Obama pushes economic plan in Congress
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0
adaydream
“I think we both share a sincere belief that we have to have a plan that works,” House Republican leader John Boehner said. “The president is sincere in wanting to work with us, wanting to here our ideas and find some common ground.”
This being said and Boehner told his collegues to vote against the package when it comes up for vote. < :-)
0
IcingDeath
Yeah, he did. But he did so on principle. Republicans generally hate mass amounts of spending and want to see atleast 40% of the bill be done in Tax cuts. Everyone generally agrees that the bill will create more jobs, no doubt, but the right is concerned that it will come to slow. Also, there is a big fear that once the jobs created are cut back on, there won't be a huge private sector base to fall back on. A legitimate concern. One way or the other though, at least Obama is trying to keep good on some of his promises. I ain't naive enough to believe he will keep them all, he is a politician after all. It seems that he is actually getting a headache from his fellow Dems. Pelosi was peeved when Obama cut out the 225 million for some type of family care thing or something.
0
SezWho2
As far as job creation is concerned, Krugman contends that tax cuts create jobs more slowly than government spending.
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wuzzademcrat
"As far as job creation is concerned, Krugman contends that tax cuts create jobs more slowly than government spending."
His own employer also offers the opinion of other experts, albeit not as ideologically biased as Krugman:
"Based on the United States’ historical record, Professor Ramey estimates that each dollar of government spending increases the G.D.P. by only 1.4 dollars."
[...]
"A recent study by Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer, then economists at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that a dollar of tax cuts raises the G.D.P. by about $3. According to the Romers, the multiplier for tax cuts is more than twice what Professor Ramey finds for spending increases."
0
wuzzademcrat
My apologies - link for the 10:22 post is
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/economy/11view.html?_r=1
0
SezWho2
Krugman's own employer is not a Nobel Prize Winner in Economics. Neither are the Romers, for whom no superiority with respect to objectivity has been shown. This doesn't make Krugman right, but it does lend him a gravitas which the Romers cannot claim.
Even if the Romers are right, that is somewhat beside the point. The point was that spending creates jobs more quickly than tax cuts. That tax cuts create GDP increases in greater amount than spending needs additional argument to demonstrate that Krugman is wrong.
The tens of thousands who have been and will be laid off will not be comforted if tax cuts create more prosperity eventually. They are looking for jobs today.
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wuzzademcrat
"Krugman's own employer is not a Nobel Prize Winner in Economics."
Nor is the NY Times eligible for the Nobel Prize.
Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz says 1 trillion is not enough.
Personally, it's Rahm Emmanuel (no Nobel Prize, but now called the second most powerful man in America) whose pronouncments have me most concerned
"You don't ever want a crisis to go to waste; it's an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid..."
0
mrgalactic
Whats to "push" ? Bush has already primed the pump ! See those housing sales figures today ? Seems the media was "surprised, shocked, dismayed" at the 6.5% increase last month, yep still under the Bush watch. Some of us however are not surprised... it's oil people, oil ! The world needs to hold OPEC accountable for attempting to destroy the world's economy last year. Tough pill for the Bush haters to swallow but this was never about "sub-prime" loans or the US banking industry. Sheesh !
0
SezWho2
wuzzademcrat,
What's your point. First you complain about spending instead of tax cuts. Now you suggest that the spending isn't enough.
Of course, the NYT is not eligible for the Nobel Prize. Neither is Princeton University, which is much more his Krugman's "real employer" than the NYT. I think you can take it as a given, however, that the NYT will publish any kind of economic theory that it's readers find interesting without regard to the editor's understandings. Nobel prize winners tend to publish theories that they have faith and confidence in.
You don't say why you are concerned about Rahm Emmanuel's words nor who it is that calls him the second most powerful man in America. (I think that the NYT said that he was arguably that. There's a difference.) However, I find the quotation unremarkable. I think every politician has operated on that principle. I think intelligent people generally operate on that principle whether they are running a nation or dealing with the domestic economy of their humble families.
