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

[4est_4est_Gump]

He did none of that. He can't even articulate a left wing position without engaging in one of his absurd straw man arguments. He just wants you to believe he used to be a liberal on order to sound more like an authority.

He's also not a libertarian, just a garden-variety Republican who realizes that the GOP has a number of indefensible positions. And by calling himself a libertarian he thinks he can shield himself from criticisms of the Republican Party's actions.

Where were you when I was protesting the war and voting against Reagan?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Sometimes, the Left just has to learn the hard way, which is why I am proudly voting for Obama.

The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period.

Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been “manoeuvring” by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.

The self-assessment returns from January, when most income tax is paid by the better-off, have been eagerly awaited by the Treasury and government ministers as they provide the first evidence of the success, or failure, of the 50p rate. It is the first year following the introduction of the 50p rate which had been expected to boost tax revenues from self-assessment by more than £1billion.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...9/50p-tax-rate-failing-to-boost-revenues.html

What I do love is how he's now using Republican themes and language to try and sucker the "independents" while the press flagellates his base into an OWS frenzy of hate...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Huzzah!

Hoo-ray!

& Yeah!


WE SAVED GREECE! Let the stock markets roar!

The Economy is back!

All Hail Obama!

Fitch downgraded Greece on Tuesday to 'C' from 'CCC', a move widely expected after the country said it may enforce losses on bondholders who do not voluntarily sign up to a debt swap plan accompanying its EU/IMF-approved bailout.

"The exchange, if completed, would constitute a 'distressed debt exchange'," Fitch said.

When the bond swap plan is completed Greece's rating will drop further to 'restricted default' and then will be re-rated again "at a level consistent with the agency's assessment of its post-default structure and credit profile," Fitch said.

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/...hange-would-constitute-default/#ixzz1n74fYVKB


Why waste your breath moaning at the crowd?
Nothing can be done to stop the shouting!
If every tongue were stilled the noise would still continue,
The rocks and stones themselves would start to sing!

OH! Bama hey bama, bama, bama, ho!
Bama hey bama OH! Bama!

See me! Hear me! Touch me! Fear me!

Right before you, I sell the slogan,
Gazing at you, I speak no truth,
Following me, you get excited,
Listening to me, you get so fearful...

I have got you, right where I want you!
I have got you, feeling with me,
I can take you, and make you follow,
I can take you, for all you're worth!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

We're Already Europe

With seemingly every day bringing more bad news from Europe, many are beginning to ask how much longer the United States has before our welfare state follows the European model into bankruptcy. The bad news is: It may already have.

This year, the fourth straight year that we borrowed more than $1 trillion to support the U.S. government, our budget deficit will top $1.3 trillion, 8.7 percent of our GDP. If you think that sounds bad, it’s because it is. In fact, only two European countries, Greece and Ireland, have larger budget deficits as a percentage of GDP. Things are only slightly better when you look at the size of our national debt, which now exceeds $15.3 trillion, 102 percent of GDP. Just four European countries have larger national debts than we do — Greece and Ireland again, plus Portugal and Italy. That means the U.S. government is actually less fiscally responsible than countries like France, Belgium, or Spain.

And as bad as things are right now, we are on an even worse course for the future. If one adds the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare to our official national debt, we really owe $72 trillion, by the Obama administration’s projections for future Medicare savings under Obamacare, and as much as $137 trillion if you use more realistic projections. Under the best-case scenario, then, this amounts to more than 480 percent of GDP. And, under more realistic projections, we owe an astounding 911 percent of GDP.

Meanwhile, counting both official debt and unfunded pension and health-care liabilities, the most indebted nation in Europe is Greece, which owes 875 percent of GDP. That’s right, the United States potentially owes more than Greece. France, the second most insolvent nation in Europe, owes just 549 percent of GDP. Even under the most optimistic scenario, we owe more than such fiscal basket cases as Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.

