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bbartlog
14 years ago
They’ll have to monetize the debt – that is, there is no way the Chinese or anyone else on God’s green earth will buy this much US debt (at least not at rates we would accept). In fact I don’t think the Chinese (or the Japanese, or the Europeans) will have enough money even if they were inclined to help, as they have some very serious problems of their own. So the Fed will have to step in and buy the debt, which is just a thinly-disguised way of printing money.
Ultimately this will lead to inflation, so the net effect will be to tax anyone holding dollars (or debt denominated in dollars). But in the near term (a year or two) the deflationary pressures resulting from the unwinding of our debt may still prevail.
By the way, if you’re looking at historical parallels with the Great Depression, Obama is somewhat more like Hoover than he is like FDR. By which I mean that, like Hoover, he simply hasn’t grasped the magnitude of the problem in a timely fashion, and assumes that he can fix things up by spending some money rather than by structural reforms. The proper size of the US financial sector is probably about 3% of GDP, but it’s been puffed up to 8% by the debt bubble; so about two-thirds of this part of the economy needs to disappear before sanity is restored. This could happen without any action from Obama whatsoever (albeit with massive collateral damage), just via bankruptcy and massive defaults. But some sort of controlled demolition would be best. Unfortunately Obama and Geithner appear to have opted for the ‘status quo / zombie banks’ scenario, which minimizes the pain for their buddies in the banking industry, but will put the American economy in a coma. See Krugman’s commentary.
@bbartlog: The Fed cannot print that much money. Inflation will kill the ability to cover this debt.
If the spending spree doesn’t spark an economic revival in the very short term we are in big trouble.
b1jetmech
14 years ago
I think inflation gonna rear it’s ugly head and were all going to have eat from the “sh-t sandwich”.
If the repubs regain control in 2010 they have a strong possibility of stopping the other 60% of the “porkulous” bill money i.e. damage control.
We’ll see.
PithnVinegar
14 years ago
How long can Obama blame the last administration for all the problems when he was a congressman for the last two years, as were Biden, Clinton, Emmanuel, and others of his staff?
What were they doing, what bills did they introduce, what hearings did they hold, what leadership did they show then?
bbartlog
14 years ago
The Fed cannot print that much money
I’m not aware of any hard limit on the Fed’s ability to create money. They can go all Gideon Gono if they want to. Not that they will; reducing the value of all existing money (and debt) by half should be enough to cover even this spending spree, and that’s ‘only’ five years of 14% inflation.
@Mata:
And yes I know Krugman’s spending advice is a result of Keynesian delusions. But his point about the banks still seems correct.
@bbartlog: Are there any studies out there that suggest what will happen if we print $TRILLIONS with nothing to back it up?
@PithnVinegar: You know that we never hold Dems accountable to the same standards they daily demand of Repbulicans. It’s all Bush’s fault. It’s never the Dems fault. Obama will never be held to the same standard. It will still be the Republicans fault.
The comparisons with the Bush budgets are odious. It’s not like there was some sort of steady-state going on (without a calamitous financial meltdown) and the Democrats suddenly increased spending for no reason. The GOP/McCain stimulus plan wouldn’t have increased spending as much, but they would have increased spending, and there would have been much greater tax cuts, which would have produced massively increased borrowing; so the true difference in new debt isn’t nearly as great as the WSJ graphic implies.
The true test of economic stewardship is the debt to GDP ratio. These always went down during all Democratic administrations since World War II (even Johnson’s combined “Great Society”/Vietnam War spending), but went up with the last three Republican administrations. Obama’s on record as saying he’ll cut the deficit in half, relative to what he inherited, by the end of his term in office (or first term, if he’s reelected).
There is this great illusion that Reagan and Bush were “conservatives.” Conservative economic policy is not to cut taxes without cutting spending and then to massively drive up the debt to GDP ratio. This is what Obama is out to change — he wants to get back to the days of reducing the debt to GDP ratio, even though he’s starting out from a deep hole inherited from his predecessor. We’ll see if he succeeds.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: “There is this great illusion that Reagan and Bush were “conservatives.” Conservative economic policy is not to cut taxes without cutting spending”
Larry, perhaps you are too young or have forgotten the budget deal that Democrats agreed with the first President Bush. They got him to agree to give up his no new taxes pledge in return for spending cuts that they promised would come later.
Bush lived up to his part of the bargain and Democrats just gave him the finger when it was time for the spending cuts.
It’s a similar game we are seeing now with massive tax increases the first order of business and vague unspecified promises to cut the deficit later.
Only you could get sucked into that big lie again.
If it weren’t for Democrats we’d likely have balanced budgets every year. No serious person can suggest that Dems take spending restraint seriously.
SpideyTerry
14 years ago
The president blamed the nation’s economic travails on the administration that preceded him
Ah, blaming someone else – the mark of a true leader. *snark*
and on a nation that lost its bearings
This is true, though, as evidenced by that mental midget being in the White House.
Mike, the facts remain that the debt/GDP ratios fell under the Dems, but rose with the GOP. Bush 41 was right to raise taxes. Clinton raised them even more — and balanced the budget, because of it. There would have been no balanced budget, had the Bush 43 level tax cuts been in place.
Presidents can veto spending bills they don’t like. No one can put a gun to their heads. For the first 6 years of the Bush 43 administration, the deficit and debt ballooned, and the GOP controlled both Executive and Legislative. The last two years, the Dems pretty much gave Bush 43 the spending bills he wanted. There was no massive Democratic-induced increase in spending.
My main concern is debt/GDP. We here in America are not overtaxed; we moan and groan about it; no one likes to pay taxes. But we want national defense. We want decent education — more than that, we want world class education and affordable world class education, at that. We want health care. The private health care system is not meeting our needs. I’m an oncologist and I’ve been looking and looking and I can’t find a health care plan that would begin to pay for the cost of new forms of chemotherapy, if someone in my family gets cancer. We want highways. We want bridges. We want parks. We want clean cities. Great western civilization cities have all the above.
So all administrations, GOP as well as Democrats, strive to give people what they want (the Medicare prescription drug bill being a great example). But the main difference between Democrats and Republicans is that the Democrats have the political guts to raise taxes to pay for all of this, while the Republicans persist in the false delusion of the fanciful Laffer curve – that tax cuts somehow pay for themselves and that eventually we’ll be able to start paying back all the borrowed money that went into financing those tax cuts.
I could live with either system: lots of social programs (e.g. health care) and high taxes or truly limited government spending and low taxes. It’s really not a huge difference; on one hand, there is private sector innovation and, on the other hand (e.g. health care) there are public sector economies of scale (e.g. drug purchases). Same thing for education. And on and on. I’ve been to so-called “socialized” countries, many times, and the educated people in these countries live very much the same sort of lives that I do. There is this myth that only in the USA do people have high standards of living and happy lives. So, as I said, I could live perfectly happily with most of the Western Democracy systems. What I can’t live with/won’t tolerate in my government, is the immoral policy of not paying our own way, in our own time, but instead borrowing money to finance our government, while passing the bill on down to our children.
