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

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Did I attack Bush for his stimulus/bailout plans? No, I did not.

So why do you think I'd attack McCain's stimulus?

But "WE" did...



Beginning with the Bush-Pelosi minimum wage and stimulus checks.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

"WE" were right then and we're still right on the issue...





NON-PARTISAN correctness

 

[Byron In Exile]

But "WE" did...

Beginning with the Bush-Pelosi minimum wage and stimulus checks.

TARP I was just as much bullshit as TARP II, only the second one was an order of magnitude larger.

How many Americans' mortgages could have been paid off with that money?

Instead, it was fed to banks.

This is the most corrupt age in American history. They don't even try to hide it, anymore.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

We could use some H.L. now...

 

[Byron In Exile]

We could use some H.L. now...

Gods, no doubt he is spinning like a lathe in his grave at this moment, yet laughing maniacally as he does so.

This sort of circus... is what he lived for.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Should I mention the she-devil at this point?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

“Time to Admit Obamanomics Has Failed” is the title of a Washington Examiner editorial from Sunday that brings out in stark relief the monumental failure of the $1 trillion stimulus bill to stimulate anything except the greed glands in Democratic constituencies like labor unions and government workers.

The money graf:

The economy is stalling, unemployment seems stuck at European levels of idleness, the federal deficit and the national debt are at historic highs, public confidence in Congress is at its lowest-ever level and big majorities of Mainstream Americans say Obama has the country on the wrong path. Obamanomics has failed miserably and it’s time for everybody in this town to admit it so we can move on.

That’s only the half of it. Add on the following from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and you begin to get the complete picture of how much this government has spent to “rescue” the economy and how little good it has done.

* $85 billion to prop up GM and Chrysler, as well as auto suppliers. GM is still “Government Motors” despite crowing about “repaying” the government loan that kept them afloat. Not only was the $6.7 billion GM gave back to the government only about $42 billion short of what they owed, they had the temerity to use part of the bailout money to do it. GM claims a healthy profit this past quarter, but taxpayers — who still own about 70% of the preferred stock in the company — shouldn’t be checking their mailboxes for dividend checks. This gift to the UAW has spawned the next adjective to describe product failure: the Chevy Volt.

* $70 billion for consumer and business lending initiatives. This was a program designed to jumpstart business and consumer lending. As with every other program that was supposed to shock the economy back to life, it has failed miserably.

* $75 billion to help those with mortgages that were underwater to stay in their houses. A recent study shows that the centerpiece of those efforts — the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) — has a miserable success rate of 32%. That means that “about a third of the trial mortgage mods begun will be successfully converted to permanent ones, and won’t redefault.” Granted, if it were you or I who was helped by the program, we would declare the effort a success. But a redefault rate of 2/3, if looked at rationally, has to be considered an abject failure.

All of the above came out of the $700 billion TARP program signed by President Bush. Of course, no one who voted for the bill could have imagined the monies being used to bail out GM, throw money at lendees drowning in bad mortgages, or jumpstart the commercial and consumer loan industries. The bill may have originated with Bush — a desperate attempt, we were told, to buy up toxic paper from banks in order to stave off economic calamity. But Obama made this program his own, eschewing its original intent by vastly expanding the reach and power of the federal government, taking it into areas of the economy it had never ventured before. TARP’s failures are Obama’s failures.

And what of the hundreds of billions of taxpayer monies used to bail out banks? Much of that money didn’t go to eliminate the problem that caused the meltdown in the first place. Some estimates place the amount in toxic assets held by banks — still hovering in the background despite massive efforts to hide, write down, or otherwise resolve the value of these worthless securities and derivatives — at several trillion dollars face value. If another meltdown were to occur — a possibility not out of the question — we’d be back at square one with the big banks, risking depression and a blowup of the Western industrialized world’s financial system unless taxpayers repeated the agony of massive bailouts.

One federal program, the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP), promised to buy $1 trillion worth of those troubled assets. To date, the program has purchased $12 billion — another failure that can be laid at the doorstep of Treasury Secretary Geithner.

Nothing the Obama administration has tried to get the economy back on track has done what they promised. The only positive out of all of this seems to be that the big banks are profitable again and are back to paying their executives enormous bonuses. The question of ownership — whether the banks are owned by the government or whether the government is owned by the banks — is open for debate after all the wheeling and dealing done by Democrats in Congress and the administration in getting their “financial reform” package passed.