So far we have been able to avoid the consequences of our profligate ways because the very public turmoil in Europe has helped prop us up as the world’s safe haven for foreign investment. Compared to the euro’s problems, the dollar looks pretty safe. This means that others are still willing to lend us money at absurdly low rates. But that won’t last forever. In fact, already seven European countries, including Germany and Sweden, have better credit ratings than the U.S.

Michael Tanner
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/291628

 

[RobDownSouth]

Where were you when I was protesting the war and voting against Reagan?

AJ once claimed he voted FOR Reagan because Reagan helped him "recover" from his homosexuality.

That's one reason he changes his username so often, I suppose.

"Plausible deniability"....Situational red man speaks with forked tongue, right Chief?

 

[JohnnySavage]

Michael Tanner
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/291628

The interwebs are going to be the death of you.

 

[RobDownSouth]

The interwebs are going to be the death of you.

It's quite amazing how an Amurican Exceptionalist like AJ can turn on a dime and warn us that Amurica is "just like Europe" now.

Ah, well, consistency never seems to matter much to Glibetarians....

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The interwebs are going to be the death of you.

*chuckle*

 

[JohnnySavage]

It's quite amazing how an Amurican Exceptionalist like AJ can turn on a dime and warn us that Amurica is "just like Europe" now.

Ah, well, consistency never seems to matter much to Glibetarians....

I don't really think much has changed over the past few thousand years; human nature wise. What's changed is that the shrill voices who used to shout at inanimate objects, now have blogs.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I don't really think much has changed over the past few thousand years; human nature wise. What's changed is that the shrill voices who used to shout at inanimate objects, now have blogs.

... and Lit...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Liberals have thrown in the towel on America...

An opinion piece carried by the Associated Press contrasts what Erica Werner calls the new “spare, fundamental” American Dream to the “rhetoric from Obama’s 2008 White House campaign.” The soaring promises have vanished; in its place is the new line that Obama is the best candidate to keep you from losing it all. “With the economy showing no signs of life: no jobs, mortgages they can’t pay, dwindling retirement funds and college savings,” it is hope of a different kind. The residual aspiration is you can actually have a “job, a house, a college education for the kids, health care, money for retirement,” some day anyway.

The article quotes Xavier professor Michael Ford, who explains that the downsized dream is pretty much all anyone can still believe in without laughing out loud: “It’s pretty basic stuff (Obama) talks about and I think as it turns out that’s pretty much where the dream is right now.” But Werner says it’s working, because now Change You Can Believe In is real. Hoping for food on the table is so much more convincing than promising the oceans will fall and the Earth will begin to heal.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/02/21/the-most-that-you-can-keep/?singlepage=true
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120221/D9T1KH900.html

And yet they wonder why we on the right spend so much time talking about Doom and Gloom...

 

[RobDownSouth]

The Liberals have thrown in the towel on America...

Yes, AJ, you and your kind have "won".

Have a cookie.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Dear Mr. President, you are presiding over an epochal contraction, not a pause in the growth epic. Your assignment is to manage that contraction in a way that does not lead to world war, civil disorder or both. Among other things, contraction means that all the activities of everyday life need to be downscaled including standards of living, ranges of commerce, and levels of governance. “Consumerism” is dead. Revolving credit is dead — at least at the scale that became normal the last thirty years. The wealth of several future generations has already been spent and there is no equity left there to re-finance.

If contraction and downscaling are indeed the case, then the better question is: why don’t we get started on it right away instead of flogging rescue plans to restart something that is DOA?
James Kunstler

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

No good, in fact, will come of a campaign to sustain the unsustainable, which is exactly what the Obama program is starting to look like. In the folder marked "unsustainable" you can file most of the artifacts, usufructs, habits, and expectations of recent American life: suburban living, credit-card spending, Happy Motoring, vacations in Las Vegas, college education for the masses, and cheap food among them. All these things are over. The public may suspect as much, but they can't admit it to themselves, and political leadership has so far declined to speak the truth about it for them -- in short, to form a useful consensus that will allow us to move forward effectively. One of the sad paradoxes of politics is that democracies do not seem very good at disciplining their citizens' behavior. The wish to please voters and the influence of campaign money overwhelm even leaders with mature instincts. In America's case, this could lead to what I like to call corn-pone Nazism a few years down the road. Someone will design snazzy uniforms and get us all marching around to "God Bless America." At the point of a gun.

