I love how this whole economic meltdown started at the end of 8 years of George W Bush and Republican-dominated rule, and yet subby has the balls to call it the Obama Economy. Regardless of whether or not you think his stimulus approach is working or wasteful, you'd have to be a complete simpleton to lay the blame for the housing collapse, the banking collapse, and the sorry state of US manufacturing on a President who took office well after all of that began.

/He may claim to have rainbows or unicorns, but he hasn't got a time machine, people.

Car_Ramrod: portscanner: Came here for the but, but, but, but Bush!!!

Left satisfied.

Seriously. Bush isn't in office anymore, guys. He has no relevency to what's happening. It's all Barry. Sorry you got duped.

LOL

Republicans blamed everything in BOTH of Bush's terms on Clinton (when it wasn't all Carter's fault, of course). The phrase originated as "b...b...but Clinton!" because Bush defenders couldn't go 10 words without trying to pin something on Bill.

I'm sure you're going to tell me that you're being sarcastic and making fun of Bush defenders now, because this is fark and up is down.

Trey Le Parc: MaxxLarge: Easy, pal. Bush had to work his ass off for almost his whole two terms to f*ck the economy up beyond description. It took plenty of rich-asshole tax cuts, two money-pit, exit-strategy-free foreign wars, complete negligence while a natural disaster wiped half a major American city clean off the map, and total ignorance of intelligence briefings leading to a significant terrorist attack on a financial center to bring the wealthiest country in the world to its knees.

That kind of crap is hard to undo overnight, Subby. Not that you'd be able to see that while you're busy checking out the view from the inside of your own colon like that. So give it time.

There's a lot of willful ignorance in your post, an almost obsessive determination to pin every setback of the past eight years upon one man and a grinding need to assign him blame for all negative current events and those far in the future that have yet to occur. It's almost as though, in your search for truth, you've crawled up your own asshole and lost contact with the real world. Send us a postcard.

You're right. Congressional Republicans share a lot of the blame, along with Bush.

technicolor-misfit: Dil Doe - Are you dipshiats still going to call it the "Obama economy" when things improve? Or will you just forget about the whole thing and start biatching about something else to divert everyone from your idiocy and shallowness?

What was your solution to this mess again? Oh yeah, do nothing at all. Brilliant. Thanks for all your help. We'll let you know when you're relevant again.

Now, c'mon... that's not completely true. They did suggest some big tax cuts for the wealthy.

Then again the solution to a cat being stuck up a tree is apparently big tax cuts for the wealthy.

xria: Larofeticus: Someone get that graph from the report Obama released during his campaign.

The one that predicts unemployment without stimulus, and unemployment with stimulus, along with the extra line showing actual unemployment turned out to be much higher than either of them.

That graph is hilarious.

And without the stimulus it would be even higher still. Government adding new spending increases employment, that is undeniable. Whether it is worthwhile in the long run can be debated, but the base fact is hard to deny - you would basically be saying that for every person the government hires, private enterprise reacts to that single fact by firing more than one person on average. Most analyses of historical employment policy (government vs private) suggest that in a period of high unemployment every extra employee the government takes on increases private employment (by amounts from 0.3 to 1.6 being a figure that sticks in my head but I can't remember which recessions we were discussing at the time). The government employees have more money to spend compared to when they were unemployed, so that tends to stimulate demand in the private sector.

Obviously when government takes on more employees during a period of low employment it competes with private industry more, and the net increase in employment drops below 1 and heads towards zero as you get closer to full employment. At full employment it is exactly 0, as any new employee must come from private industry by definition (ignoring immigration/emigration, new entrants/retirements and so on for simplicity).

But most of the expenditures of the stimulus package goes to private contractors, not government employees.

Your theory, it just evaporated.

Larofeticus: jgbrowning:
Republican Austrian humor strikes again! - laughing at Democratic Keneysian failure to properly judge the enormity of Republican Keneysian failure.

That is a more accurate perspective on my point of view. I find it amazing how a field of study with such a terrible track record for making predictions continues to find someone to listen to its predictions.

John Maynard Keynes, hence Keynesian.

Keynesianism is probably broadly correct, it is just impossible politically. The spending by government when things are bad works fine, but cutting back spending and paying down the debt during booms (to avoid competing with the private sector and causing inflationary pressures) is far too rare to make it work in practise. Politicians are Keynesianists when there is a recession and turn into Monetarists when there is a boom.

DGS: MaxxLarge: Easy, pal. Bush had to work his ass off for almost his whole two terms to f*ck the economy up beyond description. It took plenty of rich-asshole tax cuts, two money-pit, exit-strategy-free foreign wars, complete negligence while a natural disaster wiped half a major American city clean off the map, and total ignorance of intelligence briefings leading to a significant terrorist attack on a financial center to bring the wealthiest country in the world to its knees.

