I think you are getting things backwards a bit. First, just to clarify, I never said interest rates were zero, but close enough to it, which is the case for all bills with short to medium term maturity.

In any case, it is not the rate the govt is charging others, but that it is paying on its bills, or the interest it is paying when it borrows money. It has little to do with the deals the financial institutions are making, other than to say that the scenario for private investment is so bad that people, not only around the world but within the US itself, prefer to make almost nothing lending to the government than receiving an uncertain percentage from private investments.

It's a fuckin' miracle. No worries it looks like this giant spendulus plan worked and the recession is ending this year. I'm just glad Obama was able to guide us through this deep recession and bring us out so soon!!! We are so lucky to have him at the helm.

Interesting, I was watching the cable news talk shows last night after Obama's speech. On one show they did a survey and about 80% had a positive outlook after his speech, I don't remember exactly how the question was phrased. And of course Obama has about a 65% approval rating. So, I am wondering why every time he speaks the stock market tanks? Why aren't all these optimistic people investing? Why aren't they buying homes? What should we believe, polls or how people actually invest their money?

cheerleading is not adequate economic policy.

CNN's poll numbers were similar to what you just posted, but they warned that they only polled people who watched the speech, which tended to skew Democrat.

CNN also had a Nobel winning economist on who said that using the day-to-day stock market trends as a metric for the economy is the wrong thing to do.

Because Bush and the conservative policies that he enforced have lead us into a financial crisis which is causing the stock market to pretty much tank every day.

The other day I had pizza for lunch and the next day the stock market tanked. Clearly I shouldn't eat pizza anymore...

Oh, I disagree. I think "cheerleading" is one of the most powerful tools available to a national leader. I think it again goes to the fundamental view held by Obama, who thinks government is the answer. The reality is that millions of hard working people and growing businesses are the answer, and sometimes we need encouragement. But as Biden said in response to a question regarding what is in the stimulus for small business, paraphrased - if your business needs a bridge for your customers to get to you, we will build a bridge. O.k., personally I don't need a bridge, but I could put more money to work if I got a tax cut.

Both. People are more optimistic. "The economy will get better, at which point I will have money to invest."

Just because they're not investing doesn't mean they're not optimistic. . . They simply don't have the money to invest.

I am pretty much looking at the trend since the market started to price in Obama's victory.

In June 2008, when Obama secured the nomination the Dow was at about 12,600, today it is at about 7,200. That is a lot of hope down the drain, don't you agree?

---------- Post added at 07:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:25 PM ----------

When do you stop blaming Bush. During his last two years he was a lame duck. And, I seemed to recall Bush got blamed for the recession when he first took office, and was not given any credit for the recovery after 9/11. So what gives? Do we just argue points based on what we want to believe or on actual information in some form of consistency?

---------- Post added at 07:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:28 PM ----------

It is not just people not investing new money. They are taking money out of the market. The savings rate is up and people are paying down debt. All these indicate pessimism.

{added} Oh, and here is another good one. They just doubled the federal deficit, and now Obama is going to cut it in half by the end of his first term. What does that mean folks? If this was not so serious, I would be laughing out loud. It has to be a joke the way the pundits are so amazed by Obama's plan.

No, it's realism. For three decades now people have followed the republican borrow-and-spend mantra. The republicans bankrupted the government doing it. And people bankrupted themselves. Now they're figuring out that buying everything on credit isn't such a hot idea and maybe instead of buying the new shiny, it's time to pay off some old debt.




Do you understand the difference between the deficit and the debt? The deficit is not cumulative, the debt is. Yes, he's having to spend a lot of money now, because the republicans screwed everything up so badly. But that doesn't mean he can't cut government spending in the future.

Ace, if you actually believed in cheerleading, you wouldn't have been so quick to publicly pooh pooh the stimulus plan. I was going to invest millions until I heard that the stimulus plan wasn't going to work...

ace, your biased observation of what the market has done since anything related to Obama is a far shot from correlation and even farther from causation. Right now your argument holds no weight.

The government is not bankrupt. They just passed the largest spending bill in history.

Yes, I understand the difference. But then again, I don't because of the way liberals communicate. For example you talk about deficits under Republicans as a negative and deficits under Democrats as a positive.

