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

[IrezumiKiss]

Just heard 6 in 10 Americans plan on spending more this year than last year this Holiday season. Must be the Liberal media.

How dare Obama create a feeling of hope, prosperity and joy, enough to make people spend beyond their means again like they used to do back in 2006 when things were all lollipops and unicorns, when the reason why things were all lollipops and unicorns was because people were spending beyond their means!

oooooooh, he's a sly one, our President!

 

[firespin]

How dare Obama create a feeling of hope, prosperity and joy, enough to make people spend beyond their means again like they used to do back in 2006 when things were all lollipops and unicorns, when the reason why things were all lollipops and unicorns was because people were spending beyond their means!

oooooooh, he's a sly one, our President!

They're actually celebrating the Republican house majority a few weeks early.

 

[fair_warning]

The Aussie dollar is par with the American. All is as it should be.

 

[jeninflorida]

well, I guess hope is all that we can expect from obama.....

it would be nice if he could toss in a free game of golf for everyone, after golf is what obama does...

How dare Obama create a feeling of hope, prosperity and joy, enough to make people spend beyond their means again like they used to do back in 2006 when things were all lollipops and unicorns, when the reason why things were all lollipops and unicorns was because people were spending beyond their means!

oooooooh, he's a sly one, our President!

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Oh, man, has the story changed with the changing of Presidents on who's to blame...

Asked by correspondent Steve Kroft if it were true, as Republicans have suggested, that the election was a referendum on him and the Democratic Party, Obama replied: “I think first and foremost, it was a referendum on the economy. And the party in power was held responsible for an economy that is still underperforming and where a lot of folks are still hurting.

He acknowledged that he thought the economy would have improved more and that he sometimes feels powerless when it comes to spurring growth.

“I do get discouraged, I mean, there are times where I thought the economy would [have] gotten better by now,” Obama said. “As president… you’re held responsible for everything. But you don’t always have control of everything. Especially an economy this big— there are limited tools to encourage— the kind of job growth that we need,” he said, quickly adding that he was “positive” that the U.S. economy will eventually rebound.

Sooner, or later, I mean, if FDR is the measure for our policies, you still have to give us eight years of your patience...

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

His problem is that we DID!





For some of us it took a lot longer, but most of us got it when he went off the teleprompter to talk to Joe...

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

He had some minor media gig the last time I heard...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Better yet, where is Cindy Sheehan?

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Obama is not much focused on the foreigners who want to saw our heads off on jihadi snuff videos, though he has continued fighting the drone wars with at least as much gusto as his predecessor. The foreigners who seem most severely to chap the presidential hide in anno Domini 2010 are those who want to sell us goods and services. And what an enemies list Obama has compiled: the entirely fictitious cabal of foreign financiers he blamed for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s criticism of his party’s fiscal incontinence, the “foreign corporations” he insists are bankrolling sundry other political enemies, and, most important, the go-to foreigners American politicians rely on when an exotic peril must be rustled up in the months before a difficult election: the Chinese.

Obama and the Sinophobe wing of the Democratic party have seized upon what is for them a nearly perfect issue: the valuation of China’s currency, the renminbi. The issue is complicated enough to accommodate the intellectual vanity of the president and his coterie while consigning most voters to a state of rational ignorance, and the narrative is flexible enough to be used to explain away a great many varieties of bad economic news. It’s the all-purpose phlogiston of the self-consciously cerebral policy set. Massive trade deficits? Blame the renminbi. Investment in decline? Blame the renminbi. The fact that Obama’s reckless State of the Union promise to double American exports is starting to look like the sort of thing a luckless gambler says to himself before putting his Greyhound-ticket money on the craps table in Vegas? Blame the renminbi. Persistent levels of historically high unemployment? Chinamen are stealing our jobs and using their artificially devalued currency to do it.

The administration has been stepping up the anti-China rhetoric for a year now, and Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner underwhelmed the G-20 meeting in Gyeongju, South Korea, in late October with non-credible demands that each country adopt policies to keep both trade surpluses and trade deficits “below a specified share” of GDP, with his preferred target being about 4 percent. The Indian delegation responded with whatever the Hindi is for “Get the hell out of here!” — or, as finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, New Delhi’s man at the G-20, put it, “Protectionist policies are not acceptable.” Japan’s representative called the plan “unrealistic,” apparently ignorant of the fact that “unrealistic” is the defining adjective of the Obama administration. The Germans denounced Geithner’s proposal as a move toward a “command economy,” demonstrating a fine Teutonic flair for the obvious. (Too protectionist for the Indians, too authoritarian for the Germans — that’s our economic policy.) Geithner did not mention China by name, and China returned the favor.

