Jobs numbers pretty much fooled everyone on the econ side, but not anyone on the political side.
The American jobs engine hit stall speed in May, with the economy adding just 69,000 new jobs while the unemployment rate climbed to 8.2 percent.
As another summertime swoon looms, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that job creation missed economist estimates for 158,000 new positions and the jobless rate rose for the first time in nearly a year.
Labor force participation remains near 30-year lows though incrementally better than last month, rising to 63.8 percent.
The unemployment rate that counts discouraged workers rose as well, swelling to 14.8 percent form 14.5 percent in April.
Long-term unemployment also took a sharp upturn, with the number of those out of work for 27 weeks or more jumping from 5.1 million to 5.4 million. The average duration of unemployment moved from 39.1 weeks to 39.7 weeks.
“It’s painfully obvious the economic recovery in the U.S. isn’t just slowing down, it’s pulling up the emergency brake. And, lack of job creation isn’t the only critical concern. Wages/Income is sharply lower,” said Todd Schoenberger, managing principal The BlackBay Group in New York.
Your headline: “GOP Plan To Throttle Economy Ahead Of Crucial Elections Proceeding Apace.”
Open thread.
[UPDATE] Yeah, pretty much every gorram thing Chuck Pierce says on this.He cannot win re-election on the merits if he’s mixing pale middle-class nostrums with deficit-hawk snake oil. The nation is in crisis now. It’s not in as deep a crisis as it was when he came into office, when we were shedding 800,000 jobs a month, but the unemployment level we have now is not sustainable in a viable political democracy. The media will be no help. This morning, as the crows came to sit upon the Capitol, I heard one commentator after another talk about how the jobs figures were depressed because the corporate class in this country was “concerned” about, or “uncertain of,” the situation in Europe. This is all my balls. They’re still hiring people in Malaysia, and in China, and everywhere else that people will work for 40 cents a day and no bathroom breaks. They’re not thinking about Greece when they do that. They’re not hiring people in this country because, frankly, and I know their tender fee-fees will be injured by this, the average American corporate CEO has the same relationship to patriotism as John Edwards had to his marriage vows. But he cannot run on any of this, either, not credibly, anyway. He lost that opportunity a couple of years ago. This morning, it’s hard to see a way forward for him on this, except to argue that the ditch was deeper than he thought it was, which is, let’s face it, an argument for dullards.
Butch
Go read Pierce. His reaction is better than anything I can put into words.
c u n d gulag
I can hear the R’s cheering, screaming, crying, slapping each others backs, and wetting and shitting their pants, with joy at this news.
“Hooray for our side!”
Party over Country!
PARTY UBER ALLES!
Hunter Gathers
Ecomony neadz moar tax cutz
Mike Goetz
This is a gut bomb of huge proportions. Obama and team are going to have to bring A-game every single day between now and November to pull this out. This is serious as a heart attack now and a fight for political life.
c u n d gulag
@Hunter Gathers:
2 manee Libtard regoolatshions, alzo 2!
Comrade Jake
Let’s just hope this trend reverses in a couple of months. Otherwise we’re probably looking at President Romney.
Man that’s painful to even type.
Stuck in the Funhouse
I have been harsh on former Hillary Clinton supporters, for the sour grapes that at least some of them have clung to since the 08 primaries. And none more so than Taylor Marsh, as one of the worst in that mold.
But when folks begin to show some team spirit for our side against the insane republicans, I will note it with praise, in the returned spirit of
magnaminitymanglminityMagnanimity . And this morn Taylor has mellowed some my pain at the new job numbers. Putting out some valuable info, or something I was already aware of, but forgot in a gathering gloom.Though with solemn respect for the badness of the job report for those unemployed, especially the long term unemployed, on the electoral politics front, things ain’t as bad as they seem. Take it away Taylor.
and from Mr. White
“Most of the swing states by the third quarter of this year will have a lower unemployment rate than the national average,” said Xu Cheng, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics who compiled the latest state-by-state economic data and updated Moody’s voting model for POLITICO. “And most of the battlegrounds will be below 8 percent unemployment, which will negate the ‘grumpy voter effect.’” Cheng was referring to data suggesting voters will discount by half any improvement in joblessness if the national rate remains above 8.
The Moody’s model, which accounts for unemployment, historical voting patterns, per capita income and other factors, currently predicts Obama will win at least 26 states and 303 electoral votes. The model is one of the few to forecast voting patterns based on economic statistics and other data. In 2008, it came within 25 votes of Obama’s margin in the Electoral College. Of course, a lot can change between now
This is true, in the electoral college world we live in for electing presidents. Thanks Ms Marsh for reminding me of this little factoid.
Hill Dweller
@Mike Goetz: The 2010 elections will go down in history as one of dumbest mistakes this country has ever made. If Obama loses in November, which looks much more likely today, it will largely be the result of America deciding to put a bunch of imbeciles in office at both the congressional and state level.
It’s hard to overstate how stupid this country has become.
Amir Khalid
@Butch:
Apart from the bit about Malaysians being willing to work for 40 cents a day, which I took some exception to. Yes, I know Pierce is just being rhetorical; but his 40 American cents a day, or about 30 Malaysian ringgit a month, wouldn’t even pay your bus fare to and from the factory. Even if your factory otherwise passed muster with the Human Resources Ministry, there’s no way you could hire a Malaysian worker for that little.
Villago Delenda Est
There is a major problem with going full Krugman.
You’ve got cretinous sacks of rancid dogshit gumming up the works in the House. Pretty much on purpose. The vermin of the Village refuse to report on that.
So, what you need to do is deploy two battalions of airborne troops in DC, one with the specific mission of hunting and destroying the teatard caucus and all their staffers, the other with the mission of cleansing K street of corporate lobbyists.
Then you need to deploy SEAL teams at all major media outlets to take out those nests of assholes.
I recommend New Orleans Saints style bounties on major media figures. New Porsche if you take out BoBo, for example. Have to turn the head in to get it.
Chris
@Hill Dweller:
Depressingly true.
We made a similar mistake in 1946, but Truman was able to mostly hold the line. One can only hope that Obama will be able to as well.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
second stimulus, oh and put a permanent end to the debt ceiling hostage crisis on it.
the only person in public life not admitting they fucked up is dick cheney, don’t be a dick.
chopper
zing!
Scott de B.
Untrue. The Chinese and Indian economies are starting to stall out.
Handy
Impossible to go “full Krugman” unless Obama has the support and votes in congress.
flukebucket
Don’t you have to have yes votes from 435 house members and 100 senators to do that nowadays?
Chris
The words “conservative” and “patriotism” used in conjunction always bring to mind Solomon’s Judgment for me, personally. Republicans “love” their country in the same sense that the woman who demanded that “her” baby be cut in half rather than given to someone else, “loved” the baby. If they can’t have it all, then nobody will. Property rights > human life, doncha know.
SatanicPanic
Pierce is starting to remind me of Digby downer
askew
Sigh, I was with you until that moronic update. We all know that there is nothing Obama can do to get a jobs bill or stimulus bill passed. Obama spent months campaigning for his jobs bill and it didn’t go anywhere. The media reported it as Obama’s failure and the Republicans were pumped up because they stopped Obama.
There is truly nothing to do at this point but watch the economy crater.
jonas
What’s really killing us is the contraction of the public sector workforce, particularly at the state and local level. If Obama could add to the federal workforce at the same rate G.W. Bush did, we’d have 1 million more people working and 7% unemployment.
Apparently, the solution to all this is more belt-tightening.
RP
What does this mean in practical terms?
And, no, the nation is not in crisis. Take a deep breath.
Mike Goetz
@Hill Dweller:
The question is how to respond? Just the normal clutch-and-grab campaign is not going to get the job done. The media are going to shovel shit on Obama every day all summer long; Romney will use the term “failure” 500 times a day every day. Ponce Democrats will be concern trolling Obama and off message at every turn.
Obama has to reassert himself now and take control of the room. Go over and around the media, directly to the people, and say “Here is how we are going to get out of this, and I am going to walk over anybody who tries to get in the way. Join me.” It’s the only way forward I see.
Egg Berry
Basically what @Handy and @flukebucket said. Obama was calling for a second stimulus a few months (?) ago. Unless I missed a house vote somewhere, the problem is not in the White House. Unless you mean something else by “Full Krugman,” like write shrill columns and blog posts for a major national newspaper.
gene108
Why?