That kind of crap is hard to undo overnight, Subby. Not that you'd be able to see that while you're busy checking out the view from the inside of your own colon like that. So give it time.

This.
/Newsletter?
//Subscription!


Obama is continuing the Bush Policies x 10. How is what he doing any different in policy? We're just going to hell faster than under Bush.

006andahalf: So he's the new Reagan? That qualifies him for canonization.

no, Obama would need 20 years to fark things up like reagan was able to do in 8.

ronnie started the ball rolling and its culmination was in 2008 when bushie put the cherry on top and the richest 1-2% ran away with all the Gold.

thanks ronnie for getting that evil government off the backs of wallstreet bankers so they could frkkk this country in the asss.

you're swell ronnie!

PS --have a great dirt nap for eternity.

wmanning833: DGS: MaxxLarge: Easy, pal. Bush had to work his ass off for almost his whole two terms to f*ck the economy up beyond description. It took plenty of rich-asshole tax cuts, two money-pit, exit-strategy-free foreign wars, complete negligence while a natural disaster wiped half a major American city clean off the map, and total ignorance of intelligence briefings leading to a significant terrorist attack on a financial center to bring the wealthiest country in the world to its knees.

That kind of crap is hard to undo overnight, Subby. Not that you'd be able to see that while you're busy checking out the view from the inside of your own colon like that. So give it time.

This.
/Newsletter?
//Subscription!


Obama is continuing the Bush Policies x 10. How is what he doing any different in policy? We're just going to hell faster than under Bush.

Not really. Foreign policy is drastically different. Economic policy is also much different. Tax policy, yup, different.

How you can say that we're going down faster now when in GWBs last term so many of the major bankers failed and the housing bubble burst astonishes me.

kleppe: Can't wait for 2012 when nothing has changed and the Obama fellators claim that the economy was too jacked up and so sorry, but nothing could be done (please reelect us).

So this leaves us with two options:

(1) You're right. Obama can't fix the economy. Because it was so much of a mess that the entire combined might of all politicians on both sides of the political spectrum can't fix it (the GOP is working with Obama, right?). This does not help the GOP.

(2) You're wrong. He did fix the economy. Your entire position is invalid, and you are a laughing stock for playing Chicken Little while Obama fixes things.

Is that really what you want? To either be right about the biggest fark-up in years and have things worse, or to be completely wrong?

Please, help me see your perspective here. I'm failing.

Larofeticus: That's nice. How is it relevent to this thread?

The other side wants to borrow as much money as possible to flush down the government toilet with no track record for success or even close to accurate predictions. That strikes me as not only a less rational point of view, but it's also a relevant one.

I'm sure it strikes you as less rational. I wouldn't expect anything such from someone that can believe in Austrian Economics.

For those reading here's a bit from wiki about Austrian Economics "Austrian economists reject empirical, statistical methods and artificially constructed experiments as tools applicable to economics, saying that while it is appropriate in the natural sciences where factors can be isolated in laboratory conditions, the actions of human beings are too complex for this treatment. Instead one should isolate the logical processes of human action. Von Mises called this discipline "praxeology".

and

"The Austrian praxeological method is based on the heavy use of logical deduction from what they perceive to be self-evident axioms; undeniable facts about human existence."

Eddie Adams from Torrance: Obama has been President for almost 6 months and he STILL hasn't fixed the economy.

WTF is this guy's problem?

Worst President EVAR!

It's not that he hasn't fixed it, it's that he's totally farked it for the next three generations.

Hoopido: It's not that he hasn't fixed it, it's that he's totally farked it for the next three generations.

xria: Keynesianism is probably broadly correct, it is just impossible politically.

I fail to see how something can be correct despite government when it both requires government to implement and that government is a permanant aspect of our society.

That is as valid as the claim "Communism is right, it just can't be implemented."

jgbrowning:

Hey I've got a piece of empirical evidence for you.

http://otrans.3cdn.net/45593e8ecbd339d074_l3m6bt1te.pdf

That's the report obama used to justify the stimulus. It uses modern macroeconomics to distill the near infinite complexity of american economic interaction into some numbers. The past six months have demonstrated that its predictions are not just wrong but far in excess of their worst case scenario.

Using toy models to understand a system of that much complexity would be fine with me if it worked. Instead, they have to be modified following every crisis to explain it after the fact, and are never successful in predicting the next crisis. In data mining, that sort of error is called overfitting.

