Anonymous wrote:Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling 3 years ago. The tea party was elected not to raise it at all. At least they handed over the blank check again. The debt celing being a crisis is such a joke. The crisis is 14 trillion in debt + 41 cents of each dollar spent by the government being BORROWED on top of the debt and baseline government increases of 7% every year . If cut cap and balance was passed, we would have a stellar AAAAAA+ rating. Brace for impact.

What are your thoughts as to how long that process should continue, if needed, to maintain a "stellar AAAAAA+ rating?"

Anonymous wrote:Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling 3 years ago. The tea party was elected not to raise it at all. At least they handed over the blank check again. The debt celing being a crisis is such a joke. The crisis is 14 trillion in debt + 41 cents of each dollar spent by the government being BORROWED on top of the debt and baseline government increases of 7% every year . If cut cap and balance was passed, we would have a stellar AAAAAA+ rating. Brace for impact.

Tell that to S&P. They specifically cited the debt ceiling crisis as half of the reason for the downgrade.

Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling 3 years ago. The tea party was elected not to raise it at all. At least they handed over the blank check again. The debt celing being a crisis is such a joke. The crisis is 14 trillion in debt + 41 cents of each dollar spent by the government being BORROWED on top of the debt and baseline government increases of 7% every year . If cut cap and balance was passed, we would have a stellar AAAAAA+ rating. Brace for impact.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for shaving another 350 points off the market today. You have managed to erase a year's worth of gains in just a few short days. Way to go.

Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.

are you that stupid to think this has ANYTHING to do with washington politics? it has everything to do with the crisis in Europe and the continuing poor economic #s here in the US.

Would you like to take that back now?

Anonymous wrote:The real driver behind a possible downgrade is the $14 trillion debt we've acquired and the lack of a convincing strategy to deal with it.

Just raising the debt ceiling isn't going to change Moody's mind.

(Although I do think a downgrade is unlikely. We can, ultimately, pay out debts or inflate them away. The rest of the world is not in such a lucky position.)

Oops and Oops. It happened, and they said half of the problem was the idiotic drama over the whole affair that created a lack of confidence.

Tea Party, you really REALLY suck.

It is YOUR willingness to take us to the brink on the debt ceiling that has caused us permanent damage.

The AA rating is your fault. Dems and Moderate republicans had plenty of reasonable positions but YOU botched this up. Thanks a lot.

Japanese debt/growth from the mid-90s (from IMF WEO):



Perils of inductive reasoning.

Also, it's a common misperception (on the right) that Japan's debt caused slow growth over the 90s. That gets the causality wrong. Japan's lost decade was a deflationary spiral resulting in zero growth. That caused the debt.

Just to respond, because your post was a bit undirected:

Mainstream liberals were calling for trillion dollar stimulus packages, which you and I know full well would've died a painful death in the Senate.

I'm not sure how folks can reconcile the assertions "Obama got everything he wanted" with "What Obama wanted would never have made it through the Senate." You're right, a real stimulus bill to make up for the shortfall in demand couldn't pass the Senate because Republicans filibustered it. That left "moderates" to cut the baby in half--which of course made no sense whatsoever)

(As an aside, I don't care if eliminating the filibuster would allow President Palin to ram her program down America's throats, if she can get elected along with other Republicans, then let them have the freaking keys to the bus. Ditto if Obama can get re-elected.)

So the actual alternatives were, do nothing and see if America cares (hint, they don't. They want jobs. If a deficit this size were paired with 5% unemployment, no one would care.) Or, try a half-measure and see if that fixes things.

No one gives a shit about the deficit. It's merely an excuse to implement the anti-New Deal policies that the GOP was trying to destroy in good times and in bad.

Bottom line is, a return to growth, and a return to the tax policies that were so successful under Clinton, and there is not deficit crisis. The government should be printing money hand over fist right now--since borrowing is essentially free--and we should be putting people to work repairing our essential infrastructure. We need to fix it at some point, it will put people to work, and there's a "flight to safety" that makes the money essentially free.