Even issues that have 70% general support – like raising taxes on the rich – Republicans can obstruct passage of the popular will with impunity.
We get what we deserve.
Mike R.
I think Obama needs to start flashing pictures of boehner and mcconnell to the American people 24/7 and label them as public enemy #1 and #2 (the order is irrelevant). They have effectively destroyed America, if that’s not enough to get Democrats to nut-up then they deserve whatever fate November holds for them.
Suffern ACE
@Amir Khalid: Yep. Also, too, the jobs that they’re hiring in Malaysia and China aren’t necessarily jobs that are coming from the US at this point. If we’re importing pet food from China, I think pretty much every type of manufacturing production that can be transported overseas has been.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SatanicPanic: Pierce has always had his fire bagger streak. As Steve Benen points out, Obama “nutted up” and went “full Krugman” last September. I could be wrong, ’cause I’m tired and cranky, but did Democrats like Ed Rendell and Cory Booker rally to the American Jobs Act the way they did to defend Bain?
yopd1
In related news, Romney is still taking credit for the auto industry recovery.
Stuck in the Funhouse
Sometimes snark is wrapped up in all sorts of packages, with nary a tell to be found.
Davis X. Machina
@SatanicPanic: They’ll both tell you the Democrats nominated the wrong guy. They’re just fractionally less dickish about it than, say, Avedon Carol.
chopper
@jonas:
this. a nice big chunk of the unemployment rate is due to public sector layoffs. state level austerity has really paid off for the GOP.
RP
I also think Pierce is crazy if he thinks this has nothing to do with Europe.
Hill Dweller
@jonas: As I was saying in the previous thread, public sector employment rose in the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush administrations during their first 3+ years in office. If the public sector jobs numbers had stayed the same as when Obama came into office, never mind growing, we’d be near 7% unemployment rate, with much better job numbers.
gene108
@jonas:
Sad thing is, if Republicans get control of government, they’re going to expand the Federal government like they did under Bush, Jr. and unemployment will start dropping as more and more people get hired by the government.
All the while they’ll be saying its because of their massive tax cuts and lack of oversight of businesses that has left the private sector free from the tyranny of mean old Democrats.
Brachiator
I don’t know. In 2008, the country was smart enough to vote for Obama even though Grampa McCain kept insisting that only he knew how to win wars, without offering a single idea of how to deal with Iraq or Afghanistan.
Mittbot is offering the same con with his empty boast that he knows how to create jobs.
As a wise man once said, “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, uh, uh, well, I won’t get fooled again.”
Chris
@Hill Dweller:
On second thought, maybe that’s not quite fair. Europeans by and large seem perfectly capable of seeing this austerian shit for what it is: so far that hasn’t done them much good in terms of getting a government that’ll actually stand up to it. The elites have drunk the kool aid far and wide, and they don’t care what the people think (as gene points out, even in this country raising taxes on the rich has very broad public support).
Stuck in the Funhouse
We may need to bail out Europe first, then pistol whip some sassy oil speculators, to float this leaky boat
PeakVT
@Amir Khalid: Most Americans (by which I mean 98%) don’t realize that Malaysia is a middle-income country now. Why couldn’t you guys stay poor so we don’t have to bother our beautiful American minds with new facts? (j/k!)
gaz
@jonas:
Buh, buh Obama has cut government spending unlike Bush! So it must be a good thing! – Bob Cesca and the usual suspects.
Fuckin’ hell.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Zandar, how exactly would you go “full Krugman?”
Rob in DC
This report actually wasn’t that bad, a lot of the drop was in adjustments. http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=206711.
Our economy is in the crapper of course, and has been for decades but it’s way too late for Obama to do anything about it now. The time for action on this front was in January 2009, and we all know how that turned out.
Eurozone problems actually are going to factor heavily in how this summer plays out, although Pierce is right that hiring will continue in countries with slave wages. But hiring might rise decently in America too if Europe manages to stabilize. It almost certainly won’t, but Obama should be praying for the relatively slow deterioration going on now, instead of a full on conflagration in the PIIGS.
This report is bad news for Obama from an optics front, but overall its not a fundamentally bad report, whereas the one in January looked great but was actually crap. I expect June to be better, barring catastrophe in Europe. So don’t worry Obamanauts!
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@Handy:
well, that’s true, but if you make jobs, and the credit worthiness of the us debt a campaign issue as per the debt ceiling hostage crisis, and you force congress to vote on it, in an election year, you might finally find the gop votes who aren’t willing to die on tea party hill.
Hill Dweller
@Brachiator:
They gave Obama less than two years to solve the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He obviously couldn’t solve it, so the country went full on teahadist.
The 2010 election will prove devastating, especially if the Republicans take control of the federal government next year.
SatanicPanic
@Davis X. Machina: Part of it is probably generational. They just don’t get Obama
Allan
Today we learned that the economy has added private sector jobs for 27 straight months, for a total of 4.3 million payroll jobs over that period.
Oh noez, everyone panic!
Can we haz better media?
Cacti
@Scott de B.:
Yup.
China and India need prosperity in Yurp and US of A for their own economic models to function well.
LanceThruster
Release the KRUGMAN!
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Mike Goetz:
That’s what he needs to do, true, but I don’t know how well he can do it. It just isn’t in him to be outwardly aggressive that way, I think. He doesn’t have the personality. I think he really does like to work with people rather than fight them. I’m sure he knows he can’t work with Republicans, and that he’ll have to get kind of nasty, but that doesn’t mean he’ll feel at ease doing it.
I wonder if it might be best for him to keep on doing what he has been doing, to try to work with them, to come off as the reasonable one, while the Republicans show themselves over and over to be demonic six year olds. He has, in Biden, somebody who is good at slapping the Republicans around rhetorically; I think he should let Biden go nuts all over the place, which s what he seems to be doing so far.
SatanicPanic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t remember them doing that. I would be surprised if they had.
Blue Neponset
It is too late to go full Krugman. The Overton window has shifted so far to the right that it will take a decade or two to swing it back. Obama and the Congressional Democrats had a chance to get this country talking about public investment but they blew it by talking about deficits.
The real tragedy is, I don’t think anyone who could have won the Presidency in 2008 would have done better than Obama did. We lost on the ‘government spending is good’ argument back when Reagan was in office. At this point I think the whole party has to retool our message and concentrate on getting some good people in place for a 2020 Presidential run.
In the meantime we have to hope Captain compromise beats Romney in November and the Republican who wins in 2016 doesn’t do too much damage.
beltane
@Scott de B.: Thanks for bringing this up. I’ve read thing are getting pretty dire in China and there do not appear to be any true bright spots in the global economy. 2010 may turn out the be the election that later generations will see as having ended the United State’s reign as a superpower.
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, you’re somehow going to get that idiot Merkel woman, who is an abject slave to German banksters, on the same page? Or Cameron? Hollande you can get…he was elected because his predecessor was such an abject toady to Berlin. But the other two, forget it. They’re rabid austerians.
How naive are you Zandar? Come on.
Rhoda
The Obama team has to own the growth position and then repeat Romney/Bush Republican economic policies got us here and the Republican house put the breaks on the recovery by not enacting the jobs bill. He should pull that bill out and campaign on it again. Make it bigger and explain the global crisis we are in.
This is winnable. If an armchair quarterback like me can see this, I have no doubt team Obama will put together something better. This election has to be framed around solutions. We are back from the brink, here is how to go forward.
cat48
I think Obama can eke out a win if he wins the Kerry States. I’ve been keeping track of monthly u/e rates in the states on my Electoral Map. The auto bailout saved the Midwest. U/E in MI has dropped from 14% in 2009 to 8.4% now. Ohio went up to 10% & is around 7.4%. So I can see a win if that message was taken to individual states. Several like that.
He’s going to give a speech soon & he should demand the jobs bill he req abt a year ago be passed and/or if the gop shits still are holding onto the HwyBill as they were last month, he should excoriate them. The Senate passed a 2yr bipartisan Hwy Bill in abt Jan & the House has been fucking around with it since. Extending 1 month at a time so no new projects.
The Dangerman
Welcome to the Jobs Market, Class of 2012.
The Austerians will rule the day after November even if Obama wins…
…and we will rue the days after that happens.
Mike Goetz
There are silver linings to be had. The world economic slowdown has fragged oil prices pretty good this month. Gas prices are receding at a nice clip. That’s an immediate, tangible plus to offset the sort of existential foreboding that a bad jobs report gives rise to.
