What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[koalabear]

Actually, things are going pretty well considering the shape things were in at the beginning of 2009. Business at my company is BOOMING, has been for quite some time now, and conventions really just don't happen when business is poor.

and they do need clean toilets, you have it made.


Poor little bear, projecting your mommy issues onto me? Don't worry, I'm sure you can pay someone to give you a hug and tell you that it's all going to be alright.

You cashed that Social Security check right? I don't think they'll extend condolences on credit.

SS check is direct deposited into my son's account, saves me giving him an allowance.

 

[Beco]

Actually, things are going pretty well considering the shape things were in at the beginning of 2009. Business at my company is BOOMING, has been for quite some time now, and conventions really just don't happen when business is poor.

You and LukeIsADick should have a drink....

 

[mercury14]

...

On Capitol Hill, a staffer for Sen. Charles Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, was poring through the Federal Register and spotted the note. Then he went to the Department of Labor Web site, where he found a number of announcements like these:

** U.S. Department of Labor Announces $100 Million in Green Jobs Training through Recovery Act

** U.S. Department of Labor Announces $150 Million in "Pathways Out of Poverty" Training Grants for Green Jobs

** U.S. Department of Labor Announces Nearly $190 Million in State Energy Sector Partnership and Training Grants for Green Jobs

In the staffer's mind, two and two came together. The Labor Department is shoving money out the door for "green jobs," yet at the same time is admitting it doesn't know what a "green job" is.

Cue Grassley, a longtime watchdog of funny business in the federal bureaucracy. In a June 2 letter to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Grassley noted that there was an enormous amount of money in the $862 billion stimulus bill for those still-undefined green jobs.

"According to the administration, the Recovery Act contains more than $80 billion in clean energy funding to promote economic recovery and develop clean energy jobs," Grassley wrote. "However, it has come to my attention that the [Labor Department] is just now attempting to define what a 'green job' is. Interestingly, this comes more than a year after the Recovery Act was signed into law and after millions of dollars in funding have already been distributed for green jobs."

Since the Labor Department is looking for a definition after spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on green jobs, Grassley asked, then what definition of green jobs did it use when it spent the money?

The question applies beyond the Labor Department. What about all the other government agencies that are spending zillions on green jobs? They don't have a widely accepted definition either.

Grassley voted against the stimulus. But since it passed, he wants to hold the administration accountable for the money. "This inquiry is a measure of oversight to make sure the money is spent the way supporters of the legislation said it would be spent," he says. "I'm asking how the administration is distributing the money for what it said would go to clean energy jobs. If the criteria were too broad or poorly defined, the money might be going for other kinds of spending."

So far, the Labor Department has not yet responded to Grassley, and a spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, even as it searches for the definition of a green job, the Labor Department is assuring Congress that everything is going gangbusters on the green job front. "The demand for green job training opportunities is enormous," Solis told a Senate committee in March, adding that the Labor Department had by that time already spent $500 million on green jobs, with more to come. "The department has been unable to keep pace with the record number of applications for grants."

Last year, Republicans complained that the Obama administration planned to spend billions on an ill-defined concept of green jobs. Now, billions have been spent, and many more will be spent, and the administration still can't tell you what a green job is. Just look at the Federal Register.

President Obama says he values accountability. How about accounting for those green job billions?

Byron York
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...green-jobs__-whatever-they-area-96098934.html


Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...hatever-they-area-96098934.html#ixzz0qYXZOoO1

This is the Sen Grassley that voted against HCR and the stimulus and then runs around Iowa boasting about how hard he worked bringing these great benefits to his distict?

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

This is the Sen Grassley that voted against HCR and the stimulus and then runs around Iowa boasting about how hard he worked bringing these great benefits to his distict?

recently the Governor of Texas boasted about his state's balanced budget.. He forgot that he used stimulus funds to balance it I guess.

 

[RobDownSouth]

recently the Governor of Texas boasted about his state's balanced budget.. He forgot that he used stimulus funds to balance it I guess.

Forgetfulness has become a Republican art of late.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Forgetfulness has become a Republican art of late.

"LalalalalaIcan'thearyou" is not "forgetfulness".

 

[RobDownSouth]

"LalalalalaIcan'thearyou" is not "forgetfulness".

Grassley, though, has elevated his forgetfulness to near AJ-levels.

 

[Ham Murabi]

Have you heard the joke about the double-dip recession?

 

[koalabear]

Things are looking up.

