presidency and leave it with a sour note. However, since you constantly come up intellectually short and your little empty suit of a president is sworn in, why those headlines will be turned upside down from frowns to smiles and will proclaim that sunshine shoots out of his ass to push back the darkening financial gloom to save us all.
Either way, you're still an idiot whom I would gladly see get turned into hamburger and fed back to his parents as a juicy patty. Have a nice day.
Freeman Hunt said: What then?
White Pinks on Hope!
Joan said...
What struck me about the speech, which I heard broadcast live in its entirety, was how insincere Obama sounded. He didn't a mean a word of any of it. He wasn't trying to scare us or inspire us. I don't agree with him about just about anything (I did like the part about rebuilding a more secure electrical grid), but I admit that in the past, I have been charmed by him. I've seen him at his charismatic best, and I understand where all the hopey changitude fluff that got him elected comes from. This speech wasn't a bad speech at all, but his delivery sucked. This could've been a firebrand, a call to arms, but the Obama who showed up today was the part-time law professor who came to drone at us. If he's going the fear-mongering route, he should step up his game and sell it.
He hasn't even been inaugurated yet, and it seems as if he's tired of playing president already.
What I saw and heard today was a man who is either scared shitless about what he is in for or who is so bored out of his mind, he's ready to move on to the next thing. He looked like he should have just stayed in the Senate where he could have glided on by and got the little things he wanted without hanging himself out to far. Now the spotlight is on him and what he does. However, I don't think he ever expected that light to be shining so bright and the expectations are going to be so high that when falls flat on his face people will wonder what the hell they were thinking when they put this empty suit do-nothing into the highest office in the world.
Yeah, I'm sure you were charmed (duped) into believing his cotton candy promises and you will have no one but yourself to blame if you voted for him. Let the band play on.
Leave Michael alone! He's gotten plenty of bailouts over his life time, but always from women.
Too much inventory, too little discretionary income to draw down the inventory. Deflation. How does the market, or more accurately human nature, solve this problem? By drawing in, SAVING, then buying the excess inventory with some of the savings, investing the rest, and reigniting the economy.
IF LEFT ALONE!
Not good, not good at all from the standpoint of a statist.
Barack Obama said: “More families will lose their savings. More dreams will be deferred and denied. And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”
Ronald Reagan said: "I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy."
I miss Ronald Reagan.
Henry:
Good one.
Michael:
I was trying to say you can't improve consumer confidence when Obama and others talk gloom and doom 247.
Just like if a parent constantly tells his kid he is dumb, the kid will turn out dumb. You are living proof of that.
What I saw and heard today was a man who is either scared shitless about what he is in for or who is so bored out of his mind, he's ready to move on to the next thing.
What I see is a guy who had a dream about how to change this nation to make it more socially just. He doesn't know anything about the economy. Somehow he lucked out during the election, because his lack of saying anything about the economic crisis was hailed as Presidential.
Now he's got to do something. He's hired some really smart people to help him learn, but he's the one that has to make the speeches. He ends up sounding like someone making a speech in a foreign language that is spelled out phonetically on a teleprompter.
Joan--
Interesting. Yes, it's all about the sale, closing the sale, and then moving on.
I predict many trips to Hawaii.
He'll wow them in Indonesia and in US inner cities. He's a good salesman. Something to be said for that.
Good afternoon fellow patriots. I am so sorry I haven't posted sooner today.
The day has been crazy.
Negotiating 6 figure offers, international relocations, conference call with Barcelona, arranging ex-pat compensation packages, conducting preliminary research on multi million dollar acquistion and other very high level, strategic responsibilities.
No time for even pinching a loaf.
What did I miss? What's going on? Who said what? What are we angry about? Let's get this party started. OKKKKKKKKKK.
It's funny, to hear the folks who stampeded the country into an unnecessary war, and in the process wasted a trillion dollars, along with the trillion dollars on the Medicare prescription drug turkey and the trillion dollars in tax cuts that financed outsourcing of millions of jobs,
suddenly claiming that the Obama stimulus represents a 'sky is falling' argument. Now, the burden of the Bush economy/lack of oversight/war caused the sky to fall long ago, and the roof has caved in with it. The Obama plan is to start repairing some of the damage.