If Obama can take this punch and stay on his feet, not be seen as a hostage to fortune, but as a counterpuncher in his own right, he could be ok. But he can’t be passive.
TK421
Under a law passed in 1996, the President can create as much money as he wants (via the US Mint) and spend it any way he chooses, and Congress can do nothing to stop him.
http://www.correntewire.com/coin_seigniorage_a_legal_alternative_and_maybe_the_presidents_duty
President Obama could create a federal program to hire as many unemployed people as he wants to today.
Mnemosyne
@Blue Neponset:
I don’t remember any deficit talk prior to the disaster of the 2010 midterms. You know, the ones that brought us a large Republican majority in the House?
I’m not really sure how you thought Obama was going to force Boehner to pass Obama’s priorities through the House when Boehner can’t get his own caucus behind him, but maybe you can explain what the magic strategy to get teabaggers to vote for Obama’s policy should have been.
Cacti
@beltane:
I say 2004 and 2010. The last 4 years of the Bush Administration gave our economic demise so much forward momentum, Obama had to spend the first 2 years of his presidency just pulling it back from the precipice. 2010 was the final nudge that sent it off into the abyss.
Redshift
Sorry, but Pierce is full of crap on this one. One bad monthly report does not negate everything else. People don’t vote based on the monthly jobs report or the unemployment rate, they vote based on their experience of the economy and the direction they think it’s heading (for the portion of the decision that is based on the economy, that is, which contrary to the words of the pundits is not 100%.)
If this continues until November, then it will be bad. If it doesn’t, it will be good. But screaming that we’re in a crisis and this month’s report means something must be done now now now to save the election is just as meaningless as all the other horse race twaddle.
There probably isn’t enough time to do anything to affect the economy before November, and there definitely isn’t time to do anything with an intransigent Congress that wants the economy to fail. Calling for a “full Krugman” is just another demand for the bully pulpit, which is even more useless on the economy than on politics. People definitely don’t vote based on what the president is saying about the economy.
beltane
@Villago Delenda Est: Merkel is the main problem here. Instead of a nimble and adaptable leader, she is a rigid moralizer who will not alter course even if it means steering Europe and the rest of the world right into an iceberg. I used to think the Europeans were smarter than us, now I realize they are just as stupid but in different ways.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Mike Goetz:
The fundamental problem with this, and triple in the heat of an election about the economy, is that selling the solution, that we need the government to spend more to fix it, is completely counterintuitive to already low info voters. That cannot help conflating their personal economic situation with the economy at large. They just can’t get their heads around the notion that spending more is the solution , when their instinct is to personally spend less in hard econ times. And I don’t think any amount of bully pulpitting will change that thinking in voters. Unless we required every citizen to take a course in macro economics, and there just isn’t time for that to make a diff in November.
Chad
People wondered why a lot of black folks thought riots were the only way to get America’s attention in the early 90’s. Not saying they were correct but when you’re disillusioned and the only answer you get is platitudes it’s easy to see why thinking a collective slap to the face is the only way to break through.
LanceThruster
@Blue Neponset: Thank you for this reference as I had never heard of it before (I don’t get out much)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Zandar
@Villago Delenda Est:
So we do nothing, Obama takes the fall for this shit and Romney wins?
Fuck that. I refuse to go out that way because if that happens we’re done. Gone. Toast.
SatanicPanic
@Redshift: THIS. And I would add the prez elections are largely a popularity contest and Mitt Romney is at best tolerated by even his most ardent supporters.
Alex S.
I think that the structural advantage of the Obama campaign (incumbent, trajectory of the economy, swing state polls) is gone now. It’s a real race.
Blue Neponset
@Mnemosyne:
You don’t remember all those idiot tea baggers protesting in April 2009 about how they are ‘taxed enough already’ and the government is too damn big?
PeakVT
@LanceThruster: Krgthulu was released on the Brits, though probably without much effect.
LanceThruster
@Zandar: Yeah, it’s goddamn scary when you think that f#cking up the Supreme Court is the *least* of the disasters we’d have to worry about with Preznit Mittens.
gaz
@Stuck in the Funhouse: I’m not saying this is a solution to the problem, in which I happen to agree with you, but it’s probably not a great idea to use the phrase “spending is the solution” – it’s more accurate and easier to sell the phrase “investing is the solution”.
Brachiator
@Hill Dweller:
Opposition to Obama and the Democrats began as soon as he won the nomination. And the country did not go full on teahadist. The Tea Party People organized and took advantage of the opportunity.
Things will be shitty even if Obama wins and the Republicans maintain control and an obstructionist core of the Congress.
The battle is on. If the American people believe that things will get better by returning to office the people who screwed them over the first time around, then the Republicans will have earned their pyhrric victory.
Mike Goetz
@cat48:
Kerry states plus Virginia would do it for him. All he needs really is one of the swing states. Romney isn’t even competing in Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin, so if he can firewall around those and just play in the swing states, he can win.
SFAW
Yeah, I remember how Obama’s rallying cry of “5% unemployment by 2010” was killed when the Rethugs forced him into pushing healthcare reform over everything else. If ONLY they had LET him launch a full-court press for Jobs-Jobs-Jobs, the big meanies.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Alex S.:
Why would you say this, when the good polls for Obama from swing states is based on those states having better job and econ conditions than the rest of the country?
SteveinSC
@flukebucket: @askew: @Egg Berry: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Belafon (formerly anonevent): Oh, yes the Obots and their exquisite issues and items and concerns. The difficulties began in 2009 with Obama with that Bipartisan bullshit and deals with the drug industry and ignoring Krugman. Like I (Cassandra) have said on this blog before: Obama acted a whole lot like and acts a lot like Harold Ford II. He should start by shit-canning that asshole Axelsnot. Fucking pansy.
The Red Pen
First of all, the word stimulus must always be preceded with the word “failed,” as in, “Can you believe Obama wants to have another failed stimulus on top of the previous failed stimulus?! It’s the failed stimulus that ruined the economy in the first place!”
I think Obama’s political advisers are well aware that this framing will take root.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@gaz: further complicated by the fact that a lot of the low-information voters we’re talking about–swingers, indies– think of themselves as high information voters, indeed insightful sophisticates. They watch Meet The Press and read Thomas Friedman and they agree with Ed Rendell, they may be Democrats/liberals, but it’s time to make those tough choices!
Rhoda
@The Dangerman: No. Republicans will spend like the biggest, baddest, Keynesian motherfuckers if Romney wins and Democrats will not commit the economic treason Republicans did in ’09 to present.
SFAW
Ah, yes, I remember Obama saying something like “I welcome their hatred” and pushing ahead anyway.
He apparently thought politics actually IS beanbag.
LanceThruster
@PeakVT: Thanks for a great link.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@TK421: Nice link to one of the most economically illiterate people I’ve ever read.
He doesn’t understand why such a move would be a problem? Well, shit howdy, if he can’t understand why it would be a problem it just couldn’t possibly be one, amirite?
Wow. Not sure who’s dumber, him or you, but as my momma always used to say, “it’s not a contest.”
Barry
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): (re – Obama being aggressive)
“That’s what he needs to do, true, but I don’t know how well he can do it. It just isn’t in him to be outwardly aggressive that way, I think. He doesn’t have the personality. I think he really does like to work with people rather than fight them. I’m sure he knows he can’t work with Republicans, and that he’ll have to get kind of nasty, but that doesn’t mean he’ll feel at ease doing it.”
If he wants to win………………………..
gene108
@Hill Dweller:
If Republicans get full control of government look for Federal hiring to ramp up and for money to flow to state and local government to rehire the folks they laid off.
Fine some poor folks will be starving because the social safety net will be gone, but for most folks things would seem better because unemployment is down because of all the government hiring.
Cacti
Imagine for a moment that the Repubs sweep the election:
Ryan budget passed in its entirety – Senate filibuster you say? They’ll get rid of that shit.
Deep, painful cuts in education, housing, food stamps, medicare, medicaid, etc. Social safety net eviscerated.
Huge tax cuts for the rich, while our roads, highways, and bridges continue to crumble.
Every positive change to health insurance from PPACA, gone in a week.
Hikes in military spending for our next glorious war for make liberation of teh ebil Iran. Possible return of the draft.
