United States Heading towards a Depression?

I don't believe that Pelosi is in charge of anything. Just before the health care debates she had her meetings with drug companies to get her cut.

Then again that is minimal in the grand scheme of things.

Pelosi is being kept around for a reason, likely those running the country enjoy her loud mouth and the cheap entertainment (perfect distraction) she provides while they remain undercover and surprise us with the next "bomb".

 

"we are either kings or pawns; emperors or fools."

You lead or you follow. You have the power or you don't.

She's a bit of both!

 

She has the power to piss a lot of people off, I give her that.

 

Nancy Pelosi is the lynch pin to health care legislation and has the political skill to pass the legislation if at all possible - and if passed the politician with the most to gain for control and dominance of the House of Representatives. Something Liberals are hopping for and conservatives see as their greatest threat at the moment, irregardless the subject matter....All hail Pelosi.

 

You forgot the independent and from what I receive, most are doubtful that the outcome of her "efforts" is going to work in anybody's benefit.

 

I think if both Pelosi and Reid were to let a "sample government run health care" entity work on her face lifts and his wife's broken neck and back, they might both have a better chance of selling this bull shit.

 

Few independents in the house, need to have some elected to keep in mind - the Democrats are saying anything is better than the present and with passage there will be something to work on - the Republicans have done nothing usefull but as usual cover their own asses while ignoring the needs of everyone else.

 

And sure enough with that thinking, being a 2 party government and all, the people flock head over heals into the arms of the Dems believing they will save them.

When will the American people realize that it never works out when you expect a government to do you right without you and your community taking the first step?

What makes you believe that they have your best interest in mind?

I'm trying to understand looking at the track record of politicians and government how it still happens that a ton of people remain waiting for Obama to deliver the miracles that he promised.

 

Incorrect. Republican Paul Ryan wrote a plan, and attempted to not only introduce, it but bring it up directly with the Democratic leadership and the president and has been ignored every step of the way.

For those that do not know. The republican plan really does a couple of things. It allows competition and curbs costs. It does this all the while putting the power in the hands of the PEOPLE, not a few wealthy democrats on a power control binge.

Democrats seek to fix what is NOT broken by creating more costs and taking away more freedoms. That's what they do.

Think of Democrats and their version of Health care as Soylent Green Day. Its about power, not about fixing health care.

 

Obama has been president just over 1 year - where was Paul Ryan two years ago with Bush or sooner when the Republicans were in control and after they stopped the initial healthcare review under Clinton?

There are very few people that believe the present healthcare legislation is the best solution to a rampant problem but at least its a starting point and brings to light the many complexities involved that may / will lead to better legislation. To be passed by either party whichever finds the best solution and gets the votes to pass it as what the Democrats are presently trying to accomplish and to their credit.

 

With the way the stimulus program has failed, what gives you the faith that this one will succeed?

 

Pretty brazen trying to bring up failed Hillary Care from over a decade ago.

Where was Paul? Making sure that tax dollars were not wasted on stupid shit. I did not realize that Health Care was an issue 2 years ago. I believe we were focused on winning a war on terror, lowering taxes, and shrinking the size of government. Unfortunately even then (2 years ago) the democrats were in control.

It's kinda hard to do much of anything when you keep hitting a brick wall.

All that's gonna change in a few short months.

 

It's been, oh, three, three-and-a-half years since the Republicans have been in control.

Just curious, BW, but who do you think runs the country - the President, or Congress? Who do you think has more power over domestic policy - the President, or the Speaker of the House?

 

Failing in 3 out of 3, not bad. Sounds like the life story of those loud mouth who were "supporting" the war.

 

Lets not forget the Supreme Court - the conservative ruling allowing corporations to politic with corporate assets unrestricted will have a direct bearing on our type of democracy and the immediate elections that serve their agenda and not the country's as a whole.

The President has the most power IMO, 2/3 of congress both houses to override a veto not to mention Foreign affairs Execu. agencies etc. - The conservatives had better hope healthcare dies in flames otherwise there may be a consolidation throughout gov't not often accomplished any time in our history and yes Pelosi will have a lot more to say than what is perceived from in the present. Definitely at a crossroads to be determined within the week.

The next vote will determine if Hillary Care were a failure or not.

So, what is your explanation for being voted out of power than a purly dysfunctional gov't.

 

It does not take a vote to figure out the obvious.

Voted out of what? I did not realize I was elected or running for anything.

 

Perspective on the economy in this forum is always a function of political perspective. The Right Wing slams everything that Obama and Dems do. Its a joke. They slam the boost the Dems have been working to provide as ineffective and a waste of tax payer money. When Bush pushed through a tax rebate "economic stimulus" plan in Feb 2008 they never said a word about wasting tax payer money or it not working.

Hey Right Wing whiners. The 2008 stimulus cost $168 billion in tax payer money and the economy just kept tanking, tanking, tanking.

Now GDP has rebounded and some of the signs of recession are flattening if not improving. Other signs are flattening or possibly worsening.

Here is a positive sign of hard facts; http://wardsauto.com/keydata/ Wards is one of the authoritative sources for info on auto/trucks manufacturing and sales. Both manufacturing and sales are up for Feb and Jan 2010 over 2009 and production for March 2010 is up over 2009. That means more people are working in that area.

That is about 6 months after the Right Wing was moaning, groaning, and complaining about the auto incentive program from last summer wherein the Right called it a disaster, a waste and would shrink sales going forward. Its not the case at all.

Political perspective from the Right which is typically baseless when it comes to facts, twisted by attacking Dems for acting exactly like Bush and the Republicans did in 2008, when the Right Wing whiners thought it was A OK...invariably never focuses on facts but is an all out attack on anything Obama and Dems do. Even as the GDP has moved from continuous downward trend that started during the Bush administration and has rebounded with the biggest GDP jump in many many years...the Right just endlessly goes on the attack. So much for reality.