...rebuilding a more secure electrical grid
Now there's something I can believe in (not that I think it will happen).
Are there any other high level business executives in this crew?
Let's partner and share best practices.
Thank God my potential and promise is still around.
I am making decisions today that are going to have enormous consequences in peoples life.
I am a partner to the organization. I am here to execute their initiatives. I am pro-active, customer focused, available within one business hour at all hours of the day and night. I am proficient in cutting edge no make that bleeding edge technologies. I am all about streamlining. I always have the bandwith to get the projecte complete on time and below budget.
Hmm.
Bush takes office. The economy is robust enough, and there's a nominally balanced budget.
Obama takes office. The economy has collapsed, the deficit for just this year exceeds a trillion.
Bush had presided over the greatest collapse of the American Economy in quite some time. Yet somehow, all the blame is shifting to Obama, who isn't even in office yet? Odd.
I do agree with the comment that Obama should lay off the doomsaying. Leave that to Republican critics.
Freeman Hunt said..."Eventually the grandchildren are going to say, "Enough with this debt. We didn't make these agreements, our spendthrift parents did, and we're not paying." What then?"
Bush inherited a massive surplus.
Because I am such a self starter and focused sometimes I don't spell write i mean right.
I also have an ass you can bounce quarters off of.
I am touching my tight ass right now.
methedras: "If you weren't one of the dumbest people on earth and more or less nothing but the simplest of stooges then you could see that in those headlines is another way to further diminish the outgoing presidency and leave it with a sour note."
"leave it on a sour note???"
Are you daft?
Bush inherited a massive surplus, the Dow was at about 14,000, oil at $28, unemployment at about 4.4%, and now we're buried in debt, the economy is in a shambles, the real estate market is upside down, unemployment is predicted to go to 9-10%, they predict 25% of all retail businesses will go bankrupt...and you think the newspapers and Obama are being too..."negative?"
I swear, most of the people here either never read, are uneducated, or are just plain stupid.
Quarters really aren't worth that much anymore. Any tight ass high level executive can tell you that.
There will be a great deal of money sloshing around somewhere. But, where? Neither I nor anyone near and dear to me will be getting any of it. Someone is making a killing. Who is it? Can no one tell us? Why can't they?
Watch Soros.
It's enough to make a libertarian cry.
Original Dolt: "I predict many trips to Hawaii."
What the hell does Hawaii have to do with what our country is facing right now?
You sound like a fool.
spelled out phonetically on a teleprompter.
HA, HA, HA
That was awesome, best laugh today.
We did have a VP (maybe P) nominee who did have words spelled out phonetically in a major speech.
HA, HA, HA
That's great stuff.
Rose: "Watch Soros."
Yeah, that's it. George Soros is the real culprit.
Duh.
*Speaking of money "sloshing" around...ever wonder what we could have spent that trillion dollars wasted in Iraq on...right her?
The $1.2 trillion dollar deficit
Video with David M. Walker, the nation's chief accountability officer and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, who says he has given up trying to talk sense to the politicians and is taking his message to the people.
"Ronald Reagan said: "I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy."
Ronnie's who started us the road to where we are today.
Maybe you should read something relating to that wonderful "trickle down" strategy he initiated.
He also drastically cut taxes, then realized everything was turning to shit, that we were heading for a massive debt load, and in turn raised them 4 times over the next few years.
AGAIN: George W. Bush inherited a massive surplus...
Three trillion.
Thousands dead.
Tens of thousands wounded.
Check out the Stiglitz Foratv.com thing about the three trillion dollar war. The first ten or so minutes really express the long term burden and suffering of our extraordinary military.
P.S.
It was even a surplus w/o taking the Social Security surplus, which is a conservative accounting that normal net deficit numbers don't use because if they did the deficits would look even worse.
I enjoy touching my own ass.