In budget crisis, states take aim at pensions

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37798908/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

The economy hasn't "collapsed?"

That's your goal post for the administration's success?



If it were to collapse, let's say next Spring, of course, it would be Bush's fault... no?

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

The economy hasn't "collapsed?"

That's your goal post for the administration's success?

If it were to collapse, let's say next Spring, of course, it would be Bush's fault... no?

Small victories considering what was handed to the incoming administration.

Yeah, I'll take a gradual recovery over the screaming death spiral the last guy left in his wake.

While you're still waiting and actively hoping for economic collapse like Marvin.. "Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!" The sane portion of America is seeing recovery. The sun is peeking through the clouds and you're stuck stomping around in your galoshes and raincoat hoping for a monsoon.

You sit in rapt attention while the likes of Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity scream desperate lamentations bout the end of the world as they know it. They may very well be right, but from where I sit, the end of the world as they know it is not a bad thing. Not by a long shot.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Obama's busily engaged in the Broken Windows Fallacy...

This is the new normal for Obama's economic purview.






Get used to it...
__________________
Only the mediocre are always at their best.
Jean Giraudoux

Barack Obama was supposed to be the best, the very best, and yet he is always, reliably, consistently mediocre. His speech on oil was no better or worse than his speech on race. Yet the Obammyboppers who once squealed with delight are weary of last year’s boy band. At the end of the big Oval Office address, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and the rest of the MSNBC gang jeered the president. For a bewildered Obama, it must have felt like his Ceausescu balcony moment. Had they caught up with him in the White House parking lot, they’d have put him up against the wall and clubbed him to a pulp with Matthews’s no longer tingling leg.
Mark Steyn

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

After the Bush tax cuts expire in January, will you blame him for the new recession?




You do know that between the fallacious spending and the sped-up profit-taking, your gradual recovery is an illusion on par with the FDR "recovery" and Japan's "Lost Decade."

What good is building infrastructure when transportation and the activity that drives it are both in decline? Does that make sense to you? Really???

PS We need to bail out Freddie and Fannie again as foreclosures skyrocket and banks go under at a record rate...

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

After the Bush tax cuts expire in January, will you blame him for the new recession?




You do know that between the fallacious spending and the sped-up profit-taking, your gradual recovery is an illusion on par with the FDR "recovery" and Japan's "Lost Decade."

What good is building infrastructure when transportation and the activity that drives it are both in decline? Does that make sense to you? Really???

PS We need to bail out Freddie and Fannie again as foreclosures skyrocket and banks go under at a record rate...

Still hoping for the double dip huh Cap'n Sunshine?

The Bush tax cuts benefited the top wage earners more than anyone else, as usual for a "conservative" effort. Those who needed relief the most got the least while those who needed no help received a windfall.

Typical and indisputable.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Nobody is "hoping" for it.




Smart people are "preparing" for it.
__________________
"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
Eric Hoffer

 

[firespin]

Still hoping for the double dip huh Cap'n Sunshine?

The Bush tax cuts benefited the top wage earners more than anyone else, as usual for a "conservative" effort. Those who needed relief the most got the least while those who needed no help received a windfall.

Typical and indisputable.

Got a link for that? Or just something you remember from a blog.

Most of the low income folks pay NO federal income tax now, and many get a credit against taxes they didn't pay.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Nobody is "hoping" for it.




Smart people are "preparing" for it.

*laugh*
Better buy some more gold..

You've been preparing for how long now for something that hasn't happened Cap'n Chickenlittle?

You know what they call people who spend their entire lives squirreling away everything for the disaster that never comes?

Litbertarians apparently...

No, that wasn't a typo.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Got a link for that? Or just something you remember from a blog.

Most of the low income folks pay NO federal income tax now, and many get a credit against taxes they didn't pay.

Some of that goes away unless the Democrats pass a new budget...

Which, they're not about to do since they would get all the blame for austerity measures and they want to "Spend Baby, SPEND!!!"

Like finally releasing all those emergency funds right before an election instead of during the emergency.

Drove Krugman crazy, er...,

I KNOW!!! Let's extend unemployment benefits with no idea of how we're going to pay for it!
__________________
--let me-- let me do the positive side of this. Okay? We've-- just been through eight years where people said-- many people said, ‘Deficits don't matter. We can-- we can pass huge tax cuts, pass huge new programs without paying for them.’ That debate has changed fundamentally. Now you don't hear people say anymore, ‘Deficits don't matter.’ You don't hear people saying that we can pass enormously—enormous expansion of government without paying for it. That's an important change. I think all Americans understand that our deficits are unsustainable. And I think that'll be helpful as we move to try to make the hard choices to bring them down again.”
TIMOTHY GEITHNER

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Got a link for that? Or just something you remember from a blog.