Joliet_Jake:

Car_Ramrod: portscanner: Came here for the but, but, but, but Bush!!!

Left satisfied.

Seriously. Bush isn't in office anymore, guys. He has no relevency to what's happening. It's all Barry. Sorry you got duped.

You are either illiterate or willfully ignorant. It's an economic fact that unemployment is a lagging indicator. The Dow is now above what it was when Obama took office. The stock market is a fast-paced indicator, unemployment tends to lag 3-6 months behind. This isn't rocket science, it's high school economics.

Okay, so you're saying everything from this month on is Obama's fault? No more Bush-biatching^TM about everything? Fair enough. Set the counters to zero...

Gen. Jim

Hideously Gigantic Smurf:

Car_Ramrod: Seriously. Bush isn't in office anymore, guys. He has no relevency to what's happening. It's all Barry. Sorry you got duped.

Yet... 9/11 was Clinton's fault.

Got it.

Speaking personally, I don't mind looking at this kind of thing either way. YES, there are carry-over effects, some of them long-lasting. And, YES, once someone becomes President, like it or not, the buck stops there.

BUT (and it's a big but) only take it one way or the other. If 9/11 was Clinton's fault, then GWB has to take responsibility for the problems NOW. And if it 'was all Bush's fault' on 9/11, then Obama screwed the pooch on the economy. I don't mind looking at it either way, but, BOTH sides of this want to take any credit, and dodge any blame. Get real.

But, as to this, Obama ducking responsibility for the economy would make a lot more sense if he weren't making the same mistakes GWB did, and doubling down every chance he gets. Using any reasonable viewing of the situation, if you think GWB was bad on the economy (like I do) then Obama is several times worse.

I mean that it would make more sense to blame GWB for current INTERNATIONAL problems, because BHO has changed them, quite a bit. But on the economy, GWB started a dumbass bailout program, and BHO is continuing, and accelerating that plan. What's the gripe? GWB didn't dork it up enough?

Gen. Jim

Yeah but obama takes reporters out to eat and hits the bars with them

obama news

obama achievements

Hoopido: It's not that he hasn't fixed it, it's that he's totally farked it for the next three generations.

I also heard that the sky is falling! We'd better all move underground.

Few things are more hilarious than watching a bunch of people with less understanding of what's going on than an average 12th grader a week into Econ 101 throw tantrums.

Did Bush cause the recession? No. Did he do much to prevent it, even when it was glaringly obvious it was imminent? No, he stuck his head in the sand like an ostrich.

Is Obama making the recession worse? Too early to tell. So far the worst crime he's definitely guilty of is presenting very rose-tinted projections of how quickly his policies might turn things around. Anyone who says that he's doing better/worse than that is a partisan hack.

You can quote all the history, economic theories, political jargon etc you want, fact of the matter is there are thousands of variables at play here and it's impossible to predict where we'll be in 3 months much less a year from now.

Back to your regularly scheduled self-congratulatory noisemaking contest.

chaunceymo: I also heard that the sky is falling! We'd better all move underground.

Yeah, but employed volume isn't beyond a standard deviation of the mean, the DOW is recovering nicely and the stimulus package hasn't even gotten it's groove on yet.

DarnoKonrad:

Joliet_Jake: Believe me, it will happen. There are still people who claim that the 90s stock market boom was a result of Reagan.

John Boener said as much last month.

The reality of the situation is that the 90s were going to be good, almost no matter what, and had been predicted that way since the 60s. The reason? The giant lump of baby-boomers were in their peak earning years, buying houses and cars. This decade, the 2010s, (starting a tad early) should suck, also based on demographics; the boomers are retiring, and starting to draw money rather than deposit it.

But the dynamic duo of GWB and BHO are proving there's no cluster-fark so bad you can't throw another shrimp on the barbie, to mangle the metaphor. This is precisely the wrong time to be building up a huge debt.

Gen. Jim

This economy took years to get where it is, it will take years to get out. The president did what he could to replace some of those 6 million jobs that were lost - he passed a stimulus to get some important public works projects started so that some people could start earning a paycheck again.

As you can't grow an economy on hamburger stands, lawn care, and other crappy service sector jobs and the pain will continue until some industry booms and soaks up some of these people out of work, if anything Paul Krugman was correct and we need a larger stimulus.

Another harsh reality is that those jobs aren't going to come back. A 21st century plan is needed to pull the US out of its recession, the best thing we can do is get these people building solar panels, turbines, and tidal harnesses. After that we can put them to work cleaning up the great Pacific Garbage patch, a project that would have tremendous health benefits for the ecosystem, our country, and the world.

