Like anyone is surprised by this. Anyone notice how quiet all the Obamaphiles have become since he took office? Like I said. Careful what you wish for. It should not come as any surprise the direction things are headed.
The Rockefeller Republicans are switched over to the dems. They love the social spending but swith back to Republican as soon as their taxes go up.
I don't think people like you really understand the problem. This is anything but stimulative. We have a problem of too much debt and this "stimulus" is more debt, you can't fix a problem with more of it. We are borrowing a.k.a. leeching off future productivity and paying a price for it with interest. How is that supposed to be helpful? You cannot borrow(stimulate) your way into prosperity. --------- A good idea by Kucinich: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r_-QRKyu6g
He's hated on by the right, I think because he's on MSNBC. I like Joe no matter where he is. Don't agree with him all the time but he's not a shill like Olbermann or Hannity.
And that pretty much defines Joe. Perhaps. I mean he was a Republican Congressman at one point. Not a very good one, but none the less... I agree on the Olbermann comment though. That guy is just nuts. Hes a has been sportscaster that could not cut it, and now sits on soap box and cries like a little bitch to a listening audience smaller than public access in the most remote Alaskan igloo village.
The situation that we are in today is similiar to what happened after the 1973-1975 recession. Jimmy Carter won the 1976 election on a message of hope and spending. Paul A. Volcker was Predident of the FED. 2008, Jimmy Carter a.k.a. Barry Obama and Volcker are back. A lot of people forget that gold was 1k an ounce in 1979 and Siver was $50.
Right now the economy is collapsing. Consumer spending is driveling up. Businesses are shrinking, people are getting fired. Meanwhile asset values are shrinking at alarming values. The assets in stocks have fallen dramatically. Real estate values are dropping at rates which nobody has seen. There will be more in the real estate side as commercial values will start to drop around the nation. Some of that will be experienced in the stock market as REIT's will lose values as will big financial firms with uber heavy real estate investments (life insurance companies for instance) will suffer enormous losses. It is different than the very serious economic downturn of around the early 1980's. At that time ultra high interest rates ultimately shrunk everything. Now we have low interest rates (at least for the time being). Truthfully nobody has an idea how to deal with this. The simplistic commentary about "nobody ever taxed oneself into prosperity" is meaningless. A spending spree by the government will tackle one part of that problem. It gets money floating through the economy in lieu of money that is simply not moving, not creating jobs, etc. That is it. Its a simple idea trying to attack one of the simple elements of the collapsing economy. A dollar spent by the government into salaries or purchasing internally within the nation as opposed to externally to other nations moves more money into the economy, maintaining jobs, creating income and encouraging spending. Political rhetoric endlessly calls for lower taxes as a mechanism to expand the economy. Hard economics and most economists, especially those that don't have a political axe to grind, will show via studies that lower taxes are typically NOT the source for greatest economic growth. That isn't rhetoric, its the hard facts coming out of studies. There is no doubt that the package of stimulus spending developed by Democrats favored programs Dems support. While the political Right cracks jokes about it and calls it stupid they ignore the fact that for the 8 years of the Bush administration and 6 years in which the GOP dominated both houses in Congress.....HERE COMES THE FACTS.....government spending exploded in every which way possible. It was dramatically higher than that which DEMS ever spent...and the increase in spending was higher. Not to mention that the GOP righteous RIGHT that is carping about government debt took the Government into extraordinary high levels of debt never before seen. (so much for being righteous about the debt levels of future generations---let alone the debt levels tax payers will have to carry this year, next year, the year after and so on. In Mia's list of expenditures it shows that money is being heavily oriented toward government run programs. Of interest, I totaled up the entire list. It came to slightly less than $20 billion out of a total "expenditure/stimulus package of about $900 billion dollars. This utterly reminds me of the wild rantings of those who go crazy over "pork barrel spending" and earmarks. Earmarks, which endlessly can be pointed at and be ridiculed are so amazingly small in the great context of things that they have the impact of a couple of drops in a big pail of water. I personally don't like earmarks....but I was way in favor of earmarks by a couple of both Dem and GOP members of Congress that got the ball rolling on improving the armour and type of vehicles in Iraq that would protect against IED's that were killing and maiming so many American soldiers as the insurgency against Americans was escalating at horrendous levels. These members of Congress did this in the face of prior administration non action while American soldiers were dying. Of the long list of expenditures I'd like to comment on a few: $448 million for a new department of Homeland Securities Headquarters. In the commercial real estate world you can build a top notch office building in and around the Washington DC region for about $150-200/foot give or take something and dependant on land costs. That means about a 2 