You are witnessing the discrediting of economic conservatism
Submitted by modernesquire on Thu, 10/29/2009 - 10:04pm.
Just as W. Bush's neoconservatism has become the Republican Party's "Vietnam" that will plague it for a generation on all matters of foreign policy and national security, the Republican Party's "all in" bet against the stimulus is not paying off.
Remember what they said when these proposals were passed:
- Unemployment benefits don't stimulate the economy.
- The plan doesn't do enough to improve the economy this year.
- "Cash for Clunkers" won't help the economy.
"I believe it was likely driven by increases in transfer payments such as food stamps, unemployment benefits, and Social Security."
...
“It’s good to have the economy growing again,” said Brian Bethune, economist at IHS Global Insight.
“But we don’t think that rate of growth is sustainable because it is distorted by all the government stimulus.
“The challenge here is to get organic growth – growth that isn’t helped by fiscal steroids.”
Read that last quote again. Bizzyblog's Tom Blumer wants today's 3Q GDP growth to have an asterisk like people want with Mark McQwire's HR record.
Fine... put an asterisk on it. And down below write: the 3Q09 GDP growth was only possible due to a tax cut/government spending package introduced by President Obama and passed by a Democratic Congress with no Republican support.
Because that's what happened.
Poor Blumer. He spent the first few months saying that freshly inaugurated Obama and the Democratic Congress was responsible for the stock market which was still sliding since its epic slide in October '08. It's now regained most of its losses from a year ago.
He pushed WSJ editorials about how ObamaCare was keeping Dow under 10,000, and then the DOW breaks 10,000 and Nancy Pelosi's bill with a robust public option shows that it'll reduce the deficit both the first and second decade. (That's twenty years of deficit savings, and it covers 36 million more Americans than the Senate Finance Committee version that lacked a public option.)
So, what does he say today? He talks about a jobless recovery the second the 3Q GDP numbers show that the recession is over and the economy is growing, despite knowing that job data is always a lagging indicator and the last economic indictor to recover from a recession (particularly the worst one since the Great Depression.)
After all the Tea Party nonsense, the debate is over: the economy is growing and the stimulus is the reason why. The stimulus' government spending component was able to supplement the lack of private spending in the economy until the major industries restructured and the cycle of economic pessimism was broken:
For the first quarter in a year, the private domestic investment component of GDP grew... In other words, private spending is finally growing on it own instead of shrinking.
Oh, and Blumer, about those job numbers that also came out today?
Analysts had forecast continued claims would be 5.90 million. This better-than-expected performance chimed with forecasts for labor market conditions to stabilize as the country pulls out of the worst recession in 70 years.
A Labor Department official said that there were no special factors influencing the data last week and that no states had submitted estimates for their count.
Another key gauge of underlying labor market health, the 4-week moving average for new claims, decreased by 6,000 to 526,250, which was the smallest reading since January.
This measure is closely watched because it is supposed to iron out weekly volatility. It has now declined for eight straight weeks, in further evidence that the jobs market is slowly beginning to heal.
While Blumer and his pseudo-intellectual ilk were foaming at the mouth about how the economy had "gone Gault," Obama and the Democratic Congress were saving the American economy.
There is no debate. The stimulus worked. Deal with it.
Boo-hoo ouch.
American economy saved?!?
Submitted by Nifty Lawrence on Fri, 10/30/2009 - 10:39am.
Obama and the Democratic Congress were saving the American economy.
There is no debate. The stimulus worked. Deal with it.
This is the type of dangerous/misguided analysis, shared by many, that shows we, as a country, have learned nothing the past few years.
If anything, the past few years have revealed what a wise & select few have been saying for years - the U.S. economy operates as a giant Ponzi scheme, borrowing obscene amounts of money to keep itself afloat with the fantasy that an ecomony that relies a full 3/4 on consumer spending will - someday, decades from now (fingers crossed) - be able to balance itself out.
Meanwhile, the gap between rich & poor grows ever bigger, manufacturing jobs across the country continue to disappear with no hope of ever coming back & Baby Boomers continue to gray, meaning the drag they will create on social services is a ticking time-bomb no one is talking about. These, among many other problems.
In addition, we've had nothing close to any kind of banking/financial reform, millions continue to go without health care & taxpayers are still bled dry by a government that spends more on its military than every other country in the world combined.
We need to fundamentally restructure our economy to compete in the 21st century if we wish to maintain our standard of living. Unfortunately, neither political party appears to have the brains and/or courage to deal with these problems.
So, we'll just continue to do what got us as individuals and a country in serious trouble - borrow today to pay for what we can't afford in the long run.
Stimulus worked? Yeah, it goosed some numbers in the short term because we borrowed more than ever, completely ignoring the fact all that money will need repaid, with interest, by future generations.
Dangerous territory
Submitted by paper ballots now on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 2:18pm.