It's not too late for President Obama to start uttering these truths so that we can avoid a turn to fascism and get on with the real business of America's next phase of history -- living locally, working hard at things that matter, and preserving civilized culture. What a lot of us can see now staring out of the abyss is a new dark age. I don't think it's necessarily our destiny to end up that way, but these days we're not doing much to avoid it.

http://www.alternet.org/story/12892...ead_us_to_a_downscaled_lifestyle/?page=entire

 

[RobDownSouth]

Dear Mr. President, you are presiding over an epochal contraction, not a pause in the growth epic. Your assignment is to manage that contraction in a way that does not lead to world war, civil disorder or both. Among other things, contraction means that all the activities of everyday life need to be downscaled including standards of living, ranges of commerce, and levels of governance. “Consumerism” is dead. Revolving credit is dead — at least at the scale that became normal the last thirty years. The wealth of several future generations has already been spent and there is no equity left there to re-finance.

If contraction and downscaling are indeed the case, then the better question is: why don’t we get started on it right away instead of flogging rescue plans to restart something that is DOA?
James Kunstler

Speakin' of DOA, General Motors was pretty much DOA a couple of years back. Now they're looking pretty darn good, thanks to the government bailout.

I bet you don't teach that sorta lesson in your homeskool.

 

[richard_daily]

AJ once claimed he voted FOR Reagan because Reagan helped him "recover" from his homosexuality.

That's one reason he changes his username so often, I suppose.

"Plausible deniability"....Situational red man speaks with forked tongue, right Chief?

He also said he is an atheist, and that he's voting for Obama... however, further posts proved both statements to be lies.

 

[mercury14]

Speakin' of DOA, General Motors was pretty much DOA a couple of years back. Now they're looking pretty darn good, thanks to the government bailout.

I bet you don't teach that sorta lesson in your homeskool.

After GM's previous financial report AJ immediately posted links to articles "proving" that their 3 Billion dollar profit was all smoke and mirrors and that the company was still going nowhere.

Then the next financial report comes out with $7.3 billion dollars in profit. AJ then hides and pretends like he never took a position. Also it's been two years since his predictions of hyperinflation, deflation, and stagflation. And he's on the record predicting three separate double-dip recessions.

Any day now...

 

[koalabear]

Poverty has a new address: Suburbia

There are now 2.7 million more poor households in the suburbs than in cities, thanks to long-term trends that have accelerated in the current economic downturn.
Suburbia always had its share of low-income families and the poor, but the sharp surge in suburban poverty is beginning to grab the attention of demographers, government officials and social service advocates.

http://money.msn.com/family-money/poverty-has-a-new-address-suburbia-fiscaltimes.aspx

 

[richard_daily]

Poverty has a new address: Suburbia

There are now 2.7 million more poor households in the suburbs than in cities, thanks to long-term trends that have accelerated in the current economic downturn.
Suburbia always had its share of low-income families and the poor, but the sharp surge in suburban poverty is beginning to grab the attention of demographers, government officials and social service advocates.

http://money.msn.com/family-money/poverty-has-a-new-address-suburbia-fiscaltimes.aspx

Yeah, it would have nothing to do with the tearing down of housing projects and moving the people who lived there out to the outer-ring suburbs...

 

[koalabear]

Yeah, it would have nothing to do with the tearing down of housing projects and moving those people out to the outer-ring suburbs...

Why does your town do that?

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

Of course the poverty line established by the government is politically oriented. The last time I checked over 40% of those under the line owned their own homes.

According to lil chihuahua, the city is tearing down his houses.

 

[cheesehead2]

Speakin' of DOA, General Motors was pretty much DOA a couple of years back. Now they're looking pretty darn good, thanks to the government bailout.

I bet you don't teach that sorta lesson in your homeskool.

Bought I new GM car or truck lately? If not check the cost. Like it? Just wondering.

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]