million square foot building. Oops....they aint planning a building that big. That is way excessive. Either that or they somehow figured that instead of constructing a building at competitive costs--somehow they have it in there for about 3 to 5 times competitive costs. Add $248 million for furniture for this building. (I'm getting a headache)--It looks to me like they want to fit out that building w/ furniture at values that replicate the money spent by the recently fired head of Merrill Lynch who spent $1 million to furnish his offices---(while taking TARP/bailout money). Of interest...as commercial real estate vacancy rates go up in the DC region and around the nation.....access to great buildings becomes ever cheaper---(its the law of demand and supply). On the other hand....buying environmentally based cars that don't suck up gasolene for the US government and for military bases. I like the idea. Mia, I'd think you might like the idea also. Here is why. The US auto industry should jumpstart into creating more autos that are not dependant on gasolene. Transportation is the animal that sucks up imported oil and gasolene and drives energy prices ever higher. Mia, I'm going to paraphrase something you wrote here a while ago. High gas prices and high oil prices gets reinvested into terrorist bombs strapped onto the wastes of terrorists who walk among innocents and blow up everyone and anyone. Prepurchasing hybrids and automobiles that used no or little gasolene would be a part of a "jumpstart" into moving American automobile production in an area that we should be moving for security reasons, for balance of trade reasons, for reasons of driving down American debt to foreign nations, for overall reducing demand reasons, and for environmental reasons. Right now American auto manufacturers are about to die. This would jump start production and money into their structure for a period of time. Hopefully after that natural market conditions and abilities to buy new cars would rebound. Hell they could do that and rework cost structures, union wages and other excesses all at the same time. In the meantime the production side of producing vehicles would be in better shape to handle more hybrids for the natural market. Now as to the total cost according to the bill. I got a good idea it is similarly overstated as is the cost of construction for the Homeland Security Headquarters. Btw: If you want to look at excessive government spending take a look here by the former administration......(drum roll)...the US embassy in Iraq. a note by fox news from early this year....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,476464,00.html Then there was an article from a year earlier, when the Bush administration blocked any review of the size and spending catastrophe that was occurring.....http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/usa.iraq..... Now if you want to see something dramatic about government spending...take a look at this link......http://www.wtv-zone.com/Mary/NEWUSEMBASSYINIRAQ.HTML Of interest....I know a contractor on the embassy job in Iraq. Even as the news reports in early January reported the project was complete, it isn't. This guy continues to go over to Iraq every few months. When his team isn't working and are back in the states, other teams are working. The guy's subcontractor work involves totally redoing stuff they did a couple of years ago as personnel and functions have changed since initial planning. That is called "cost overruns". They are still going on, still occurring while the govt announced that the embassy is finished. The former administration and its supporters simply blocked anyone from seeing the costs ....and then its supporters go and attack the other side of the political coin for openly proposing to spend money. Give me a break. So much for political righteousness. Meanwhile as to reducing taxes as a theory for spurring the economy. Sounds great. Its a wonderful political soundbite. Here is what happened in 2001 amongst other things. The feds dropped all tax rates including the highest level personal tax rate from 39.6% to 35%. That is a 13% drop in taxes. Pretty massive. As we look at the decade it produced a dramatic increase in federal debt, it had one of the comparatively lowest levels of job growth compared to other decades, it is ending in a financial disaster of unprecidented levels, and the middle and lower classes took on debt through the nose and is now losing their shirts on home values that are dropping at never before rates, a stock market that has crashed, and by the way the disparity between rich and poor grew to levels not seen since the depression of the 1920's. Now I like lower taxes. For most years of the 2000's I benefitted at that maximum level differential. I wasn't doing serious investing. I'm not a crazy spender. I am buying some investments dirt cheap right now and last year. We have one business that hasn't moved into profitability yet after a year. Here is what we are doing. We keep trying DIFFERENT things until we get it right. If something isn't working we junk it. We discovered that the "conventional thinking" isn't working on a business in a particular market. We started doing other stuff....it is working. By the way, we have experience and a great track record in this type of business....but it doesn't come easy or by "some book" or political/economic soundbite. We work at stuff, try and implement it, work on the implementation, measure it and see if it works. Most of our experiments and testing are still ongoing. Nothing happens immediately in the business world. Anyways, I have no problems with revising the stimulous package. I do hope they keep various levels of spending in there. Spending is stimulous in the absense of spending by the private markets.