So for me, politics is all about avoiding nuclear bombs going off in Long Beach Harbor and reducing debt/GDP ratio.
Larry, you keep saying it’s all about a nuke bomb in your back yard… What makes you think the Long Beach Harbor comes before Hawaii, San Diego or Norfolk? Mistaken self-import, me thinks…. I doubt your back yard holds much interest in the context of reality.
luva the scissors
14 years ago
this is the ugliest i have seen my husbands line of work. they are off more thant hey are on. his union kept saying to vote for obama, he will save us. i really can’t see how this is saving us. as a general rule one cannot spend more than one brings in. if my income goes down, which it has, i have to cut spending, which i have, whe is it governments turn. you can’t pay for canoes and tattoo removal when there are far more pressing things that need to be taken care of.
I love it when this comes up. After Rostenkowski got out of “so called” prison, he did an interview on WLS/Chicago that I listened to. He said that what President Bush(41) did by allowing that tax increase in his estimation was brave, that 41 knew that it would damage his chance for re-election but he trusted the deal he made with the dems and they reneged. Rostenkowski also said in that interview that he was ashamed because of the betrayal. They were supposed to cut spending for the tax increase. Never trust them.
bbartlog: This could happen without any action from Obama whatsoever (albeit with massive collateral damage), just via bankruptcy and massive defaults.
I generally agree with your comment #1 but, what kind of massive collateral damage are you speaking of?
@Missy: The first President Bush was held accountable at the polls for that mistake in trusting Democrats to follow through with their promise to cut spending.
What a shame the voters never held Democrats accountable for their part in that bargain. But of course their voters want more spending.
Bush showed he could take the courageous position even if it meant a loss at the polls.
No Democrat has that much courage to do the right thing.
Larry with the twinkle in eye -increasingly mesmerized with the superficial, Hollywood presentation of political flash.
Mike, I have a personal favor to ask: As much as I love this blog, and I truly do, or else I wouldn’t waste so much time here, I can’t monitor each and every thread. If there is something that either you or anyone else feels that I should be responding to, it would be a kindness for you to send me an email and tell me about it.
I don’t have time right now to go and see what Mata said in the above quote, but I’ll try to do so in the future — just as I eventually got around to watching the whole hour and 15 minutes of your interesting global warming video.
People who are wrapped up in themselves make very small packages.
IndieDogg
14 years ago
I just spoke with the president and I asked him what I thought was a great question raised in this blog string (above), how was it he could so vigorously condemn the spending habits of the federal government over the past two years while he, himself, was a member of Congress, without accepting any personal responsibility.
It was striking but he seemed to be genuinely surprised by the question and even a little incredulous. But, in any event, I’ll share his answer:
Mike:
I wanted to post a readers article here, but saw that it could not be posted on any other blog.
If i pull it from the other blogs can I post it here.???
Val
@Marion A. Valentine: You have to ask the boss Curt. I’m a pretty easy going guy (most of the time) I would say yes without asking you to pull it elsewhere.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, you seem to track every single word I type and cross check it against your liberal play book. I would think that posting multiple reminders on the threads you comment on would catch your attention.
I’m eagerly looking forward to your response to Mata’s comment as it appears to be at the heart of so many of these discussions.
O.K. I read Mata’s post. I can’t see where she invited me to respond to it.
The tax cuts, combined with the monstrous amount of frivolous spending thus far, and the promised spending to come, will be short lived at best. Even Larry admits you can’t give tax cuts without decreasing spending. And boyo… that ain’t about to happen with a Pelosi/Reid Congress. Spending is what they live for.
So I’ll somewhat agree with the better marketing statement you made. However when you’re marketing lies and toxic policy waste, there is nothing admirable about the outcome. That, of course, will royally PO Larry with the twinkle in eye -increasingly mesmerized with the superficial, Hollywood presentation of political flash. Economically Obama and his Clintonian economic team losers are dangerous. And Obama is not much more effective in foreign policy.
My only comment is that I consider the Democrats to be much more truly economic conservatives than I consider modern day Republicans to be. In the first place, you are in massive denial over the fact that in 6 years of complete GOP control, there were massive increases in spending, massive tax cuts, and super-massive accumulation of debt. In 12 years of Reaganomics, there was massive accumulation of debt, which would have been even worse, had not Bush 41 wisely raised taxes.
The Democrats spend more on social programs and less on military hardware and wars. Spending-wise, it’s pretty much a wash. The difference is that the Democrats raise taxes and try to balance the budget; the GOP cuts taxes and borrows money to make up the shortfall, without worrying about long-term consequences.
Except for right now: Now that the Dems are firmly in control, the GOP has suddenly — overnight, found religion. Oh, goodness, we must not run up debt. But the only plans advanced by the GOP to deal with the financial crisis would run up debt, through greater tax cuts, to go along with more modest spending on domestic programs, only it is a certainty that a McCain administration would have spent more money on military matters, as Republicans always do, with the result that Republicans beginning with Reagan have always massively increased the debt/GDP ratio.
Clinton’s economic team are hardly “losers!” By what standard? They raised taxes and balanced the budget. That is true economic success. Pay as you go government. That’s where the Democrats again want to take the country and the numbers prove that the Democrats have done a much better job of reducing debt/GDP than Republicans have done. Not even close.
The GOP has proven itself to be the party of debt. Numbers don’t lie. The truth often hurts.
I could actually vote for a Ron Paul type Republican. Trouble is, outside of Ron Paul, they don’t seem to exist.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: “My only comment is that I consider the Democrats to be much more truly economic conservatives than I consider modern day Republicans to be.”
Do we need to define “economic conservative” here?
Either that or you are smoking crack.
By every measure you suggest in comments above and elsewhere it is the Republicans who do a better job (no one said perfect job) of meeting your criteria.
Curt…I wrote PLANNED OR HAPPPENSTANCE this afternoon and posted it on 3 sites…i also am the author of America In Peril referred to in the post.
Scrapiron
14 years ago
Elect a black drug adddict who has never earned a dime in his life POTUS, give him the keys to the treasury and go back later looking for the money. Give me a break, you ask for it and you’ll get it no matter who you are.
Give your 16 YO son the car keys and a quart of Jack Daniels and you’ll be visiting the funeral home. Same thing.
bbartlog
14 years ago
y every measure you suggest in comments above and elsewhere it is the Republicans who do a better job (no one said perfect job) of meeting your criteria.
No, Larry is correct about the ratio of public (but not private) debt to GDP (as far as I know; I haven’t looked at the figures for Johnson, but for Carter and Clinton I recall this is correct). There are certainly still some arguments to be made – most notably, Congress under Clinton was mostly Republican, and in the early years after 1994 they actually made some efforts at fiscal conservatism.
In Carter’s case, it was inflation that helped drive the real debt down as a percentage of GDP.
More generally if you want to defend Republicans you have to talk about Congress rather than the President, because the deficits under Republican presidents have been the bad ones. Until this year, anyway.
