Yep that about sums it up! Every leftist, democratic pressure group will get at least a good piece of their wish list. Almost all of these individually (and certainly combined) will slow or decrease economic growth. There is no glimmer of hope on the horizon for anyone to invest or grow unless they are picking up distressed properties.
You need surplus economic activity to pay for welfare, green stuff, union inefficiencies, lavish educational budgets. To try to do these (as well as bail out poor economic actors) in a recession is insane. The Dems really have drunk the koolade about ‘green jobs’ or ‘investment in people’.
Great IBD editorial. Perhaps IBD and the Wall Street Journal will be the only newspapers that can survive without government subsidies.
I predict that the economic recovery will be a weak one, especially if they implement the carbon tax regime. These people in charge now have not a clue as to how this economy really works and within four years it will be obvious to any objective observer applying hard metrics.
Dirty, Oblio, and Fred sum it up well, but the carbon tax regime may sabotage a recovery completely. I’ve long thought that the oil bubble and high gas and energy prices last year was the climax which finally weakened the system irrevocably. It’s becoming obvious that this is deliberately inspired and orchestrated sabotage, and it’s becoming very personal…
Do you think some of that money that was pouring into Goldman Sachs to be directed into the hedge funds that bet long on the oil futures came from overseas sources? Dare I say Putin and Chavez?
Putin and Chavez probably, but more likely the long established sheiks who dominate OPEC, especially every exclusively oil revenue dependent moslem regime (Saudi Arabia in particular), and which, when they aren’t using America for their own military and economic (market) survival needs (one face), are eagerly and actively, especially financially, inspiring, aiding and abetting the jihad against the infidels, especially America and Israel (the sheik’s and dictator’s second, but only honest face)….
I am sorry what’s to follow is long but someone emailed the article from the newspaper and I can’t find a link so will put up the whole thing. I do this because Cap in Trade (carbon scheme) has been mentioned here and what is below actually makes scientific sense and just tells me that if you spend trillions reducing carbon emissions to next to nothing it will not do anything except drive the economy into the grave. Oh by the way GWB mandated (in 2001 I believe) a 95% reduction in sulfur emissions which was achieved in 2005 (I believe). the refineries paid the freight to re-engineer. So if what is below is true GWB did more, at no cost, to curb global warming than the billions upon billions Al Gore and like minds (including the Obama Administration AND John McCain) want to throw at it.
By Thomas Dewell, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
February 21, 2009
A retired U.S. Geological Survey scientist will speak Sunday on the role sulfur dioxide plays in causing global warming and what humans can do about it. The free lecture by Peter Ward starts at 7:30 p.m. in the theater at Center for the Arts.
Ward argues that sulfur dioxide emitted from volcanoes and from burning fossil fuel is the primary initiator of global climate change.
“Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas compounding global warming, but it is not the initiator of climate change,” Ward said in a prepared statement.
In a recently released paper, Ward says sulfur dioxide emissions regulate the ability of the atmosphere to clean itself by oxidizing pollutants. Ward observed that the highest rates of volcanic activity in the past 46,000 years occurred at the same times as the highest rates of global warming.
“When very large volcanic eruptions occur every few months, rapid warming follows,” Ward said. “Too much sulfur dioxide in a short period of time causes warming.”
Large eruptions today typically occur once per century. Yet by 1962, human activities were putting as much sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere every 1.7 years as one of these large eruptions. That was enough to cause world temperatures to climb at their highest rate in the 20th century, Ward said.
Global efforts to reduce acid rain succeeded in decreasing human sulfur dioxide emissions 18 percent by 2000. The rate of increase of methane in the atmosphere began declining in 1990.
By 2000, global temperature and the concentration of methane became nearly constant and have remained so. Current climate theories cannot explain these changes, Ward said.
“These observations make sense, when you realize that sulfur dioxide is changing the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere,” Ward said. “A dirty atmosphere warms the earth, and a clean atmosphere cools the earth. The atmosphere cleans itself by oxidizing greenhouse gases and other pollutants, causing their molecules to become larger and therefore to fall out or be rained out of the atmosphere.”