Death watch for Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Retirements of Scalia and Kennedy and their replacements with two more 50-something right wing activists.
Throw in the towel in June, and all of this will surely come to pass.
El Tiburon
Nut the fuck up and go the full Krugman.
Hahahaha that’s some funny fucking shit.
It’s time to meet the Republicans half-way and extend the Bush tax cuts while being responsible on Social Security benefits – cut them NOW!
This is really the only way. At least the only way Obama knows.
Oh, he’ll go full-metal jacket on your ass – if that ass is a hippy liberal.
So STFU.
Brachiator
@Chad:
There had been rioting or demonstrations in Spain, France, the UK and Greece over austerity measures, but the real breakthroughs have come at the ballot box.
Same as it ever was.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brachiator:
including from other <a href=”http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_12/016045.php”>Democrats.
The complication is apparently set to expand. Roll Call reported last night that Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) intends to form a group of “moderate” Democratic senators based “loosely on the House Blue Dog Coalition. “
that’s from December 13, 2008
Mike Goetz
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
All too true. I just think Obama needs to have an aspirational, yet concrete, plan that he can stake his claim on and rally people around. And then fight for it, not in Congress, but in the public forum. Just so he’s not floating in the current without a paddle.
Hill Dweller
@SFAW: The stimulus, despite its flaws, was still the largest piece of counter-cyclical legislation in history.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
Can’t we print some cash for clunkers again?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Zandar: Carter took the fall for Nixon’s inflationary policy. Bush I took the fall for Reagan’s deficit. Why do you think the Republicans ran McCain in 2008? They could have run someone who would have had a much better chance of winning. They didn’t. This is why.
Alex S.
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
This jobs report is not yet represented in the polls. I can imagine that some swing states are going to credit their jobs numbers to republican governors instead of the national government (Wisconsin, North Carolina).
Villago Delenda Est
@Zandar:
Look, the make noise domestically stuff needs to be done.
But you’re never going to get that idiot Merkel woman on board. The only hope is Hollande, and the German electorate, which is beginning to realize that the CDU is led by a concubine to banksters.
Hillary is not going to be that much help. The Europeans are even more under bankster control than we are.
The Dangerman
@Rhoda:
Not gonna happen. The Republicans will be all about tax cuts and gutting entitlements, not jobs.
The future can be seen in CA, land of the Golden Gate and 11% unemployment; no, Obama won’t lose CA (duh), but presently Prop 29 is being firebombed (and it will win, too) about taxing Californians and creating jobs elsewhere. Basically, the Austerians will create an economy where people will be told “be happy you have your shit job” while locking in the tax cuts for the 1%.
gaz
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, illusory superiority. As if watching Press The Meat or reading the Mustache of Understanding doesn’t make you measurably more ignorant. I know the people of which you speak. My step-father is one (bless his heart). He’s conceded to me on so many points, years after-the-fact, only to be swept up again and again in the same old hurricane of wrongness. I just got decidedly sick of trying to reason with the man. FTR, I don’t even like politics, but I fear for our country, and my future. In the end, I bought property in Mexico. It seems to be the only sane solution left – I’ve no illusions about that, it comes with it’s own share of problems, but I’d rather cash out and take my nest egg to the third world at this point. Fuck it.
Bruce S
Amen to Zandar!
I’ll assume that for assenting to a perspective I’ve long believed and expressed here, but in the context of agreeing with Zandar of all people, I won’t get called a “Firebagger!”
But you never know…
(I’ll also note that “full Krugman” is metaphorical, not literal IMHO. Obama is adept enough to manage the nuance and broadly-aimed messaging that isn’t part of Krugman’s Job Description as a columnist and non-politician.)
Mike Goetz
@Cacti:
No kidding. It really puts the fear of freaking god into you to see that list.
I really hope the Supremes uphold the ACA, just for some good news. I can’t take another body blow.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@gaz:
I’m all for the best framing words from our side, and I think Obama about always uses the more palatable “investing”. Me, I’m just another gasbag on the internet, using words I can spell moar better.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@jonas:
All Dubya did was contract out massively. Costs shitloads more, less service, far less cost-effective in about 80% of the Bushies outsourcing schemes.
All part of looting the Treasury.
And yes, I say that as a Federal gubmint employee.
Cacti
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This x1000
The problem with getting a bigger stimulus and passing PPACA wasn’t the Repubs. They were intrasigent from the start.
The problem was keeping the blue dogs from wandering off the reservation.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And then there are the high information voters who are not nearly as high information as they think they are. Maybe they’re just high.
@Rhoda:
There is not a chance in hell that the Republicans will do this. They didn’t under Bush/Cheney. They are not going to start if Romney is elected. Except, of course, for defense spending.
Zandar
@Villago Delenda Est: Alright.
I’ll give you the point on Merkel, she basically *is* the Head Austerian.
Chad
@Brachiator: I’d argue that the rioting led to voters changing horses at the ballot boxes but then this would all become an argument over interpretation. Looking at my original example though the riots in L.A. led directly to concerns about policing being addressed although the gains were very short-lived
Zagloba
Were you just not paying attention?
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/further-adventures-in-fake-deficit-hawkery/
Mark S.
@jonas:
As the article says, it’s not federal employment that’s killing us, it’s the states:
That is definitely a trend that needs to be reversed if we’re ever going to get out of this ditch.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Alex S.:
Possibly. And it could matter if those red state governors were on the POTUS ticket against Obama, instead of multiple choice Mitt. This is one month, and it is still a race between people, one an awful candidate, the other a proven POTUS winner. I’m not going to freak out, due to the fact I very much believe that presidents always get the blame or credit for economic conditions, even though they are limited to effect those conditions. And that most people grade the economy mostly from their local world and sphere of friends, family, and colleagues. At least those considered swing voters, and not ideologues. There will be few Fox News hounds to vote for O, no matter if it meant avoiding a collision with an asteroid fixing to destroy all life on planet earth as we have known it.
Alex S.
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s funny (or actually, sad) how the money class has always managed to keep a foot in the door even though the majority of people (including most academic economists, not the political ones)) firmly rejects the austerity paradigm. Obama won the election at a time of a possible paradigm shift, but because of the filibuster and two or three conservative democrats AND a republican party united behind economic sabotage the paradigm shift didn’t happen. Same in Europe, Merkel inherited Germany’s good economic shape from her predecssor who enacted social reforms in a time of economic growth and now she wants to enact the same policies in other countries in a time of economic depression. That course isn’t popular in Europe, not even in Germany where the Euro isn’t popular at all, but she keeps on doing it.
Blue Neponset
@Brachiator:
The R’s spent a hundreds of billions of dollars (if not a trillion) on two wars and medicare part d during Bush’s first term.
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: yep. I also remember bills passed to ease state budgets so that those layoffs wouldn’t undermine the recovery. I remember Republicans screaming about public worker bailouts, and voters in November 2010 being very receptive to that idea. We have the recovery that the voters said they wanted basically.
The Dangerman
@Mike Goetz:
I think the ACA will be upheld (the mandate is a fucking gift to Big Insurance), but I wonder if the flareup between the DOJ and Florida will lead to the Voting Rights Act going down.
Bruce S
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
This was referenced on one of the MSNBC shows last night – not sure which because I FF through a couple and they merge in my mind – but some show with a bigger platform than Marsh – and it’s a critical point. Not time for meltdowns among Obama people or investing energy in hand-wringing.
This state-based data can provide credible basis for broader message about the importance of stuff like the support for auto, etc. that is both “record” and a reconciliation of proposals to invest more at the federal level moving forward (despite the CW about “deficits” – which isn’t really CW as much as Beltway Chatter.)
jehrler
@Mike Goetz:
Wonder how much of this year’s spring slowdown is a result of belt tightening due to higher oil prices.
If a good bit of it was, then lower prices may help both the narrative (things are looking better, I still have money in my wallet after the fillup) and the reality.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Stuck in the Funhouse: I keep arguing on FB with an old classmate who has been in an out of unemployment, and his belief is that it’s debt that is ruining the economy, no matter what I show him or say.
Egg Berry
@PeakVT: I could swear Krugman was debating Paul Ryan and some Wall Street flunky on that BBC program. The talking points were exactly the same.
beltane
@The Dangerman: You are correct. The idea that Romney would transform himself into Daddy Warbucks once he won the presidency is some seriously delusional thinking. If I thought for a moment that the GOP was going to miraculously change their spots and follow Paul Krugman’s advice to win popularity, then I really wouldn’t mind seeing Romney elected. Unfortunately, in the real world, a GOP win will mean tax cuts for the rich, tax hikes and austerity for everyone else, further privatization of anything and everything, and a renewed emphasis on the extraction of what remains of the working and middle class’s wealth.