It is undeniable that Beijing plays games with China’s currency in order to bolster exports. To put it bluntly, China keeps its people artificially poor, their wages artificially low, and their savings diminished in value, in order to increase the profits flowing into the state enterprises run by Beijing’s power elite, a good deal of the returns being captured by the thriving entrepreneurs who make up the officers’ corps of the People’s Liberation Army. When one considers that China’s economic strategy is predicated on creating needless poverty for its people, it all seems a lot less clever, and Tom Friedman’s occasional orgasmic moans in the New York Times sound a bit nefarious, to say nothing of embarrassing.

The People’s Republic of China is a for-profit police state, and we should not be under any illusions about the chances of its reforming its ways and further liberalizing its economy and politics, or the possibility of its chauvinistic rulers’ acting with regard to anything other than the ruthless pursuit of their national interest, in whatever distorted way they define that. While Deng Xiaoping’s much-vaunted economic-liberalization program worked undeniable wonders, the thawing of the Chinese economy came to a halt years ago, and if there is any political progress in sight, it is not obvious. All of which really ought to be of interest only to full-on Sinologists, because, the Obama administration’s populist fist-shaking notwithstanding, China’s economic policy is not what ails America — any more than Japan’s economic policy was what ailed America during the Carter years, that awful interlude during which Honda and Toyota viciously conspired to dump affordable, reliable, fuel-efficient automobiles on unsuspecting Americans who really wanted to buy an AMC Gremlin but were duped into an upgrade by those inscrutable Orientals and their long-game industrial policies. China’s economic policy is what ails China. Fortunately, today as in the 1970s, most of what is troubling the U.S. economy is the result of decisions taken in the United States, not in faraway Asian capitals. The American problem is in Washington, not in Beijing.

The demonization/fetishization of the Asian economic superman relies on myths as death-defying as Keith Richards and just as addlepated, a fact that is played for maximum benefit both by our politicians and by the entrenched business interests that rely on them for patronage and protection. As long as we’re blaming China, we will not direct the blame where it belongs.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/252823

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

In conclusion, whether QE works or not is as unsettled as AGW (anthropogenic global warming). A static analysis of available data may suggest some success, but a more dynamic analysis would lead most observers to hold a healthy dose of skepticism.

As to the unintended consequence of QE2, application of basic economic principles suffice for abandoning the policy. QE, as its planned implementation suggests, will most likely cause the U.S. dollar to decline in value vis-à-vis other global currencies. It is a basic economic fact that printing money without creating corresponding economic activity in the form of goods and/or services debases a currency.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the reason QE will not work in this instance is that we do not have a credit availability problem. Our woes are based simply on a crisis of confidence. All surveys of businesses have consistently indicated that businesses small and large are nervous about the regulatory environment as well as the uncertainty over possible tax hikes. Corporations are sitting on nearly $2 trillion in cash instead of investing it, partially because of record low consumer confidence and partially because of the uncertainties this administration and Congress have created over the past two years. Simply put, no amount of liquidity will entice businesses to invest and create jobs -- at least not until the business environment improves.

As the true, real-world, practicing economic giants like Roubini, Gross, and Schiff (unlike academics like Krugman) say, allow the economy to restructure. Do not gamble away the reputation of the dollar in return for imagined short-term benefits. Superficial meddling will only dig our grave deeper. If these warnings are not heeded, as Mr. Roubini puts it, "the only light at the end of the tunnel so far is the one of the incoming train wreck, unfortunately[.]"

Kerem Oner
NRO

Bernake is fighting current DEFLATION with QEII. He fears that more than inflation.

So, he's inflating commodity prices on purpose.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Haven't seen Code Pink since the last stomping.

I suspect you got a rare non-Viagara-assisted woody when you saw that video.

 

[jeninflorida]

Better yet, where is Cindy Sheehan?

with obama in office Cindy Sheehan is okay with the war. she's off writing a book

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

GM has it's IPO next week, buy, buy, buy.

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

Think I'll get a shoe shine instead.

You must buy! The Government and the retirees are waiting for the price to climb so they can drop their shares!

 

[Beco]

Think I'll get a shoe shine instead.

Why? Seems like a good stock

 

[unregistered]

 

[mercury14]

well, I guess hope is all that we can expect from obama.....

it would be nice if he could toss in a free game of golf for everyone, after golf is what obama does...

You want the president to work 24/7?

 

[Wok]

You want the president to work 24/7?

The Presidentg can work 24/7 and still be the worst because if he did work 24/7, then it is more hours to destroy the country...

 

[unregistered]

 

[mercury14]

Sick of these righties shouting accusations of too much family time, golf, etc just because they heard on the news that the president got out of the office for a few hours.