Ward said the primary oxidants in the atmosphere are generated by the effects of sunlight on ozone, which is in short supply. Sulfur dioxide reacts swiftly with these oxidants.
“Too much sulfur dioxide uses them all up, causing methane and other pollutants to accumulate. By reducing acid rain, we accidentally reduced global warming,” Ward said. “The problem now is that sulfur dioxide emissions are rapidly increasing again as new power plants are coming on line every week, especially in developing countries. But we know how to reduce sulfur emissions both technically and politically. It is much easier to do than reducing carbon dioxide emissions.”
The Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis has been debunked – thoroughly. But people like Mikhail Gorbachev, his friend Maurice Strong, and Maurice Strong’s ally George Soros want the 1997 Kyoto Protocols imposed on the United States. The primary purpose of it is to destroy our economy. The “science” that supposedly undergirds AGW has been called by Vladimir Putin as “junk science.” So, if the world’s most power Communist thinks it’s a hoax, and Putin is a very smart man, then what do you suppose it is?
Maurice Strong is the younger cousin of Anna Strong, the Communist who died in China in 1970. Maurice Strong is an avowed socialist who has stated that his highest purpose in his life is to lay the United States low. Words from a man from Canada who would not run for office in Canada because he had contempt for the voters.
We are seeing a global oligarchy emerging.
the problem, neo…is that it doesn’t sum it up…this is merely another partisan opinion that you site… one really knows what is going to happen..i can’t help the impression on occasionally reading here…well, i read a lot of sites…is that you and your interlocutors would rather the economy crash to make your partisan political point, then that some measure of success be achieved by the basically well-meaning efforts of the present administration…just as i believe the previous administration was basically well-meaning…but here is all cynicism and derision and emotion…you once bemoaned the decline of civility in the public square, but you are always throwing things in the fire here..on left-leaning sites the opinion is that all the main-stream media does is repeat Republican talking-points, a la george stepenopoulos…someone here quoted yeats the other day…and, yes..the center must indeed hold, or we torn apart
Obama has spent most of his adult life sticking it to “the man” and resenting the system. He hasn’t figured out yet that now he is the man and that talking down the economy is doing himself in. Unfortunately, he is taking us with him.
md:
We are not destroying the economy. The Communist “Democrats” are doing that.
George Stephanapolos is not a Republican. He is a lifelong Democrat and was in the Clinton Administration.
Are you on drugs?
I would like to personally assure md that I would not like the economy to crash to prove my talking points.
I commented recently, here or somewhere else, that I was a depression baby and WWII youth. I have been poor. My take on being poor (within reason) is that it is fine when you are young–especially if everyone you know is in the same boat. There is nothing good about being poor as you get older.
Here is what I would like md. I would like for Obama to see the burning bush and convert from being a central control, autocratic, borderline despot to become a free-market, federalist who actually believes in, and abides by our Consititution.
I don’t feel at all lonely on this site.
“… on left-leaning sites the opinion is that all the main-stream media does is repeat Republican talking-points…” and “…someone here quoted yeats the other day…”, and finally, “the center must indeed hold, or we torn apart”?
Try this easier “talking point”, md, since you’re too shallow to make the intellectual leap with Yeats, or understand the implications of a graph illustrating the world stock market reaction since Zero locked up the vote…
NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!
Yeah, I did a double take on “md” when he implied that Stephanopoulos is a Republican. When you make that kind of location, it means that this “md” is more at home at DailyKos than here. Which I would urge him to do. But, I’ve finally had enough experience here in the blog world to understand that the Lefty trolls are not at all remotely like us. We conservatives might go on over to the Lefty blogs and read, but rarely will we comment. It isn’t worth our while, and our comments would be removed anyway. But the Lefty trolls DO drop in on the conservative sites and they take their dumps there. Best to just step around them, like one out for a walk avoiding what a dog left in the middle of the sidewalk.
md mentions the center which “must indeed hold, or we are torn apart”.
I would suggest that the “center” can best be defined by references to The Declaration of independence and the U.S. Constitution, with other documents fleshing it out. What pulls us from the center are the desires of some to override the individual and collective liberties presented in those documents, and replace them with “thou shalts” having governmental force.