Anyway the D/R discussion sort of bores me at this point. The peculiar boom/bust cycle of debt appears to be a systemic one (1873, 1929, 2008). Some policies can exacerbate it, but considering that the latest wave has been building since the mid-70s it’s kind of idiotic to describe it specifically as a Democratic or Republican caused problem. OK, CRA tacked $500 billion of problems on; we would have been better off without it; but when the problem is the total combined debt of $40 trillion, complaining about the straw that broke the camel’s back is beside the point. And you’ll note that somehow all the banks of Europe ended up in the same boat without the benefit of the USG pushing them to make dubious loans.
So really it would be nice if our elected officials were talking about what they think caused it and how it can be prevented the next time around. I suppose we have to survive the next ten years first, so we could afford to wait before worrying about that; still, a little more effort at diagnosis as well as bailouts would be nice.
bbart: In Carter’s case, it was inflation that helped drive the real debt down as a percentage of GDP.
Bingo… inflation, the unaccounted for fly in the ointment in all Obama’s calculations for tax revenue and tax “cuts”.
And you’ll note that somehow all the banks of Europe ended up in the same boat without the benefit of the USG pushing them to make dubious loans.
Some of this is because of their own housing bubble The rest? Real estate assets make the world go round, and securitizing bad loans was a global virus.
bbartlog
14 years ago
I generally agree with your comment #1 but, what kind of massive collateral damage are you speaking of?
I’m not entirely sure. At the extreme, you could have the money market funds default, followed by a run on the banks for cash that would put almost every bank under, leading to a deflationary contraction so severe that most of the bonds and other debts on earth would go into default. But that’s assuming that the Fed stands pat and does nothing, which is implausible. In the Great Depression they did act this way (made deflation worse by contracting the money supply), but they are smarter now than they were then. Of course the problem is also bigger.
Larry is absolutely correct that in my original comment on his continual praise of Obama being the most “skilled politician” he’s ever seen has never warranted a response. I just had to comment that his superficial assessment of a reason to admire the leader of the free world is so damned Hollywood and shallow. He substantiated this very snobbish ‘tude with his comment about Palin being an “air head”.
As a parallel to that sort of thought, Larry – let me give you this to mull over. I think the SS Waffen were the snappiest dressed military I’ve ever seen, an astonishingly efficient fighting force, and the Panzer one helluva tank. Does that mean I admire their quest? But nooooo.
You can’t seem to separate the presentation from the substance. And from one whom I consider intelligent, this is quite disheartening. I can only assume it’s your specific locale to the superficial-capital-of-the-world, LA.
But now, Larry… in light of your latest response… I *do* request a response.
Specifically:
The Democrats spend more on social programs and less on military hardware and wars. Spending-wise, it’s pretty much a wash. The difference is that the Democrats raise taxes and try to balance the budget; the GOP cuts taxes and borrows money to make up the shortfall, without worrying about long-term consequences.
Really? Truly cancer research is your specialty. But I had no idea your math was so challenged. As WSJ points out today in the The 2% Illusion, the math just don’t add up for the spending and promises. I don’t care if you think it’s “wise” spending or not.
And, to boot, all the projections are based on an *improving* economy to generate more taxes from “the wealthy”, not taking in the baby boomer SS costs immediately afterwards. In fact, when you look at his “halve the budget” promise, you’ll notice the enusing years it ticks up considerably each following year.
But what does Obama care? Because, as you said often, he just wants to be “the greatest President”, and if it happens after he leaves, he can leave us all in the toilet while he looks good.
Feh and more feh
“Wise” spending, which you claim to support, will require placing smaller (not widely encompassing) policy in place first to generate improved revenues. When that works – and ONLY after that works – you can then start placing more spending policies in place. To bank on the spending working all at once is throwing the dice with a huge ante… OUR ante, BTW, not Obama’s money. He’ll always be rich with PR shit.
Obama is going for the gold on our dime… without knowing whether these policies will work, and not caring if they do beyond his reign. He’ll be out of office by then.
Clinton’s economic team are hardly “losers!” By what standard? They raised taxes and balanced the budget.
You say this because you, Larry, refuse to recognize the legislative roots that begat this housing bubble, which begat this recession/depression. Obama’s team are exactly those who were teammates and proteges on the CRA/Gramm-Leach debacle.
You babble about CRA banks, and ignore facts that the Clinton/Rubin/Summers (and Geitherner protege) admin forced EVERY bank (who wanted to financially grow) to adhere to those rewritten CRA compliances in 1998-99. Do you do this out of sheer refusal to acknowledge fact? Or is it that you genuinely do not know?
Same team that caused this housing bubble is the same team Obama has picked to “cure” it by trying to reinflate the bubble. Bad juju.
The GOP has proven itself to be the party of debt. Numbers don’t lie. The truth often hurts.
I could actually vote for a Ron Paul type Republican. Trouble is, outside of Ron Paul, they don’t seem to exist.
Let me get this straight. You want me to believe that you detest Bush spending.. which is less than Obama’s in just his first 30 days on a “per day” level, but then tell me you’d vote for a “Ron Paul”???
‘scuse me while I go “inhale”…..
There could not be more complete opposites fiscally than a “Ron Paul” and Obama. Bush falls in the middle of the two – *especially* considering he had active wars (not Lewinsky wars) to deal with, as well as the economic repercussions of 911 atop an inherited economic recession.
So you bash Bush, love a “Ron Paul”, and go all a’twitter about Obama as “the most skilled politician” who is “playing us and we don’t even know it”…
Either you reconcile this extreme opinion of spending, or you’re nothing more than a very pleasant – and extremely shallow – partisan hypocrite.
@bbartlog: I cite my magic example once again: Imagine if we could go back in time and wave a magic wand and magically every Democrat in the U.S. House and Senate dissappeared. With either Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Bush II can you imagine that spending would be higher or lower in such a scenario.
We all know that CONGRESS appropriates and spends, not the President. Which is another reason that blaming Bush for being a big spender is a cop out.
As for spending as a percent of GDP it was higher in the 1980’s than it was until recently (I guess Bush wasn’t such a big spender after all:
Total federal spending as a percent of Gross Domestic Product
2008:21.0%
2009:27.7%
2010:24.1%
2011: 23.4%
2012: 22.2%
Spending in the last full fiscal year of Bush was average, but immediately jumps up and stays there. Obama takes the high point of Reagan era spending and makes it his new baseline.
The other interesting thing is the projected growth Obama’s budget predicts. I don’t know what fantasy economist came up with these numbers but they are usually WRONG. Spending as a percent of GDP is likely to be much higher than the numbers above predict.
Anyone want to take bets on that? Larry?
Greg
14 years ago
The DemocRATS will either succeed in creating a welfare state or cause a depression that will dwarf the depression of the thirty’s. My wife and I are planning for the latter. Though it will be a traumatic experience for many, the one benefit will be that we will be wiser for the experience and hopefully no DemocRAT will ever win an election again.
They can think all the positive fantasy illusions they want but time will prove their folly. Mark my words!
Fear not, Greg… we’ll all move to Missy’s for a conservative commune… LOL
Greg
14 years ago
“Either you reconcile this extreme opinion of spending, or you’re nothing more than a very pleasant partisan hypocrite”.