The parasites are not pumping billions into Romney’s campaign because they think he will enact a Keynesian stimulus plan, they are doing it because he is going to intentionally scuttle this country and send it to the salvage yard where the 1% will make damn sure not even the smallest scrap of metal is left behind for the 99%.
Pyro Joe
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
Thank You.
One bad jobs report does not make 2012 a lost cause. If the trend continues, I’ll be more worried. For now, I’ll just continue working with my local OFA branch and save the finger pointing, fretting over fascist take overs, and depression for if we actually lose.
askew
@TK421:
I am all for it except I worry that the Supreme Court would declare the law unconstitutional and give the GOP another argument against Obama. The House would definitely impeach him if he used the law.
Brachiator
@Zandar:
Agree somewhat on introducing legislation, including a stimulus bill to get attention.
Getting on the same page with the Europeans is tougher than you think. Hollande and Merkel ain’t anywhere near to being on the same page. Cameron is not even using a copy of the same book.
Executive order stuff. Going into the election, very risky, as it feeds the conservative fantasy of an authoritarian Obama not listening to Real Americans(tm).
The other big ass battle that is looming is the coming fight over the huge number of tax cuts and spending provisions that are expiring at the end of the year. The Republicans are pretty blatant about holding out for tax breaks “for everyone,” including millionaires. And the strange thing is that this is actually resonating with a significant number of voters.
Alex S.
@Alex S.:
I have to correct myself a little, North Carolina does not have a republican governor, but Gov. Perdue is rather unpopular, according to Publicpolicypolling, so the inclination to credit Democrats with economic growth might not be all that high, either.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@SteveinSC: If I remember correctly, Axelrod was not working for Obama during the period you describe.
cat48
@Alex S.:
Yep, only advantage he has now is ground game. Mitt opened his first office in PA last month on the same day OFA was opening the 29th office. So advantage now is infrastructure & pd employees on the ground. His payroll is $2M a month. Since everyone’s so polarized, best turnout wins on Nov 6.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Mike Goetz:
Agree, and he should also have a plan to draw a contrast between himself and Romney, down to even a personal level, to make the race a choice between two humans, or one human and a right wing lizardoid.
He should therefore, also too, commence to make a plan to grind Romney twitchy arse into fine grains or fertilizer, so Michelle can sprinkle it on her south lawn garden. And if that doesn’t get the job done, O may want to consider blasting himself off, and politically nuking Romney from orbit. Only way to be sure. :-)
Heliopause
If we pool our Ryancare vouchers maybe can get a discount on cigarettes and beer. I like to plan ahead.
Redshift
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Really? Then why did they run such horrible candidates this time around?
Generally, you have a much better chance in an open race than running against an incumbent. But I’d be fascinated to hear who could have had a much better chance than McCain in 2008.
The Dangerman
@beltane:
Yup; the Republicans have spent the better part of a generation telling everyone that taxes and deficit spending are the problems. It will be slash and fucking burn on an epic scale if Romney is elected.
Catsy
Get a load of this steaming pile of horseshit from CNN: Why Politicians Lie
Great subject, CNN. I’d love to see a serious treatment of the epidemic of shameless lying about critical issues that has plagued the nation for well over a decade now (at minimum).
So what does CNN decide to talk about?
Birthers.
John Edwards.
Anthony Weiner.
Are you fucking shitting me?
No, apparently not. There’s a nice little slideshow that accompanies the article. The ten examples contained therein?
Richard Nixon. Bill Clinton (D). Marion Berry (D). John Edwards (D). Anthony Weiner (D). Eric Massa (D). Rid Blagojevich (D). William Jefferson (D). Edwin Edwards (D). Kwame Kilpatrick (D).
Notice a pattern here?
Notice anything or anyone missing who might be relevant to the topic of lying to the country about important things? Like, perhaps a certain war in the Middle East? Or a current presidential candidate who can’t get past his breakfast menu without telling a whopper?
Wankers.
MikeBoyScout
Nut the fuck up and go the full Krugman
I love that!
Deliciously succinct.
Here’s the funny thing about the full Krugman (or full Stiglitz for that matter), it is based on science. What Dr. Krugman explains in layman’s terms is not some GD snake oil or new & improved! economic theory.
But, let’s get real. Kthug is not Very Serious, so the confidence fairies spurn him.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Sigh……..Christ.
Considering RL and online outside of save havens like this, I’m almost assuredly the only stalwart Dem left (either they’ve gone the full Romney or have decided ‘They’re all the same, so give the new guy a chance’ bullshit), I’m just about this close to just crawling into a fetal position and giving up entirely. And this….doesn’t fucking help.
It seriously feels like everythings in fucking massive collapse, and Romney is simply fucking surging in all fucking aspects. Then there’s Wisconsin where the whole state seems to have gone on full ‘RAH RAH SISBOOM BAH, FUCK THE COMMIE UNIONS FOREVER!!” and I keep getting hit in the face with the idea that an election we should be winning handily has turned into an unstoppable fucking second wave of GOP dystopian success.
I….god…fucking god, I just want to fucking not care anymore, but I’m at a point where I care too much but fucking feel too helpless to bother anymore. Especially when it seems like the more anyone on our side does shit, the more it ends up failing AND the more the public decides to fucking hate our guts even fucking more.
I know it’s a terrible fucking mindset, but it just seems like trying just brings about assured failure AND further marginalization. And…….god…I just fucking give up.
taylormattd
This line is fabulous:
liberal
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Please tell us what the problem with the “coin seignorage” proposal would be. (I’m really thinking of the proposal as generally discussed, not that page in particular which I haven’t had time to read. The proposal as I understood it was as a way to circumvent the debt ceiling.)
Heliopause
Checking my calendar, it is no longer February of 2009. The S.S. Krugman sailed more than three years ago when he told us we would only get one chance to get this right. Alas.
What we need to focus on now is how to evade the Romney/Rubio Hunter-Killer Patriot Drones. Maybe John Connor is reading this?
liberal
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Well, debt is ruining the economy, but he’s probably focussing on the wrong debt (i.e, public sector).
jl
Don’t have time to read all the comments.
I think Mr. Stuck is correct, the political ramifications depend to a large extent on economic performance in the swing states, which is better than average. Some of those swing states are doing better because of the auto industry bail out, so that might save Obama in the election.
I am not sure what Zandar is talking about when he said the bad numbers fooled most economists. I do not recall Keynesians like Krugman, DeLong, the Econobrowser crew (with whom I have some very severe disagreements), Galbraith, etc. being wells of optimism recently. The rapidly decelerating public sector employment has been a signal of a possible further weakening of the recovery.
Even obscure lesser people like me have been using phrases like ‘cross your fingers’ and ‘hope against hope’ when taking about future jobs reports. One or two months of weak reports did not establish a trend. But this one is a clear signal. Also, the newest revisions of recent initial estimates are no longer in the upwards direction consistent with the consensus of short run macroeconoomic model forecasts (and most of the models that make up that consensus are basically historical trend extrapolation machines). The most recent revisions are down. Repeat: down. The revisions also are a clear signal of a possible turning point.
I thank Zandar for his second update. I agree on the politics.
In the land of empirical fact, however, I think the evidence is that in this economic climate, fairly simple old fashioned hydraulic Keynesian theory is the most robust and reliable model to use for forecasting what will happen in the future (which is to a large extent an important test of whether one is talking about something real or just spinning fantasy).
The sad fact is that both the Democrats and Republicans are using flawed and failed macroeconomic theories to guide policy. The Republican approach is miles worse than the Dem, but that does not make the mainstream Democrating policy proposals effective, it just means they are not disastrous, but still will not work.
Same is true for consensus European policies.
All of it is failed zombie Washington Consensus theory.
Just because Obama/Dem policies are not disasters (like GOP approach) does not mean that they will work. That fact must be faced, and I do not see what that has to do with having Obama or Dems backs or not.
One more month like this will clearly signal a new trend in the already weak recovery, and means hard times ahead. Cash and stash should be the watchword.