Democrats are fools to triumph this economy.
The stimulus (it should have been called the jobs bill) did help some but the economy is still in deep, deep trouble. Most people feel that way and painting a different story about the economy is stupid and self-defeating.
Unnecessary wars + Bush tax cuts for the rich
Submitted by paper ballots now on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 2:27pm.
Democrats should bang away that the economy and government budgets are in big trouble because of unnecessary Republican wars and the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
The Soviets' war in Afghanistan helped bankrupt it and we better be careful too.
Rich people do not typically create jobs when given tax cuts. Instead, that money is used to speculate in financial markets.
Tax increases actually incentivize the creation of jobs. Tax increases incentivize investments within businesses to avoid tax hits which stimulates job creation and the greater economy.
2008=2010
Submitted by paper ballots now on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 2:36pm.
Here's a prediction: The financial terrorists of Wall Street will strike again in 2010.
Expect another Bankster meltdown and a demand for trillions more with the threat of another financial collapse.
Glenn Beck is banking on it actually predicting it. Unfortunately, the reporting and commentary in the Financial Times is showing that it will happen again.
2009 was a year of profit-taking for the banksters and delaying the posting of losses.
Too big to fail must be equated with too big to exist by policymakers. Obama better scrap the Hooverism for some FDR-like audaciousness and fast...
Democrats deserve just as much blame
Submitted by Nifty Lawrence on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 3:05pm.
Democrats should bang away that the economy and government budgets are in big trouble because of unnecessary Republican wars and the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
Except that the Democrats in Congress are/were, at a minimum, compliant and, at a maximum, fully supportive of the above. And those wars are no longer Bush's wars. They are now Obama's.
Furthermore, our economic house-of-cards is the way it is for reasons far beyond the wars & tax cuts.
Sounds Like Kasich's Lehman Bros. "defense":
Submitted by BuckeyeNation on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 5:02pm.
"I was just the piano player (in Zanesville)!" 
Just keep drinking that GOP kool-aid Nifty.
And don't forget: Palin-Bachmann 2012!
Criticizing Democrats makes me a Republican?
Submitted by Nifty Lawrence on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 5:40pm.
Ah, yes. If I criticize Democrats I must be a Republican, a conservative, a tea-bagger, or all three. Isn't it much easier to try & pin one of those labels on me, and therefore discredit me, then actually address anything I've said?
Or, perhaps, I'm far to the left of the Democrats on most social issues & learned long ago the party offers nothing much more than broken promises, failed policies & zero vision.
Nah, it couldn't be that. Whoever heard of a person who doesn't belong to either of the parties? That's crazy talk.
hehehe
Submitted by mvirenicus on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 8:48pm.
this exchange seems to come out of the blue, doesn't it? give me your phone number, david. i'll alert you to well-timed spams in the future, including those that arrive at 3:00am. 
That Would Be Funny
Submitted by David Potts on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 8:53pm.
If I hadn't actually gotten out of bed at 3 A.M. just to clear out spam before.
What robust public option?
Modern, I agree with everything that you say EXCEPT for the Pelosi public option.
The public option was always a compromise for serious supporters of meaningful health-care reform, who — like Barack Obama when he was running for the Senate in 2003 — knew that a single-payer “Medicare for All” system was what America needed to provide health care to everyone while controlling costs.
The public option put forward by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is even MORE compromised than the always more conservative leaning Senate version. This house compromise of an already over-compromised reform effort is a complete capitulation to the insurance industry.
Nancy Pelosi says the legislation is “historic.” Historic in what way? Maybe the historic squandering of overwhelming Democratic majorities. I watched the video, she celebrates the fact that it “still includes a public option.” While there is a public option, it is anything but robust.
How far to the right can a majority speaker go before she compromises her party’s ideals? I worried more about Harry Reid then Nancy Pelosi in regard to health care. To say that Pelosi has bent far to the right is an understatement.
She obviously caved to the pressure from moderate-to-conservative members of the House Democratic caucus. She has decided to propose a government-run insurance plan that would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, rather than using prices set by the government like Medicare. She calls it a “consumer option,” that would compete with private insurers.
But the public option Pelosi and her team have proposed would not make payments for care based on Medicare rates, as the Congressional Progressive Caucus and key Senate Democrats have proposed. Rather, under the Pelosi plan, the rates will be TIED to those of the big insurance companies. That’s a big, big victory for the insurance industry, as it will undermine the ability of the public option to create pressure for reduced costs.
Pelosi’s plan also drops a number of provisions, the key one being an amendment championed by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich that had advanced through the committee level to promote consideration of “Medicare for All” models and to allow states to experiment with single-payer plans on a state-by-state basis. That’s an especially bitter pill for me to swallow. I was hoping that at least the state-based experimentation would make it through and that it could be the catalyst for a national single-payer system as this was the route Canada went on its way to universal health care 35 years ago.