I would suggest he’s suffering from chronic selective logic disease. When you pick and choose what facts you will ignore, eventually you end up supporting bad ideas and faulty reasoning. Larry’s there! Only the foolish ever get fooled. Stupid people don’t know that they are stupid.
bbartlog: I’m not entirely sure. At the extreme, you could have the money market funds default, followed by a run on the banks for cash that would put almost every bank under, leading to a deflationary contraction so severe that most of the bonds and other debts on earth would go into default.
I think that scenario is not too out of the realm with what has happened in the past 18 months. I tend to think the Govn’t/Fed with either print a boatload of money or borrow as much (or both). Thank god that there is more room on the oil tankers and car carriers to bring the cash since we cannot really afford the real products/commodes any more.
Mata: Larry is absolutely correct that in my original comment on his continual praise of Obama being the most “skilled politician” he’s ever seen has never warranted a response. I just had to comment that his superficial assessment of a reason to admire the leader of the free world is so damned Hollywood and shallow. He substantiated this very snobbish ‘tude with his comment about Palin being an “air head”.
Holy cow. 🙂 Be careful of the fired up biker chick. 🙂
Out of all the people on FA, I would love to meet you Mata. Very cool. Even when we pick at each other, thank god I am not Larry. 🙂
Mike, I tend to respect women and Mata is a nice person… even when we totally have different positions. You on the other hand, I just plain don’t like. 🙂
“good come back” mike. I would love to engage with you in dialogue but really doubt you would take it serious or you would be disingenuous. For you it seems to be sport to devolve into personal insults. Maybe that is the way of blogs and I just don’t look at enough of them to realize all people disregard civility to strike home their points. And all this time I thought civility was a traditional value.
I know this is a loaded point, since it is “off topic”, but since we have been going back and forth for months, maybe you will learn something in this exchange. When you personally attack me… I will fight back. I try not to get down to the insult level, but it is in my nature to defend myself. Call that hypocritical… that is fair (especially when I have called you an “ass” back), but first remember who threw the first punch.
ruaqtpi2
14 years ago
@Larry,
Yes, Republican presidents did pass spending increases pushed through by mostly Democratic Congresses, but did so believing that Democrats would keep their word and honor pledges to cut taxes. The GOP has gotten burned by such antics far too often, which is why they’re taken a firm stand against Obama and his Democratic Congress. If the GOPs didn’t fight to restrain the spending of Obama and his buddies controlling Congress, who knows how high the spending could get; regardless of previous performance, the GOP *must* fight for fiscal responsibility.
Can we PLEASE put an end to the myth that Clinton balanced the budget and even created surpluses? The treasury’s own numbers tell the story once you accept the reaty that Clinton picked the Social Security “lock-box”, used the loot to pay part of the general budget, and filled the box with IOUs. Clinton’s administration also increased intergovernmental spending to offset the reductions in public debt, thus increasing the government’s debt AND the national debt.
Obama’s team of Geithner, Summersand Rubin are the same thieves who, under Clinton (who deregulated banking and set the stage for the financial incest and its deformed offspring) orchestrated the very policies that allowed the banks to f_ck around with fantom mortgage-based securities and related derivative products for their own short-term gain. They knew full well that by the time the roof came crumbling in, they’d be able to hide behind government guarantees. The complexities they built into the system were intended to squeeze every penny out of each “investment” while providing a cloud of confusion so that regulators and others on the “outside” wouldn’t have much of a chance to figure out what happened. Then they could claim (as they have) that the complexities of the system left them unable to see upcoming problems until it was too late. Only a delusional self-absorbed stuffed shirt (or an evil minded genius with devious ulterior motives) would think that putting these same men in charge of the Treasury and in charge of engineering the nation’s economic recovery.
I’d like to believe that Obama is not a diabolical, evil-minded political practitioner, but I don’t think he’s delusional. Under what circumstances does it make sense to leave the fox in charge of the hen house?
Geithner and his buddies are trying to reinflate bubbles and get as much money flowing into the banks in hopes that they can forestall – perhaps even prevent – the real market valuation of the toxic assets. Geithner knows that once the true pathetically paltry value of the toxic assets sees the light of day, his reputation will be irreversibly damaged and his sense of self-worth shattered, he will be revealed as the crook he really is, and he’ll potentially face criminal proceedings. Not to mention that the one thing false idols fear the most is for truth to show the world that they are nothing more than slimy charlatans.
The GOP Presidents haven’t been perfect, and have made significant (and costly) errors along the way. Over the past 8 years – and especially the most recent 2 years – George Bush (in addition to his own faults) has been made out to be the embodiment of everything that is wrong with government, and he has taken the character assassination admirably. On the other hand, Obama has been elevated to the level of a demi-God incapable of doing any wrong – a cult figure of mythical proportions, with the power to heal society’s every ailment by the mere wave of his hand or the sound of his name.
Both characterizations are evidence of a neurotic nation (even a world), unable to see what has made it sick, and unable to formulate a plan to heal. Bush and Obama are the new Satan and Savior the world has invented because it has been fooled by crooks and neo-evangelists who are selling these idols to us on the basis of exaggerated charges and lies (in the case of George Bush) and false hope and the Promised Land (in Obama’s case.)
But both are illusions, and we will be much better off if we expose the crooks and false prophets who are using misdirection in order to rob us of our prosperity and our future. Don’t fall for the illusions.
Jeff V
Hard Right
14 years ago
Folks, I warned you larry w would only go deeper and deeper into denial about obama.
Yet again he has posted his severely disproven claims that the current economic problems are the faults of the Reps and not the dems. He even trots out the ridiculous claim that the dems balanced the budget in clinton’s time.
Blast, I had shifted to neutral on you until you spewed BDS hate. Perhaps you fancy yourself a moderate, but moderates don’t do things like that.
Obama’s economic team plays the numbers by assuming the economy will decline by only 1.2% this year, then start growing by 3.2% next year. By 2010-2013, they are guessing it will be chugging along at 4%.
Tim Kane from Heritage Foundation had a article in 2004 assessing US growth. When you look at years that had considerably less widespread economic trauma getting those numbers, I have to wonder if Obama is either being too optimistic, or if the “catastrophe” he tells us we are facing is nothing but hype.
Then, of course… where’s inflation being factored in? How will these tax revenues be affected when costs for energy go up for the greening of America? When oil prices rise because of decreased output. And to boot, the devaluation of the US dollar on the world market.
Frankly, how the Obama economic team envisions such recovery with impending inflation while simultaneously sucking the top % of taxpayers dry (who pay virtually all taxes) strikes me as making Bush’s supposed “fuzzy math” seem crystal clear by comparison.
eaglewingz08
14 years ago
The libs won’t just take what the rich ‘earn’, their income, but what the rich OWN. That is how all commies act and the dem libs are no different. The libs will just package that as ‘sacrifice’. But once the golden goose is slain even the Obamessiah will not be able to resurrect the rich or the economy.
Lisa
14 years ago
“The president blamed the nation’s economic travails on the administration that preceded him….”
I do remember the Democrats during the 2004 and 2006 election complaining about Bush’s out of control spending spree.