Edit: and with big bond holders willing to invest in safe government bonds (ie, that means governments that issue own currency, or control currency of a monetary union like Germany) at a very definitely negative real interest rate all over the world, that cash and stash is exactly what the ‘smart money’ is doing.
I will bring back my slogan from awhile back: 1939 forever! Yay!
Hill Dweller
@Catsy: The first sentence of Romney’s bizarre press conference yesterday afternoon was a demonstrably false statement about the Inspector General. It wasn’t fudging numbers nor exaggeration; he claimed the IG said something he didn’t.
Nothing from the press(except Maddow)…
liberal
OT, but related: Yahoo has a CNBC report quoting Uncle Alan as saying:
Hah, hah, hah…
Alex S.
@jl:
Well, I think that there might be another war coming up (against Syria).
PeakVT
@Egg Berry: Heh. I said the same thing last night.
I blame Murdoch.
Brachiator
@Chad:
Your original example was extremely flawed, which is why I tried to go around it.
People are always “concerned” when black people in America riot. But too often they look to re-establish the status quo as quickly as they can. And the rioting ends up being self-defeating as already economically depressed areas now have to deal with the impact of pointless destruction.
Had the rioters in the 90s burnt down Brentwood, Beverly Hills, and Hancock Park, there might have been a response stronger than “concern.”
WereBear
Sadly, yes. They don’t know how anything works, from iPhones to car engines to macroeconomics. They are the people in Idiocracy.
Fwiffo
This is a phrase that needs to be used more often to describe many things.
PeakVT
@liberal: He’ll be right one of these days, about some country somewhere.
Alex S.
@liberal:
Sad… he compares it to 1979 when interest rates jumped from 9% to 13%. They are at 1,5% now… Even Spain’s 10-year interest rate is just at 6,5% at the moment, with 25% unemployment and possible bank runs.
Mark S.
@liberal:
No one expects the
SpanBond Vigilantes!How many times does one have to be wrong about something before he or she begins to questions some of their premises? There are so many dumbasses who have been predicting inflation for four years now. Do they ever get tired of being wrong?
jl
@Alex S.:
Yeah, that might be the GOP recovery plan. There will be a lot of deficit spending under a Romney/GOP regime. But it will be stimulus only for the very rich.
Whether the deficit spending under Romney/GOP results in more productive economic activity overall will depend on whether the mix of multipliers from their war spending will outweigh the harmful effects of truly rapacious and destructive rent seeking rampage that will be unleashed for the benefit of the financial and resource extraction sectors.
Kane
Can you imagine what the media narrative would be right now if the positions were reversed? Can you imagine what the media would be saying about the Democratic leadership in congress if they had publicly stated that their primary goal was to hamstring a Republican president? Can you imagine what the media would be saying if Democrats decided to sabotage the economy for the sole purpose of damaging the reelection chances of a Republican president? Can you imagine the headlines if Democrats had held the economy hostage and caused a credit downgrade…and then cheered? Can you imagine the stories if a Democratic Congress, elected on the notion of creating jobs, jobs, jobs, had failed to provide a single viable jobs bill a year and a half after taking office?
It’s doubtful that the media would be offering the popular meme of both sides do it. It’s doubtful that the media would be largely ignoring the circumstances and blaming the Republican president.
The Dangerman
@Alex S.:
Given that draws in, at the very least, Iran and Isreal, even Romney might not want that war.
catclub
@gaz: How about:
“If nobody else is hiring, then the government should be hiring.”
Somebody else posted that if Obama added govt’t jobs at the rate GW Bush did, that we would be at 7.2% unemployment.
Instead, government jobs are shrinking.
AA+ Bonds
@beltane:
Considering that strip was all about how FDR was a socialist who was destroying America . . .
beltane
This. But what do you think would work, and do you have any links to economists or others with better solutions? I am not doubting you, I would just like to further my education on the subject.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@liberal: I could launch into a long explanation, but I’d be wasting time I don’t have. Put simply, there’s no difference between doing this and declaring default. If you don’t understand how unilaterally declaring that a coin is worth one trillion dollars (Mugabenomics), and then spending on that assumption (without the backing of the Congress, who are the folks who are designated to handle currency and debt issuance), would cause a total flight from the dollar and a total crash in the value thereof, I can’t help you.
Also, politically, such a move would be the end for Obama. He’d be instantly impeached. And for doing something so stupid and reckless with the currency, frankly I’d support impeachment, conviction, and removal.
catclub
@Mark S.: “Do they ever get tired of being wrong?”
No. SATSQ
Ever heard of perma-bears when discussing the stock market?
Alex S.
@jl:
@The Dangerman:
Hmm.. ;-). Actually, I thought that it’s the Obama administration that might start such a war, with a UN mandate.
beltane
@The Dangerman: Such a war would in no way boost our economy. At worst, it could easily go nuclear and cause the types of repercussions we can hardly even imagine.
japa21
Let me throw this out there.
Obama could go out and say, “As a businessman, Governor Romney knows that to make money you have to spend money. Well, that works with the government too. The debt is large and can become troublesome, but ultimately, the only way to reduce it is to have more money coming into the federal coffers. There are two ways to do that. Increase taxes (but only on the SOBs who could care less about the rest of the country)or have more people working so that they pay taxes into the government and don’t take money out of the government through unemployment, food stamps, etc. Actually, by doing the first it is easier to do the second. However, the Republicans want to do neither. Cutting spending won’t do it, as several countries have shown, that only makes the situation worse. So I am asking Congress to do both things. I know I have the support of the Democrats in Congress. Let’s see if the Republicans are really sincere in their desire to do something about the debt and helping people get jobs.”
Chris
@jl:
Unfortunately, the only way to make things really work again is by embracing policies that will have most Americans squealing like elephants in front of mice because “it’s socialism,” and since the elites will be against it too, that’s that. At this point I think it would take a massive, near-universal popular mobilization, the kind we haven’t seen since the Great Depression, to break through the walls erected by the Washington Consensus crowd, and I sadly don’t see such a mobilization in our future.
Mnemosyne
@Zagloba:
Sorry, I didn’t realize that I had to specify that I didn’t hear Obama or the Democrats talking up the deficit prior to the 2010 midterms. I only heard it from them after Democrats got wiped out in the midterms.
Republicans spent a whole lot of time wringing their hands about the deficit, especially when it came to PPACA, and it’s one of the reasons they kicked our asses in 2010 — they got voters (especially swing voters and elderly voters) all worked up about how Obama was spending us into oblivion.
But please point me to a story where Obama is the one supporting the Ryan budget, or Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid. Or any prominent elected Democrat (Barbra Streisand doesn’t count).
Cato
Terrible news for Obambi. But Romney is smiling from ear to ear…
We’re witnessing the twilight of Obama’s political career.
jl
@beltane:
IMHO, more government spending on education, infrastructure, energy efficiency, and for support of state and local government services. Do not worry about short run deficits. Start social bankruptcy procedures to help household repair balance sheets and speed housing adjustment (banks have to take write downs). Get cracking on fixing broken US healthcare system. If SCOTUS knocks it down, come back with stronger proposal plus a public option (ie, go Swiss on healthcare).
Read DeLong and (grits teeth) that miserable old Summers, for reasons why that policy now has a very good chance of increasing jobs and economic activity in the short run, AND decreasing medium and long term US government debt. While current policy have a very high chance of makeing all those situations worse.
Google DeLong, Krugman, Galbraith, Stiglitz, Econobrowser, Romer, Blanchard, Blinder, Solow, and follow their analysis.
Mnemosyne
@Blue Neponset:
Which is why job growth was flat under Bush — the things he spent money on didn’t do jack shit to grow jobs.
Federal money is not magic — you can’t just throw it at any program you want and the job market will magically grow. You have to spend it on the right things.
beltane
@Chris: It would be the elites squealing like elephants in front of a mouse. It’s the job of the elite-owned and controlled media to bamboozle ordinary people into feeling that fear. The only way things will change is if enough people start to realize that the news they see on TV is nothing but the propaganda of 1%ers and no different than North Korean state television save for the production values.
The Dangerman
@Alex S.:
Russia will never allow a UN mandated war against Syria.
Rhoda
@Brachiator: Bush/Cheney did the first auto bailouts. These people want to win and they can win with some infrastructure spending and jacking up the defense budget; that is stimulus. They’ll cut taxes which will have a stimulative affect.