Larofeticus: Oooo I found one! It's hot, though.



Time to add another reality dot to that fantasy.

If anyone doesn't believe that graph initially came from the Obama campaign, i'll go track down the pdf of it.



Do any of you understand what a projection is?

RevMercutio: We're on Day 2 of the fiscal year. How are we able to determine "Obama's Economy" right now?

Unfortunately that'll never stop the right from getting their shots in.

Unfortunately for the right-wingers the economy during Reagan's first term wasn't a great read either.

Jeezus. Were y'all paying attention at the end of 2009? Did you see what happened? Did you see banks collapse and lenders freeze money? Do you think you think that sort of thing just goes away?

The economy isn't a farking microwave. It's that kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.

Duke Phillips' Singing Bears: Jeezus. Were y'all paying attention at the end of 2009? Did you see what happened? Did you see banks collapse and lenders freeze money? Do you think you think that sort of thing just goes away?

The economy isn't a farking microwave. It's that kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.

2008. I meant 2008.

kleppe: Eddie Adams from Torrance: Obama has been President for almost 6 months and he STILL hasn't fixed the economy.
WTF is this guy's problem?
Worst President EVAR!

And in three years you'll just say it was a wash and Bush ruined it so bad Obama never had a chance to begin with. Kill yourself.

And? You act as if it would be an unfair statement.

ragekage: Shaggy_C: Larofeticus: The one that predicts unemployment without stimulus, and unemployment with stimulus, along with the extra line showing actual unemployment turned out to be much higher than either of them.


Ask and ye shall receive

The stimulus benefits are supposed to hit in Q3/Q4 of this year full-bore, which actually (interestingly enough to the report I listened to on NPR) means that the prime effects'll be in time for the mid term elections in 2010. I wonder how much of a coincidence that was; because if it works, there won't be a Republican in Congress outside of the Deep South/Mormon country.



Because Two-Party Politics is a Biatch

Private sector job growth was almost non-existent over the past ten years. Take a look at this horrifying chart:



source (new window)

moralpanic: Seeing as it took almost 8 years to break the economy, i think it's gonna take a little longer than 6 months to fix it. Generally it's a lot easier to break something than to fix it.

The housing bubble has been going on for a lot longer than Bush's presidency....

It's better than 5 in 10 living on elephant farts, like in 2000 & 2004.

Between May 1999 and May 2009, employment in the private sector sector only rose by 1.1%, by far the lowest 10-year increase in the post-depression period.

It's impossible to overstate how bad this is. Basically speaking, the private sector job machine has almost completely stalled over the past ten years. Take a look at this chart:



source (new window)

Over the past 10 years, the private sector has generated roughly 1.1 million additional jobs, or about 100K per year. The public sector created about 2.4 million jobs.

But even that gives the private sector too much credit. Remember that the private sector includes health care, social assistance, and education, all areas which receive a lot of government support. I've been talking about the HealthEdGov sector. Take a look at this table:
10-year Job Growth: HealthEdGov Sector Dominates


Industry Change, May 1999-2009
(thousands of jobs)*

Private healthcare 2898
Food and drinking places 1567
Gov educ 1390
Professional and business services 885
Gov except health and ed 843
Social assistance 796
Private education 772
Arts, entertainment, and recreation 188
Gov health 148
Mining 133
Financial activities 130
Utilities -40
Transportation and warehousing -43
Retail -91
Accomodations -119
Wholesale -166
Construction -238
Information -525
Manufacturing -5372

*Gov health and gov educ based on April 2009 estimates
Data: BLS


Most of the industries which had positive job growth over the past ten years were in the HealthEdGov sector. In fact, financial job growth was nearly nonexistent once we take out the health insurers.

source (new window)

brainiac-dumdum: Private sector job growth was almost non-existent over the past ten years. Take a look at this horrifying chart:



source (new window)

Yeah, but the employed volume hasn't left standard deviation. Hmm, wonder what blew the percentage up.

Without a decade of growing government support from rising health and education spending and soaring budget deficits, the labor market would have been flat on its back.



source (new window)

Obama and his great stimulus sham has FAILED. There is no debating that. The standard for success for the stimulus plan SET BY OBAMA HIMSELF was that unemployment would not rise above 8.5%. Unemployment is approaching 10%. FAIL. Many much FAIL.

The 22%'ers calling this the "Obama recession" can go fark themselves.

You don't get to rewrite history WHILE IT'S HAPPENING. You have to at least wait a few years before you pin something on the new guy that clearly started under the last guy.

You also don't get to rewrite history when you lose.