0
yabits
Despite being a discredited party with failed policies who were trounced at the polls by the American voters, the remaining Republicans in Congress were sought out for a meeting by President Obama as a demonstration of his good faith efforts to work together. (Despite the details of the economic plan, what a breath of fresh air compared to the puny, petty George W. Bush who spent his time in the post-2004-election period crowing about all the "political capital" he was going to spend. He sure spent it alright, along with everything else.)
The American voters in overwhelming percentages have declared that Bush and his GOP stooges have set the country in the wrong direction. While listening to Republicans and being open to some influence and persuasion, the Democrats were elected to take the nation in a new direction.
What is abundantly clear is that all-too-many Republicans have not a shred of integrity -- intellectual or otherwise. They really would want the nation to continue down the road according to their failed ideas and policies. If the Democrats were crazy enough to actually follow Republican ideas, does anyone believe that Republicans wouldn't be blaming Democrats for the resulting failures? (Case in point: Note how Republicans on this board have blamed former president Clinton for the repeal of banking dereguation laws -- legislation that was completely written and crafted by House and Senate Republicans!)
It is far easier to proceed on the given that, despite all of their flag-waving and sanctimonious, self-righteous platitudes, the Republicans are the party that is home to those who care only about themselves first and foremost. The nation and the well-being of the majority of its people do not enter in. Their biggest fear right now is that the Democrats' stimulus plan will actually have some good impact on the nation -- further highlighting how it's their ideology that's more important to them than the country.
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wuzzademcrat
"They really would want the nation to continue down the road according to their failed ideas and policies."
Who ruined California and Michigan?
Democrats.
0
SushiSake3
Who bankrupted America and triggered a global recession?
Republicans.
0
adaydream
Touche' SushiSake3.
I am encouraged today that Boehner came out last night saying the republicans are more in line with what the president wants. Not solved, but more accepting them before. < :-)
0
Sarge
Sushi: "Who bankrupted America and triggered a global recession? Republicans."
You really should do some reearch before posting.
Recession? What recession? U.S. companies are paying their lawyers and engineers over $200,000 a year.
"triggered a global recession"
Hey, we never told you guys to follow us! Why don't ya'll go your own way? Sheesh!
0
adaydream
Sarge, you never cease to surprise me.
I love that you doubt that we're even in a recession. < :-)
0
yabits
More proof, as clearly set forth above, that it is only among the Republicans that you'll see the description of our nation's wealthiest state as "ruined." One of the biggest engines of economic growth in the world has been Silicon Valley -- not a place that one could call conservative by any stretch of the imagination.
0
SuperLib
Here's a breakdown of the stimulus package, which creates both jobs and tax cuts:
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/106490/Stimulus-101-What%27s-in-the-Bills
and another:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/stimulus-pie-chart/
and another:
http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-4507/Brannon-Howse
about the jobs that will be created:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/10/where-stimulus-will-create-jobs/
0
SuperLib
Can you give details about how Republicans triggered a global recession? From what I've read it was a combination of things from subprime mortgages to credit default swaps that caused the most damage, neither of which are things proposed by Democrats or Republicans.
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yabits
Aside from the fact that it was Alan Greenspan who kept interest rates artificially low and fed the real estate bubble, the only power that could have prevented the things that you mentioned would have been increased government oversight and regulation -- all contrary to Republican practice and ideology.
Republicans, in essence, gave free reign over the henhouse to the foxes.
0
wuzzademcrat
sushisake writes:"Who bankrupted America and triggered a global recession?
Republicans."
One-time Obama advisor Franklin Raines walked away from Fannie Mae with over 90 million dollars he saw fit to pay himself in compensation.
Longtime Dem bagman and former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson helped direct Obama's VP search. He took a total of almost 21 million dollars in bonuses from F Mae.
Clintonistas like Jamie Gorelick also paid themsleves tens of millions in bonuses.
The GRA in question was the Dems' baby - brought into this world by Carter, aided by Clinton and protected by Barney Frank and other Dems still in office. There was one year there where I think they had an accounting "oversight" of something like 1.2 billion dollars. No single politician received more money from F Mae and FMac over a shorter period of time than did Barack Obama.