Obama got his US Senate seat in January 2005.
Why didn’t Obama fix the problem Bush was creating?
Bush spent our tax dollars like a drunken sailor.
Obama is spending our tax dollars like a crack addict….all going up in smoke.
Rob
14 years ago
Every time I see that disasterous graph of our sudden debt surge, I am reminded of a reverse hocky stick.
They’ll have to monetize the debt – that is, there is no way the Chinese or anyone else on God’s green earth will buy this much US debt (at least not at rates we would accept). In fact I don’t think the Chinese (or the Japanese, or the Europeans) will have enough money even if they were inclined to help, as they have some very serious problems of their own. So the Fed will have to step in and buy the debt, which is just a thinly-disguised way of printing money.
Ultimately this will lead to inflation, so the net effect will be to tax anyone holding dollars (or debt denominated in dollars). But in the near term (a year or two) the deflationary pressures resulting from the unwinding of our debt may still prevail.
By the way, if you’re looking at historical parallels with the Great Depression, Obama is somewhat more like Hoover than he is like FDR. By which I mean that, like Hoover, he simply hasn’t grasped the magnitude of the problem in a timely fashion, and assumes that he can fix things up by spending some money rather than by structural reforms. The proper size of the US financial sector is probably about 3% of GDP, but it’s been puffed up to 8% by the debt bubble; so about two-thirds of this part of the economy needs to disappear before sanity is restored. This could happen without any action from Obama whatsoever (albeit with massive collateral damage), just via bankruptcy and massive defaults. But some sort of controlled demolition would be best. Unfortunately Obama and Geithner appear to have opted for the ‘status quo / zombie banks’ scenario, which minimizes the pain for their buddies in the banking industry, but will put the American economy in a coma. See Krugman’s commentary.
bbart, Krugman advocates spending more… or stepping waist high instead of knee high in da sheeeeeeet
@bbartlog: The Fed cannot print that much money. Inflation will kill the ability to cover this debt.
If the spending spree doesn’t spark an economic revival in the very short term we are in big trouble.
I think inflation gonna rear it’s ugly head and were all going to have eat from the “sh-t sandwich”.
If the repubs regain control in 2010 they have a strong possibility of stopping the other 60% of the “porkulous” bill money i.e. damage control.
We’ll see.
How long can Obama blame the last administration for all the problems when he was a congressman for the last two years, as were Biden, Clinton, Emmanuel, and others of his staff?
What were they doing, what bills did they introduce, what hearings did they hold, what leadership did they show then?
The Fed cannot print that much money
I’m not aware of any hard limit on the Fed’s ability to create money. They can go all Gideon Gono if they want to. Not that they will; reducing the value of all existing money (and debt) by half should be enough to cover even this spending spree, and that’s ‘only’ five years of 14% inflation.
@Mata:
And yes I know Krugman’s spending advice is a result of Keynesian delusions. But his point about the banks still seems correct.
@bbartlog: Are there any studies out there that suggest what will happen if we print $TRILLIONS with nothing to back it up?
@PithnVinegar: You know that we never hold Dems accountable to the same standards they daily demand of Repbulicans. It’s all Bush’s fault. It’s never the Dems fault. Obama will never be held to the same standard. It will still be the Republicans fault.
The comparisons with the Bush budgets are odious. It’s not like there was some sort of steady-state going on (without a calamitous financial meltdown) and the Democrats suddenly increased spending for no reason. The GOP/McCain stimulus plan wouldn’t have increased spending as much, but they would have increased spending, and there would have been much greater tax cuts, which would have produced massively increased borrowing; so the true difference in new debt isn’t nearly as great as the WSJ graphic implies.
The true test of economic stewardship is the debt to GDP ratio. These always went down during all Democratic administrations since World War II (even Johnson’s combined “Great Society”/Vietnam War spending), but went up with the last three Republican administrations. Obama’s on record as saying he’ll cut the deficit in half, relative to what he inherited, by the end of his term in office (or first term, if he’s reelected).
There is this great illusion that Reagan and Bush were “conservatives.” Conservative economic policy is not to cut taxes without cutting spending and then to massively drive up the debt to GDP ratio. This is what Obama is out to change — he wants to get back to the days of reducing the debt to GDP ratio, even though he’s starting out from a deep hole inherited from his predecessor. We’ll see if he succeeds.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: “There is this great illusion that Reagan and Bush were “conservatives.” Conservative economic policy is not to cut taxes without cutting spending”
Larry, perhaps you are too young or have forgotten the budget deal that Democrats agreed with the first President Bush. They got him to agree to give up his no new taxes pledge in return for spending cuts that they promised would come later.
Bush lived up to his part of the bargain and Democrats just gave him the finger when it was time for the spending cuts.
It’s a similar game we are seeing now with massive tax increases the first order of business and vague unspecified promises to cut the deficit later.
Only you could get sucked into that big lie again.
If it weren’t for Democrats we’d likely have balanced budgets every year. No serious person can suggest that Dems take spending restraint seriously.
Ah, blaming someone else – the mark of a true leader. *snark*
This is true, though, as evidenced by that mental midget being in the White House.
Mike, the facts remain that the debt/GDP ratios fell under the Dems, but rose with the GOP. Bush 41 was right to raise taxes. Clinton raised them even more — and balanced the budget, because of it. There would have been no balanced budget, had the Bush 43 level tax cuts been in place.
Presidents can veto spending bills they don’t like. No one can put a gun to their heads. For the first 6 years of the Bush 43 administration, the deficit and debt ballooned, and the GOP controlled both Executive and Legislative. The last two years, the Dems pretty much gave Bush 43 the spending bills he wanted. There was no massive Democratic-induced increase in spending.
My main concern is debt/GDP. We here in America are not overtaxed; we moan and groan about it; no one likes to pay taxes. But we want national defense. We want decent education — more than that, we want world class education and affordable world class education, at that. We want health care. The private health care system is not meeting our needs. I’m an oncologist and I’ve been looking and looking and I can’t find a health care plan that would begin to pay for the cost of new forms of chemotherapy, if someone in my family gets cancer. We want highways. We want bridges. We want parks. We want clean cities. Great western civilization cities have all the above.
So all administrations, GOP as well as Democrats, strive to give people what they want (the Medicare prescription drug bill being a great example). But the main difference between Democrats and Republicans is that the Democrats have the political guts to raise taxes to pay for all of this, while the Republicans persist in the false delusion of the fanciful Laffer curve – that tax cuts somehow pay for themselves and that eventually we’ll be able to start paying back all the borrowed money that went into financing those tax cuts.
I could live with either system: lots of social programs (e.g. health care) and high taxes or truly limited government spending and low taxes. It’s really not a huge difference; on one hand, there is private sector innovation and, on the other hand (e.g. health care) there are public sector economies of scale (e.g. drug purchases). Same thing for education. And on and on. I’ve been to so-called “socialized” countries, many times, and the educated people in these countries live very much the same sort of lives that I do. There is this myth that only in the USA do people have high standards of living and happy lives. So, as I said, I could live perfectly happily with most of the Western Democracy systems. What I can’t live with/won’t tolerate in my government, is the immoral policy of not paying our own way, in our own time, but instead borrowing money to finance our government, while passing the bill on down to our children.