The reaction to the current downturn is very similar to the Jimmy Carter years. This current year this is a $1 trillion deficit. Add to that a $1 trillion stimulus package and another 2.5 trillion tarp III. The ultra high interest rates came a couple of years after the 1970's stimulus spending. I'd like to see the Government bypass the big failing banks and flow capital into the smaller regional banks that are making money. Another good plan would be to bundle infrastructure spending on ports, Miss. river locks, bridges into investment grade securities that pension funds can buy into. The market is killing the guy on the street. Prime Rate 1977-05-13 6.50% 1978-06-30 9.00 1979-06-19 11.50 1980-05-01 18.50 2008-01-22 6.50 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/PRIME.txt
I agree. Let's get ourselves out of debt by creating more of it! Sounds like something the government would come up with. To me, it's like paying your monthly credit card payment with another credit card....
Of interest about the high interest rates and inflation during the Carter years: Inflation and interest rates were going up during Nixon's administration. He established wage and price controls (prior to an election). After a couple of years he lifted the controls. Subsequent to lifting the controls, inflation and interest rates started to go up. They continued rising during Ford's years (finishing the Nixon years) and got worse during Carter's administration....and continued into Reagon's years. So much for blaming it on an administration. I suspect that higher rates and inflation will follow the long downturn....but as long as the economy stinks....costs of materials and labor should be low thus holding off inflationary impacts. Meanwhile since the beginning of 2008 either 3.1 or 3.6 million jobs have been lost. It covers all aspects of the economy. Manufacturing and construction are basically being lobotomized...but of course retail is taking a punch in the gut...and services are being pitted. Add that to people losing their homes, asset values being decimated, etc etc etc. The economy is major league ugly.....and it continues on a downward spin. I'd spend money on stimulous. I'd spend it on infrastructure also, Bogart. I wouldn't be making major investments in humvees and weapons, as you suggested elsewhere. I'd put it into US stuff right here. I'd buy the hybrid cars by the US. I think I'd tie the US auto manufacturers into massive changes as part of a big buy. I'd make em change their overhead (big boss expenses, corporate jets and stuff, and I'd slap the unions upside the head to work for wages similar to those of the US workers producing cars for foreign manufacturers. Push the auto industry into being more competitive for the upfront cash infusion/buying of fleets of cars. Frankly, I'd push the government to be a tight fisted buyer. Take that expense for Homeland Securities Building. If it was being done by a private speculative developer it would come in far less expensive. Materials costs have to be going down. You can get labor cheaper. Make the expense go further. Then take the money you would have government overspent on the building....and didn't by building like a private fund....and use it elsewhere...say perhaps pay off debt/lower taxes/spend it elsewhere/better yet-->just give it to me. I suspect if they were buying a huge fleet of cars they should be able to negotiate a helluva purchase deal. Buy low. Make the car companies work for the damn taxpayer money. Firegirl: Frankly, the entire US economy is awash in debt, its not just the government. Relatively speaking consumer debt and financial institution debt are far more serious than government debt at this point. That is why the economy has collapsed. Blame it on everyone. Remember since beginning 2008 over 3 million jobs have been lost. US tax revenues have got to be shrinking. Less jobs, less income, less bonuses. Individual taxes make up the bulk of US tax revenues. Corporate taxes are significant. Hmmmm.....less profits....big losses....going to see big drops in US tax revenues there also. So unless the government fires tons of people and cuts all sorts of services---which increases the reduction in the size of the economy--and pushes more people out of work--the government is going to have bigger deficits just by doing nothing. I believe in stimulating the economy....spending money, putting people to work....and then see what happens. It will add government debt no doubt. Anyway you look at it none of the choices are good.
I do blame everyone. Our entire country is obsessed with debt. I have several distant friends who spent themselves into debt buying Mercedes, new houses, and 5+ credit cards to the max full of crap. And they are my friends, but they got themselves into debt, now they need to buck up and take responsibility for what they did. NOT MY TAX DOLLARS! But, I'm pointing the finger at the government right now because trying to solve all of these problems, caused by EVERYONE using debt poorly, by creating more debt doesn't make sense to me. It's like a kid watching their parents rob a bank day after day and the parents turning around and saying to the kid "don't rob banks because it's bad and not the right thing to do". Lead by freaking example.......