You never addressed the stimulative effects of WWII. Is it really true that the stimulative effect only applies to armaments? Maybe we should start another war?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Exactly, the fall in the stock market has everything to do with *their* nonsensical, crippling austerity measures; and nothing whatsoever do do with *our* nonsensical, crippling austerity measures. Funny though that you can't understand that policy has anything to do with "poor economic #s here int he US."

Jesus Christ, what the fuck are we (Europe/USA) supposed to do? Let our debt/GDP go up above 200% and run 10%/GDP deficits for the next decade?

You seem to be completely ignorant of even the barest outlines of basic macroeconomics. No, you don't do trillion dollar stimulus packages every year for the next decade. You just need one large enough to make up for a shortfall in private demand. Your side's basic argument is that a defibrillator doesn't work because you already held a 9 volt battery to the patient's chest and it didn't do anything.

And before you start blathering about how the government can't create jobs, I'd point you to a little known phenomenon called World War II. Or do armaments magically get an exemption form the iron-clad law that stimulus never works?

Does basic macroeconomics say countries whose debt/GDP ratio exceeds 100% should keep on spending? How big should the stimulus have been? $1 trillion? $1.5 trillion? $2 trillion? Japan seems to have been stuck in the mire for some while after its debt-induced binge fizzled, an actual case study which should give thoughtful people of all stripes some pause before recommending MOAR SPENDING or MOAR TAX CUTS.

The 1930s and 1970s disproved a number of tenets of macroeconomics, such as the gold standard being the best monetary system (damn New York liberals and international bankers) and the Phillips curve ... I suspect this decade, combined with the experience of Japan, will refine our knowledge of macroeconomics.

Mainstream liberals were calling for trillion dollar stimulus packages, which you and I know full well would've died a painful death in the Senate.

(As an aside, I don't care if eliminating the filibuster would allow President Palin to ram her program down America's throats, if she can get elected along with other Republicans, then let them have the freaking keys to the bus. Ditto if Obama can get re-elected.)

So the actual alternatives were, do nothing and see if America cares (hint, they don't. They want jobs. If a deficit this size were paired with 5% unemployment, no one would care.) Or, try a half-measure and see if that fixes things.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Exactly, the fall in the stock market has everything to do with *their* nonsensical, crippling austerity measures; and nothing whatsoever do do with *our* nonsensical, crippling austerity measures. Funny though that you can't understand that policy has anything to do with "poor economic #s here int he US."

Jesus Christ, what the fuck are we (Europe/USA) supposed to do? Let our debt/GDP go up above 200% and run 10%/GDP deficits for the next decade?

You seem to be completely ignorant of even the barest outlines of basic macroeconomics. No, you don't do trillion dollar stimulus packages every year for the next decade. You just need one large enough to make up for a shortfall in private demand. Your side's basic argument is that a defibrillator doesn't work because you already held a 9 volt battery to the patient's chest and it didn't do anything.

And before you start blathering about how the government can't create jobs, I'd point you to a little known phenomenon called World War II. Or do armaments magically get an exemption form the iron-clad law that stimulus never works?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Exactly, the fall in the stock market has everything to do with *their* nonsensical, crippling austerity measures; and nothing whatsoever do do with *our* nonsensical, crippling austerity measures. Funny though that you can't understand that policy has anything to do with "poor economic #s here int he US."

Jesus Christ, what the fuck are we (Europe/USA) supposed to do? Let our debt/GDP go up above 200% and run 10%/GDP deficits for the next decade?

I don't want to horrify you, but here we could try taxing our rich just a teeny bit. I realize that in normal times that would sound like sheer lunacy - hysterical class warfare - but these are desperate times.

Oh - and we could end these obscenely expensive wars.

No, fucking morons on the right believe wholeheartedly in Keynesian stimulus on the revenue side--it's just the spending side they choose not to believe in. Yes they're intellectually bankrupt, but what are you going to do?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Obama got his blank check. It's his economy. His ideas have failed. He will be crushed in 2012, anything is better than this crap.