The centrifugal efforts differ somewhat between those on the far ‘right’ and on the ‘left’, with those embodied in the latest spending bill, calls for ‘fairness’ on the radio, laws against ‘hate’ speech, federal restrictions on automobiles, the No Child Left Behind act, Medicare prescription extensions, and the like, exemplifying what by far is the current greatest problem. Upon reflection, I think it fair to say that the locus of the center (as defined above) is generally labeled as being on the ‘right’ in politics at the present time.
I tend to agree with oldflyer that Mr. Obama is as much autocrat as socialist. Historically, the two are often joined. (Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mugabwe, and Pol Pot are some extreme examples of this sort of malevolent socialist-autocrat connection.)
And, like oldflyer, I would be very pleased should Mr. Obama convert from what appears to be his present belief system.
You can’t impose caps/taxes on carbon without visibly increasing utility costs, gasoline prices, and general prices (measured inflation) for every consumer in America. This crew is daft enough to try anything, but I have to think that besides being counter-productive to the main economic goals of stimulus, it is another form of electoral suicide.
Even I know that the recession was predicted early on by some AND TO LAST FOR YEARS (much less Obama being mentioned at all)
I could probably come up with correlations between Neocon posts and the economy too if I wanted to and draw you a nice graph.
There is a curious anti-cyclical opposition to climate CHANGE and economic CHANGE by our governing class, whose dear leader was elected for CHANGE (conveniently without specifics) as if cycles can be made not to exist. As Schiff reasons in the youtube link thoughtfully posted above, a recession with a return to personal saving is not ipso facto bad.
“I could probably come up with correlations between Neocon posts and the economy too if I wanted to and draw you a nice graph.”?
Please extrapolate Logern, sorry, I don’t understand how this is relevant…
IBD Article:
“- A 1,000-plus page stimulus bill is bulled through Congress with no GOP input and not a single member of Congress reading it before passage. It borders on censorship.”
It doesn’t “border on censorship”, it’s virtually unchecked one-party rule identical in style and result to traditional communist party dictate practiced in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc. No GOP input, for 48% of the voters? Not a single member of Congress read it? We have just been “had” by our very own “Gang of Four” plus…
“In Chinese history, the chief members of the radical faction that played a key role in directing the Cultural Revolution and tried to seize power after the death of the communist leader Mao Zedong in 1976.” – Tiscali
NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!
From the Washington Post:
“President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on businesses and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said.”
More Bait and Switch?
Perfected,
Have a look at the Great Leap Forward
(1958-63) in China. These fire-breathing Jacobins
were so sure that utopia was just ahead they
absolutely wrecked China, resulting in the famines
of the mid 1960’s. Still don’t know how many died,
30-40 million. By the way, they were still following
the agricultural methods of Trofim Lysenko at that
time. They smelted down every good piece of steel
to pig iron in backyard smelters. I guess they had
good intentions…..
I remember back in my college days (I majored in economics) there was the debate between the Keynesians and those who believed in the Laffer Curve. Laffer got the last laugh on that one. But the new American Social Democrats are reviving Keynes and rejecting Laffer. It will only result in lower economic growth and loss of revenue to the government.
I don’t get it. We have a republican in the White House for the last eight years, we have a republican congress for 12 of the last 14 years, and now ALL our problems come down to investors running scared because of a new so-called liberal/leftist president and so-called liberal/leftist congress? The policies of the last decade have nothing to do with our problems? I just can’t buy it.
kungfu, do you have an actual argument? IBD has a long list of arguments about what is happening now, and why investors have good reason to fear that we aren’t near the bottom. If it’s all wrong, please connect the dots between the “policies of the last decade” and your assessment of the problem now.
Oblio,
Yes, I wish “kungfu” would kindly show us how steepening the progression of the federal income tax, hiking the capital gains tax, and raising corporate taxes are going to result in more investment, job creation, and revenues to the treasury. Plus, investors fear what (not your favorite topic, but I happen to think it will be done anyway despite the recession) the cap and trade system will do to our economy.
