Ok, it's been clear for SOME time now . . . almost a year . . . that we're in a recession. Shhhhh. It's a secret! In just February, the country lost 63,000 jobs. Time for another interest rate cut. One HAS to wonder how long it'll be before it dawns on these brilliant elected officials that we actually do have to pay for spending BILLIONS of dollars we don't have, for the faux fix of interest rate cuts that cause faulty credit extensions, driving even more people into debt and for the complete lack of any economic program from the White House that does not benefit the upper 1% of the people. When we get to 0% interest . . . give me a call!
Welcome to Supply-side economics. We've given all the breaks to the extremely wealthy and, once again, it's failed. The theory was that these wealthy people would invest in businesses, right? Well WHERE? In Sri Lanka? The worst Monthly job loss in 5 years (in the shortest month of the year) . . . ummmm . . . when George "I need to look for work too" Bush was still at the helm touting this absurd, failed, Slop-side economic program that assumes widening the disparity between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' is such a great thing. So Democrats are the big spenders? Give me a BREAK! While the party of economic ignorance gives lying lip service to fiscal responsibility . . . their cut taxes and spend policies are a freaking joke. They've learned to wait for the Democrats to clean up their messes so that they could point at them and blame them for raising taxes instead of cutting services! THAT is why the spending is there. The GOP detests spending money on social programs and isn't really to thrilled with a middle class . . . one with the time and leisure to see the criminal corruption and educate themselves.
Just waiting on that ONE last job getting lost Booshie . . . YOURS!
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Comments: 80
It is astionishing that any one can still believe the myths about Republican concern for fiscal responsibility or small government.
All bills related to finance and taxation must originate in the House of Representatives -which has been controlled by Republlicans since 1994.
Paul can't blame the Democrats for the effects of Reagan's voodoo economics or the miserable failures of the expensive Bush Wars.
Ridiculous comments such as these will thrill the heart after Democrats "pay the price" in November. The payback is going to be an increase in Senate seats, and a substantial gain in the House.
Each month of this year has brought brightening prospects for Democrats in November.
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
I agree with Peter - it is hardly true that the Republicans are for smaller government or fiscal responsibility. Instead, they increased the debt and haven't had a responsible budget for the Congress in at least the past six years. Bush says that we are not in a recession, just a slowdown. What the bejeezus does that mean? It is amazing how low these guys will go to hang on to policies that aren't working. I remember that Dick Cheney said that deficits don't matter. I knew then that we were in trouble.
On the economy: My neighbor is a construction worker. He hasn't had work this winter which is a normal part of the business. The problem this year is that the prospects don't look good. I know a pipe fitter who has had to travel to the warmer climes in order to have work. (Not everyone has the means or the ability to travel like he does) There are too many houses up for sale with no one looking at them. The National Realtors Association claims it hasn't been this bad since the depression. I pity the poor Democrats who will have to clean this up. Cleaning up the mess of GWB might overshadow any chance at getting to the progressive issues, I'm afraid.
...And they will be blamed for the suffering that will come with the clean-up by the very people who caused the problem . . . it's like dropping the Nation's military into an illegal invasion and occupation . . . and then blaming the Democrats for the negative consequences of ending the disastrous policy. It'll happen . . . they're quite good at the blame game!
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
--Ding ding ding ding --
/ | | | | | | | | \
We've got a winner here.
Thanks Vicky! :)
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
"Let's take the projected 2009 tax returns for folks in the lower income bracket, and send it to them now, so they can spend it today to boost the economy... Oh, and let's be sure that we make it *sound* like free money, so they'll be really surprised come 2009 tax time. Eeeh heeee heee haaa haaa haa"
It's all terribly frustrating, this denial you describe.
"The problem is much deeper than just the War Spending." You are so right! We do not have a progressive energy or climate policy and this is costing us already... but not nearly as much as it is going to cost our children.