Ah, yes. The "blank check" of having every policy the Democrats have tried to implement undercut by the GOP, who want nothing more than for the economy to stay in the shitter until the next election. It's the tragedy of our shitty political system. If we had a parliamentary system, we'd have an election, the winner would constitute the government, and they'd enact policy. Instead we've got a Rube Goldberg contraption with 1,001 veto-points where the party that want's to throw sand in the works can do so with impunity. Hell, Obama can't even make executive branch appointments without individual GOP senators preventing their appointment.

Anyone who argues that Obama has had a blank check is either lying, or they actually believe that shit. Sadly, given that you're an anonymous commenter on the internet, it's highly likely you fall in the second camp. Sad.

obama had supermajorities in congress for 2 years. No President in the modern era has had so much power to implement his agenda. This is his economy. This is how it feels when Democrats implement their ideas, I remember the 70's which was a liberal high-point and it SUCKED.

BUSH was the one, who in his infinite wisdom decided to fight an expensive war with his personal enemy WITHOUT raising taxes. Have you EVER heard of so much stupidity? His friends got contracts and got rich paid less in taxes, kids got shot and killed, and we are straddled with the debt.

OH OH, I forgot to mention Mr. Greenspan who everyone thought was such a genius. Well it turns out that he was stupid stupid stupid. He was doing one big economic experiment with "free markets", except he did not tell anyone that it was an experiment. He played with the world's largest economy and put half of the world into a tailspin.

I am not sure what BO could have done with this debt "deal". His biggest mistake is that he should have moved sooner when he had the majority.

Hey guys, our debt is quickly approaching our GDP. Our whole output for a year. That is how big the hole is.

I AM scared...are you?

The problem is this: a return to growth (i.e. an end to the recession), coupled with ending Bush's interminable and disastrously conceived wars, and the rollback of his ruinous tax cuts would put us on the path to eliminate our debt. Under Bush, we pretty much pruned back our revenues to nothing, spent money we weren't collecting on stupidities like simultaneous Near Eastern quagmires, and failed to respond in any meaningful way to the recession (the severity of which was actually underestimated by the BEA).

So of course we started taking on massive debt via the policies pursued under Bush, and perpetuated under Obama. The hilarious thing is, most economists who recommended stimulus all argued that the one passed was about half the size of what would be effective. And like an idiot, Obama hailed it as a victory. This of course undercut any support for a real stimulus because "we already tried that and it didn't work".

It was the equivalent of driving your car into a ditch, having a mechanic recommend you pull it out with a tow truck. So you decide a tow-truck's too expensive, you'll just get a couple of your friends and pull it out of the ditch with your bare hands. That stupid fucking mechanic! He said it would work, and it didn't!

To keep the current military levels you are going to have to increase spending. Most of the equipment needs to be replace or rebuilt, troops need to be train/retrain...big $$$. I don't think any Republican will stand for a reduce military. So you must increase defense spending to maintain the current force level = you can't freeze the budget at current levels.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To fix this if I were President.... 1) flat tax 2)lower corporate tax rates 3) freeze government spending at 2009 levels. 4) Borrow to build 50 nuclear plants. 5) cut back EPA and make it easier to build factories in this country. 6) Drill and exploit our vast resources. Make it clear to the world that the U.S. is the country where you can be free and get rich. We should not be losing to China in the capitalism game. And we should attack Opec with massive energy production while giving ourselves dirt cheap energy to cloober our economic/military rivals.

Er...how is that a budget balancing plan? Or were you referring to a different "this?"

a goverment spending freeze is reasonable but is considered to be a 7.5 trillion dollar cut to the morons running congress. Growth plus a freeze would save this country and expose the euro socialists as the losers they are.

We don't seem to be getting anywhere. You seem to be having trouble stringing sentences together coherently, much less responding to others.