You have Maurice Strong sitting there in Beijing with his fellow Communists wearing the Cheshire Cat smile, because, as Strong has stated, by 2012 everything will be in place for complete global government and that the Kyoto Protocols (which he is the author of) will be put in place. He and Soros have been working hard to get Obonga elected, mainly by leveraging their money in just the right places to influence voter perceptions.
Obonga’s second term is DOA. I am convinced of it. But he and the Democrats can and will do a lot of damage during the next four years. Some of it we can reverse. Perhaps some of it we cannot. But clearly at stake is the survival of our country as it was founded.
Fred, you would have to get the Democratic congressmen into a moral panic before they would take steps that could only result in a lot of them losing their seats. Right now, the panic is all about the economy. Worrying about CO2 is a luxury good for people who are feeling rich. So my forecast is for lots of talk, no action.
I hear that EPA is working on rules to regulate CO2 emissions as a pollutant. I think that would get litigated to the Supreme Court. It is an awful thing to contemplate, and as I say, some of this crew are daft enough for anything.
Oblio,
Right now Obonga is trying to set it all up by waving around the ephemeral elixir of “green jobs” coming to revive the economy. It’s all a hoax and will destroy jobs and our economy, but to a chamber full of rent-seeking lawyers who never ran a company or made a payroll in their lives they’ll lap it up. I swear to God, lawyers are some of the best educated and most ignorant f***ers in the country. Pelosi has most of them by the family jewels, since a lot of their fundraising comes in on Obonga’s networks. If they no support his agenda, they get no funding for re-election. Some will fight it; most will not. My Congress woman is a dumb bimbo named Carol Shea Porter who never deviates from the Party. Our new female senator, Jeanne Shaheen, is a mediocre mind and party hack who also has not an original thought in her skull.
Fred, do you think bank nationalization is inevitable? If so, how far would it extend?
Bank nationalization undermines the Fed. I can also envision a legal battle going on for years about this. Moreover, I think the Fed would be opposed to it, since nationalization of the banking system politicizes the currency in ways far beyond what we are seeing now, if you can believe it.
Bernanke seems to think that temporary control of certain banks until they get out of trouble would be what happens. I just don’t know.
I still think suspending the mark-to-market rule for awhile would have been the right thing to do. And then set it up at less frequent intervals after that. In addition, I would tighten the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac standards too, but fat chance of that happening under the current regime.
I’m still scratching my head over how 5% to 7% of sub prime mortgages are the cause of all this. I just think what really happened was the bubble in California burst in 2006, then spread throughout the West in 2007, and moved East from there. While this was happening, the oil price run up was what really kicked it all into gear.
I think it’s a good thing for inflated housing prices to come down to earth. Not good for people who bought at the peak of the market with no money down and escalating rates, but why should we pay for their dumb decisions? There has to be a better way to help poor and working class people in a better position to be owners some day. We need to find ways to encourage the building of more affordable rental housing. My wife and I married in 1988 and we rented until 1999, saving up for our down payment while having two kids in tow. This is how it should be done. I am in favor of using all means to increase the supply of rental housing to keep the costs of it down, that way people can save – if they decide to – for that down payment on a home. I am against the government just pushing the money at them to get a house, especially at the peak of the market.
There are just so many smarter things to do, yet so little imagination or will to get it done.
Yes, we have talked about MTM before. And I think we will be paying for the banks’ dumb decisions. I am less sanguine than you about the impact of a broad general decline in house values.
I could be wrong.
kungfu,
If you look at economic growth, the US did very well during the majority of those years you cited, in spite of 2 wars, a massive terrorist attack, and inheriting a recession from Bill when Bush took office.
On the other hand, if you chart statements of The One and his administration with the stock market, you’ll find a depressing correspondence between stock market freefalls and when Obanga and his ilk open their mouths.
While you are correct in noting that the past should be considered relative to current circumstances, it’s also true that the current administration should be judged and compared to how well the previous administration performed under far more dire circumstances – and at the moment they are not comparing well with Bush.
If the Obongas really wanted to let the economy start rolling again, they’d just shut up for 6 months and do nothing.
