Buyers remorse: Obama declares war on business

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I meant Al Qaeda I was just typing in a rush. The Taliban shield Al Qaeda and much of their funding comes from the same Arab fundamentalists that fund al Qaeda. Either way we're in afghanistan for bin laden not the taliban, so if bill pulls the trigger and wipes him out its over. Instead Bill gets millions from the princes father and spares him his demise.

 

Oh, you were in a rush. Well that makes sense. "AL QAEDA" is only a couple of keystrokes away from "TALIBAN". Anyone could make that mistake.

Anyways, your same demented logic applies. If Iraq was justified based on the fact that the people were liberated from a totalitarian regime, it would seem to be the same case for Afghanistan, right?

 

For someone that makes that much money, you think that you could fork over a few $$ for Clutch. Then you could edit your ridiculous posts.

I'm going to go donate more right now as a burnt offering to the Clutchfans gods in hopes that they will soften your heart and help you not be such an a-hole.

 

It was a truism in that the perceived success or failure of the stimulus cannot yet be gauged.

LOL...explain that to the people who may be put back to work and have a paycheck again through the projects in the stimulus that it is intangible to them.

Also, while it may be difficult to gauge success or failure definitely, it will be gauged by future public opinion. That, if you will recall, is the subject of this thread...you know, some perceived buyer's remorse months before we can even tell how people feel about it.

You'd be wrong. I started an entire thread dedicated to the proposition that all of us, not just those on the left, should hope for the success of the President due to the critical moment we are in the nation's history. That thread was just a few days after the election.

 

My name is on the top left corner of my post, it's not hard to over look. So stop acting stupid and just get it right.

Oh forgive me oh great one, I didn't know the money I have invested into college (that wasn't given to me by the goverment) wasn't real. I wasn't aware I was allowed to pay my books and my apartment rent with monopoly money. You talk as if you are hurting.

Oh geez, I'm losing a lot of money. How will I be able to afford my car note on a Ferrari. Oh God, how the hell do I send my wife on that extra vacation. These percentages are going to kill, oh please God help me.

Stop whining for goodness sakes. Thank goodness even with whatever is left of the meager scraps after they take all your money away you will still have enough to make a mortgage payment. Hell you still have enough to send your wife to a vacation. Do you have to squeeze some pennies a little, yeah sure. Don't come in here no thinking I don't know about hard work homie. Just because you supposedly got your MBA and went through ****s to get it doesn't mean I'm not having to do the same thing.

You can shove your hard work up your ass because you feel as if you and the others in your echelon are the only ones that have ever had to work for your money. Try taxing the poor the same percentage as you. Lets do it and see what happens. Lets go ahead and do it. **** I get taxed 28% and you get taxed 28%, lets do it. Lets see what happens. Hmmm....

Perhaps here are a few scenarios that might occur. Poor people will now continually ask for more money from the government for food stamps and medicaid and such and such. Oh ****, but you know what, there isn't as much funding available since the rich want to be taxed the same. Okay, well you know lets just print more money. Ahh ****, inflation. Oh ****, what will we do?

Face it man, you have it off way better than what you make it out to be. To me, you talk as if you are going to lose having food on your table and you are going to lose your house etc etc because you are being taxed differently. Sure it is unfair, but lets talk about the real world here, life is not always fair.

Anyways, this issue we can argue it to the ground and your stubborn ass won't give in and my stubborn ass won't give in as either.

And, yes........... what point are you trying to make here?

What has happened has happened, just let it go. So Clinton didn't get rid of Osama when he had a chance, so what? It happened already, what do you plan to argue from it. Osama is alive and well hitting up the club scene in the mountains of Afghanistan. **** it happened, Clinton messed up our opportunity, what do you want me to do about it?

Honestly that whole little blurb, I feel you made me dumber just reading it.

Can't believe you said you were a nice guy on the other thread. How the hell can you make such a blatant remark and then give all this bull****? Nice people my ass. I've met rich people before, some that made their points clearer and weren't as moronic as you were. If you want to keep your money at least have the courtesy to think that you aren't the only one that works hard. There are plenty others as well.

 

I use to work in Mortgaged back securities back in 1994. Back then, you couldn't do much with them because they were heavily regulated. Banks like CS First Boston and others couldn't make a whole lot on them, as they weren't allowed to own to many of them. The problem was that to do anything interesting with them, they became derivatives, and there were all sorts of rules about pensions and consumer banks buying derivatives - they couldn't. And for good reasons.

So these bonds were just rated based on the strength of the underlying loans.

Then bush came along and deregulated everything. All of a sudden, big investment banks and commericial banks started bluring the lines. Bad loans were given, but they were wraped up and sliced so many times that rating agencies could tell you what was junk and what was AAA. Pensions and banks bought them up and produced them for quick profits because exec's would get bonused for moving securities, not the long term health of the bank.

Disaster.

So dude, you want to blame Clinton???? For making it easier for 1st time home buyers to get a loan...ok, that is partially his fault. But who made it easy to disguise the quality of the loans and allowed banks and so on to take really risky positions that they weren't allowed to since the Great Depression?

Yup, your boy Bush.

 

This thread is awesome.