The Democrats do have a majority in the Senate - but not a two-thirds majority. They have 55 Democrats, 44 Republicans, and one Independent candidate. In the House, there are 231 Republicans, 206 Democrats, and one Independent candidate. In both cases, there isn't a two-thirds majority, which means that in the end, Bush decides what gets passed into law. Until one party actually has a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, I'm not about to call it a Democratic or Republican Congress.
(Now, the guy with the vetoing pen and the right to make signing statements in which he radically reinterprets the laws he doesn't veto...)
Don't blame the Republicans or Democrats of Congress -- blame the guy who asserts that he can ignore whatever he doesn't like!
I'm in Michigan. Top of the list for unemployment. Second for home forecloseures. I have 2 grown children with significant others. Within the last couple of weeks, both my son and son-in-law lost their jobs. My future daughter-in-law just finished her degree in engineering - no go, so far. At this point, she'll take anything with a paycheck that won't be eaten up by gas mileage to get there.
Since Bush took office, we have lost 240,000 manufacturing jobs in our state. With the president's new budget, he offers no extention of unemployment benefits. According to our Senator Carl Levin, Bush also proposes to cut job training programs. The alternative minimum tax hits on the struggling middle class while allowing tax cuts for the wealthiest.
I'll stop there. We are really hurting here in Michigan and need a life ring thrown in the form of a changed government. We are drowning in debt, foreclosures, heath care expense, taxes and job losses. Help!
I'm waiting for negative interest rates myself. Not that it will do e any good. The interest on our credit cards, student loans, and mortgage has stayed the same regardless of the feds lowering the interest rates. In fact, some of the credit cards have actually gone up.
Of course not . . . that's how they determine the unemployment rate. As more people are kicked off the benefits . . . more people (still unemployed) are not counted as unemployed!
"This probably impending recession is as much George Bush's fault as the one in 2000 was Bill Clinton's fault."
Damn! I'm not sure where to start on this irrational train-wreck of thought! First off, the recession is HERE already and has been for some time. Secondly, this is COMPLETELY George "How much is gas?" Bush's fault. He's gotten everything he asked for because the spineless Democrats either won't stand up to him or, in some cases cannot stand up to him. Look at the chart up there and YOU tell me how responsible the GOP has been. Any conclusion OTHER than the fact that George "I be a Yale Graduate" Bush should never be allowed to make a financial decision is irresponsible. ...And thinking this is not his fault is, frankly, delusional.
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
Good article as well.
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
Yeah . . . so far. And I WAS since I was lucky enough to be able to vote for that damn fine President. Fact is, the Arab Oil Embargo, Vietnam War debt, formation of OPEC . . . all kinds of factors were involved in that. Not just one sneering, criminally corrupt person who was thinking of interests other than what was best for the nation.
It's simple if you're honest about it. Absurd Vietnam spending increase . . . followed by the first oil crisis in 1974 when the inflation nearly doubled from 6.2% to 11%. Unemployment from this went from 4.9% to 5.6%. Oh . . . and then a SECOND in 1979 that sent inflation to 13.5% and unemployment to 5.9%.
Lucky for us Reagon's Slap-my-sides Economics helped us out. Unemployment went from 5.9% in 1979 to 7.2% in 1980, 7.6% in 1981, 9.7% in 1982, 9.6% in 1983 . . . Oh yeah . . . what a help the GOP is to the working man . . . and the Unions too (SEE: AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS UNION, The Government was BEHIND them ALL the way). You can blame Carter but the proper thing to do while in the sad state of denial I see so often . . . is to blame Clinton.
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
Now we've got the debacle of giving the tanker contract to AirBus instead of Boeing. I saw the debate on Jim Lehrer's Newshour last night and it was almost excruciatingly painful watching a Bush lackey try to justify why AirBus was the winner. The poor rep from Washington state was almost having epileptic fits negating the nonsense that this Bushie "thinktank" guy was spewing. To put American companies on an equal playing field with foreign companies that reap huge governmental subsidies and support is shear lunacy. Finally, the Bush guy tripped up and said something about it having to do with political support........ahhhhhh.....Sakoszy gets his payback for being a vocal Bush supporter! It was so friggin' obvious, and so sickening.