I do not like having my ass touched though.
They can lookeywookey but no toucheywouchey.
It's funny, to hear the folks who stampeded the country into an unnecessary war, and in the process wasted...
You go on believing that, Eli. If Iraq hadn't happened, the overwhelming majority of jihadi idiots wouldn't have been eliminated. Bush and the US armed forces did us a tremendous favor, but I don't expect you to realize it. You and Maureen Dowd can pretend it should have been as easy as sending a couple of commandos in to take out bin Laden.
suddenly claiming that the Obama stimulus represents a 'sky is falling' argument.
??
Now, the burden of the Bush economy/lack of oversight/war caused the sky to fall long ago, and the roof has caved in with it.
The sky is not falling!
The Obama plan is to start repairing some of the damage.
The Obama plan sounds like more of the same so far.
I had one cheesecurd for lunchey poo.
Bush inherited a $5.5 Trillion national debt. Clinton in 2000 ran a small budgetary surplus at the height of the Nasdaq bubble. 2001 was about break even.
True, Bush was a spendthrift idiot, but all in the name of stimulus, of course.
MadisonMan said...
"Bush takes office. The economy is robust enough, and there's a nominally balanced budget. Obama takes office. The economy has collapsed, the deficit for just this year exceeds a trillion."
When Captain Smith was called to the bridge, the ship was on the surface enough and was nominally not sunk.
The prosperity under Clinton was all due to Newt Gingrich and Republicans. But Clinton wrecked the military and caused 9/11 which left GWB no choice but to give tax cuts to the wealthy and spend the surplus ina few months. Then along came Rengel and Chris Dodd who caused the housing meltdown by forcing all these poor banks to make loans to losers which destroyed our economy and caused a ripple effect resulting in a global recession. Damn Libs. If this can wreak this kind of havoc with no control of government, just think what they'll do in control. Sheesh.
I am getting my balls waxed tomorrow.
I am getting my balls waxed tomorrow.
I don't even know what that means (but I'm OK with that).
Ronnie's who started us the road to where we are today.
The downward slide STARTED in the 1960's.
And don't let the so-call SURPLUS under Clinton fool you. The graph doesn't take into account the iou's borrowed against SS and medicare funding and not one penny of the SURPLUS was used to pay down the national debt.
Spend, spend, spend!
The Real National Debt $56, 400,000,000,000
Really.
Just your ball of wax? Not your whole kit and caboodle?
Huh... and you, supposedly a tight assed high level executive with shrunken testicles. Aren't you just a little bit embarrassed?
Quick Question:
If a person actually says that the sky is falling are we allowed to ignore any related post by them later on?
I only do the ball waxing. No crack waxing. I do my own penis shaving. I also have my back done.
The salons in the hood run a back, crack, sack wax with release but I only opt for back and sack.
I take care of the crack and release on my own.
[comment amended for clarity]
Geez Garage, if you're serious, you deserve a tag for "most improved opinion in the new year" or something.
Not that I haven't done the crack waxing before, I have.
But there is always residual wax that they don't get out of the crack and it appears in your pinched loaf and can cause concerns.
I am listening to Eric Cantor on CNN. God he is awful. Flowers flow from his mouth when he speaks.
He has definitely had a cock in his mouth.
Let me get this straight. Bozo and mr. Clean ask for 3/4 of a trillion on a 3 page no-accountability term paper, with no recourse for either of them, and you wagging heads just nod and whiz and now someone comes along and says, hey, things are a lot worse than you think (the truth at last) and a lot worse than this last gaggle of crooks let on and you get all up on your little giggly GOP hobbyhorses and thunder off like a pack of nits chasing your wits.
he has a plan. your guys don't. he sees the problems and seeks to fix it. Your last guy didn't. Live with it or come up with something. Some of your guys sound like Glenn Beck.
Eric Cantor looks constipated when he speaks. Every comment is accompanied by a snarl, turned up nose and total grossness.
He is really gross. And he has had a cock in his mouth before. I know it. I can sense it. I can smell it.
