Are things Really better? Recovery? Follow

I honestly don't see much point in comparing Obama to Bush, considering that at no point have they ever been simultaneous ballot choices. I think McCain's policies would have been disastrous, and as a result there's no point in crapping on Obama even if I didn't think he were doing a good job. But as a wise man once said:


Ultimately I still blame the Republicans for the current crisis. I don't blame Bush for the state of the economy per se, so I damn well won't blame Obama.

You are aware that the financial deregulation that was attributed to the current economic system was championed by the Republican congress?

It's awful easy to sit back and say that McCain would have done a better job, I guess. Even though there's no chance in hell that he would have with his platform, which flew in the face of all of economics.

Um, because both of them have actually held the office of President? My whole point has been to highlight the use of specific criteria used to label Bush's economic performance bad, while ignoring those same criteria when assessing Obama's economic performance. That's why I compare Obama to Bush. Specifically, that's why I compare unemployment and deficit numbers, since those are the two major indicators which were constantly used during Bush's administration as evidence to support the allegation that he was doing a bad job with the economy.

At the time, I just dismissed such things as desperate attempts to scour the economic landscape looking for something which wasn't doing well and using that to try to attack Bush with. But now, it's gone to a whole new ironic level.



Yeah. Another example of absurdity. Republicans would have passed the financial reforms, but absent the inclusion of a specific amendment the Democrats wrote and which Clinton threatened a veto over (if it were not kept in the bill), said reform would not have included the provisions which ultimately caused the mortgage bubble, the sub-prime mess, and the eventual economic collapse and bankruptcy of several large financial institutions.

And if you step back and think about it, you know this is true. If we were not speaking on this subject in this context, and I asked you which party was more likely to pass a law which helped poor minority people own homes and required that big wealthy financial institutions buy up the difference in cost, is there any doubt you'd fall over yourself to argue that the Dems would pass it and the GOP would oppose it?

Guess what? That's what was put in the financial reform of 1999, and that's what caused the economic problems we're having today. Shocking!



You'd blame the Republicans for the current crisis even if ever member of the Democratic party who's held office at any level for the last 20 years wore a sign saying "It's our fault that the economy is in the toilet" in front of every news camera for 6 months straight. So I'll just take your statement for what it is, ok? ;)

Right, gbaji the moderate.

Ultimately it was the Republicans who wanted to deregulate the financial industry. It wasn't that the banks were giving home loans that they shouldn't have so much as that the deregulation allowed the banks to deceptively gamble on those loans. I honestly don't know why you still try to spin this ******** with me. Do I ever fall for it?

Look, I'm perfectly prepared to blame the economic crisis on the collective ignorance of Democrats and Republicans alike; however, ultimately the Republicans don't really want to undo the cause. I don't blame Bush for it, either, I just think it's even more stupid to blame Obama for it. If I were going to hold one of them accountable at this point, it'd be Bush. If Obama doesn't turn it around, then it's not like I'm incapable of regarding a Democrat as ineffectual.

Why thank businesses when times are good? They're not doing it to help you, they're doing it to help themselves. Any benefit you receive is incidental.

The fact that your so unwilling to even read, try to figure out any question is like telling everyone your abilities. I hardly need to state them its obvious. Arguing for the sake of arguing is all you seem to do.

To some degree. You'd need to be more specific about what "deregulate" means. But in a nutshell, the GOP wanted to remove the restrictions which prevented commercial banks to also be investment based financial groups. I'll point out that this wasn't a radical idea. The US was pretty much the only major economy in the world which had this restriction. The suggestion that it was merely this deregulation which caused the economy to collapse is somewhat absurd.



Nope. That's completely wrong. I don't think you understand this. The changes the GOP put into the system didn't have any effect at all on the ability of large firms like AIG to invest in the market. They already could. The only effect at all which could potentially be blamed on the deregulation the GOP did was that said mergers potentially put commercial banks at risk because they were more directly tied to those types of investments than they were before.

What happened is that the amendment the Dems inserted into the reform act effectively mandated that large financial institutions like AIG buy up the risk on loans handed out to people who couldn't afford them. I don't know how else I can explain this to you. If the financial reform act passed in 1999 had contained absolutely no language except the one amendment put into it by the Dems, and there had been no other financial changes in our market for the next 8 or 9 years, the exact same economic crisis would have occurred.

It was 100% the fault of that amendment. It created a black hole economic condition. I've explained this many times in the past. Now, if you can show me how any single or even combination of regulatory changes made by the GOP created the crisis, and actually in your own words explain how they caused the crisis, then by all means do so. But in the couple years we've had this debate kicked around, I've yet to *ever* hear anyone explain how GOP deregulation caused the crash. Lots of people just state that it did, but no one seems to be able to explain how.

Meanwhile the explanation as to how the CRA requirement in that 1999 act caused the crash is very clear, very easy to understand, and provides a step by step cause and effect chain that leads us directly to the crash. Give me a similarly clear explanation that points the blame elsewhere, and I'll gladly listen. But no one has yet done this, so I'm not holding my breath.



Because what you want to "undo" isn't the cause. You're leading with an assumption, without taking the time to prove it first.



No one's blaming Obama for the economic crash itself. What people are saying about Obama is that his policies since taking office have made the economic problems worse instead of better and will ultimately make any recovery from those problems take longer. They blame him for having a pretty strongly anti-business government, which in turn makes business hesitant to risk money in a way needed for full recovery to happen. They blame him for ineffectively spending trillions of dollars of money in the name of fixing the economy resulting in little or no real positive impact on the economic fortunes of Americans, but putting us massively more in debt and making economic recovery even more difficult.


There is a very strong argument to be made that had we passed just the TARP and changed absolutely nothing else in terms of the economy; all tax rates the same, all other spending the same, no extension of unemployment, nothing else changed at all, we'd be better off economically today than we are right now. So when people talk about "the recovery", some of us kinda have to laugh. It's a sad laugh that one might use when their car just crashed or something, but it's a laugh nonetheless.

Edited, Feb 24th 2011 6:48pm by gbaji

I admit, I thought of this and had to laugh at Varus when I read this story today:

There ya go, sport. Yes, rising oil prices are partially an indication that the US economy is improving.

Edit: Today's actual report showed slower growth than originally figured although still grew significantly. I guess this means gas prices can come down!


Edited, Feb 25th 2011 8:42am by Jophiel

Mmhmm. You're uninspired lately. Hurry up and get yourself banned. Maybe the next iteration of you will be a little quicker-witted.

Edited, Feb 25th 2011 2:24pm by Eske

Good point. You're lazy all of the time.

I think that people need to do some reading.

http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~nroubini/SUPPLY.HTM

Seriously Jophiel, did you lean anything in school?
The answer to the question is Kennedy. The Democrats have only once given incentives to help business and it was the Kennedy administration that did it.

Like it or not. If you help businesses? It helps everyone. Taxes never are the answer to the problems.