Here is another example. Removing the troops from Iran. O.k. I get the fact you can not predict an exact date, like the 16 month timeframe Obama promised, but then he mocked McCain for saying we would have troops in Iran for an indefinite period of time. Guess what, Obama is going to leave 50,000 troops in Iran for an indefinite period of time.

Gee, I am so confused.

---------- Post added at 08:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:47 PM ----------

I have money in the stock market and I want the market to go up. Me making money trumps politics. Being honest, I could be a happy billionaire in a communist country, not support communism in principle - but support those who help me protect my wealth. If Obama made the market go up 50%, rather than down almost 50% since June 2008, I would be spending much less time on his case.

To recover from the mess the republicans put us in. . .



Bullshit. Total, utter, and complete bullshit. Who has said deficits are good? Obama certainly hasn't. He's said he knows deficits are bad, but if we want to get out of the hole that we inherited, by which he means "dug by the greedy lunkheads who preceeded him," we have to do it.

Clearly: we don't have troops in Iran.

Not that THAT'S the problem with what you posted, but it IS evidence for confusion over there.

I pretty much don't care about flaws in my logic when I am down almost 50% since June 2008. I am just pissed off for believing that liberals would have the strength of their convictions and would invest based on all that hope they had during their convention and all the while Obama was running against McCain. It is true I am a sucker.

---------- Post added at 09:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:58 PM ----------

O.k., o.k., it all the fault ob Republicans, now what...


Again, I am confused. If deficits are bad, why do we need them? Some here said deficit spending got us out of the depression and that when FDR slowed deficit spending it caused the recession of 1937. Besides questionable facts, it seems the justification for deficits being bad and good is all over the place.

---------- Post added at 09:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:01 PM ----------

My mistake.

That would be the problem.

Because the idiots that you support insist on transferring all of the wealth from your customers to people who don't want to buy what you offer.


I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say here.


Ever had to borrow money in an emergency? Carrying debt isn't good either, but are you telling me that if your wife were dying and you had to borrow money to get her treatment, that you wouldn't? And btw, I explained that despite having a firm conviction that you aren't confused at all, but are desperately trying to advance the neo-con agenda despite the fact that it's been proven completely and utterly damaging and destructive to the interestes of this country.

O.k. given the errors made by Bush and Republicans, Bush is not President and Republicans have virtually no power in Congress - Change was coming, we knew that since June, change is here, change got the TARP passed - meeting change's conditions, change got the largest spending bill in history passed, change is holding bad Wall St. bankers accountable, change is..., why am I loosing money every day?

I answered the question already. I am a sucker. I actually believed in change. I think the people who said they believed in change, lied and buried their money in their back yards.


I think the only good reason to borrow money is to use the borrowed money to buy things that either appreciate in value or will make you more money in the future. Borrowing money, for my children to pay back is always wrong in my view. Borrowing money for short-term fun or to feel good is always wrong in my opinion. My views on the use of debt is simple and clear, at least to me.

Well, first of all you seem to contradict yourself, then. The stimulus package cant be all bad, and fiscal stimulus cant be all bad, if you are for tax cuts.

That aside, no amount of cheerleading will make people resume payments on underwater mortgages, no amount of cheerleading is going to clear up toxic securities from banks' asset sheets.

Only someone extremely partisan would say that the problem with the current economic scenario is that the president isnt optimistic enough.

---------- Post added at 01:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:48 PM ----------

No, not at all. But here is the thing: a deficit, in and of itself is not bad, as long as you eventually run a surplus.

So, as even the basic morality tails tell us, save during the good times and spend during the bad.

Clinton had a surplus during his economic expansion, Bush had a deficit during his. That is the difference.

True, but if the point is lost given the trivial amount of tax cuts relative to the size of the spending bill I do contradict myself.

Historically, "cheerleading", I often like to use Churchill as an example, has been the reason people have done extraordinary things. Again, we will simply disagree on this point.

No. Like I wrote previously when it comes to my money I am not partisan at all. If a Democrat helps me make a shit load of money, I could careless about his politics.