From your keyboard to our reps ears, Doyle.
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
The president has very little. Blaming the buisness cycle on a president is what's really delusional. If you really want somebody to blame, it's Greenspan, who kept interest rates too low for too long, allowing asset bubbles like we saw in housing/mortgage securitization. How about everybody and their brother building houses in California/Las Vegas/Florida, take your pick. Or how about all the people who spent more than they were making for the last 10 years. Or how about all the millions of people who bought homes that was obviously couldn't afford--the list goes on. George Bush is pretty low on the totem pole of people who you can blame for this.
If you want to blame anybody for Michigan's problems, yell at the UAW. Japanese car companies that are building plants in the US are going elsewhere--places you don't need to pay your high-school educated workforce $75 per hour, and where they didn't have to build cars that they couldn't sell because it cheaper than shutting down a plant. The UAW has crippled itself, along with the rest of Michigan, plain and simple.
Yea, isn't it a shame that the military didn't shortchange itself and the taxpayer by buying the inferior plane that Boeing was entitled to sell to the military. Where's the corporate cronyism? I mean come on, it's one thing to have huge military contracts with England and Israel, but France? Come on, they eat frogs legs for christ sake!
The president has very little. "
Probably the first thing you said I agree with. LoL!
"George Bush is pretty low on the totem pole of people who you can blame for this. "
LMAO ! ! ! Ok, my bad. He has NO control over US spending (*cough*), the Secretary of the Treasury OR the Chairman of the Federal Reserve . . . Mostly Greenspan . . . who helped since Reagan appointed him and did well enough artificially balancing the economic policies of the government through the use of the interest rate and their unique power to simply 'print money'. Regrettably, there's only so much you can do to quell the damage of the financial policies that have been implemented by Booshie and his corrupt crony crowd! We see yet again a likely future cut in the interest rate which led to your 'housing bubble' and which is also a side-effect of trying to keep the sad news of a recession off the pages of the newspapers and out of the minds of the voters . . . who will learn ALL about it as soon as a Democrat is in that oval office . . . ripe to be attacked! Naturally YOU will be the first to say "Let the President alone! It's not HIS / HER fault!" Thought so.
Yep . . . nothing Stops on THIS President's desk . . . especially not responsibility for anything.
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
Back to blaming the Unions? Ok . . . SOME people think it's a poor thing to have everything from children working overtime in firetrap sweatshops to blatant cronyism and some just can't stand a worker gets protection from improper treatment. Somehow I'm guessing you neither know nor have you ever been a high school graduate making $75.00 an hour at an auto factory. Building cars it cannot sell? . . . designed at the corporate level, no doubt. How many blue collar workers decided to build the Ford Excursion or the Hummer? They can't sell them becuase they aren't doing homework, by way of marketing or contract negotiations . . . which include HEALTHCARE. Japanese cars can drive our streets . . . but large American cars cannot drive in Japan's narrow streets . . . but you keep blaming the Union for all the woes of the working world . . . NOBODY else could be responsible, could they?
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
The unemployment rate is kept artificially low by keeping out people such as those I mention above and some significant other groups. If you work as little as one hour in any given month, the unemployment figures show you as fully employed. Same is true if you are working 2 or even 3 part time jobs because you cannot find full time work. The same is also true if your unemployment ran out or you were never eligible for it in the first place....then you are not unemployed.
So the jobs picture is simply a tiny glimpse of the truth about what is going on in this country and is manipulated so people don't get madder than they already are. Haven't you ever wondered why, if the unemployment rate is so low that so many people are out of work? Well, that's why. After a while they just stop counting them and in the government's eyes they cease to exist. Unemployment problem solved.
