Agree. The best thing for the Obama campaign to do is just leave her alone. If Mrs. Romney goes off the reservation, that's on her, and something for Mitt to handle. He probably thinks she's doing a terrific job. After all, being secretive seems to be something Romney is fond of, and consistently not answering legitimate questions about your income tax returns, among other things, during a political campaign is a tad secretive, in my opinion.
Yes, it was entirely the fault of those Wall Street scum and not the fault of those poor middle class Americans who were just trying to live beyond their means. If only Wall Street hadn't forced millions of Americans to buy homes they had absolutely no way of paying for, this never would have happened.
Yeah, because those poor middle class Americans developed mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps.
That's correct - if it was just greedy consumers, you'd have had a pretty typical consumer led recession that's part of the normal business cycle. It would have been limited because people would only be able to get so much in loans, which puts a cap on how bad things can get. Instead, you had a recession caused by a near total collapse of the financial system resulting from greed and lack of risk management by Wall Street. Slight difference.
Yes, and what you're conveniently neglecting to mention is that unemployment went from 7.4% in February of 1981 to 10.8% in November of 1982- that's almost 2 years- are you saying Reagan doesn't share responsibility with Congress for this dramatic rise in less than 2 years?? Here are the number of months from Feb of the 1st year to Aug of the 4th year in which the UE decreased: Reagan: 17 months Obama: 17 months Unemployment in Aug 1984: 7.5% Unemployment in Aug 2012: 8.1% Again, Reagan's at this point was lower, and declined more rapidly. Yes, it went to a higher level (10.8%) than under Obama (10%) UE reached 10% in the 8th month of Obama's term UE reached 10.8% in the 23rd month of Reagan's term UE went UP with HW Bush, W Bush 1, and W Bush 2. http://www.miseryindex.us/indexbymonth.aspx?type=UR So, you can spin it how you want, but when you look at everything, Obama ranks about the middle in terms of overall UE numbers compared to Presidents of the past 32 years. Especially when you consider rate of increase or decrease, which is what the President can influence. Anyone that spouts off their "UE has been at 8% for __ months" as their reason to not elect Obama, or say his policies have failed miserably, well, I just don't know how else to say it- as someone who studies this for a living and speaks frequently with recruiters and hiring managers about these numbers, I have to say that they're just uninformed.
Oh, and when they say, "well, actual unemployment is 16%," fine. But don't say "and it never got above 7% with Bush!!!"- because you're using the standard with Bush against the non-standard with Obama. See, we know how one can be deceitful with that type of stuff. I'm using the official UE and applying it to all Presidents. I'd be glad to use the Real Unemployment number- as long as that is applied to ALL Presidents. See, the extremists won't do that- they'll apply it to Obama but not to someone like Reagan. They'll say "Obama's Real UE actually got to 20%!!!!"- OK, then Reagan's peak was not 10.8%, but 21.6%. Those of you that have intelligence, I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about.
I wasn't trying to say it was entirely middle America's fault or that Wall Street played no role. But let's at least be honest here and admit that the greed was everywhere, not just in banking.
I would argue that it wasn't just greed and lack of risk management, but also government and Fed policy that made it clear to the banks that they would be bailed out in some way if things went wrong. It's pretty much the argument Raghuram Rajan makes in his book "Fault Lines" (a good read if you haven't read it yet). Also, having worked on Wall Street, I think the greed aspect is very overrated. Traders can certainly be far too reckless at times, but I think it's much more a case of runaway competitiveness than greed, at least in my experience.
They spent 8 years deregulating banks, shipping jobs overseas and fighting 2 wars with deficit spending while cutting taxes and then the next 3 years obstructing any attempt to fix things; so definitely put them back in power. What could possibly go wrong? How is this even a race America?
it's not The only reason Romney it is close is because of PACs. But I just read an article talking about how Americans are starting to catch on and tune these out.
It's close because the shine is off Obama and the economy isn't doing well enough. Agreed on the PAC ads (for the most part) but we haven't seen anything yet. Romney Inc. has a boatload yet to spend. Remember, if you repeat it enough times...
Its pathetic how much of America can be swayed by pure saturation rather than substance. I'm not just talking about the bible belt right either. US citizens as a whole rely too much on campaign commercials to figure out who to vote for. I'd be surprised if even 25% of the voter base for each respective candidate even knew what policies their candidate supports. Pretty sure the vast majority of the voter base are just single-issue voters.
Agreed about the onslaught we're about to see and that the economy can be doing better. But really? We're going to give the presidency back to the party that caused the problems in the first place? It's going to be a hard sell for Romney/Ryan. I just don't see it
Knowing your perspective, not surprised you don't see it. Thing is, Obama is a hard sell for many people. The only reason it's a contest is because of how awful Romney is. As someone posted earlier, this is much like 2004 where the incumbent is weak and voters are ready to let him go, but the opposition puts forward a sorry loser from Massachusetts.
The deregulation took more than 8 years. But I guess if you admitted that, you'd have to face the fact that the previous Democratic president played a major role in causing the crisis. Sooner423 rightly pointed out the role of credit default swaps in the financial crisis. Which president do you think deregulated CDSs?
Obama has spent roughly $100 million more than Romney. The PACs do not even come close to making up for that. You are just wrong. Again