So for me, politics is all about avoiding nuclear bombs going off in Long Beach Harbor and reducing debt/GDP ratio.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Larry, you keep saying it’s all about a nuke bomb in your back yard… What makes you think the Long Beach Harbor comes before Hawaii, San Diego or Norfolk? Mistaken self-import, me thinks…. I doubt your back yard holds much interest in the context of reality.
this is the ugliest i have seen my husbands line of work. they are off more thant hey are on. his union kept saying to vote for obama, he will save us. i really can’t see how this is saving us. as a general rule one cannot spend more than one brings in. if my income goes down, which it has, i have to cut spending, which i have, whe is it governments turn. you can’t pay for canoes and tattoo removal when there are far more pressing things that need to be taken care of.
@Mike’s America:
I love it when this comes up. After Rostenkowski got out of “so called” prison, he did an interview on WLS/Chicago that I listened to. He said that what President Bush(41) did by allowing that tax increase in his estimation was brave, that 41 knew that it would damage his chance for re-election but he trusted the deal he made with the dems and they reneged. Rostenkowski also said in that interview that he was ashamed because of the betrayal. They were supposed to cut spending for the tax increase. Never trust them.
I generally agree with your comment #1 but, what kind of massive collateral damage are you speaking of?
@Missy: The first President Bush was held accountable at the polls for that mistake in trusting Democrats to follow through with their promise to cut spending.
What a shame the voters never held Democrats accountable for their part in that bargain. But of course their voters want more spending.
Bush showed he could take the courageous position even if it meant a loss at the polls.
No Democrat has that much courage to do the right thing.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Once again you excuse Dems for pushing for more spending while blaming the man who would have refused it.
What’s wrong with that picture Larry?
Will you ever stop drinking that socialist Kool Aid long enough to see the flaw in your reasoning?
What will you do when Obama’s phony budget fails to produce the cuts in the deficit you claim is so important?
You going to blame the GOP for that one too?
At what point do you admit you were wrong?
P.S. I’m still waiting for you to respond to Mata’s comment from yesterday.
Mike, I have a personal favor to ask: As much as I love this blog, and I truly do, or else I wouldn’t waste so much time here, I can’t monitor each and every thread. If there is something that either you or anyone else feels that I should be responding to, it would be a kindness for you to send me an email and tell me about it.
runnswim@aol.com
I don’t have time right now to go and see what Mata said in the above quote, but I’ll try to do so in the future — just as I eventually got around to watching the whole hour and 15 minutes of your interesting global warming video.
– LW/HB
@MataHarley:
People who are wrapped up in themselves make very small packages.
I just spoke with the president and I asked him what I thought was a great question raised in this blog string (above), how was it he could so vigorously condemn the spending habits of the federal government over the past two years while he, himself, was a member of Congress, without accepting any personal responsibility.
It was striking but he seemed to be genuinely surprised by the question and even a little incredulous. But, in any event, I’ll share his answer:
“I wasn’t there.”
Oh, right. I forgot.
Mike:
I wanted to post a readers article here, but saw that it could not be posted on any other blog.
If i pull it from the other blogs can I post it here.???
Val
Marion, do you mean post something someone else wrote on another blog? If so, then no. If you wrote it then submit it.
@Marion A. Valentine: You have to ask the boss Curt. I’m a pretty easy going guy (most of the time) I would say yes without asking you to pull it elsewhere.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, you seem to track every single word I type and cross check it against your liberal play book. I would think that posting multiple reminders on the threads you comment on would catch your attention.
I’m eagerly looking forward to your response to Mata’s comment as it appears to be at the heart of so many of these discussions.
O.K. I read Mata’s post. I can’t see where she invited me to respond to it.
My only comment is that I consider the Democrats to be much more truly economic conservatives than I consider modern day Republicans to be. In the first place, you are in massive denial over the fact that in 6 years of complete GOP control, there were massive increases in spending, massive tax cuts, and super-massive accumulation of debt. In 12 years of Reaganomics, there was massive accumulation of debt, which would have been even worse, had not Bush 41 wisely raised taxes.
The Democrats spend more on social programs and less on military hardware and wars. Spending-wise, it’s pretty much a wash. The difference is that the Democrats raise taxes and try to balance the budget; the GOP cuts taxes and borrows money to make up the shortfall, without worrying about long-term consequences.
Except for right now: Now that the Dems are firmly in control, the GOP has suddenly — overnight, found religion. Oh, goodness, we must not run up debt. But the only plans advanced by the GOP to deal with the financial crisis would run up debt, through greater tax cuts, to go along with more modest spending on domestic programs, only it is a certainty that a McCain administration would have spent more money on military matters, as Republicans always do, with the result that Republicans beginning with Reagan have always massively increased the debt/GDP ratio.
Clinton’s economic team are hardly “losers!” By what standard? They raised taxes and balanced the budget. That is true economic success. Pay as you go government. That’s where the Democrats again want to take the country and the numbers prove that the Democrats have done a much better job of reducing debt/GDP than Republicans have done. Not even close.
The GOP has proven itself to be the party of debt. Numbers don’t lie. The truth often hurts.
I could actually vote for a Ron Paul type Republican. Trouble is, outside of Ron Paul, they don’t seem to exist.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Thanks Curt…I wrote it and it’s on the way
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: “My only comment is that I consider the Democrats to be much more truly economic conservatives than I consider modern day Republicans to be.”
Do we need to define “economic conservative” here?
Either that or you are smoking crack.
By every measure you suggest in comments above and elsewhere it is the Republicans who do a better job (no one said perfect job) of meeting your criteria.
Lay off the kool aid Larry.
Mike I don’t think Kool Aid is strong enough to cause Larry’s delusions
Could I get a hit, because reality’s not doing it for me right now.
I wanna go play with Larry and Alice and the Mad Hatter.
Curt…I wrote PLANNED OR HAPPPENSTANCE this afternoon and posted it on 3 sites…i also am the author of America In Peril referred to in the post.
Elect a black drug adddict who has never earned a dime in his life POTUS, give him the keys to the treasury and go back later looking for the money. Give me a break, you ask for it and you’ll get it no matter who you are.
Give your 16 YO son the car keys and a quart of Jack Daniels and you’ll be visiting the funeral home. Same thing.
y every measure you suggest in comments above and elsewhere it is the Republicans who do a better job (no one said perfect job) of meeting your criteria.
No, Larry is correct about the ratio of public (but not private) debt to GDP (as far as I know; I haven’t looked at the figures for Johnson, but for Carter and Clinton I recall this is correct). There are certainly still some arguments to be made – most notably, Congress under Clinton was mostly Republican, and in the early years after 1994 they actually made some efforts at fiscal conservatism.
In Carter’s case, it was inflation that helped drive the real debt down as a percentage of GDP.
More generally if you want to defend Republicans you have to talk about Congress rather than the President, because the deficits under Republican presidents have been the bad ones. Until this year, anyway.