" I know it. I can sense it. I can smell it."
Eeeeyww! That is repulsive.
You really should get your nostrils waxed too then.
hdhouse said...
"[Obama] sees the problems and seeks to fix it."
Clearly not! The problem is entitlement spending, and he thinks that we need more of it!
Obama is a commie and I am mad.
It has reached the point where they just need to throw every American an equal slice of the entitlement pie. It should be paid by check every month.
Then they can scrap all the other boondoggle social and entitlement programs.
Sheesh Titus, not to be mean or anything, but sometimes you can sound like such a cheese ball. Just back off the ADD.
A cheesball is defined as more homosexual than your grandmother's cooter.
Mmmm.
I like to stick my hands in my armpits and smell them. Especially after I workout.
As well i like to smell my balls when they are sweaty.
Oh shit, the home care attendant went out to get lotto tickets and Hd has wet his depends again.
they just need to throw every American an equal slice of the entitlement pie
The lady in line in front of me at Kroger last night had a Coach purse (a real one) and paid with one of those WIC things. So I'm hoping they've already started and I just haven't got mine yet.
Bush inherited a massive surplus.
No, he inherited a projected surplus based on unchanging economic factors. Pure fantasy on paper.
Freeman,
use the google.
Knox:
LOL unfortunately at your all too common experience.
You know I am dead serious and observations like you made are proof the current system is broken.
And look on the bright side.... ending the entitlement programs would put an awful lot of sociology majors and social workers out of work.
"use the google".
No thanks I think Titus touched it last.
The business cycle is nothing if not cyclical, and the progression through the cycle is beyond the control of any president. Obama surely knows that.
Except that it is possible to significantly delay the recovery through government mismanagement of the economy, as so famously proven by FDR.
So, we have BHO following in FDR's footsteps as far as his prescription for remedying the problem. At least in FDR's time, there was a supposed liquidity trap caused partially by the Bank Holiday, and serious tariff problems. Also, FDR didn't have 60 years of economics showing his economic programs to be counter-productive.
The right wing is real dead set on rewriting history of FDR's record.
That particular fantasy has been thoroughly debunked by a Noble Laureate economist, no less.
After winning a smashing election victory in 1936, the Roosevelt administration cut spending and raised taxes, precipitating an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate back into double digits and led to a major defeat in the 1938 midterm elections.
Conservative economic theory has been thoroughly discredited. Read the newspapers today for proof. After 8 years of Republican economic policies we teeter on the bring of another depression.
"Trickle down" economics? We've been there, tried that and the result was a failure. "Trickle down" economics didn't raise wages, wages fell, poverty rose and inequality skyrocketed.
Republicans said the sky would fall when Clinton raised taxes on the wealthiest a teensy bit. Instead, we had the best economy in decades, poverty fell, wages inched up and Bush inherited a robust economy.
The failure of laissez-faire no-regulation economics has been proved - AGAIN. Capitalism without rules and referees is just asking for trouble, which we now have.
Comes a time that ideology needs to yield to reality. For conservatives, that time has arrived!
Bruce,
WTF? You're Mr. Austerity.
It's really easy to look at employment charts to see that FDR's fiscally conservative changes reversed and tanked a strong four year long improvement.
But, now you say BHO is Mr. Austerity/FDR.
"It's a terrible affliction by which I suffer from that manifests itself as a compulsion I have no control over."
Best sentence of the thread.
Oh, I should credit such beauty: Methadras.
Simon needs to elaborate on this one, please:
The problem is entitlement spending, and he thinks that we need more of it!
Do tell! We're in the economic state we're in due to entitlement spending?
That caused the stock market to tank?
That caused Wall St firms to go belly up?
That caused home values to fall?
Can't wait to hear this explanation! Ha-ha!
People create depressions. People create recoveries. It's not possible, nor is it reasonable, to do everything within the power you exert within your own sphere to destroy confidence in government and in society in general and then expect economics to not reflect that effort. Take a bow. This recession was absolutely demanded. That is obvious in the printed and published record, it's obvious in the congressional record. But come now, be of good cheer. Here, let me help.