I presented my theory on why I lost so much money since June, 2008. I clearly made an error in judgment and I think I know what that error was. If others think the decline in the market since June is Bush's fault or the fault of Republicans, all I can do is ask - when is change going to be responsible for anything? Let me know when it is safe to dig up my money and put it in a bank, real estate, or Wall St.

See? I just knew this would happen. I even said it in this forum. I knew that Americans would barely let Obama get his chair warm before they expected him to have everything that took over 30 years to break completely fixed, and have life be wonderful again.

Thanks for proving me right, though I kinda wish you hadn't.

Can I believe we are having this conversation? uh, no...well, yes.
can i get an updated statement on what the bush presidency has cost me in actual dollars and cents since (roughly) 2004 and also, while you're at it a ballpark estimate of what it will cost me over the next 10 years...
and I'll have a biggie fry and a coke with that, if you please.

The thing about the economy is that it moves a lot slower than people think. It is very rare for anything to have an immediate impact on actual economic conditions that we face daily.

How much of all of this was Bush's "fault?" Hard to quantify, and honestly I think of economics as being more than the morality play of the mainstream media where any problems can only come about from the moral shortcoming of a particular person, and not the sort of systemic hiccups that any economic system goes through from time to time.

The thing, though, is that while markets have cycles, sometimes governments can worsen conditions significantly or vice versa.

In this case, the causes for this mess are numerous, but we do know of three things that made it much, much worse than it needed to be.


- Alan Greenspan set a very expansionary monetary policy a few years ago. 1% fed rates made money extremely cheap. In an upward cycle, this is precisely the sort of thing that fuels speculative bubbles. This is neither party's fault as fed policy is independent from the executive branch.

- Regulation lagged behind significantly. Methods for determining margin calls and net capital requirements were poorly understood, if they were understood at all. Here is a good read: Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street
This, of course, is both party's fault.


- Finally, there is the whole deficit issue. And this IS Bush's fault. As someone who is concerned about deficit and the debt, I just don't see how you can ignore this. Bush's deficits were large and significant, and had to be financed from abroad. Running a deficit during an economic expansion is like throwing fuel to the fire. It accelerates inflation, increases costs, increases imports, etc. Which is why basic economic knowledge says that, just like the tale of the bees, you should save while times are good to spend when they arent. Bush did the opposite, sped up the bubble and therefore is significantly responsible for the mess.


As far as when we should start blaming Obama, well, anything before at least one year in office is too little to evaluate economic policy. Decisions regarding investment, stocks, hiring and firing take a few months to change direction.

If by mid 2010 we are worse than what most projections expect, then we can start talking about it. Before that, its just the toxic waste that he inherited. Just as Bush wasnt responsible for the dotcom bust (although he was responsible for mishandling the recovery).

True, but given the nature of the crisis as described by Obama, I don't really care that he, as he puts it so frequently, "inherited" all these problems. He wanted the job. He was a sitting Senator and had inside information regarding our situation. People bragged about how detailed his campaign plan were. People bragged about how he was putting his transition team together so much sooner than McCain and that he would be ready to go. He has also complete control over Congress. He has a 65% approval rating. He has the support of the world. So, again I ask - when is he going to take responsibility for anything? Are we talking 6 months, a year, two, three, four...?

---------- Post added at 04:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:47 PM ----------

I made money under Bush. I made money under Clinton. In my view there is clearly a different tone coming from Washington regarding business and investment. I think various markets are reflecting that, including the recent acceleration in job losses.

Also, is it me or do they simply not know what they say has consequences. For example private planes serve a purpose, can be cost effective and not always about luxury. So to dump on business people who use that tool, is to dump on the industry that makes that tool. Perhaps they want all the people in that industry unemployed.

He's taking responsibility. Just because he can't fix the mess overnight doesn't mean he's sloughing off responsibility, or that he wasn't ready to go. What you seem to have trouble wrapping your mind around is that real life is not a TV drama where everything is solved in one hour-minus-commercial-breaks. Yes, he did inherit a major problem. A problem three decades in the making. Surely you are not suggesting that he take the blame for what was started in the 1980's? This mess is going to take years to solve. Years. He's the president, not a wizard. He can't just wave his wand and make everything lovely. I know that's going to be a hard adjustment because magic and (in their own words) voodoo economics seem to be the republican solution for anything involving money, but unlike Reagan and the Bushes (and Clinton) we live in the real world and can't just cast a spell to fix things.