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/07/top-senate-recipients-of-fanni.html
I realize you are not American and are therefore uninformed on the matter but those of us with family and friends affected want to see that the culpable pay for making the entire country foot the bill for their sentimental, misguided, typical guilty white "liberal" attempts to provide housing (and an investment opportunity) to huge swaths of the US population who never deserved it, couldn't afford it, and never intended in the first place to honor their end of the sweetheart deals that crooks like Raines, Howard and Johnson gave them.
0
yabits
wuzzademcrat obviously believes that Republicans never had any control over US policy over the past 30 years.
Smarter people know better.
0
SuperLib
Actually the financial instruments that partly caused the tragedy were created under Clinton and congress actually passed on creating oversight for them while he was in office. Clinton also supported measures to lower the bar for home lending to increase home ownership by minorities. If you want to blame a political party you'd pretty much have to blame Democrats, but like I said blaming any political party for the mess is pretty silly. I'm just saying that if you insist on playing that game you might as well get it right, but I won't hold you to being a player if you don't want to be. The fact is that Wall Street and home owners/lenders mostly created this problem.
0
wuzzademcrat
I agree with superlib. Both parties have among their supporters too many people who have lived beyond their means for way too long. And now we all pay the price.
I'm perfectly willing to admit it.
Are you, yabits?
0
yabits
What Republicans are on record of opposing Clinton's passing on oversight or lowering the bar on home lending? Citations please.
The only ones who supported oversight and regulation of these new and abstruse financial instruments were to be found among the Democrats, not the Republicans. Another case in point is the Republicans' unanimous rejection of regulations on accounting firms providing services to the companies they were supposedly auditing, which led to the collapse of Arthur Andersen, Enron and a host of other firms.
Refer to the following: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/regulation/interviews/levitt.html
I can't blame the Democrats when it was from among their ranks that the calls to do the right thing by the American people were raised. It's a shame that not all Democrats followed the calls, and instead some of them acted like Republicans, with disastrous results for the nation.
0
yabits
As I wrote to SuperLib, it is only among the Democrats and liberals that you will find people on record at pointing out the dangers and trying to introduce policy to prevent them.
For the essence of the hypocritical nature of Republicans, one need look no further than their "Contract with America," which included provisions for term limits and a balanced budget amendment as matters of principle. But, as we all know, as soon as Republicans achieved the actual power needed to push the terms of the Contract, they threw those principles aside.
0
adaydream
They created derivitives, which were investments of $$Trillions of mortages with out a single dollar of real money.
When mortages started to fail, there was no way to pull a mortage out of the derivitives package, the home owner couldn't refinance their loan because they couldn't find where it was in these derivitives. So loans started failing because they couldn't refinance a loan that they couldn't find.
These loan packages were bought through out the world, and other countries tried doing the same thing. Now we have $$Trillions of investments backed by $00.00.
When the dominos started falling here, they started falling/failing across the globe.
The republicans and Phill Gramm's ideas of no regulations in the stock market caused this problem. Worldwide greed then took over and these derivitives were sold worldwide. When our $00.00 backed ivestments started collapsing here, they collapsed worldwide.
That's how the republicans triggered a world recession. $7Trillion of $00.00 backed investments. < :-)
0
yabits
To: adaydream Re: derivatives
While agreeing totally with your premise that derivatives, which some have called the "weapons of financial mass destruction," have been a key factor in the mess we are in now, I am going to go out on a limb and say that anything with that much power to destroy can, under proper management and supervision, also do much to power us out of this mess.
0
adaydream
yabits are you saying that $00.00 backed derivatives could get us out of this mess, also?
Just trying to understand what you're saying. < :-)
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yabits
We've had futures/commodities markets and stock options for decades now and they have worked quite well. I don't know what you mean by "$00.00-backed derivatives." If you look at how traders inject lots of liquidity into the financial markets via the trading of (relatively) illiquid things like pork bellies and real estate, I'm not sure how you can say that derivatives aren't backed up by anything.