Give it a rest on the doom and gloom. Bush is gone, Christ is in charge now. Besides, not everyone is "driveling up". Not everyone's business is shrinking, and not everyone is losing their job.
Spoiled Americans want everything. Just cause we're American doesn't mean bad stuff can't happen. Boom and bust cycles are inherit with the system we have. It's fine when you're racking up junk on your credit card, but when the negative side of our system unfolds, we suddenly don't wanna play that game anymore. That's the secret to our little "mixed" economy. You always have capitalism to blame, and government will always be the solution.
I knew you worshipped Obama. I agree. Heard from a friend about a business expecting to add about 500 jobs this year because of new business and new contracts. Not great jobs...but what the hell. Another way to look at the problem. Over 3 million jobs lost in the last 13 months. Call it 3 million and an average salary of $50,000/year. That is a loss of $150 billion in net income. At $50,000/year taxable income the feds would take about 16%. Lost income to the feds....about $23 billion. Say they stop spending the rest. That is $127 billion in lost transactions in the economy. More people lose jobs because of less work. Say the $127 billion was subject to state/local taxes. That is about $6 billion less for the local governments. More firings and cutbacks. I'd go for stimulating the economy. I have no great ideas on where to spend it; big banks, small banks, mortgages, infrastructure. I have preferences....but nobody is a genius in that regard. What do economists say is the most stimulative kind of spending? If the gov spends it....it will definitely add more govt. debt. On the other hand, the loss of jobs is already creating fed debt as shown above. As to your friends. Time to bite the bullet. Eat hamburgers and hotdogs instead of steak. Drive around in a kia instead of a mercedes. hey....chili is cheap. Tell em to quit going out to dinner.
I guess that buying government employees Toyota Prius is simulating the economy. I also guess that funding abortion will stimulate the economy and changing the sewer system of government schools is suddenly cause the half a million jobs lost last year to come back.
I think it is important for non-American's to know that not ever American lives beyond their means. He is the messiah you know... We also need to keep a few other things in perspective here. 1. Many of the jobless claims this time of year occur every year due to seasonal unemployment. 2. We're not looking at the net loss of total jobs that were actually created over the last 8 years. Until the last few months we were creating 100's of thousands of jobs EVERY month. 3. A lot of the jobs being lost technically did not exist. Many of the jobs were related directly to many of the sources of trouble we see today. These includes those in the lending sectors, among others. This is number 4. The numbers keep growing. First its 1.6, then its 2.6, now its 3... So the feds lost $23 billion. Why are they spending a trillion? Your numbers just don't add up. Sure there is a hit, and sure there is a trickle down affect. But throwing trillions at a loss of billions in tax revenue is not going to equal prosperity of any kind. The problem I have with this "stimulating" is that to stimulate, you do not often spend in areas that apply no return. This bill in almost every avenue does just that. Spends money on things that generate no return. Why should those of us that are doing well bite any bullet? Maybe its out turn to live a little high on the hog.
Agree. I would think that this economic shock will change American spending and debt activities into the foreseeable future. I'm not sure on how they are calculating the figures. It may be already accounted for, it may not. Not sure. Following the recession of the early 2000's we were creating jobs. Overall during this decade, though, job creation was slower than in previous decades. Look it up. I have a theory about that...but its just theory. I'll mention it at the end[/quote] . hm...that happens after all bubbles. The end of the 1990's and early 2000's saw the dot.com/telecom recession. At the end of the 90's tons of people were hired in the dotcom explosion and even more in the telecom industry as a result of a huge surge of hiring. Both industries exploded and tumbled. Those hirings of the last few years before the recession evaporated. No different than the finance/real estate/construction explosion of jobs in the last few years. Its still counted the same way. [/quote] I looked at 2 sources that cited the bureau of labor statistics...the source for information on this stuff. I wasn't sure on how they were reporting, but one source seemed to indicate 3.1 job losses for 13 months between Jan 1/08 and Jan 31/09 and the other was 3.6 between those periods. I quoted 3 million to be conservative and because I pulled it from secondary sources. Of course it is going up. We are in a period of consecutive monthly job losses.