These are failures that are statistically quantifiable. But even with the evidence of incompetence and catastrophe, including anemic economic growth, high unemployment, massive uncertainty, and the growing possibility of the United States falling back into recession, we should calculate the failure of President Obama on a much more fundamental level.

President Obama has failed to inspire the American people. He has failed to ignite the native optimism that is part of our patrimony, and which is vital to America regaining its self-confidence in order to overcome this economic inertia and start the engine of democracy rolling forward.

You don’t have to be an expert economist to understand how this singular failure by the president is holding us back. Everyone from corporations, to small businesses, to ordinary folk are holding onto their money and playing it safe. Businesses aren’t hiring because not even the government knows how new laws like national health care and financial reform, as well as new regulations from every department of government, are going to affect their bottom line.

For someone who got elected largely because of his supposed golden tongue, the president’s efforts to lift up the American people and instill the kind of optimism and confidence that just might overcome the uncertainty caused by his policies have been dismally lacking in inspiration. He lectures rather than lifts up. His rhetoric fails to connect because it has distanced itself from reality. Few are buying what he’s selling.

Both Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan also came to office at a time when there was a lack of hope and belief that things would get better. Then as today, America’s detractors were circling like vultures overhead, predicting the end of the “American century” or the “death of capitalism.” America as a superpower was finished, we were told. The U.S. was down for the count never to rise again.

Never underestimate the power of the spoken word in a democracy, because both Roosevelt and Reagan picked the country up off the floor by the sheer zest and sunniness of their words and their dispositions. President Obama’s disposition is sometimes dark and foreboding. His threats promising catastrophe if his stimulus and financial reform bills weren’t passed hardly contributed to elevating the national mood. And his words, while pretty things that listeners allow to envelop them in good feelings, end up floating above his audience, untouchable and unreachable, not zeroing in on their hearts where the soul is touched and thoughts transformed.

Obama’s calls to action fall flat because his attempts to connect our past with the present in order to build a brighter future fail on the fundamental level of believability. He has made it clear that he wants to cut America’s umbilical cord with our treasured traditions and first principles. His desire to “remake” the country, by definition, abandons the past in order to create his new America. Hence, President Obama’s rhetoric that seeks to use America’s past as a touchstone for patriot hearts engenders a titanic disconnect between his actions and words. There is no “there” there when Obama seeks to inspire the country.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/have-obamas-policies-failed-let-us-count-the-ways/?singlepage=true

 

[eyer]

"Never underestimate the power of the spoken word in a democracy, because both Roosevelt and Reagan picked the country up off the floor by the sheer zest and sunniness of their words and their dispositions. President Obama’s disposition is sometimes dark and foreboding."


FDR & RR "words" = magical

BHO "words" = dismal

This "premise" = silliness, pure silliness

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/have-obamas-policies-failed-let-us-count-the-ways/?singlepage=true

Who woulda thought that an opinion piece posted on pajamasmedia blog would be anti-Obama.

I mean, besides anyone who has ever read anything they "published", ever.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Slowlane]

TARP I was just as much bullshit as TARP II, only the second one was an order of magnitude larger.

How many Americans' mortgages could have been paid off with that money?

Instead, it was fed to banks.

This is the most corrupt age in American history. They don't even try to hide it, anymore.

Much of it to banks overseas. Not directly but that's where it went nonetheless.

 

[mercury14]

TARP I was just as much bullshit as TARP II, only the second one was an order of magnitude larger.

How many Americans' mortgages could have been paid off with that money?

Instead, it was fed to banks.

This is the most corrupt age in American history. They don't even try to hide it, anymore.

You don't realize the economic mayhem that would have ensued had large banks been allowed to fail.

I'm all for allowing irresponsible businesses to fail. But when banks get so big that their failure would wipe out broad swathes of the economy, it can't be allowed to happen.

The solution is for banks to not get so huge that they become too big to fail. Too much consolidation is very, very bad.

 

[mercury14]

What the neocons need to realize - and you never have a rebuttal for - is that from a practical level we simply cannot allow our industries to fail. Yes, even if it requires significant government intervention.

Why? Because our industries are competing against those in other countries. Everything is global now.

Is China going to allow its banks to fail? Germany? Japan? Brazil? No, they're going to prop up their industries no matter what it takes.

So America can allow it's banks, auto industry, etc to fail whenever there are hard times if it wants to... The result is that foregin powers jump in and instantly pounce on the market share being vacated by failed American companies. If our banks fail, American corps/individuals will just invest with foreign banks, which become a much safer option. If our auto industry is allowed to fail then Asian and European auto makers will happily (and likely permanently) snatch up the market share of Ford/GM/Chrysler.