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Yep that about sums it up! Every leftist, democratic pressure group will get at least a good piece of their wish list. Almost all of these individually (and certainly combined) will slow or decrease economic growth. There is no glimmer of hope on the horizon for anyone to invest or grow unless they are picking up distressed properties.
You need surplus economic activity to pay for welfare, green stuff, union inefficiencies, lavish educational budgets. To try to do these (as well as bail out poor economic actors) in a recession is insane. The Dems really have drunk the koolade about ‘green jobs’ or ‘investment in people’.
Great IBD editorial. Perhaps IBD and the Wall Street Journal will be the only newspapers that can survive without government subsidies.
I predict that the economic recovery will be a weak one, especially if they implement the carbon tax regime. These people in charge now have not a clue as to how this economy really works and within four years it will be obvious to any objective observer applying hard metrics.
Dirty, Oblio, and Fred sum it up well, but the carbon tax regime may sabotage a recovery completely. I’ve long thought that the oil bubble and high gas and energy prices last year was the climax which finally weakened the system irrevocably. It’s becoming obvious that this is deliberately inspired and orchestrated sabotage, and it’s becoming very personal…
Do you think some of that money that was pouring into Goldman Sachs to be directed into the hedge funds that bet long on the oil futures came from overseas sources? Dare I say Putin and Chavez?
Putin and Chavez probably, but more likely the long established sheiks who dominate OPEC, especially every exclusively oil revenue dependent moslem regime (Saudi Arabia in particular), and which, when they aren’t using America for their own military and economic (market) survival needs (one face), are eagerly and actively, especially financially, inspiring, aiding and abetting the jihad against the infidels, especially America and Israel (the sheik’s and dictator’s second, but only honest face)….
I am sorry what’s to follow is long but someone emailed the article from the newspaper and I can’t find a link so will put up the whole thing. I do this because Cap in Trade (carbon scheme) has been mentioned here and what is below actually makes scientific sense and just tells me that if you spend trillions reducing carbon emissions to next to nothing it will not do anything except drive the economy into the grave. Oh by the way GWB mandated (in 2001 I believe) a 95% reduction in sulfur emissions which was achieved in 2005 (I believe). the refineries paid the freight to re-engineer. So if what is below is true GWB did more, at no cost, to curb global warming than the billions upon billions Al Gore and like minds (including the Obama Administration AND John McCain) want to throw at it.
By Thomas Dewell, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
February 21, 2009
A retired U.S. Geological Survey scientist will speak Sunday on the role sulfur dioxide plays in causing global warming and what humans can do about it. The free lecture by Peter Ward starts at 7:30 p.m. in the theater at Center for the Arts.
Ward argues that sulfur dioxide emitted from volcanoes and from burning fossil fuel is the primary initiator of global climate change.
“Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas compounding global warming, but it is not the initiator of climate change,” Ward said in a prepared statement.
In a recently released paper, Ward says sulfur dioxide emissions regulate the ability of the atmosphere to clean itself by oxidizing pollutants. Ward observed that the highest rates of volcanic activity in the past 46,000 years occurred at the same times as the highest rates of global warming.
“When very large volcanic eruptions occur every few months, rapid warming follows,” Ward said. “Too much sulfur dioxide in a short period of time causes warming.”
Large eruptions today typically occur once per century. Yet by 1962, human activities were putting as much sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere every 1.7 years as one of these large eruptions. That was enough to cause world temperatures to climb at their highest rate in the 20th century, Ward said.
Global efforts to reduce acid rain succeeded in decreasing human sulfur dioxide emissions 18 percent by 2000. The rate of increase of methane in the atmosphere began declining in 1990.
By 2000, global temperature and the concentration of methane became nearly constant and have remained so. Current climate theories cannot explain these changes, Ward said.
“These observations make sense, when you realize that sulfur dioxide is changing the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere,” Ward said. “A dirty atmosphere warms the earth, and a clean atmosphere cools the earth. The atmosphere cleans itself by oxidizing greenhouse gases and other pollutants, causing their molecules to become larger and therefore to fall out or be rained out of the atmosphere.”