On the office real estate market side the world's #1 source of information and data made this statement on 2/24/20 as part of its report on FY 2009 financial results for the company:

In other words nationwide office hiring was up in 4th quarter 2009, office vacancies stabilized. That is a powerful indicator of an economic upswing from the recession caused during the Republican administration. Retail vacancy continues to increase, though at a slow rate. There are some significant national retailers with expansion plans over this year, even as a greater number are looking to shed space. The overall trend in retail is downward but not at the alarming rate of last year.

Construction overall sucks. It will continue on this basis for a while. Housing starts are probably running at about 1/4-1/3 of what they were during the boom building years of the early part of the 2000's. That is to be expected. Housing was being overproduced relative to natural demand at probably 20-40% every year for the early part of the decade. Meanwhile private and institutional construction has slowed to a trickle.

To be expected. I've portrayed what happens in a real estate slump many times here, documenting development in one of the nation's larger commercial real estate markets (Fairfax County, Va) over a 30 year period. Depending on how you define the beginning and end dates of the real estate caused recession of the lates 1980's to early 1990's it took about 5-9 years for construction recovery. That was a long time.

The housing component of this recession is a mess with lots of conflicting data. Foreclosures could surge again as financial institutions slowed down the foreclosure process in 2009. OTOH housing starts are at lows not seen since the early 1980's or earlier. Excess of inventory of houses will be eaten up with such low rates of new construction. Warren Buffett predicts housing starts to rebound in 2011 based on low construction numbers 2008-2010. We will see. One thing about Buffett is that he has great access to more realistic numbers than virtually any of us and his company, Berkshire Hathaway has investments/businesses in these sectors that depend on those numbers.

The realistic situation is that we are in the deepest recession since the great depression of the 1930's. Recovery will take years.

 

From the Sovereign Society's Offshore Newsletter:

We’re now swiftly approaching the end of March… and the Fed is out of funds for its "quantitative easing" program, which mostly involved buying mortgages to prop up the housing market.

In other words, they’ve been shooting at this bogey for more than a year, and the chamber is empty. So what’s next?

How much capital has the Fed tied up on their balance sheet to keep your home’s value propped up?

The Fed has completed $1.22 trillion of its $1.25 trillion MBS (Mortgage-backed security) debt purchase program as of two weeks ago. So they’re 98% of the way done propping up housing prices.

How has that helped the value of your home?

Individual results may vary, but with the increasing number of homeowners still underwater… it’s not working out that well, with moderate declines in housing in the past year, and a few brief blips of improvement.

The valuation of real estate ties into the Texas ratio: the key component is the value of nonperforming loans. When those start getting written down en masse, Texas ratios will skyrocket.

In other words, right now the Texas ratio is being kept artificially low, giving an extra margin of safety when we enter short positions on the banks (as a higher ratio is a bad thing for banks, and the ratio should, by and large, be higher for most banks that haven’t adjusted the value of their loans to reality).

On the plus side, there are few subprime mortgages remaining to reset…

As you may already know, a “Reset” occurs when the introductory teaser rate on a mortgage is raised to meet the prevailing interest rates of the market. The reset factor was constantly cited as a reason why the Subprime mortgage fiasco is still – to this day – a ticking time bomb.

If interest rates were to spike today, subprime rates would follow suit, along with delinquency and default rates soon after, as a bevy of homeowners are forced to acknowledge reality and face foreclosure. This would undoubtedly reignite the disaster still sitting idle on bank balance sheets.

But where the Fed has succeeding in stifling the subprime blowback, another equally distressing time bomb sits right next to the subprime mortgages.

Look at the chart above and you’ll notice the substantial volume of Option ARM mortgages that will soon be facing a reset. This is why the Fed needs to buy mortgages and keep interest rates at record lows: so that the ARM resets can fly through without setting off another wave of foreclosures.

It’s a bad time to run out of stimulus ammunition, and any misstep here will send the economy into a tailspin.
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You could look at these facts, or, you could have faith in "The One." Your choice.

 

Do you even understand the basics of economy?

 

Well, I can easily claim that the left-wing slammed everything that Bush and the Republicans did.

My attitude is, I ignore what extremists say. In my opinion, left- and right-wing extremists are prejudiced towards their viewpoint. We get angry when our prejudices are violated - and I've noticed that political extremists:
1. Are the quickest to anger, (especially the left)
2. Curse more easily and often (especially the right)
3. Use violent language (both)
4. LABEL EVERYBODY (Huffington Post, Mike Beck)

That's because most everyone got a check for $300. IMO, that was less of a stimulus and more "hush money". Yes, I believe it a toothless stimulus because it temporarily addressed the symptom and absolutely did not address the problem on Wall Street. But it was impossible for the left to attempt to criticize it because how could they possibly criticize Cash-In-Damn-Hand (CIDH)?

If Bush II was a stronger leader he would have taken more decisive action. But keep in mind we had a Democratic Congress that sat back and did almost nothing.

You are correct, correct, correct.

You mean FOX moaning and groaning, don't you?

Hmmm, let's try it this way:

Political perspective from the Left which is typically baseless when it comes to facts, twisted by attacking Repubs for acting exactly like Clinton and the Democrats did in 1994, when the Left Wing whiners thought it was A OK...invariably never focuses on facts but is an all out attack on anything Bush and Repubs do.

O.K.?

Very interesting. Thanks for the insight.

Like I've written before, bankers in the know have been telling me that the economy won't begin significant recovery until 2011. At the present unemployment, for the published unemployment rate to reach a realistic 5%, the economy needs to create 250,000 new jobs every month for about five years.