Again, the recession wasn't caused by spending in Iraq, or corporate cronyism, or any of that. It was caused by a housing bubble fueled by a loose monetary policy--the president doesn't control monetary policy, the fed does. The the vast majority of the housing bubble happened under Greenspan's tenure. Therefore, Alan Greenspan had much more to do with the current situation than Bush.
Dropping interest rates now isn't a "feel good" measure. Recessions are almost always caused by credit contractions because an abrupt tightening of lending practices like we're seeing now. Even with the drops in interest rates for the past ~6 months, interest rates for borrowers have increased because banks are scared.
Your insistance that Bush is to blame for this situation both shows a limited knowledge of economics as well as a classic blame Bush first, always, and in any way possible attitude. Believe me, I have no love for this presidency, but some of the charges against him are just utterly rediculous.
What comes after trillion? We'd better all be finding out and learning how to pronounce it. Bush has 8 more months in office. By the way, I don't totally disagree that Democratic response has been puny, but after all, they only have a one or two vote majority.
The truth is that this is a coalition Congress, and they can't come together on anything, nor get it past Bush if they do.
I'm for three year term limits in Congress. We'd save enough in Senatorial pensions to pay down the national debt and restore Social Security to stability.
First of all, a signficicant number of American military equipment is made by foreign companies in foreign countries. BAE systems, a British company, is one of the largest contractors for US military equipment, just as one example. So the idea that this is all of a sudden a new threat to the dominance of US made military equiment just isn't true.
It's also rediculous to think that this has anything to do with giving favors to any other country. Boeing is one of if not the most politically connected comapnies to the government, easily on par with the Exxon-Mobiles of the world. The political clout of Northrup, let alone EADS, pales into comparison. The uproar about this contract is the clearest proof of that--otherwise, this would be just the average military contract that nobody gives a shit about.
Also, according to the members of the military, not congress/administration, the military, said Boeing wasn't even close. The 767 is an obsolete aircraft which Boeing has stopped taking orders for for civilian production. The A330 is a much more modern aircraft. Also, the A330 is a much bigger plane, which the military wanted. If Boeing really wanted to, they could have offered the 777, which is about the same size as the A330, is much more modern and fuel efficient, and in hindsight probably would have won by a mile with. The 767 is about a 30 year old model, while the 777 is about 10 years old. Boeing though it was a done deal, so they offered a sub-par plane, and they lost. They're weren't entitled to win that contract, and they didn't, it's that simple.
The national debt is $9 trillion. The unfunded liablilties of medicare and social security is $35 trillion. Personally, I see higher taxes as a way to increase the US net savings rate, because the average american certainly isn't doing it.
Would to God there were 55 Democrats and 45 Republicans - which is very close to what it will be after the November elections.
At this time, our Senate has 49 Democrats and 49 Republicans. The Democrats have a bare majority with the votes of Joe Lieberman, elected as an independent, and Bernie Sanders who is elected as an Independent.
But Paul makes a stupid mistake when he translates the way people low rate the Congress into a prediction of their party preference.
Party preferences have shown a consistent tilt toward the Democrats since 2006.
With 28 congressional Republicans stepping down (including some who have NOT been indicted), the Democrats are going to pick up seats in both chambers.
Happy Days are here again, get used to it.
.
Uh Doyle, your graph of national debt fails to show The Dot.com Bubble.
Bill Clinton's economic policy echoed that of Calvin Cooledge, with the same economic results.
Clinton reduced the national debt with a phoney economy that collapsed in the last year of his presidency costing the nation $5 trillion in market value. Yes, that is TRILLION, with a "T".
Let me repeat that again. Clinton's Dot-com bubble crash wiped out $5 trillion in market value.
Do us all a favor and keep the other Clinton clear of the economy.
Could you explain, by the way, how Mr. Clinton personally persuaded people to invest huge sums of money into companies that were not producing a profit? Was it similar to Mr. Bush relaxing the rules governing subprime mortgage loans (if he indeed did such a thing)?