So while it might seem nice to say that we need to strictly rely on the free market, the cold hard reality is that American corporations are competing globally against rivals with strong government backing that will not be allowed to fail during hard times.

 

[eyer]

Fascism becomes you, doc.

 

[mercury14]

Fascism becomes you, doc.

What does any of this have to do with fascism? I'm simply being pragmatic.

You can stick to your strict free market principals if you wish. Then when America becomes a shadow of its former economic self, eclipsed by China and others, at least you'll be able to say you stuck to your values.

 

[eyer]

You're right; I should've have posted...

..."Pragmatic fascism becomes you, doc."

Pragmatic fascist...

Democratic socialist...

...you're all becoming the new norm - so relax, you're winning, enjoy it while it lasts.

And if, somehow, these utopian concepts of global unity amid social justice, under fair government dictate don't pan out, those individual freedom values and free market principles will still be around to pick up the pieces from the human mess you guys have been making all these decades...

 

[Byron In Exile]

You don't realize the economic mayhem that would have ensued had large banks been allowed to fail.

I'm all for allowing irresponsible businesses to fail. But when banks get so big that their failure would wipe out broad swathes of the economy, it can't be allowed to happen.

The solution is for banks to not get so huge that they become too big to fail. Too much consolidation is very, very bad.

That is flat wrong. They absolutely should have been allowed to fail.

The fact that they weren't is your clearest possible indication that you are living under a Fascist system.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Much of it to banks overseas. Not directly but that's where it went nonetheless.

These banks and corporations are multi-national.

"Overseas" has no meaning regarding them, anymore.

 

[rosco rathbone]

That is flat wrong. They absolutely should have been allowed to fail.

The fact that they weren't is your clearest possible indication that you are living under a Fascist system.

So you think the predictions of Armageddon were just part of the heist? Or you think the whole shitaree should have been allowed to come down around our ears and maybe reset to something better.

 

[Saint Peter]

We are fucked.

I am going to move to Idaho and buy some cool weaponry.

 

[mercury14]

That is flat wrong. They absolutely should have been allowed to fail.

You fail to realize the impact this would have. Every business that had assets tied up in folding banks would be crushed, causing severe bleeding thoughout the economy even in sectors that have nothing to do with finance.

The ripple effect would be immense and thoroughly destructive.

I would say sure, let the banks fail if it just meant that the bank entities themselves would go down. But you must understand that the financial sector is inextricably tied to the rest of the economy. If the financial sector bites the dust, so does everything else.

 

[mercury14]

That is flat wrong. They absolutely should have been allowed to fail.

The fact that they weren't is your clearest possible indication that you are living under a Fascist system.

By the way, enlighten me as to what fascism has to do with bank bailouts.

 

[mercury14]

You're right; I should've have posted...

..."Pragmatic fascism becomes you, doc."

Pragmatic fascist...

Democratic socialist...

...you're all becoming the new norm - so relax, you're winning, enjoy it while it lasts.

And if, somehow, these utopian concepts of global unity amid social justice, under fair government dictate don't pan out, those individual freedom values and free market principles will still be around to pick up the pieces from the human mess you guys have been making all these decades...

Government support of a nation's corporations doesn't mean that the government qualifies as being one of those nasty names. Even the most free market economies in the world do things to interfere in their markets.

You still haven't made any kind of rebuttal as to my point though. American companies are comepting with Chinese/Asian/Euro/Brazilian ones. Those countries aren't going to allow their corporations to fold every time there's a recession. But you're saying it's okay if ours do? And this is going to work out okay for us in the long run how?

 

[mercury14]

These banks and corporations are multi-national.

"Overseas" has no meaning regarding them, anymore.

WTF???

When corporations employ people overseas, it means less jobs in America, higher unemployment, less people getting taxed, etc.

Are you sure you want to stand by that statement?

 

[cebalrai]

You're right; I should've have posted...

..."Pragmatic fascism becomes you, doc."

Pragmatic fascist...

Democratic socialist...

...you're all becoming the new norm - so relax, you're winning, enjoy it while it lasts.

And if, somehow, these utopian concepts of global unity amid social justice, under fair government dictate don't pan out, those individual freedom values and free market principles will still be around to pick up the pieces from the human mess you guys have been making all these decades...

Okay so because you don't have any way to counter his point, you resort to name-calling?

Does this make you feel better?