Even more pitiful economic numbers released. Obama built that

Spoken like an iron-clad Republican! Maybe sell it and give the proceeds over to reduce the national debt.....

 

It will collapse, the only question is when. If a Greece collapse can cause so much turmoil. As can bad assets send us to a near global depression. As can an earthquake in Japan. magine what will happen with the havoc of rising temperatures, the inability to add more household members to work to maintain a standard of living, food prices increasing, and energy problems...plus a population heading toward 10 billion...there will be some sort of event that can send the whole thing crashing down into chaos. What happened in the middle east is a preview of what can happen globally.

People are very complacent. The poop will hit the fan.

 

Reagen got lucky, and got the tail end of the Volcker recession, a specifically designated monetary event that did not cause mass deleveraging. There was nowhere to go but up then.

Clinton also got lucky with the fraudulent internet boom.

Bush II rode a wave of cheap credit, only to watch everything collapse, which has affected Obama numbers significantly.

All to say that most of macroeconomics are outside a president's control.

And that perhaps pre-2010 and post-2010 are better comparisons anyways, as that would have coincided with the lag in fiscal policy (monetary policy being about as influenced by the President as Supreme Court decisions).

 

Truth is that Obama inherited the worst economy since the great depression, so it's a joke to make these comparisons. It's all political b.s. It's not even worthy of a response.

 

Rejection of debt relief fits obstruction agenda
By Paul Krugman
Updated 6:53 p.m., Friday, August 3, 2012

There has been plenty to criticize about President Barack Obama's handling of the economy. Yet the overriding story of the past few years is not Obama's mistakes but the scorched-earth opposition of Republicans, who have done everything they can to get in his way - and who now, having blocked the president's policies, hope to win the White House by claiming that his policies have failed......

http://www.chron.com/default/article/Krugman-column-Rejection-of-debt-relief-fits-3761314.php

 

people don't get that the GOP was elected in 2010 to stop Obama's agenda

Obama hasn't learned Clinton's lessons from 1994. He thinks he can advocate the same policies that got his party ousted and not expect any opposition.

 

this is just garbage.

 

What policies should the opposition articulate?

Come on, give me specific policy prescriptions, rather than "opposing policy".

I want bad ideas to pick over.

 

Well what I would do and what's politically tenable are different things. But Obama could/should

1) make all tax rates permanent

2) pass the Ryan budget

Clinton worked with GOP congress to pass a balanced budget with no tax increases. Obama has made no such effort.

What Commodore would do:

1) abolish all federal taxes (capital gains, estate, income, payroll, corporate), replace with either the FairTax or a flat tax on discretionary income. No deductions

2) all regulations sunset after 6 months unless passed by Congress

3) outlaw all bailouts, corporate subsidies, and guaranteed loans

4) firesale on most federal land, start selling it off or giving it back to respective states

5) abolish the federal minimum wage

6) abolish Dodd-Frank and the Affordable Care Act

7) abolish Depts of Energy, HUD, Commerce, HHS, Labor, Agriculture

for starters

 

Okay, we need to have a long-winded talk about your bad policy.

How does 7) create certainty for businesses or help sustain economic recovery? Not only will abolishing these departments constitute a huge shock drop in aggregate demand, but you have enumerated no reasons for why they should be abolished at all, rather than a vague ideological commitment to do as much wrong as possible.

6) is foolhardy at best. Explain to me how creating the conditions necessary for 2008 again is a good idea. Do you even understand Dodd-Frank? It, among other things, audits the Fed's discount window, stops prop trading (or should stop prop trading) and attacks a very flawed system. Please explain to me why you would abolish Dodd-Frank, specifically, keeping in mind how Wall Street risk managers f**ked up again in the JP Morgan whale CDS trades, and how Wall Street's ethics were once again broken in the LIBOR scandal.

5)

 

3) is recklessness at its' worst. You create an overarching economic system that, with lack of regulation, will become consolidated and where over-leverage, and failure will occur, and then you steepen that failure by saying the government shouldn't intervene? You better hope for a whole lot of J.P Morgans a la 1907, if you want to go back to the system America had before American policy makers finally figured out how basic macroeconomics works.

 

Most people want policies that won't ruin our nation.

 

Overall, Commodore, your system would basically be reverting government back to the 1800s, while private markets continue to advance. How this makes any sense, I have no idea. We saw how in 2008 how private forces and a over-complicated financial system swept away the rules of seventy to eighty years ago, you think the solution is to have even less rules to stem the tide? Good luck with that line of reasoning.

 

The graphic is inaccurate, barely over 1M jobs were created during Bush the younger's term...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobs_created_during_U.S._presidential_terms

 

Unfortunately the President is limited to what is politically tenable. And that is defined by the Republican control of Congress.

But in fairness, if you had a Republican President he wouldn't get anything like a Ryan budget by the Senate.

 

It should come as no surprise that Obama's policies of higher taxes, more regulation and more litigation are not creating jobs. The chart above is a nice illustration of just how bad Obama's policies have failed. And to think all of this weak job creation is in a zero interest rate environment. It's unreal how badly his policies have stunted America's prosperity.

 

Congress controls tax bills, how does a President raise taxes?

Blanket statements are always discounted as political rhetoric. If you have a specific tax, regulation or lititgation you want to talk about you should list it, and your alternative.

And, job creation always lags behind increased demand. Jobs are created in response to demand. Taxes are low now, credit is cheap but the residual debt from the housing crash is killing demand. We are tapped out.