Take a look at the following link:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/181266
It could very well be that, where derivatives are concerned, many of us are reacting the very same way that people of the past reacted to the idea of protecting against smallpox by injecting the body with a disease.
0
adaydream
yabits I read your article, both pages of it and these paragraphs seemed to stand out.
I think my link spells out a vision of that was about to happen 2 years ago.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/derivatives-new-ticking-time-bomb/story.aspx?guid=%7BB9E54A5D-4796-4D0D-AC9E-D9124B59D436%7D
When you buy a house and insure it and your house burns down. You expect to be able to go to that insurance company you have been paying and get your insurance protection, you've paid into. (Here is the $00.00 backing I'm talking about.) The problem is these derivatives that were in the markets weren't backed by any money/insurance if the mortage system melted down. There was cash value insurance backing these investments. The insurance that was supposedly there wasn't. The greed of Wall Street allowed financial instruments to be sold and traded with out any money of insurance if the mortage system crashed. These financial instuments were packages of subprime loans made to people who were likely to fail. But they were sold as if they were prime mortages, likely to be paid in full.
I understand your view of the market concerning derivatives, I just don't agree. The market crashing is more evidence to prove my point that derivatives are not a good idea. < :-)
0
adaydream
These should have been separeted into 2 para.
Derivatives, Shiller says, are merely a risk-management tool the same way insurance is. "You pay a premium and if an event happens, you get a payment." That tool can be used well or, as happened recently, used badly.
Some critics dismiss Shiller's basic premise that more derivatives would make the housing market more liquid and more stable. They point out that futures contracts haven't made equity markets or commodity markets immune from massive moves up and down, and may have made such moves steeper, sharper and more rapid. They add that that Shiller has never had to manage a portfolio or a trader's book, and that a ballooning world of home-based derivatives wouldn't lead to homeowners' insurance: it would lead to a new playground for speculators. < :-)
0
Good_Jorb
I don't want to infer to much but I think Yabits is talking about hedging derivatives, which are used to remove potential risks from the market and are relatively safe becuase if the derivate does poorly, then the hedged item does well and vis versa. Adaydream is talking about speculative derivatives, which is essential gambling and is dangerous because thier is nothing that offsets the derivative loss.
0
adaydream
Hey I have no problem with definitions or clarifications.
I just know that we're in a sh** load of debt and financial collapse due to greed and stupidity.
Maybe we can both/all three agree with that. < :-)
0
SuperLib
I'm not here to support Republicans nor am I here to attack Democrats. My point is that if you want to play that silly game you might as well use accurate information, something that I don't think you're willing or able to do. Only a fool would debate the greatest financial meltdown of our time along party lines.
Republicans created the financial instruments known as derivatives? Are you mad?
By the way, what happened to your credit default swap horror stories? Did it play out just as you anticipated? Because you aren't talking about it anymore...
0
Good_Jorb
Not created per se but they did reduce the regulations around derivates, allowing new types of high risk derivates to be created. Which in turn caused the value of derivate instruments on the market to increase from 100 trillion to 516 trillion in under 5 years(2002~2007). Causing top financial figures such as Bill Gross and Warren Buffet to warn people that such high risk derivate instuments should not have been aloud to be created.
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yabits
Had the United States early on completely rejected going according to the conservatives' philosophy of dereguation and the purposeful underfunding and declawing of government watchdog agencies, would we find ourselves in the mess we're in today? The answer is "No Way," and I rest my case.
Don't try to paint me as someone who is making this simply along party lines. What we're talking about is a failed philosophy (and the policies that resulted from that philosophy), and one that all too many Democrats felt cowed into supporting at times. But it was a philosophy that was foisted on the nation via the Republicans. That they refuse to take responsibility for it is just par for the course.
0
SuperLib
Ah, I see. You're ignoring the actions of Democrats and Republicans and instead focusing on the philosophy. So while the Democrats voted against oversight of these kinds of derivatives the guilt is actually found in the philosophy of deregulation, which is a Republican ideal. Now I get it.
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