That was my point before, but others just ignored any common sense in order to bash Bush. Not that I think Bush's economic policies have been helpful or even well thought out, people are going to have a rude awakening when Bush leaves office and we still have problems, but nobody to stick the blame on.
My point was simple, if we are going to "credit" Clinton for the Dot.Com spike in tax revenues that reduced the budget deficit, then we logically should blame him for the subsequent deficit that resulted from the Dot.Com/NASDAQ crash.
Clinton, as well as Coolidge, had many opportunities to be economically responsible but neither took them.
HOLD ON THERE!!!
The progressive left has been howling at the Banking Industry for decades to loosen restrictions so that the poor, single parents, the elderly, minorities and handicapped could have access to home ownership.
Relaxing those standards was PRESICELY what they have been demanding for decades. The Federal Reserve, the Congress, the Administration, Banking Groups have all been setting goals for lending to the poor, single parents, the elderly, minorities and handicapped and now when these good intentions backfired -- they blame Bush.
The subprime crisis has three causesL
1) The loosened standards demanded by Liberals.
2) Mortgage Fraud.
3) Speculative investing on low margin.
I am not sure where "the Administration" comes in. Most of this is squarly in the domain of the Federal Reserve and independent entities like Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Let's repeat that again CLINTON allowed the securitization of CRA loans containing subprime mortgages.
Calm down Greg. I should have put my sarcasm sign on that comment. I don't believe either of them are responsible for either event. There are lots of other people involved. There is a huge difference between loosening rules so more people can own homes, for instance, and predatory lenders coming up with the mess they did. If you read a good analysis of this problem you'll find the blame goes to a lot of different people, none of whom reside in the White House. It was the banking industry going nuts and being stupid and nobody stopping them when what they were doing first became apparent, and before it was a crisis.
boosh ain't aware of or responsible for anything........................................
Damn you Bill...............................greg you are a brainwashed moron!
Some villiage in Texas will be getting their prodigal village idiot back very soon.
(Now....May I suggest a tall, strong LONG fence?)
"Let's repeat that again CLINTON allowed the securitization of CRA loans containing subprime mortgages. "
Yes, Clinton signed it after the Republican House refused to authorize any effective federal oversight of the process.
But it was Bush who led the politicization and weakening of Fannie Mae in the guise of reducing wasteful regulation.
When this story is told, there won't be a Republican majority again for twenty years.
Hastert represented this solidly Republican district for 21 years, and the district has not elected a Democrat since WW II.
The Democrats pick up another seat, the Republicans down another one from their beating in 2006.
Interesting, because McCain campaigned there -and the Republican ran on a "victory in Iraq" platform.
The Democrat was solidly anti-Bush.
While I'm not now, nor did I ever say that the President was solely responsible . . . it's equally irrational to assume that the President has NO power to influence the economy. Recall the HUGE surplus left to us by Clinton? It alone would have made Social Security solvent . . . but was handed back instead . . . followed by an inarguably disastrous foreign policy intervention that cost this nation more than we can even count yet. Nobody can possibly argue rationally that this does not influence our economy. As Juan pointed out . . . falling values of the dollar affect us all . . . the poor more than the wealthy.
Stephanie & Leslie . . . you too crack me up!
Peter . . . once again the voice of rationality!
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
Huh? How can be cruel enough to break hearts with reality?
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
Bush's people are the 'haves and have more' and we are the 'have nothing soon'
I'm with you on the recession. Drive down streets where homes used to sell overnight or within the month. I see foreclosed homes and those slated for auction and others listed (optimistically) for sale. What I don't see are the buyers that used to be there.
Hunkering down, making sure everything is in order. Huge sigh of relief at having both cars paid for.
...and now we the taxpayers bail out the Countrywide predatory lending company. They were bought by the Forbes 500 company B of A, who took the losses and deducted them so they could reduce their taxes. In the end, WE bailed them out anyway!
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~