Ward said the primary oxidants in the atmosphere are generated by the effects of sunlight on ozone, which is in short supply. Sulfur dioxide reacts swiftly with these oxidants.
“Too much sulfur dioxide uses them all up, causing methane and other pollutants to accumulate. By reducing acid rain, we accidentally reduced global warming,” Ward said. “The problem now is that sulfur dioxide emissions are rapidly increasing again as new power plants are coming on line every week, especially in developing countries. But we know how to reduce sulfur emissions both technically and politically. It is much easier to do than reducing carbon dioxide emissions.”
The Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis has been debunked – thoroughly. But people like Mikhail Gorbachev, his friend Maurice Strong, and Maurice Strong’s ally George Soros want the 1997 Kyoto Protocols imposed on the United States. The primary purpose of it is to destroy our economy. The “science” that supposedly undergirds AGW has been called by Vladimir Putin as “junk science.” So, if the world’s most power Communist thinks it’s a hoax, and Putin is a very smart man, then what do you suppose it is?
Maurice Strong is the younger cousin of Anna Strong, the Communist who died in China in 1970. Maurice Strong is an avowed socialist who has stated that his highest purpose in his life is to lay the United States low. Words from a man from Canada who would not run for office in Canada because he had contempt for the voters.
We are seeing a global oligarchy emerging.
the problem, neo…is that it doesn’t sum it up…this is merely another partisan opinion that you site… one really knows what is going to happen..i can’t help the impression on occasionally reading here…well, i read a lot of sites…is that you and your interlocutors would rather the economy crash to make your partisan political point, then that some measure of success be achieved by the basically well-meaning efforts of the present administration…just as i believe the previous administration was basically well-meaning…but here is all cynicism and derision and emotion…you once bemoaned the decline of civility in the public square, but you are always throwing things in the fire here..on left-leaning sites the opinion is that all the main-stream media does is repeat Republican talking-points, a la george stepenopoulos…someone here quoted yeats the other day…and, yes..the center must indeed hold, or we torn apart
Obama has spent most of his adult life sticking it to “the man” and resenting the system. He hasn’t figured out yet that now he is the man and that talking down the economy is doing himself in. Unfortunately, he is taking us with him.
md:
We are not destroying the economy. The Communist “Democrats” are doing that.
George Stephanapolos is not a Republican. He is a lifelong Democrat and was in the Clinton Administration.
Are you on drugs?
I would like to personally assure md that I would not like the economy to crash to prove my talking points.
I commented recently, here or somewhere else, that I was a depression baby and WWII youth. I have been poor. My take on being poor (within reason) is that it is fine when you are young–especially if everyone you know is in the same boat. There is nothing good about being poor as you get older.
Here is what I would like md. I would like for Obama to see the burning bush and convert from being a central control, autocratic, borderline despot to become a free-market, federalist who actually believes in, and abides by our Consititution.
I don’t feel at all lonely on this site.
“… on left-leaning sites the opinion is that all the main-stream media does is repeat Republican talking-points…” and “…someone here quoted yeats the other day…”, and finally, “the center must indeed hold, or we torn apart”?
Try this easier “talking point”, md, since you’re too shallow to make the intellectual leap with Yeats, or understand the implications of a graph illustrating the world stock market reaction since Zero locked up the vote…
NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!
Yeah, I did a double take on “md” when he implied that Stephanopoulos is a Republican. When you make that kind of location, it means that this “md” is more at home at DailyKos than here. Which I would urge him to do. But, I’ve finally had enough experience here in the blog world to understand that the Lefty trolls are not at all remotely like us. We conservatives might go on over to the Lefty blogs and read, but rarely will we comment. It isn’t worth our while, and our comments would be removed anyway. But the Lefty trolls DO drop in on the conservative sites and they take their dumps there. Best to just step around them, like one out for a walk avoiding what a dog left in the middle of the sidewalk.
md mentions the center which “must indeed hold, or we are torn apart”.
I would suggest that the “center” can best be defined by references to The Declaration of independence and the U.S. Constitution, with other documents fleshing it out. What pulls us from the center are the desires of some to override the individual and collective liberties presented in those documents, and replace them with “thou shalts” having governmental force.