[/quote] . Good question. I thought about this when trying to figure out these numbers. All I calculated/estimated was the lost economic activity from 3 million job losses alone. That is only one part of a total economic analysis. Economic spending is down in all sectors. That would be interesting to look at. How much is economic activity down? Is it a trillion? Is it more? Is it less? I don't know. More over if I invested $1 I don't expect a return of a dollar. Maybe I'll get $0.05 on the dollar. Maybe 10%. Hopefully higher. If I earned a dollar on every dollar invested every year thereafter I'd be on a South Sea Island. . My assumptions add up. 3 million jobs lost in the last year. Estimated $50,000/year income is roughly equal to the average American salary. After that I just applied fed tax rates on a $50,000 income before taxes ~ about 16%. I assume at $50,000/year for a family one is pretty much spending everything. Hey if you take the approach you referenced at the top of the thread, which is that not all Americans spend and borrow like crazy...then people aren't spending every dollar. A common conservative approach is to not do so. Pay yourself first. Put money away. Smart approach. I forgot to reference that of the remaining $127 billion I assumed about 5% as a sales tax or other tax on that spending....that is how I came up w/ about $6 billion. I agree. That is why I suggested.... Well, what is in this to get you to bite the bullet? Are there higher taxes? I didn't see any. As to my little theory about growth......... Actually I think there were great growth periods in the 1980's and then things really exploded into great economic activity in the 1990's. There were recessions, but overall the economic growth was great. I think it was because of the computer revolution. PC's were basically invented at the end of the 1970's. They led to enormous advances in all sorts of growth in many industries, not just the computer industry alone. The takeoff was bigger in the 1990's than the 1980's because of accumulated applications. People and businesses learned how to apply all of the growth in pc's, microchips in ways that led to enormous productivity and growth. America led the world in it. Now we are in the internet age. I don't think it has really taken off yet into huge growth. Give it another decade....all sorts of things might develop.
Inflation was high during the Nixon years but Carter took it to double digits. Both Carter and Obama came from nowhere. Both were swept into ofice on a message of hope. M-2 money supply has increased 600 billion over the last 5 months. Infrastrucre is the best place to spend the money. The current stimulus bill is short on infrastructure with only 30 billion in spending. There's almost 300 billion in social spending that will produce very little stimulus. The ofice of budget affairs has projected the way the current stimulus bill is set up, it will produce negative GDP in the coming years. The Mississippi waterway needs a lot of improvement to help exports. Rebuilding New Orleans would also be a good use of the money. The military spending could help Detroit weather the storm. The military needs approx 100 billion in new equipment. This could help Detriot survive while they retool the industry. At the same time, we could sell all the equipment that we have in Iraq to the Iraqi Military and pull all the forces out except for 1 Divison to support the Iraqi military. Military spending did get the US out of the Great Depression. Toyota Prius is built in Japan. A recession is a great equalizer. Fortunes are made in hard times.
(I could kick myself for (spending/wasting) time in the P&R section.) Did Carter cause it? I doubt it. I think it takes a harder look than some political attacks. Inflation did go through the roof during the Carter years though. Politics is bullshitty about economic times. You reap what you sow. Clinton's internal mantra on getting into office was "its the economy stupid" to keep himself and his staff on topic. I know that recession started a decade earlier with changes in the laws for S&L's. Both Nixon and Bush had putrid incredibly low public ratings. The public in 1976 was probably still pissed at Ford for pardoning Nixon. To a certain extent both Dems won because the public was sick of the GOP. It ebbs and flows.....the public will grow to become disgusted with Obama. (....sooner if you guys have your way) Yeah that is scary. I am late to recognize this vis a vis the libertarians here. When you see the amazing growth in M-2 and other monetary supplies it is spooky. Its wierd though, the equivalent of M-2 or other monetary indicators is rising like a crazy hoot for many foreign currencies also, during these years. What does that mean? I'd put more money into infrastructure also. I did some calculations on that, but its too boring to repeat. I agree with you here. I don't know which one's come first but yeah I'd fix up that stuff. Not all vehicles used by the military are made by the Big 3. In fact it could be very little. I know the newish anti- IED vehicles with the curved bottoms aren't made by the big 3. I know some other military vehicles aren't. I'm not against building that stuff....I don't think it applies to the big 3 in Detroit though. I am for seeing 1 or 2 Detroit car companies surviving. One it keeps the money and jobs in America. Very importantly there is a lot of money and a lot of future development and productivity in automobile research....and it spreads around the world. If the US loses the automobile industry it has no shot at developing what will be incredibly lucrative developments over the ages. The US has won by being first and best with jet aviation and first and best with computerization. Its important to stay on top of major innovation. Yup....Warren Buffet is investing again.