They will do this and then they’ll turn to fixing the deficit with the Ryan plan. They can walk and chew gum IMO. If they win in ’12 they will likely have all three houses and they will likely tell the tea party to fuck off, get Democratic votes to pass the stimulative stuff and the tea party folks to pass the entitlement reform stuff. JMHO.
jl
@Cato:
The political calculus is bit different than the economic. I suggest you take the time to read some of the comments at the top of this thread, written by people who know more than you do.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Alex S.:
No possibility of a UN mandate for mil force regarding Syria via the world community. The only way would be through NATO, and unless the Arab league signs on, that is a no go for that as well. For the reasons stated upthread, the likelihood for a regional conflagration is quite high. And if Iran got involved, it would likely turn in to a Sunni/Shia mother of all sectarian wars. The only peeps that could want that are rapture grade nihilists, and maybe Pam Geller.
Alex S.
@The Dangerman:
Hmm, this is true… I meant to say that the US will not attack Syria unilaterally, and a UN mandate seemed the most logical device to make it international, but you’re right, Russia would veto it.
Cato
I’m glad Democrats are finally coming around to the prospect of a big GOP victory this fall. It will be bigger than 1980!
RalfW
Meanwhile, corporate profits are nearing 10% of GDP, which is record-breaking profitability for corps.
Are they paying any of those profits to the workers, who are clearly increasing productivity if profits are that fat?
Nope. Nada. As said at top, wages are down. And yet virtually no one in the press questions the idiotic notion that high taxes are why jobs are down.
Corporations are literally awash in cash. There is only one tax-based reason that employment sucks: we the people, by way of our reps, are not taxing corps and the rich nearly enough.
Felix Salmon had a good item up this morning about how horribly inefficient capitalism is being these days. The investor class is utterly failing to deploy their money in ways that will produce new wealth, new jobs or a strong economy.
Rather, they take massive JP Morgan hedge risks. We need to tax the wealthy at Clinton-era rates, now, asap, immed. Corporations need to have wages for top leadership not be deductible from corp taxes when they exceed, idunno 30X or 50X entry-level wages.
Cato
President Romney. Both houses of Congress controlled by the GOP. The Supreme Court with a conservative majority for the next generation at least. Tax cuts. Cute to burdensome regulation. Entitlement reform.
It’s all coming in just one year…
toschek
Welcome to team firebagger Zandar, fucking took you long enough.
piratedan
really, anyone go back and run through the last 18 months of the Congressional record and tell me where the jobs bills are?
I know that we’ve had everything about not promoting abortion in every government agency from NASA to the school lunch program vetted but please feel free to show me ANYTHING that Congress has done to send a jobs bill to the Senate where the Dems have killed it?
japa21
I feel much more positive now that Cato has weighed in. After all, I can’t think of a single time s/he has been correct on anything.
Erik Vanderhoff
Abso-fucking-lutely this. Our corporations are un-American. They are run by sociopaths with no sense of citizenship.
cat48
@Redshift:
Bush I raised taxes. That’s what did him in. My wingnut neighbors were so furious they did not vote. They never mentioned the Deficit. That’s what Bush I got for being the grownup like Brooks & Friedman always try to get Obama to do w/Simpson Bowles.
Kane
Multinational corporations do not have the best interests of the U.S. or Americans in mind anymore than they have the interests of China or Ethiopia and their citzens in mind. While many of these multinational companies may be headquarted in the U.S., they see themselves as a global entity organized on behalf of their shareholders without a need for loyalty or responsibilty to any country or government or citizenry.
It’s not that these multinational corporations don’t understand the logic of the public wanting sensible regulatory reforms that will protect American consumers and ensure that there’s not another economic collapse, they just simply don’t care.
MikeBoyScout
Nobody reads a thread 160+ comments in, but for posterity … :-)
Alan Greenspan? Really? What the F*CK is wrong with us? That SOB should be in the stocks on the Mall in Wash DC.
While our president and his political operatives should Nut the fuck up and go the full Krugman, the rest of the world should go the full Pierce.
Tell me, is what he wrote in conclusion today not much, much more valuable than anything the Maestro ever said?
Cato
@japa21:
I’m going to be correct about Walker and Obambi.
BTW I said the decent job numbers earlier in the Spring were a dead cat bounce. I said that Europe was about to collapse, setting us up for an economic hammering the likes of which has never been seen before right in the middle of election season. I was right both times.
Brachiator
@Rhoda:
Not really.
A defense budget build up is not necessarily a stimulus, especially if you are spending a shitload of money on foreign wars. The Republican fantasy of backing Israel in an attack on Iran could have serious economic blowback, and spark a world wide Depression.
GOP tax cuts, especially mixed with their preferred spending cuts, will kill the economy.
Also, no one has an idea of how dumb Romney might be, or whether he would have the balls to reject Tea Party tax craziness.
Nothing that the GOP has indicated so far about their favored tax policy is pointing toward stimulus or job recovery.
I don’t see the slightest indication that Romney can stand up to the Tea Party People.
jl
Turnip Day is July 26, I think.
What HST would say is truer now than it was back then, and a certain incumbent seems ready to fight, and can give a much better speech than HST, let alone RMoney.
Some visitors might want to do some googling. And if they are still puzzled, perhaps ask some of the very informed and helpful BJ commenters to explain.
Cato
@jl:
The economy was booming in 1948.
Teresa
Maybe we can bribe the republicans in congress with wheelbarrows full of uteri if they would only focus on jobs? We know how much they love uteri.
Pierce has the gist of it. Congress was unwilling to do anything. Mostly because a lot of them either are of the monied crowd or are trying to get an entrance into the monied crowd via using their political position for the sole benefit of the monied crowd. In either case, nothing matters to them but themselves.
roshan
I think Obama can kiss this election g’bye. It’s not going to happen, not with this economy. Of course, there is not much Romney can do about it with his tax cuts either. This economy cannot come back without gov’t intervention and that is not going to happen. Obama can’t do it due to the GOP and the pseudo dems, and Mitt can’t do it because duh. The country is going to destroy lot of lives in the process, mainly the younger generation who are going to lag behind economically most of their lives due to this catastrophe.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Cato: I’m white, wealthy, and work in the defense industry. My wife’s past childbearing age and we have no kids.
I’m seriously considering the very real merits of handing off the whole shebang to your gang of Teatard anarchists and sitting on my ass laughing for the next four years while the economy craters, the safety net is removed, billionaires get richer, and the human misery piles up beyond anything most people here are capable of imagining. Won’t hurt me. Really.
But it will destroy your party for all time. From where I’m sitting, it’s beginning to look like it would be worth it.
SFAW
Yeah, so? The actual, non-tax-cut portion of it should have been two or three times the size.
Yes, I realize the Rethugs would have done their best to kill it, but it woulda been nice if Obama hadn’t pre-capitulated on the package. (“Oh, we’ll never get a $1.5T package through, so let’s start with our absolute bottom line as a negotiating position.” Because that has ALWAYS been such an effective tactic, dating back to at least Neville Chamberlain’s time.)
Had he started at 1.5-2.0 trillion, then worked the public and the refs daily, and maybe enlisted Krugman’s help (instead of telling him to fuck off, so to speak), we might have had something north of $1.0 T. And who knows how much that would have helped the economy?
PeakVT
@beltane: I haven’t see one good blog post or magazine article that summarizes everything that needs to be done in the US, but you’ve probably seen most of the ideas here in posts and comments, or elsewhere. But the problem isn’t a lack of ideas, of course. Instead, it’s that they haven’t been implemented, the reasons for which we’ve argued about a thousand times. Europe is much the same, though the problem of the common currency requires immediate action.
SatanicPanic
Obama could lose… against a real candidate. Lucky for him he’s up against a stuffy Mormon wierdo. “It’s the economy stupid” is a bunch of crap. I mean, consider the source- good ‘ol James Carville. When is that guy ever right?
SFAW
Your conclusion is based on the faulty assumption that current Rethug voters are actually smarter than a bed of kelp. (I guess we should “teach the controversy”, i.e. “some people say” that Rethug voters ARE smarter than kelp – although none of their findings have been peer-reviewed.)
Cato
@SatanicPanic:
He’s toast, SatanicPanic. It’s over for Obama.
Villago Delenda Est
@japa21:
Yup. Remember the glorious Rmoney VICTORIES! in Minnesota and Colorado?
Remember how Maine would set the pattern, and the delegation is now filled with Paultards?