The centrifugal efforts differ somewhat between those on the far ‘right’ and on the ‘left’, with those embodied in the latest spending bill, calls for ‘fairness’ on the radio, laws against ‘hate’ speech, federal restrictions on automobiles, the No Child Left Behind act, Medicare prescription extensions, and the like, exemplifying what by far is the current greatest problem. Upon reflection, I think it fair to say that the locus of the center (as defined above) is generally labeled as being on the ‘right’ in politics at the present time.
I tend to agree with oldflyer that Mr. Obama is as much autocrat as socialist. Historically, the two are often joined. (Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mugabwe, and Pol Pot are some extreme examples of this sort of malevolent socialist-autocrat connection.)
And, like oldflyer, I would be very pleased should Mr. Obama convert from what appears to be his present belief system.
You can’t impose caps/taxes on carbon without visibly increasing utility costs, gasoline prices, and general prices (measured inflation) for every consumer in America. This crew is daft enough to try anything, but I have to think that besides being counter-productive to the main economic goals of stimulus, it is another form of electoral suicide.
Even I know that the recession was predicted early on by some AND TO LAST FOR YEARS (much less Obama being mentioned at all)
see here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfascZSTU4o
I could probably come up with correlations between Neocon posts and the economy too if I wanted to and draw you a nice graph.
There is a curious anti-cyclical opposition to climate CHANGE and economic CHANGE by our governing class, whose dear leader was elected for CHANGE (conveniently without specifics) as if cycles can be made not to exist. As Schiff reasons in the youtube link thoughtfully posted above, a recession with a return to personal saving is not ipso facto bad.
“I could probably come up with correlations between Neocon posts and the economy too if I wanted to and draw you a nice graph.”?
Please extrapolate Logern, sorry, I don’t understand how this is relevant…
IBD Article:
“- A 1,000-plus page stimulus bill is bulled through Congress with no GOP input and not a single member of Congress reading it before passage. It borders on censorship.”
It doesn’t “border on censorship”, it’s virtually unchecked one-party rule identical in style and result to traditional communist party dictate practiced in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc. No GOP input, for 48% of the voters? Not a single member of Congress read it? We have just been “had” by our very own “Gang of Four” plus…
“In Chinese history, the chief members of the radical faction that played a key role in directing the Cultural Revolution and tried to seize power after the death of the communist leader Mao Zedong in 1976.” – Tiscali
NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!
From the Washington Post:
“President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on businesses and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said.”
More Bait and Switch?
Perfected,
Have a look at the Great Leap Forward
(1958-63) in China. These fire-breathing Jacobins
were so sure that utopia was just ahead they
absolutely wrecked China, resulting in the famines
of the mid 1960’s. Still don’t know how many died,
30-40 million. By the way, they were still following
the agricultural methods of Trofim Lysenko at that
time. They smelted down every good piece of steel
to pig iron in backyard smelters. I guess they had
good intentions…..
I remember back in my college days (I majored in economics) there was the debate between the Keynesians and those who believed in the Laffer Curve. Laffer got the last laugh on that one. But the new American Social Democrats are reviving Keynes and rejecting Laffer. It will only result in lower economic growth and loss of revenue to the government.
I don’t get it. We have a republican in the White House for the last eight years, we have a republican congress for 12 of the last 14 years, and now ALL our problems come down to investors running scared because of a new so-called liberal/leftist president and so-called liberal/leftist congress? The policies of the last decade have nothing to do with our problems? I just can’t buy it.
kungfu, do you have an actual argument? IBD has a long list of arguments about what is happening now, and why investors have good reason to fear that we aren’t near the bottom. If it’s all wrong, please connect the dots between the “policies of the last decade” and your assessment of the problem now.
Oblio,
Yes, I wish “kungfu” would kindly show us how steepening the progression of the federal income tax, hiking the capital gains tax, and raising corporate taxes are going to result in more investment, job creation, and revenues to the treasury. Plus, investors fear what (not your favorite topic, but I happen to think it will be done anyway despite the recession) the cap and trade system will do to our economy.