Oh my poor, misguided Americans....pretty soon you'll be Canada's Mexico.

shower_in_my_socks: The 22%'ers calling this the "Obama recession" can go fark themselves.

We didn't set the measure of success for the stimulus package at 8.5% unemployment. Obama did. We're WAY past that now. It's much worse than what they predicted would happen WITHOUT the stimulus. Not only did the stimulus FAIL it made things WORSE. This is on Obama now. The stimulus was his baby and its failure is directly attributable to him. The moment he started pushing the failed stimulus package was the moment this failure became his.

mmm... pancake: shower_in_my_socks: The 22%'ers calling this the "Obama recession" can go fark themselves.

We didn't set the measure of success for the stimulus package at 8.5% unemployment. Obama did. We're WAY past that now. It's much worse than what they predicted would happen WITHOUT the stimulus. Not only did the stimulus FAIL it made things WORSE. This is on Obama now. The stimulus was his baby and its failure is directly attributable to him. The moment he started pushing the failed stimulus package was the moment this failure became his.


So it's Obama's recession because he didn't predict that Bush's fark up was as bad as it's proving to be? If we're still this farked by the end of the year, then I'm willing to consider that the stimulus didn't work. But considering that a vast majority of it hasn't even been spent yet, I'm going to reserve judgment for now.

The failure is HIS? Fark off, wingnut. I know you'd love to pawn off one of Bush's many clusterfarks on someone else, but you have to wait a little more than 6 months if you want to be taken seriously.

shower_in_my_socks: So it's Obama's recession because he didn't predict that Bush's fark up was as bad as it's proving to be?

He accepted responsibility for it when he promised that he could fix it by ramming trillions of dollars of borrowing and spending down our throats. Instead, he made it much worse even according to HIS standards of success.

The Corporation: Oh my poor, misguided Americans....pretty soon you'll be Canada's Mexico.

We're already sneaking across the border for cheap drugs.....

But he's SO well SPOKEN!

mmm... pancake: He accepted responsibility for it when he promised that he could fix it by ramming trillions of dollars of borrowing and spending down our throats. Instead, he made it much worse even according to HIS standards of success.

Most of the stimulus money hasn't even been distributed yet. Hold your horses until it is.

I like how when Bush was president it was the Clinton economy, and now it's the Obama economy immediately upon taking office. "Party of responsibility" is clearly an exercise in ironic performance art.

Gosling: mmm... pancake: He accepted responsibility for it when he promised that he could fix it by ramming trillions of dollars of borrowing and spending down our throats. Instead, he made it much worse even according to HIS standards of success.

Most of the stimulus money hasn't even been distributed yet. Hold your horses until it is.

I'm already prepared for the dollar's collapse. Cheers!

mmm... pancake: The standard for success for the stimulus plan SET BY OBAMA HIMSELF was that unemployment would not rise above 8.5%.

Source?

The stupid in this thread is amazing.

Gosling: Most of the stimulus money hasn't even been distributed yet. Hold your horses until it is.

The standard of success, as defined by Obama himself, was that the stimulus would keep unemployment below 8.5%. Employment has exceeded 8.5%. Not only that but unemployment has surpassed what unemployment would have been without the stimulus. It did not do what it was promised to do. It has made things worse. I'm simply applying OBAMA'S standards for success here, folks.

mmm... pancake: Obama and his great stimulus sham has FAILED. There is no debating that. The standard for success for the stimulus plan SET BY OBAMA HIMSELF was that unemployment would not rise above 8.5%. Unemployment is approaching 10%. FAIL. Many much FAIL.

This statement is incorrect. If you read the report, the stated goal was to "create or save three million jobs before the end of 2010."

Give them a little credit. Although the government does not know how to fix an economy, it does know how to make a goal vauge and distant enough that it is impossible to verify.

No matter how many jobs are lost, they can claim that three million jobs more would have been lost without stimulus, which is impossible to prove or disprove.

And by the time 2010 shows up, there will almost certainly some sort of other economic disaster blowing back up since the current/previous ones weren't fixed but instead hidden under the rug. Then they can claim "Well of course we didn't meet our goal; nobody guessed that just as we were about to recover, bad future economic event would happen and ruin everything?"

Who would have guessed that economic problems come back so soon after you hide them instead of fix them? Only people that follow the money supply and realize that as soon as a recovery begins banks are going to start lending with that fresh new FED money and any pretense of recovery will be swept away by a hurricane of inflation.

mmm... pancake: The standard of success, as defined by Obama himself, was that the stimulus would keep unemployment below 8.5%

You've said this three times now, do you have a link I can read? I'd love to take a look at it. this is the first I've ever heard of "8.5%"

Thanks!