Hey, you! Hey, you!
U. S. A.
C'mon geeeeeet through!
Fight, 'em bust 'em
That's our custom.
Gooooooo America!
Defeat un-
em-ploooooy-ment
Defeat in-
flaaaaaa-shun!
Goooooooo America!
Everywhere we go
People wanna know
Who are we?
Who are we?
We are A-W-E
S-O-M-E
Whatdoesitspell?
I don't know!
Yaaaaaaay!
Hey America, go, go, go,
Hey Americans, go, go, go,
Go America, fight, fight, fight,
Go America, win, win, win,
Go America, fight and win
Fight, 'em bust 'em
That's our custom.
Gooooooo America!
Yaaaaaaaaay!
To the original post: A warning is not fear-mongering ("one of these is different from the other"). The basis for the warnings on the economic crisis are very well-established.
Contrast that with the fear mongering over Iraq having nuclear weapons, being able to strike the US with drone planes, having chemical weapons, etc, etc.
I mean, if Ann Althouse has some evidence that the economy is really in fine shape, let's see it!
Alpha:
Throwing bad money into Fannie & Freddie Mae for years is a form of entitlement spending.
Dems like Barney Frank and others just looked the other way as the govt guarantees for these mortgages became an enormous risk to we the taxpayers.
The mortgage defaults then led to the banking system meltdown in September.
Bissage has some competition and he can rhyme!
That caused the stock market to tank?
Speculative bubble burst. An excessive amount of money was being poured into long shot gambles that were undercapitalized.
That caused Wall St firms to go belly up?
These were the folks making the long shot gambles.
That caused home values to fall?
Because housing was experiencing a bubble--when you give easy money, demand goes up, but supply couldn't keep up, so prices went up. When that money flow stops, demand drops below supply, prices fall.
AJ, thanks for the respectful response, free of insults and everything.
Actually, the term "entitlement spending" has a definition and any subsidies (if there actually were any) to Fannie and Freddie don't fit the definition. There's no guarantee of F&F backing and it doesn't go to individuals anyway.
Entitlement spending typically refers to things like Social Security and Medicare.
And the rush to blame Fannie and Freddie for the economic crisis is way off the mark. Nobel-Laureate Paul Krugman explains.
Better if we define the problems to fix them than use a crisis to attack government.
AlphaLiberal said...
"I mean, if Ann Althouse has some evidence that the economy is really in fine shape, let's see it!"
For one thing, in a real economic downturn, the useless and "special" employees are the first to go, but you still haven't been laid off.
Joe, no argument here. Simon said the problem is entitlement spending, and I'm eagerly looking forward to his explanation.
AlphaLiberal said...
"Do tell! We're in the economic state we're in due to entitlement spending?"
Yes. As you are no doubt aware, entitlement spending distorts people's incentives and makes up the majority of government spending.
Alpha:
I dont care if it fits into the defined box or not.
No matter how you want to classify it, the mortgage guarantees represented govt discretionary spending and Congress placed our money at at risk for political reasons.
As to my relying on Krugman, LOL. You are joking no?
As to the financial cost of the Iraq war: 'thinkprogress{dot}org' just a couple of months ago put the total at $648 Billion in 2008 dollars. It's a lefty outfit, so I'll use their numbers without challenge.
The also demonstrated that in the peak year of the war it accounted for 24% of the total defense budget. I'll also use that number unchallenged.
US military personnel in Iraq topped out at 8% of our total armed forces, based on active duty and reserves combined. Therefore, the war has cost three times what it would have cost to maintain and train those same troops at home in the US.
From simple arithmetic, therefore, only two-thirds of the "cost of the war" can be attributed to the war itself. One third of those "costs" would have been incurred anyway.
Using leftie numbers it's reasonable to set the cost of the venture in Iraq at about $450 Billion.
When Bush entered office the National Debt stood at $5.73 Trillion. As of today it is $10.64 Trillion -- five friggin trillion dollars of debt added in just eight years!