Anyway the D/R discussion sort of bores me at this point. The peculiar boom/bust cycle of debt appears to be a systemic one (1873, 1929, 2008). Some policies can exacerbate it, but considering that the latest wave has been building since the mid-70s it’s kind of idiotic to describe it specifically as a Democratic or Republican caused problem. OK, CRA tacked $500 billion of problems on; we would have been better off without it; but when the problem is the total combined debt of $40 trillion, complaining about the straw that broke the camel’s back is beside the point. And you’ll note that somehow all the banks of Europe ended up in the same boat without the benefit of the USG pushing them to make dubious loans.
So really it would be nice if our elected officials were talking about what they think caused it and how it can be prevented the next time around. I suppose we have to survive the next ten years first, so we could afford to wait before worrying about that; still, a little more effort at diagnosis as well as bailouts would be nice.
Bingo… inflation, the unaccounted for fly in the ointment in all Obama’s calculations for tax revenue and tax “cuts”.
Some of this is because of their own housing bubble The rest? Real estate assets make the world go round, and securitizing bad loans was a global virus.
I generally agree with your comment #1 but, what kind of massive collateral damage are you speaking of?
I’m not entirely sure. At the extreme, you could have the money market funds default, followed by a run on the banks for cash that would put almost every bank under, leading to a deflationary contraction so severe that most of the bonds and other debts on earth would go into default. But that’s assuming that the Fed stands pat and does nothing, which is implausible. In the Great Depression they did act this way (made deflation worse by contracting the money supply), but they are smarter now than they were then. Of course the problem is also bigger.
Larry is absolutely correct that in my original comment on his continual praise of Obama being the most “skilled politician” he’s ever seen has never warranted a response. I just had to comment that his superficial assessment of a reason to admire the leader of the free world is so damned Hollywood and shallow. He substantiated this very snobbish ‘tude with his comment about Palin being an “air head”.
As a parallel to that sort of thought, Larry – let me give you this to mull over. I think the SS Waffen were the snappiest dressed military I’ve ever seen, an astonishingly efficient fighting force, and the Panzer one helluva tank. Does that mean I admire their quest? But nooooo.
You can’t seem to separate the presentation from the substance. And from one whom I consider intelligent, this is quite disheartening. I can only assume it’s your specific locale to the superficial-capital-of-the-world, LA.
But now, Larry… in light of your latest response… I *do* request a response.
Specifically:
Really? Truly cancer research is your specialty. But I had no idea your math was so challenged. As WSJ points out today in the The 2% Illusion, the math just don’t add up for the spending and promises. I don’t care if you think it’s “wise” spending or not.
And, to boot, all the projections are based on an *improving* economy to generate more taxes from “the wealthy”, not taking in the baby boomer SS costs immediately afterwards. In fact, when you look at his “halve the budget” promise, you’ll notice the enusing years it ticks up considerably each following year.
But what does Obama care? Because, as you said often, he just wants to be “the greatest President”, and if it happens after he leaves, he can leave us all in the toilet while he looks good.
Feh and more feh
“Wise” spending, which you claim to support, will require placing smaller (not widely encompassing) policy in place first to generate improved revenues. When that works – and ONLY after that works – you can then start placing more spending policies in place. To bank on the spending working all at once is throwing the dice with a huge ante… OUR ante, BTW, not Obama’s money. He’ll always be rich with PR shit.
Obama is going for the gold on our dime… without knowing whether these policies will work, and not caring if they do beyond his reign. He’ll be out of office by then.
You say this because you, Larry, refuse to recognize the legislative roots that begat this housing bubble, which begat this recession/depression. Obama’s team are exactly those who were teammates and proteges on the CRA/Gramm-Leach debacle.
You babble about CRA banks, and ignore facts that the Clinton/Rubin/Summers (and Geitherner protege) admin forced EVERY bank (who wanted to financially grow) to adhere to those rewritten CRA compliances in 1998-99. Do you do this out of sheer refusal to acknowledge fact? Or is it that you genuinely do not know?
Same team that caused this housing bubble is the same team Obama has picked to “cure” it by trying to reinflate the bubble. Bad juju.
Let me get this straight. You want me to believe that you detest Bush spending.. which is less than Obama’s in just his first 30 days on a “per day” level, but then tell me you’d vote for a “Ron Paul”???
‘scuse me while I go “inhale”…..
There could not be more complete opposites fiscally than a “Ron Paul” and Obama. Bush falls in the middle of the two – *especially* considering he had active wars (not Lewinsky wars) to deal with, as well as the economic repercussions of 911 atop an inherited economic recession.
So you bash Bush, love a “Ron Paul”, and go all a’twitter about Obama as “the most skilled politician” who is “playing us and we don’t even know it”…
Either you reconcile this extreme opinion of spending, or you’re nothing more than a very pleasant – and extremely shallow – partisan hypocrite.
@bbartlog: I cite my magic example once again: Imagine if we could go back in time and wave a magic wand and magically every Democrat in the U.S. House and Senate dissappeared. With either Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Bush II can you imagine that spending would be higher or lower in such a scenario.
We all know that CONGRESS appropriates and spends, not the President. Which is another reason that blaming Bush for being a big spender is a cop out.
As for spending as a percent of GDP it was higher in the 1980’s than it was until recently (I guess Bush wasn’t such a big spender after all:
http://perotcharts.com/2008/05/us-government-spending-as-a-percentage-of-gross-domestic-product-1980-2007/
But look at Obama’s budget forecast for the future. Page 114 of the PDF:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010_new_era/A_New_Era_of_Responsibility2.pdf
Total federal spending as a percent of Gross Domestic Product
2008:21.0%
2009:27.7%
2010:24.1%
2011: 23.4%
2012: 22.2%
Spending in the last full fiscal year of Bush was average, but immediately jumps up and stays there. Obama takes the high point of Reagan era spending and makes it his new baseline.
The other interesting thing is the projected growth Obama’s budget predicts. I don’t know what fantasy economist came up with these numbers but they are usually WRONG. Spending as a percent of GDP is likely to be much higher than the numbers above predict.
Anyone want to take bets on that? Larry?
The DemocRATS will either succeed in creating a welfare state or cause a depression that will dwarf the depression of the thirty’s. My wife and I are planning for the latter. Though it will be a traumatic experience for many, the one benefit will be that we will be wiser for the experience and hopefully no DemocRAT will ever win an election again.
They can think all the positive fantasy illusions they want but time will prove their folly. Mark my words!
Fear not, Greg… we’ll all move to Missy’s for a conservative commune… LOL
“Either you reconcile this extreme opinion of spending, or you’re nothing more than a very pleasant partisan hypocrite”.
I would suggest he’s suffering from chronic selective logic disease. When you pick and choose what facts you will ignore, eventually you end up supporting bad ideas and faulty reasoning. Larry’s there! Only the foolish ever get fooled. Stupid people don’t know that they are stupid.
Poor Larry. I’d feel sorry for him if he wasn’t so addicted to the kool aid.