I am the first to admit that President's generally get too much blame or too much credit for the economy under normal circumstances. however, these are not normal circumstances. I believe our current crisis, is one of confidence more than anything else. I think the level of confidence is very closely related to leadership. There is no Republican leadership and Democrats as Emanuel says is taking advantage of a "crisis" manufactured or real I suppose.



---------- Post added at 05:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:59 PM ----------

I played football when I was in school. There was one game when my team was down in the fourth quarter and our QB got hurt and the backup was put in. In the huddle the first thing he says was, it is not my fault we are loosing...I slapped him across the helmet and told him to call the f-ing play. In the heat of the game, leaders don't pass blame. Leaders, lead.

I find it funny how you are now so worried about deficit spending. Where were you during the Regan/Bush years?

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/4...torsurplus.gif

Ahh yes. Football economics.

The difference is that your QB did not have to convince millions of people that the way the old QB was running things wasn't working. The QB said something, and the rest of the team did it. Obama has to convince people, and constantly remind people, that the Republican way of doing things got us in this mess, because the Republicans are still running around claiming their way of doing things is the best way.

I suppose if your current reaction is any indication, after he called the first play, and your team failed to score on that next play, you got on him about his poor leadership abilities and then waxed nostalgic about the previous quarterback in every huddle for the rest of the game.

Ace,
No one is going to resume payment on an underwater mortgage simply because the president was upbeat. No one is going to reverse foreclosure because the president is a good cheerleader. Mortgage backed securities are not suddenly become worth something again because the administration sounds optimistic. No investor is going to pick up worthless derivatives because a chief of staff is smiling.

That is not how it works.

I have never supported the excessive spending in Washington. I support smaller government, lower taxes and fiscal discipline. My support of Bush primarily involved the war on terror and the war in Iraq. If you read my posts, you will find many where I disagreed with him on fiscal policy and government spending. I have been consistent, others have not been including those who had a problem with Bush deficits but now think deficits will prevent the worst crisis in the history of man or whatever they are saying about it today.

---------- Post added at 09:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:14 PM ----------

Every lesson to be learned about life, can be learned on the football field.:thumbsup:

---------- Post added at 09:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:17 PM ----------

Nope. We focused on the moment, the job at hand not the past. We all made mistakes, we where all there and we knew what got us into our situation.

---------- Post added at 09:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:19 PM ----------

If you believe that hanging on will lead to a better future you will. If the President says it is the right thing to do in troubled times. If the President says his economic policies will reward those willing to do what is right in these difficult times you would. Granted perhaps, not 100% of the people, but what if half of those in default did? think it would make a difference?



And if the Pres. says you and your business is worthless and that you are bordering on being criminal scum, that just might have an impact on your future behavior or the value others see in you and your business.

I can't believe you don't think words can make a difference if they come from the most powerful office on the planet. I simply can not believe it, I won't accept it.

A good pep talk has its place. But no pep talk is going to make someone with 2 broken legs finish a marathon.

In any case, this discussion is going in circles. It is clear that you don't want to consider anything else.

I'm very pleased that President Obama overturned the ban on photography/video at the airforce base where the caskets from Iraq arrive. It's about time people see the cost of war.

No, we have been consistent. We do not support deficit spending when you're spending the money on crap we don't need to do, like Star Wars, Iran Contra, tax cuts to the wealthy, and invading foreign countries, twice, when they've never shown any aggression toward us. We do support deficit spending when it is absolutely necessary in order to keep us from slipping into the second Great Depression. Your presidents spent money we didn't have for shit we didn't need. Our president is spending money we don't have, true, but if he doesn't, none of us will have money for decades. Plus, our president is forced to spend that money because of the neglect and destruction left by your presidents.

Well, that's at least consistent with the actions of the presidents that you support. The Two Bushes failed to look at the past, namely, Vietnam, and started shit with Iraq. And now we're dealing with the same situation as Vietnam - an unwinnable war that we should never have started in the first place.

Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush 2 failed to look at the history of the robber baron era, and what that immense separation of upper and lower classes led to (the great depression), and busily got down to the business of creating a yawning gulf once again. And, once again, the economy tanked because the ultra rich can't stand it if they aren't getting ultra-richer.

Poor Bush, he set the conservative movement {a smaller more fiscally responsible government} back 20 years or more and no matter how much he spent and expanded existing government programs he couldn't buy the love of the liberals because of that giant (R). In the end everyone hated him but for different reasons, the conservatives for spending and expanding the government like there was no tomorrow and again the liberals because of that (R).

As far as Obama's performance so far, I truly hope he succeeds. This country desperately needs him to succeed. We simply can't wait another 4 years to give someone else a stab at it. So far much like Bush somethings are business as usual but there have a been a few positive developments so we shall see.

Really? You really think that the only reason over half of the country dislikes Bush was because he was a republican? If you remember back to the early part of his first term, Bush was not especially disliked by the democrats, and he had virtually unprecedented support after 9/11. But he squandered whatever affection he had on unnecessary wars, torture, and countless scandals. If he had governed the way he claimed in the first campaign, as a compassionate conservative doing no nation building, he wouldn't have ended up nearly as unpopular as he did. (R) or no (R).

I loved Bush's embrace of incompetent cronyism, and how even when people monumentally fucked up he would tell them they did a "heckuva job". It was only the (R) next to his name that kept me from publicly voicing my support.

You should really reread what I wrote.

He only had voice support of the Democrats because they knew it would be political suicide to not go after the hoodlums that took out the twin towers. Only after the Iraqi invasion and the changing tide of public opinion did the Democrats change their tune. The Democrats waited until a few days after the invasion to start denying support. Suddenly they was against it before they was for it or however that shit went down. Nice work as it enabled a community organizer to be elected President of the United States.


The Patriot Bill and liberal spending probably cost him more politically than anyone would want to admit. The Democrats taking control of both houses was a direct result of the Patriot Bill and their promise to repeal it, a promise they broke btw. The Republicans pushing NAFTA through and the Democrats idea of everyone in America, regardless of credit worthiness, should own a home has gotten us in this fine mess. I just hope our community organizer and his advisors are smart enough to get us out. There is a lot riding on our Presidents shoulders at the moment and we all better hope the decisions he makes are correct as there is little room for error.

I reread it. You seem to be accusing us of disliking Bush because he's a republican, when in fact we dislike him because he's an evil moron who likes to torture people.



Are you kidding me? Please tell me this is satire.


Yeah, because Afghanistan was hiding the son of a bitch who attacked us. We supported retaliation against the group that attacked us. Iraq wasn't hiding him. In fact, Saddam hated bin Laden and would have killed him if he could have found him.


Ahh, yes, you're parroting such intellectual giants as the Swiftboat idiots. If you're going to repeat other people's words without thinking about what they say, you should at least pick someone smart. Better yet, someone smart who isn't blatantly lying.


How horrid for us that someone who actually did something useful in his past is now the Commander in Chief. It was much, much better under the man who failed as governor of Texas, who failed as an oil man, who failed as the owner of a baseball team, who failed so badly in college that only his family name kept him there, who failed so badly in highschool that only his family name got him into college in the first place, who failed to stay sober, and who failed so much that his dad, the Saudis, and the bin Laden family had to bail him out on numerous occasions, and who failed even to show up for his national guard duty. . . oh, except for that one time in the dentist's chair. Yes, clearly George W. Bush's past history of abject failure and nothing but abject failure is quite a bit better than Obama's history of success.

I would make a snarky comment here about you only disliking Obama because of the giant D next to his name, but that would an overly extreme case of stating the obvious.



I actually largely agree with this, except that its scope is too narrow - - it was also a direct result of the war, and the desire of the country to end it. And yes, I do agree that the spineless bastards broke their promise and ignored their mandate by not stopping the war.


Credit where credit is due. Clinton happily signed it, the sonofabitch.


How is that a democratic idea? It's a wall street / investment banker / mortgage broker idea, cheerfully encouraged by Greenspan. Who is a self-admitted Republican.


You're right there. Obama has to be FDR 2.0 and he has very little time to do it in.

Oh, I guess he did not actually have two broken legs, my bad.