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Another of the forum's Village Idiots weighs in with nothing more than juvenile insults, and in a thread addressing financial and economic issues -- a topic of which he's obviously quite ignorant. Yssup, aren't you the guy who started mouthing off in a thread about Jack Lew, and then acknowledged that you didn't even have any idea what an SIV is? Why yes, I believe you are!
Haven't you also called everyone with whom you disagree "dipshits" more times than most others have even posted?
Little Stevie... Do a little research on the Depression of 1920...the one that isn't taught in our indoctrination centers (public school system). We escaped that by cutting taxes in half and by cutting spending in half. The massive governed spending by FDR did nothing to let us escape the depression of 1929. The only thing that let us escape that was World War II. As far as debt to GDP levels... Maybe you should check your math...our GDP is in the 15.815 trillion for 2012. Our debt is 16.7 trillion roughly now...well over the 80% threshold. So please, instead of hurling IQ attacks maybe you should check your basic math skills you Obama man gravy swallower
Little Stevie... Do a little research on the Depression of 1920...the one that isn't taught in our indoctrination centers (public school system). We escaped that by cutting taxes in half and by cutting spending in half. The massive governed spending by FDR did nothing to let us escape the depression of 1929. The only thing that let us escape that was World War II. As far as debt to GDP levels... Maybe you should check your math...our GDP is in the 15.815 trillion for 2012. Our debt is 16.7 trillion roughly now...well over the 80% threshold. So please, instead of hurling IQ attacks maybe you should check your basic math skills you Obama man gravy swallower
Dear "two captains", COF and Barley for Brains, as I gaze through your best efforts at refutation, I see only name calling and the always-stupid defense of "Oh HIM? Ha Ha Ha" Just where are the facts you purport to have in refuting my statement of there being only two ways to get out of a recession?
One of you nincompoops actually agreed with the theory and then trashed the first stimulus as having a negative effect on the economy.
Adios, losers! Until you learn to think your way out of the dense Teapublican fog you carry with you, I'll just laugh at your irrelevant comments.
How about that Michele Bachmann using another worthless blog and a pamphlet by a Republican lobbyist to attempt to say theWhite House pays someone $102K per year to walk the President's dog?
It just proves you people will believe anything some Deadbart throws out there.
What a bunch of gibberish! Nothing like deflecting attention in almost every imaginable direction, just like Little Stevie did in one of his other previous posts. If it weren't for elementary school-style name calling and clueless non sequiturs, he wouldn't be able to think of much to say.
For one thing, what's up with that nonsensical statement about there being only "two ways to get out of a recession?" Unless the government does something to further fuck things up, recessions are self-limiting. After the recent severe recession 0f 2007-2009, it was of course necessary to restore confidence in the financial sector. Few people will dispute that, although perhaps fewer still will claim that TARP was implemented in an efficient and effective way. Nevertheless, it got us past the crisis.
The reason the $860 billion "stimulus package" was a net negative for the economy is that it was a hodgepodge of (supposedly temporary) tax cuts, entitlement expansions, transfer payments, and giveaways to favored constituencies. Very little of it went toward worthwhile infrastructure projects or other job-creating activities. Imagine how much better off we'd be today if all that money had actually been wisely spent.
There's little doubt that it made the economy slightly better in 2009-2010 than otherwise would have been the case. You can't throw that much money into the pot and produce zero effect. But there's no free lunch; it eventually has to be paid for. Big, entrenched increases in government spending act as a retardant, not a stimulant, to prospects for sustained growth. The "benefits" may have subsided, but the addition to the debt overhang remains.
Throughout our history, we've had recessions, depressions, market panics, bank crises, periods of sharp deflation, and all sorts of other events. No one got the idea that government had to spend huge amounts of money to stimulate the economy until the 1930s, yet it always recovered -- usually quite quickly and robustly.
If you are a supporter of taking further steps toward becoming more like a European-style social democracy, fine. Just be honest about how you think we should pay for it --and more specifically who should pay for it. Raising taxes only on those in the top one percent ain't gonna do it. The plan of financing entitlement expansions and other elements of big government with large amounts of borrowed and printed money is likely to unravel soon enough, too.
For the record, blind partisans such as you and Little Stevie would enjoy more credibilty if you'd demonstrate at least a tiny bit of intellectual honesty and acknowledge that the mess we're in is the fault of both parties. Who do you think is going to end up having to pay for all the promises politicians have made? Do you think loading all the additional tax burden only on the top one percent is going to come remotely close to making much of a dent in the deficit?
But, yeah, I know. In your world, the sole reason for our dire fiscal outlook is that taxes on the "rich" were cut too much.
Right?
Actually NOT right. But at least you're making generalizations that take your out of your element, Captain Midnight.
I believe this country must be governed in a bipartisan manner. I don't know how much of the obstructionist game playing in recent years is the fault of the Democrats, especially the Democrat minority in the House, but you do the fucking math.
The taxes on the rich issue is bullshit and we all know it. I believe the super wealthy need to pay their fair share. But that isn't going to erase the deficit. And that's not "the sole reason for a dire fiscal outlook" in my world. In fact, the fiscal outlook in my world is pretty bright and getting brighter every day. Stock market soaring. Joblessness decreasing. Manufacturing jobs coming back to the US. The "dire fiscal outlook" you lament is more likely the invention of the compulsive lying machine that is the GOP. In fact, there's a thread about that in the Sandbox right now.
IMHO, the ridiculous spending done by the recent REPUBLICAN administrations are what put us on the road to ruin... and that's a 20-30 year road. Ain't about taxes. It's about stealth bombers, Star Wars and undeclared wars prosecuted on false pretense. It's better to bomb kids thousands of miles away when we could be feeding and educating them here instead.