Pretend the Iraq never happened, and that there would have been no negative consequences for inaction ... today's National Debt would still be $10.2 Trillion.
The ballooning National Debt had plenty of other causes, to the tune of at least 90% other causes. Such profligacy is reprehensible, but don't try to blame very much of it on Iraq.
"The ballooning National Debt had plenty of other causes, to the tune of at least 90% other causes."
Specifically, entitlement spending. See above.
he ballooning National Debt had plenty of other causes, to the tune of at least 90% other causes.
Pork. Earmarks. Trillions of dollars on unnecessary, often secret spending by Congressweasels. Of both parties, I might add.
"Both parties"
That is the key Michael H.
AJ, Simon, Michael H, and Bart are entirely right.
1jpb and Alpha are entirely wrong.
It's a mystery to me how an economy that is 35-40% government spending and the remainder significantly regulated can be described as "laissez-faire" in any way at all, except in comparison to the Soviet Union perhaps.
Let me go slightly off-topic.
The governor's group is looking for a state bailout of $1 trillion right? What does this ginormous number mean you may ask?
Let's use Pennsylvania to consider this request. PA has 12.5 million people which is 4% of the country's 300 million. If PA got 4% of the $1 Trillion requested, PA would get a $40 Billion bailout!
In this fiscal year, PA has a general fund budget of $28 Billion! WTF does it need an infusion of $40 Billion which is way more than one year's general fund spending?
Trooper York said...Oh shit, the home care attendant went out to get lotto tickets and Hd has wet his depends again.
So hdhouse is a senile geriatric and Michael is a junior high school kid who lives in his mom's paneled basement?
Pogo,
I have no idea why you think I misrepresented the size of government (fed/state/local together) relative to GDP.
Maybe you imagined I wrote something else that was false.
Bush inherited a massive surplus, the Dow was at about 14,000, oil at $28, unemployment at about 4.4%, and now we're buried in debt, the economy is in a shambles, the real estate market is upside down, unemployment is predicted to go to 9-10%, they predict 25% of all retail businesses will go bankrupt...and you think the newspapers and Obama are being too..."negative?"
I would enjoy seeing some evidence backing this, esp. the "massive surplus". My memory was that there was a small paper surplus for Clinton's last budget.
If government spending was the route to prosperity, the Soviet Union would have won the cold war and Moscow would be the financial center of the world.
1jpb
Anyone who speaks of FDR as a conservative is in error.
The DJIA was at 10,588 when Bush took office. It most recently returned to that number at the end of this past September.
His fiscally conservative austerity policies were fiscally conservative austerity policies. Up is up. Down is down. Blue is blue. Red is Red.
I know that you understand such uses of 'conservative' are unquestionably acceptable. I'm not relating to FDR's position on the political spectrum, as I'm sure you know.
But, whatever. You've saved face in your own mind, while taking a hit it the real world. Congratulations.
When you grow up you'll either learn to restrain your unfounded attacks, or you'll acknowledge errors.
Michael H said...
"Pork. Earmarks. Trillions of dollars on unnecessary, often secret spending by Congressweasels. Of both parties, I might add."
No, I agree with Obama about this. Pork is bad for a number of reasons - it's a form of quasi-legal corruption - and ought to be put a stop to for reasons that relate to the above. Those reasons don't presently include its effect on the budget. Pork is a minimal fraction of the overall federal budget. That's one of the things I thought Palin mishandled, truth be told - the bottom line is that if you're serious about stopping the bleeding, you've got to be serious about fixing entitlement spending. You could eliminate pork and all discretionary spending, and we'd still have a massive federal budgetary problem.
Simon,
But isn't the difference between pork and entitlement spending that of scale? Politicians bribe big donors with pork, but bribe large groups of voters with entitlement programs.
Bart, you post facts, math, common sense and logic here and expect the "Death to the Great Satan" crowd to do what? They aren't anti-war, they are pro-enemy.