 

LOL, I guess basso forgot what happened in September, now since Obama hasn't cleaned up the mess in 50 days, wall street's plummet is his fault. unbelievable, the entire financial system was on the brink of collaspe in September, now its obama's fault it hasn't come back.

is this what the wingnuts are going with, good luck, too bad for you guys people are just a wee bit more informed nowadays.

 

Nobody asked, nobody cares.

 

His economic policy along with his rampant spending sure isn't helping the situation. Spending is not the most effective stimulus.

 

Well, I know that both these statements are demonstrably false, wakkoman, but I'm going to give you a chance here. I'd like to see the math behind your second statement.

Please tell what the most effective means of stimulus is other than spending - with this I'd like you to include evidence of the multiplier effect for the rest of the economy.

As always, thanks in advance

SF

 

Let me rephrase what I said. Government spending is going to help, but IMO is not the most effective way to do it.

The problem with your multiplier effect for government spending is that it has a flaw in the price system. It assumes that the government is better than the private sector in utilizing labor, capital and other idle resources to produce. So somehow the government can do this without a social cost, yet the private sector can't figure that out?

Do you believe the multiplier for spending is greater than 1?

My point is that the private sector has the money to pull us out of this, not the government. The key here is economic growth. We need to create the proper incentive structure with taxes and regulations to allow the economy to grow to its potential. We need the spending share of GDP to go down. Decrease the demand for spending. Too much money is chasing too few goods and we are going to have a lot of inflation. We need to create more goods to absorb the money so we can avoid that inflation. If you stifle the private sector and take away the growth component, GDP goes down. The results are less growth, more inflation, and a weakened stock market due to the drop in profits that companies will report. Were facing the largest deficit since WWII and the market is wondering how are we supposed to pull ourselves out of the huge hole we are digging.

 

1. the private sector is not spending $$$, that is the heart of the problem

2. Where do you think the money from government spending ends up? Hence the name multiplier.

No it doesn't, the private sector doesn't have the money and can't borrow it, because incomes are going down and the banking system is a mess.

Sorry but this is a prescription for disaster and the exact opposite of what is required. Recessions happen because spending falls off a cliff. Your recipe for this is to reduce spending further? That makes absolutely zero sense, and is defintely at cross purposes with what you had intially proposed.

BTW if "the market"is really in doubt about deficits and spending, we wouldn't see a flight to US treasuries, would we? Which is exactly what we are seeing.

Oh, and as for your tax cuts, nobody in their right mind believes they provide a better stimulus effect, precisely becausee they result in less additional spending than their cost - 1 trilllion in tax cuts is just as costly for the government as 1 trillion in spending - and it generates less stimulus effect.



EDIT: I should also say that it's pretty sillly to assume that the government will never efficiently consume goods and services, there are many many public goods that the government provides that for various reasons cannot and will not ever be provided by the private sector - I mean I'm hard pressed to understand why installing energy efficiency measures in government buildings (one of the major spending intiatives of the stimulus) is an ineffective use of resources and represents a social cost, rather than the opposite.

 

You're avoiding the flaw in the system. No surprise there. Let's talk more about this flaw in the multiplier effect. Do you believe that government spending has a multiplier effect greater than 1? (which is what Obama's economic team is assuming)

First, look at a multiplier of 1. The unit increase in government spending is going to increase the GDP by a unit. So the government builds a road. Now the theory assumes that the economy's output expands enough to create this road, without needing a cut in anyone's investment or consumption. Essentially, the road is free to society. No social cost.

Now a multiplier of greater than 1 gets even better. Not only does the economy's output expand enough to create the bridge, there are more goods left over to raise private consumption or investment. Well if this is true, one should ask why stop at $800 billion dollars for spending. Let's keep spending then, right? We can build roads that don't go anywhere but that doesn't matter because spending has an effect bigger than 1. If the government can perform magic like that, so can the private sector.

We can debate all day whether you think government spending or incentives and tax cuts for businesses will help, but the point is there is a major major flaw in the Keynesian theory of the multiplier effect. I don't want the inflation that the government is creating.

 

Yes - see the research by the CBO. Please show me some evidence that it's less than 1.

As stated previously - the private sector certainly COULD, but it's NOT, hence the downturn. Do you not notice GDP falling off a cliff? And your concerns about inflation are misplaced. It has flatlined recently, remember there are people warning about the danger of deflation.

Your theory seems to have been written years ago for a more conventional economic situation - it's incredibly obvious to most, that this is not a normal economic period....rather it's the biggest sh-tstorm since 1929.

 

Uhhh, because there's a long term debt that's being built. $1 in economic growth doesn't necessarily bring in $1+interest of tax revenues to pay for it. You only want to do as much as is necessary to arrest a steep decline which will have enormous costs of its own.

 

Those numbers will never be accurate. Not only does the multiplier theory have flaws, the numbers are wrong because I find that it would be pretty damn difficult to separate the effects of government spending from the fluctuations and changes in the business cycle.

But if you believe that the government's multiplier is greater than 1, then hell, don't stop the spending.

Yes I notice the GDP falling. My view is that if you create the proper incentive structure for small businesses and corporations, they will increase consumption and investment. Your view isn't. Both have strong arguments. We can just agree to disagree.

 

I'm just playing devil's advocate, Major. I think it was reported that Obama's team is assuming a 1.5 multiplier. At some point, the private sector has to pull the load, and not the government, correct? So why aren't we creating a system for them to do that right now?