rdmcandie wrote:
You said a bunch of sh*t so we are going back to easy mode.
Did the economy not collapse worldwide following investment errors in the US banking system
Yes. or No.
Yes. But you're leaving out cause. As I already stated, those "errors" were directly caused by our government meddling in the housing market in order to make it look like poor people were able to afford to own homes, and then passed the cost of that meddling into the financial investment market via investment instruments they created and laundered through the GSEs.
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Has the economy not improved since the TARP and ARRA (both being sizeable economic stimlus packages).
Yes. or No.
That depends on what you mean by "improved"? Also, you're lumping two different things here. TARP and ARRA were completely different types of spending bills. Let's look at just ARRA (and other similar spending bills passed by the Dems and Obama). No one's debating TARP, so lets set that aside for the moment.
I don't think the economy has improved. Our GDP is better, yes. Unemployment is still high (and went higher after ARRA was passed). There's certainly no indication that ARRA had any positive effect on either of those. But the negative is the massive debt. That can be directly attributed to ARRA (and other stimulus spending during that time period). That is today having a huge negative effect on our economy.
Let me ask you a question: Do you think that lack of investment capital in the financial markets is today responsible for our high unemployment and sluggish economy? Or do you think that the biggest economic problem in the US right now is our massive deficit? Do you think that maybe the looming fear of higher taxes might just have a lot more to do with todays sluggish economy?
I think the answer is obvious, but I'd love to hear your answer.
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(also the word Since implies after, maybe Alma can lend you his flashcards when he is done with them)
Yes. I'm well aware of the "after/because" fallacy. Neither of those words mean "because". You are not arguing causation, but merely the order two things happened relative to each other. Just because something happened "after" something else, does not mean that it happened "because" of that other thing. It's common to use the "after" language though, because it allows one to imply causation, without actually making a statement which is factually incorrect.
In other words, it's a formation people use when they want to be deceptive.
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Now you claimed spending caused the same events as the 2008 Subprime investment collapse did. Just link me to something that the government has done that did something similar.
No. I'm claiming that the stimulus spending passed in 2009 caused *different* events (effects would be the word I'd use), than the 2008 subprime investment collapse did.
The subprime collapse caused investments in the financial industry to suddenly lose value. Which left banks with insufficient capital to operate properly, which in turn affected all parts of the economy they interacted with. Without going into detail, this was "bad", but ultimately could be fixed by simply loaning money to the affected parts of the financial industry.
The stimulus spending spent massive amounts of money (and committed to future spending of yet more massive amounts). The spending itself is harmful because it lumped a ton of debt onto an economy that was struggling to recover. It also included mostly social spending rather than economically focused spending. That combined with constant rhetoric about raising taxes on the rich and big businesses, affected spending/investment choices by the very groups we most needed to jump back into the ring with their money once the banks recovered.
I don't know how to more clearly explain this to you. I really don't. The recovery act was exactly the wrong sort of spending at exactly the wrong time. If you accept that the economic downturn was caused by big banks and investors losing money, why assume that threatening those same people with higher taxes wont hurt the recovery? You need investors to put their money back into those very areas where we lost money before. But the recovery act hurt that.
And the debt alone is bad too.
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That is it, show me a period where the economy of the USA reduced by a similar amount as 2008 as a result of a spending program. Thats all I want you to do, I don't need another story.
Are you stupid? You already did this. Unemployment was worse *after* the recovery act was passed then it was during the height of the economic downturn. GDP growth was anemic at best during that time period as well. I keep explaining this to you, but instead of responding to my explanation, you keep re-asking the same question.
Let me be absolutely clear: Our economy tanked the most *after* Obama took office than it did before. And I believe that much of that was because of his economic policies, specifically the massive spending his party embarked on. If we had just passed TARP and nothing more, I don't think unemployment would have even hit 8%. I think that GDP recovery would have occurred a full quarter earlier. I think that the markets would have recovered much faster and continued recovering.
The real evidence is not in the quick up/down numbers immediately during/after the actual official recessionary period. It's in the sluggish recovery after that point. That's where the overspending has had its effect. And when you measure that compared to what the economy should have done, it ends out being much much much worse than the original economic collapse. At the time TARP was passed, almost no one outside the financial and housing markets had been directly affected by the collapse. With the passage of TARP, this should have stayed contained within those markets with a small amount of trickle into other industries.
It was because of the spending that other areas of the economy, which should not have been affected by the economic downturn at all, began under performing. Most directly, they began hiring freezes, not because business was bad, but because the spending would need to be paid for, and they would be the ones to pay.
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Hell at this point ill even accept a link to a blog.
Lol. How about just plain logic? We've already talked about the GDP and employment numbers. We presumably agree on the numbers themselves. Why do you need someone else to tell you what they mean?
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Long after the banks have recovered,
nvm found my answer. How the @#%^ do you think the banks recovered.
Um... Because they have? Because those banks directly affected by the downturn in 2008 which didn't go bankrupt had more or less completely recovered (and paid back the TARP money) by early 2010? Every part of the economy *except* employment has recovered. GDP is still anemic, but that's largely because of the bad employment figures.
Do I need to link to some source showing this? I thought this was understood as a given. It's not like anyone's been calling for bailouts for our struggling banking industry for the last few years. This is why I keep saying that TARP fixed the actual problem. ARRA (and others)
created a new problem. And that problem has been far more harmful to most people than the original financial collapse was.
Hell, most people's 401k's have completely recovered their lost value as well. Seriously. Have you actually looked at the financial stats lately? Everything is doing well except the actual employment and production. And that isn't because of the financial collapse back in 2008. It can't be. There's no logical reason for the banks and markets to recover, but for unemployment to still be so high and production so low.
There is, however, a very logical explanation for why companies might be producing less in the US *and* hiring less in the US. Could have to do with massive debt. It could have to do with a health care bill that's going to increase cost of employment. It could also have to do with eternally extended unemployment benefits which make it hard to hire people in certain salary ranges. And it could have to do with payroll tax cuts which have the effect of foisting *more* of the cost of employment onto the employer.
All of those things are direct results of Obama spending polices. That's why the economy is doing so poorly today. Has nothing to do with the collapse in 2008. That is over. It has been for at least two full years now. We should be fully recovered
right now. Instead, we're no where near it. And that's the fault of the spending spree the Dems went on when they found themselves in control of both houses of congress, the white house, and a convenient economic crisis they could take advantage of in order to scare people into letting them do it.
Are you arguing that we're still suffering some direct economic effects from 2008? Where? What? How? That makes no sense at all.
Edited, Feb 27th 2012 6:46pm by gbaji