Bruce, perhaps so, but when the issue is one of balancing the budget, the relevant aspect of pork is its scale. We should do away with it, but we shouldn't do so expecting it's going to fix the budget.
I think it's fair to point out that GWB's fiscal policies in 2001 represent a huge missed opportunity. True, there were forces outside his or anyone's control. The non-massive Clinton surplus of 2000 was driven by Wall Street profit taking. Remember day traders? Remember Ted Turner clearing one billion dollars in capital gains? New York State was flush then too. I guess George Pataki was a genius.
Nevertheless, Bush cut taxes with no attempt to cut spending, presided over a huge complication of the tax code, and never made any attempt to check an out-of-control Congress.
So he bears some blame as do the legislative incompetents of both parties. I seriously feel like the post-millenial political class in Washington has been the least competent in my lifetime.
But really, we all bear the blame. Large majorities of Americans vote for politicians who promise to give them money from the public treasury. To quote Pogo (the other Pogo), we have met the enemy and he is us.
Notice MichaelTroll comes in here and spews nothing but hate, lies and rottenness. No facts, no debates, just triumphalism.
Simon said...
"Clearly not! The problem is entitlement spending, and he thinks that we need more of it"
Clearly not Simon. That is not even first rate baloney. Social Security and Medicare will not go away and actually do a world of good. Please explain how much good the 750 billion to the banks did us? How the billions to AIG made things better? How we live better with Citibank?
Or is your quibble with a first rate education in first rate schools? You are where you are (wherever that is) because of education. It is certain that you aren't where you are on the basis of social responsibility.
Who is really wanted to work hard?
Army of clerks seating in office, drinking coffee, and digging internet?
Or may be countless middlemen’s, agents, “american idols” and the like society?
May be dishonest bankers, lawyers, corporate “fat cat” and army of bureaucrats?
This generation already lost…
Unfortunately.
Notice MichaelTroll comes in here and spews nothing but hate, lies and rottenness. No facts, no debates, just triumphalism.
Yeah, except for Michael it's a documentary called Triumph des Villians.
"Blogger Michael said...
"Ronald Reagan said: "I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy."
Ronnie's who started us the road to where we are today.
Maybe you should read something relating to that wonderful "trickle down" strategy he initiated.
He also drastically cut taxes, then realized everything was turning to shit, that we were heading for a massive debt load, and in turn raised them 4 times over the next few years.
AGAIN: George W. Bush inherited a massive surplus..."
Ronnie is my hero. He made me rich. Paying 70% gets old fast. You see Micheal, unlike you I actually pay real taxes. Far in excess of what ever putative value of government services I receive. And that includes all of my dependents as well. Why do you worry about deficits? Its not like you are actually going to pay any real amount of taxes now or ever so whats your beef? Afraid you are going to loose your welfare? There are only net tax payers and net tax consumers. A net tax payer by definition has overpaid their share no matter how many tax deductions, credits, allowances and rate reductions they get. A net tax consumer is by definition a parasite. Appears to be an accurate description of you.
Alpha, Freddie and Fannie were definitely an entitlement. No one would have bought their paper if not for the implied government guarantee. Way back during the boom, I bought plenty of their paper and never would have bought one dollar of that junk if not for the government guarantees. That is the same reason I look for the worst rated banks to deposit money under the FDIC coverage limits, they pay the highest yield. Without that insurance there isn't a snowballs chance in hell that I would stick my money in such a bank. No bank would have ever made those garbage loans if they could not sell them off and the biggest buyer indeed practically the only buyer were Freddie and Fannie. Barney frank and Chris Dodd, they knew what they were doing, they just thought the game of musical chairs would never end.
The Democrats and the left have whining for decades about Republican trickle down wealth (overlooking the small detail that without that there would be far less jobs). Now they are going to give us over the next 4 to 8 years a real lesson in trickle up poverty.
cubanbob said: "Blogger Michael said...
"Ronald Reagan said: "I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy."
Actually, that was my posting. I am Michael H, not plain Michael.
Big difference in philosophies.
"Big difference in philosophies."
...not to mention style, intelligence, and character.
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