I think that scenario is not too out of the realm with what has happened in the past 18 months. I tend to think the Govn’t/Fed with either print a boatload of money or borrow as much (or both). Thank god that there is more room on the oil tankers and car carriers to bring the cash since we cannot really afford the real products/commodes any more.
Thanks for your take on the matter.
Holy cow. 🙂 Be careful of the fired up biker chick. 🙂
Out of all the people on FA, I would love to meet you Mata. Very cool. Even when we pick at each other, thank god I am not Larry. 🙂
“Out of all the people on FA, I would love to meet you Mata.”
Note to Mata: Install heavy duty deadbolts and upgrade the security system!
Mike, I tend to respect women and Mata is a nice person… even when we totally have different positions. You on the other hand, I just plain don’t like. 🙂
@blast: “You on the other hand, I just plain don’t like.”
That’s the only validation I need to know I am on the right track.
mike, you can take it as validation, but then again narcissists are like that.
@blast: You are such an ass. You can’t help yourself.
“good come back” mike. I would love to engage with you in dialogue but really doubt you would take it serious or you would be disingenuous. For you it seems to be sport to devolve into personal insults. Maybe that is the way of blogs and I just don’t look at enough of them to realize all people disregard civility to strike home their points. And all this time I thought civility was a traditional value.
@blast: Back to lecturing me on civility hunh? Perhaps you ought to set an example instead of behaving like a hypocrite on that score.
Now, if you don’t mind, there is a topic here and it’s NOT all about you. Who is the narcissist?
I know this is a loaded point, since it is “off topic”, but since we have been going back and forth for months, maybe you will learn something in this exchange. When you personally attack me… I will fight back. I try not to get down to the insult level, but it is in my nature to defend myself. Call that hypocritical… that is fair (especially when I have called you an “ass” back), but first remember who threw the first punch.
@Larry,
Yes, Republican presidents did pass spending increases pushed through by mostly Democratic Congresses, but did so believing that Democrats would keep their word and honor pledges to cut taxes. The GOP has gotten burned by such antics far too often, which is why they’re taken a firm stand against Obama and his Democratic Congress. If the GOPs didn’t fight to restrain the spending of Obama and his buddies controlling Congress, who knows how high the spending could get; regardless of previous performance, the GOP *must* fight for fiscal responsibility.
Can we PLEASE put an end to the myth that Clinton balanced the budget and even created surpluses? The treasury’s own numbers tell the story once you accept the reaty that Clinton picked the Social Security “lock-box”, used the loot to pay part of the general budget, and filled the box with IOUs. Clinton’s administration also increased intergovernmental spending to offset the reductions in public debt, thus increasing the government’s debt AND the national debt.
Obama’s team of Geithner, Summersand Rubin are the same thieves who, under Clinton (who deregulated banking and set the stage for the financial incest and its deformed offspring) orchestrated the very policies that allowed the banks to f_ck around with fantom mortgage-based securities and related derivative products for their own short-term gain. They knew full well that by the time the roof came crumbling in, they’d be able to hide behind government guarantees. The complexities they built into the system were intended to squeeze every penny out of each “investment” while providing a cloud of confusion so that regulators and others on the “outside” wouldn’t have much of a chance to figure out what happened. Then they could claim (as they have) that the complexities of the system left them unable to see upcoming problems until it was too late. Only a delusional self-absorbed stuffed shirt (or an evil minded genius with devious ulterior motives) would think that putting these same men in charge of the Treasury and in charge of engineering the nation’s economic recovery.
I’d like to believe that Obama is not a diabolical, evil-minded political practitioner, but I don’t think he’s delusional. Under what circumstances does it make sense to leave the fox in charge of the hen house?
Geithner and his buddies are trying to reinflate bubbles and get as much money flowing into the banks in hopes that they can forestall – perhaps even prevent – the real market valuation of the toxic assets. Geithner knows that once the true pathetically paltry value of the toxic assets sees the light of day, his reputation will be irreversibly damaged and his sense of self-worth shattered, he will be revealed as the crook he really is, and he’ll potentially face criminal proceedings. Not to mention that the one thing false idols fear the most is for truth to show the world that they are nothing more than slimy charlatans.
The GOP Presidents haven’t been perfect, and have made significant (and costly) errors along the way. Over the past 8 years – and especially the most recent 2 years – George Bush (in addition to his own faults) has been made out to be the embodiment of everything that is wrong with government, and he has taken the character assassination admirably. On the other hand, Obama has been elevated to the level of a demi-God incapable of doing any wrong – a cult figure of mythical proportions, with the power to heal society’s every ailment by the mere wave of his hand or the sound of his name.
Both characterizations are evidence of a neurotic nation (even a world), unable to see what has made it sick, and unable to formulate a plan to heal. Bush and Obama are the new Satan and Savior the world has invented because it has been fooled by crooks and neo-evangelists who are selling these idols to us on the basis of exaggerated charges and lies (in the case of George Bush) and false hope and the Promised Land (in Obama’s case.)
But both are illusions, and we will be much better off if we expose the crooks and false prophets who are using misdirection in order to rob us of our prosperity and our future. Don’t fall for the illusions.
Jeff V
Folks, I warned you larry w would only go deeper and deeper into denial about obama.
Yet again he has posted his severely disproven claims that the current economic problems are the faults of the Reps and not the dems. He even trots out the ridiculous claim that the dems balanced the budget in clinton’s time.
Blast, I had shifted to neutral on you until you spewed BDS hate. Perhaps you fancy yourself a moderate, but moderates don’t do things like that.
From today’s WSJ op-ed pages… a historic graph of spending to GDP from 1930 to 2010.
Obama’s economic team plays the numbers by assuming the economy will decline by only 1.2% this year, then start growing by 3.2% next year. By 2010-2013, they are guessing it will be chugging along at 4%.
Tim Kane from Heritage Foundation had a article in 2004 assessing US growth. When you look at years that had considerably less widespread economic trauma getting those numbers, I have to wonder if Obama is either being too optimistic, or if the “catastrophe” he tells us we are facing is nothing but hype.
Then, of course… where’s inflation being factored in? How will these tax revenues be affected when costs for energy go up for the greening of America? When oil prices rise because of decreased output. And to boot, the devaluation of the US dollar on the world market.
Frankly, how the Obama economic team envisions such recovery with impending inflation while simultaneously sucking the top % of taxpayers dry (who pay virtually all taxes) strikes me as making Bush’s supposed “fuzzy math” seem crystal clear by comparison.
The libs won’t just take what the rich ‘earn’, their income, but what the rich OWN. That is how all commies act and the dem libs are no different. The libs will just package that as ‘sacrifice’. But once the golden goose is slain even the Obamessiah will not be able to resurrect the rich or the economy.
“The president blamed the nation’s economic travails on the administration that preceded him….”
I do remember the Democrats during the 2004 and 2006 election complaining about Bush’s out of control spending spree.
Obama got his US Senate seat in January 2005.
Why didn’t Obama fix the problem Bush was creating?
Bush spent our tax dollars like a drunken sailor.
Obama is spending our tax dollars like a crack addict….all going up in smoke.
Every time I see that disasterous graph of our sudden debt surge, I am reminded of a reverse hocky stick.