Most of the low income folks pay NO federal income tax now, and many get a credit against taxes they didn't pay.

Median wages stagnated while top wage earners took in windfalls and paid less in taxes as a big thank you (for what I'm not sure) from the federal government.
The return on that investment was what exactly? I mean, other than the dizzying death spiral we plunged into starting at the end of 2007.

Of course the cuts made no difference to the truly 'poor' one way or the other. It was the middle class, the median wage earner, who took it in the shorts so that the top wage earners could "trickle down" their windfall onto the masses.. Funny how that never really seems to happen isn't it?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Yeah, U_D, in January, Obama's gonna DIRECTLY raise taxes on the noble poor...






... and indirectly raise them on the middle-class since the rich simply pass their costs on to them.

I KNOW!!! LET'S BREAK SOME WINDOWS!!! THAT'LL STIMULATE THE ECONOMY!!!!!!!
__________________
The more government does on your behalf, the less you can do on your own behalf.
A_J, the Stupid

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Yeah, U_D, in January, Obama's gonna DIRECTLY raise taxes on the noble poor...






... and indirectly raise them on the middle-class since the rich simply pass their costs on to them.

I KNOW!!! LET'S BREAK SOME WINDOWS!!! THAT'LL STIMULATE THE ECONOMY!!!!!!!

wait, we're talking about the world according to the Cap'n..

Here I thought we were talking about reality.
I should know better.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

That dizzying death spiral was in reaction to an openly hostile business administration clearly stating its intentions...

They turned a garden-variety recession into a full-fledged panic while at once trying to shield the root causes, the Democrat slush fund at Freddie and Fannie which ran on Harvard Brain. Now, we see "too big to fail" needing to be bailed out again since foreclosures are on the rise again (as are bank failures) under the "gradually improving economy" that you are so hopeful of.



BP proves why only the stupid still do business in America.

Haliburton bugged out...

 

[hmnfl74]

What has fundamentally changed in the US in order to make people believe we are on a genuine road to recovery?

Is it the positive news that over 400,000 jobs were added yet only 40,000 of them were in the private sector? If the private sector only hired 40,000, who then is paying for the other 360,000? The simple answer: The US taxpayer.

A lot of the currency that was printed within the past year and a half has yet to make it into the system. How do you successfully reel it back in without causing either hyperinflation or rapid deflation? No country has yet to figure that trick out. The only way to reel it in is through inflation.

But what happens when inflation comes? The price of everything goes up. Let us assume the housing bubble is the cause of where we are at now. Housing prices rose far too rapidly so the crash occured. People could not afford where they are living so they simply stopped paying their mortgages subsequently causing more houses to go on the market and causing housing prices to fall as a result. (Economics 101: Supply and demand. Increased supply and prices fall.)

Yet the government says we are on the road to recovery because housing prices have begun to stabilize. Not so much. Remember, we still have a lot of currency out there that has yet to make its way into the marketplace. How do you resolve this? Raise interest rates. The instant you do that, the "housing recovery" vanishes. If this were a genuine recovery, raising rates would not have such a negative effect on the housing market.

The "good news" is nothing more than an illusion.

Food for thought: What caused the unfunded liability portiono of the US national debt to go up $17 trillion dollars semingly overnight? (It went from $113 trillion to over $130 trillion.)

Something is still not right. I do not know what it is but it does beg two questions. 1. What is it? 2. What does our country look like 5 years down the road when all of this debt truly comes home to roost?

Even now the public is more and more concerned about the national debt. It seems politicians from both parties are choosing to ignore that reality. Why?

Why would Greenspan say a few days ago the national debt is almost at a breaking point?

Whatever you do, know the "recovery" will not last. The worst is yet to come.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

That's reality U_D.




A lowering tide sinks yachts.

Their "oil slick*" sinks the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.






* Pres__ent Obama joke...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

You gave your own answer in the first sentence, hmnfl...





They BELIEVE!




Reminds me of a book by Hoffer about the thought process of the "frustrated."
__________________
I'm Hungary for some €PIIGS!
A_J, the Incredulous