You have Maurice Strong sitting there in Beijing with his fellow Communists wearing the Cheshire Cat smile, because, as Strong has stated, by 2012 everything will be in place for complete global government and that the Kyoto Protocols (which he is the author of) will be put in place. He and Soros have been working hard to get Obonga elected, mainly by leveraging their money in just the right places to influence voter perceptions.
Obonga’s second term is DOA. I am convinced of it. But he and the Democrats can and will do a lot of damage during the next four years. Some of it we can reverse. Perhaps some of it we cannot. But clearly at stake is the survival of our country as it was founded.
Fred, you would have to get the Democratic congressmen into a moral panic before they would take steps that could only result in a lot of them losing their seats. Right now, the panic is all about the economy. Worrying about CO2 is a luxury good for people who are feeling rich. So my forecast is for lots of talk, no action.
I hear that EPA is working on rules to regulate CO2 emissions as a pollutant. I think that would get litigated to the Supreme Court. It is an awful thing to contemplate, and as I say, some of this crew are daft enough for anything.
Oblio,
Right now Obonga is trying to set it all up by waving around the ephemeral elixir of “green jobs” coming to revive the economy. It’s all a hoax and will destroy jobs and our economy, but to a chamber full of rent-seeking lawyers who never ran a company or made a payroll in their lives they’ll lap it up. I swear to God, lawyers are some of the best educated and most ignorant f***ers in the country. Pelosi has most of them by the family jewels, since a lot of their fundraising comes in on Obonga’s networks. If they no support his agenda, they get no funding for re-election. Some will fight it; most will not. My Congress woman is a dumb bimbo named Carol Shea Porter who never deviates from the Party. Our new female senator, Jeanne Shaheen, is a mediocre mind and party hack who also has not an original thought in her skull.
Fred, do you think bank nationalization is inevitable? If so, how far would it extend?
Bank nationalization undermines the Fed. I can also envision a legal battle going on for years about this. Moreover, I think the Fed would be opposed to it, since nationalization of the banking system politicizes the currency in ways far beyond what we are seeing now, if you can believe it.
Bernanke seems to think that temporary control of certain banks until they get out of trouble would be what happens. I just don’t know.
I still think suspending the mark-to-market rule for awhile would have been the right thing to do. And then set it up at less frequent intervals after that. In addition, I would tighten the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac standards too, but fat chance of that happening under the current regime.
I’m still scratching my head over how 5% to 7% of sub prime mortgages are the cause of all this. I just think what really happened was the bubble in California burst in 2006, then spread throughout the West in 2007, and moved East from there. While this was happening, the oil price run up was what really kicked it all into gear.
I think it’s a good thing for inflated housing prices to come down to earth. Not good for people who bought at the peak of the market with no money down and escalating rates, but why should we pay for their dumb decisions? There has to be a better way to help poor and working class people in a better position to be owners some day. We need to find ways to encourage the building of more affordable rental housing. My wife and I married in 1988 and we rented until 1999, saving up for our down payment while having two kids in tow. This is how it should be done. I am in favor of using all means to increase the supply of rental housing to keep the costs of it down, that way people can save – if they decide to – for that down payment on a home. I am against the government just pushing the money at them to get a house, especially at the peak of the market.
There are just so many smarter things to do, yet so little imagination or will to get it done.
Yes, we have talked about MTM before. And I think we will be paying for the banks’ dumb decisions. I am less sanguine than you about the impact of a broad general decline in house values.
I could be wrong.
kungfu,
If you look at economic growth, the US did very well during the majority of those years you cited, in spite of 2 wars, a massive terrorist attack, and inheriting a recession from Bill when Bush took office.
On the other hand, if you chart statements of The One and his administration with the stock market, you’ll find a depressing correspondence between stock market freefalls and when Obanga and his ilk open their mouths.
While you are correct in noting that the past should be considered relative to current circumstances, it’s also true that the current administration should be judged and compared to how well the previous administration performed under far more dire circumstances – and at the moment they are not comparing well with Bush.
If the Obongas really wanted to let the economy start rolling again, they’d just shut up for 6 months and do nothing.