Now as far as putting labels on me, or anyone else on this board, that's certainly your prerogative. I submit you're the blind partisan ... driven more by your hatred of the administration and progress than your love of America. But the more you talk, the bigger a dipshit you reveal yourself to be.
I recommend the book "Coolidge" by Amity Shlaes. It shows how the economy suffered it's greatest loss and biggest come back in 1921 when Coolidge was president. Don't confuse this with the 1929 depression. I will point out again that in 1930 the king of Sweden reduced the currency of his country by half and made severe cuts. They had no Great Depression and were the first country to recover from the depression of 1929. History refutes you.
I really don't know why I bother with Whatzup but do you even know how many years that the democrats had a majority in the house in the last hundred?
I believe this country must be governed in a bipartisan manner. I don't know how much of the obstructionist game playing in recent years is the fault of the Democrats, especially the Democrat minority in the House, but you do the fucking math.
The taxes on the rich issue is bullshit and we all know it. I believe the super wealthy need to pay their fair share. But that isn't going to erase the deficit. And that's not "the sole reason for a dire fiscal outlook" in my world. In fact, the fiscal outlook in my world is pretty bright and getting brighter every day. Stock market soaring. Joblessness decreasing. Manufacturing jobs coming back to the US. The "dire fiscal outlook" you lament is more likely the invention of the compulsive lying machine that is the GOP. In fact, there's a thread about that in the Sandbox right now.
IMHO, the ridiculous spending done by the recent REPUBLICAN administrations are what put us on the road to ruin... and that's a 20-30 year road. Ain't about taxes. It's about stealth bombers, Star Wars and undeclared wars prosecuted on false pretense. It's better to bomb kids thousands of miles away when we could be feeding and educating them here instead.
Now as far as putting labels on me, or anyone else on this board, that's certainly your prerogative. I submit you're the blind partisan ... driven more by your hatred of the administration and progress than your love of America. But the more you talk, the bigger a dipshit you reveal yourself to be.
Since, unlike Little Stevie, you actually made an errort to offer a few thoughts, I'll take a stab at answering them.
First of all, don't reflexively compartmentailize. I am not a "partisan," since I consider today's Republican Party an utter train wreck that's been dominated by phonies and hacks, just like the Democratic Party. In fact, if I could walk into a voting booth and pull a lever marked "Divided Government," that's what I would do. As currently constituted, neither party has shown any signs of offering a responsible or sustainable plan, and both are good for little more than preventing the other from cramming through a ruinous agenda. However, I am right of center and would prefer a robust, center-right economic growth agenda, not a march toward further bloating the entitlement state. For the record, I did not vote for Romney, and as unserious as I believe Obama is, I am not unhappy that he won re-election. It was my view that Romney, nothing more than a political opportunist, would have combined with congressional Republicans to overplay their hand in a suicidal manner.
Our fiscal outlook is manifestly not very bright. Large swaths of the economy are doing pretty well, and the S&P 500 is almost back up to its 2007 highs. But that's largely due to ZIRP and oceans of QE. What will happen when all that monetary accommodation has to be withdrawn, as eventually it must? Nobody knows for sure. You can't mathematically model things like that, at least not with any degree of efficacy. Maybe we'll be able to slowly let the air out of the balloon, or maybe we will not.
But reducing the deficit is really not the overriding concern now. Economic growth is. If we can return to RGDP growth rates of at least 3.5%, a lot of problems will take care of themselves over time. Even so, the debt trajectory cannot simply be ignored. That would be virtually certain to lead to trouble down the road.
You correctly mentioned that Republicans put us on an irresponsible path and that it's been a 20-30 year process. I submit that it's primarily been an 11-year process. 2002 was the year that a Republican congress jettisoned PAYGO rules so that we could cut taxes while simultaneously porking up the budget with a big spending spree. As I recall, that's why Paul O'Neill (not the baseball player) broke ranks with the Bush administration. At about the same time, Cheney said that "deficits don't matter," a statement that's simply ridiculous on its face. Then the Iraq war exacerbated fiscal problems that would have still been serious even if it had never happened.
But simply stacking failure atop failure is not much of a plan. We need a serious growth-oriented agenda, not just another politically driven one. For one thing, we need to fix the health care reform plan. As currently constituted, it's nothing more than an expensive, inefficient clusterfuck. I believe that its implementation is going to be a messy and costly process, and that it will create chaos and dislocations. As it stands, it's a significant impediment to economic growth and employment.
Then we need to actually fix the financial system. Dodd-Frank does far more harm than good, and little about TBTF. For all intents and purposes, it's just another crony capitalist shuffle. But neither party is even talking about an effective plan to fix any of this. Both are in the pay of the biggest players.
And we badly need tax reform. Our tax system is nothing more than a national embarrassment. One of the highest priorities, in my view, is implementing a territorial corporate tax system. That alone would make a big difference. But here once again, our "leaders" are asleep at the wheel.
We should be doing much better than we are. But until we address all of these structural issues, I'm afraid we'll be stuck in a slow-growth rut.
We are adrift with no real leadership, and we aren't even trying to fix anything.
I recommend the book "Coolidge" by Amity Shlaes. It shows how the economy suffered it's greatest loss and biggest come back in 1921 when Coolidge was president. Don't confuse this with the 1929 depression. I will point out again that in 1930 the king of Sweden reduced the currency of his country by half and made severe cuts. They had no Great Depression and were the first country to recover from the depression of 1929. History refutes you.
I don't know what subject you are "teaching", but I can guess is has nothing to do with 20th century history. Coolidge did not become president until 1923. Warren Harding was president in 1921. Also, the monarchy of Sweden has really had no true powers, especially concerning currency since at least 1917. The monarchy is really nothing more than symbolic and a figurehead. It is the Riksdag that has the governing power in Sweden deriving it's authority from the people.