SFAW
Cato knows this because he read it on the front page of The Chicago Daily Tribune.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cato:
And Dewey defeated Truman.
Cato
HAHAHAHAH whenever the other side starts talking about Truman, you know it’s over!
SatanicPanic
@Cato: Hahaha, prez race is a popularity contest and you’re betting on a guy who doesn’t even have the charisma of John Kerry.
becca
@Forum Transmitted Disease: I think a reckoning is near. Worldwide.
Hill Dweller
@SFAW: It wasn’t just the Republicans. The Senate “centrists”, who were given power after the Republicans filibustered, arbitrarily reduced the size of the stimulus in conference.
Obama has a bunch of cowards in his own party. They will undercut him in a heartbeat if they think it will benefit them. Couple said cowardice with the Republicans shattering filibuster records, and we end up where we’re at now.
SatanicPanic
Remember how in 2004 us Democrats were saying “let’s go for the electable guy”? That turned out the be shorthand for let’s not lose too badly.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Hill Dweller:
Combined with an electorate that consistently loves Dem proposals but votes for the GOP to implement them because….fuck-all I can’t even think why anymore…and we’re not even at rock bottom. And the more you try to convince them something’s rotten, the more they become convinced that it’s the Dems who are the evil rotten super-extra-hyperpartisan monsters that need to be gotten rid of NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW.
Just…fuck it all. What hope is there fucking left…
jl
@Cato:
” The economy was booming in 1948. ”
No it wasn’t. The economy was heading into recession and the unemployment rate was volatile and rising slightly on average over last half of the administration.
You can see the graphs at St Louis Fred
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/
trollhattan
Sorta OT, anybody else following TBogg’s FirebagFiesta thread? Sheesh. Piñatas for everybody!
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/06/01/nobama-slam-poetry-hatefest-disappointment-caucus-is-in-the-house/
jl
@Cato:
” HAHAHAHAH whenever the other side starts talking about Truman, you know it’s over! ”
Umm…. because Truman won? Or because Truman’s do-nothing GOP Congress line is now famous, because it was true and it worked? Or because the voters saw through the GOP BS, even though the economy was weakening rapidly and heading into recession?
I’m trying to get your logic straight here. May need some help.
trollhattan
@jl:
Now don’t go all facty with Taco, you know he/she/it doesn’t grock facty things.
Jim Treacher
Tee-hee!
FlipYrWhig
Hey, maybe if there was an election coming up or something the candidates could talk about what they would do to help the economy. Maybe Obama would say a thing or two then, instead of being exclusively dedicated to attacking innocent people with drones and plotting the destruction of Social Security, like he is now, according to what I read on blogs.
SFAW
No argument there. But there are ways to deal with cowards in your own party. As far as I can tell, he chose not to do so. (Insert obligatory LBJ reference here.) Whether that makes Obama a coward, naive, a wimp, unwilling to use power when it’s uncomfortable for him, or some other reason, I don’t know.
But considering that he rewarded the latter-day Tail Gunner Joe, after Lieberman shivved (no, it’s not a veiled Dolchstosslegende reference) him repeatedly, one wonders whether he’s cut out for playing the power game in that environment.
lacp
SC Justices Janice Rogers Brown and Roy Moore….does have a certain ring about it, doesn’t it?
SFAW
Shorter Cato: Because SHUT UP, that’s why!
roshan
Holy fuck, Treacher is amidst us. Obama ate a dog, Treach, didn’t he? He also wasn’t born here, right? All entertainment will be provided by Treach from here on.
lacp
@Jim Treacher: Eat dog and die!
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: LBJ cut deals with open racists, and had a commanding partisan majority in the first place. What is this LBJ-esque thing Obama could have done but didn’t because of being too much of a wuss? I think you seriously underestimate the eagerness, or giddiness, with which Democrats undercut Democratic presidents. Do something to Ben Nelson and… What? He votes for you forever? Why would he do that, instead of telling you to piss off and good luck with the next Democrat you get from Nebraska?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@SFAW: Naw, the bed of kelp would win every time.
My conclusion is based on what America will be like after four years of full-metal Teatard politics, where people are murdering each other over precious canned goods, there’s no safety anywhere, especially not in the upper-middle class gated communities (who will be sitting ducks when things go to shit), and American is killing American over failure to know the proper code words:
“Who is John Galt?”
“I don’t know, some used car salesman? Or is it that guy I used to work with at Boeing?”
BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM
Sounds like fun, no? I’ll be at my vacation shack in Costa Rica, assuming I’m not shot by the Mexican army as they try to keep millions of American refugees out of their country.
The Thin Black Duke
@Forum Transmitted Disease: I know it’s not your intention, but you’re sounding like a rich jerk in a lifeboat laughing as he’s watching the Titanic sink.
If Romney becomes President, a lot of people are going to die.
It’s not funny.
Hill Dweller
@SFAW: Republicans filibustered. Dems didn’t have 60 votes. The legislation was only going to be as good as the most liberal Republican.
Furthermore, $760 billion is a big number. Granted, not in context, but when do we context in this country? And BEA was giving everyone numbers that severely underestimated the depth of the recession. They were saying the economy shrank around 3.6% in the 4th quarter of ’08. We now know it was 9%.
The stimulus was flawed, no doubt. But they weren’t going to get much better.
The devastating blow to any hopes of a quick recovery was the 2010 elections, which put wingnuts in charge of the House and way too many states.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig:
also too: the ghost of the martyred JFK; a still mostly solid labor/white ethnic coalition in the north and Roosevelt Democrats in the plains and border states who remembered the TVA, the WPA and WWII and hadn’t yet freaked out about race, school prayer, Amnesty, Acid, Abortion, God, Guns and Gays; honest-to-God liberal Republicans; and a lot of good old-fashioned corruption (can you say “Boss Daley”?). Other than that, all Obama had to do was take a shit in the Oval Office toilet with the door open and Claire McCaskill, Jim Webb, Mark Warner, Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Max Baucus, Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Kent Conrad, Tim Johnson and Al Franken’s empty seat would’ve fallen right into line and worn their “I Stand With Krugman” tee-shirts on to the Senate floor.
I pick the Senate because the individual players are easier to identify, but the same holds true in the House. When Nancy Pelosi told Obama she wouldn’t even bring the proposed 1.2 trillion dollar stimulus to the floor, he should have gotten rid of her (by snapping his fingers, or holding up Bo by the ears) and replaced her with a real Progressive. Like Steny Hoyer.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Were is everyone getting the idea the GOP will stop with cuts if Romney wins? They really believe this crap and that’s why a President Romney would be a national disaster; tax cuts, spending cuts, deficit spirals up, war with Iran then a second round of tax cuts and spending cuts. Four years of doubling down on teh stupid
piratedan
@Hill Dweller: also not helping was replacing Kennedy with Brown and Byrd with Manchin
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@The Thin Black Duke:
But.. but… Drones! Both sides do it! I Haz a Dissapointed!
Seriously, I find myself to be out of compassion lately. Any poll in which Romney’s over 30% against Obama damns our politics, our culture and our people… and yet here he is, dead even.
Don’t get me started on Wisconsin. If Walker keeps it, it will be hard to not laugh at the soup lines in 2014.
There’s so much that could be done, even in the face of a GOP that is essentially econo-terrorist (as the FP Update points out). And yet… nothing. Mustn’t offend the MOTU. Mustn’t question the common wisdom, or the punditry.
In 2002/3, I watched this People let itself get led into war, on a trail of lies. And now, in 2012, I will apparently get the honor and privilege of watching them as they allow themselves to be lied into their own self-destruction.
OzoneR
you think most Americans will believe a new stimulus is going to solve the problem?
brantl
@SFAW: Oh, bite me. The Republicans have done their best to kill programs that THEY WERE PROPOSING JUST A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO. Yes, I’m shouting as you seem to be hard-of-thinking.
OzoneR
@SFAW:
Will the LBJ myth never die?
SFAW
Start by making Lieberman pay the price of screwing him over. Yeah, Little Lord Petulance would have gotten back at Obama somehow, but making Holy Joe sit in the corner for awhile would’ve sent a message.
Find out what Nelson REALLY wants/needs (other than his need to screw over his own party, that is), and work a deal with him. Maybe Nelson’s portrait hanging in 1600, next to Ike’s or St. Ronnie’s.
And so on.
No, I don’t. But I also believe they can be made to act in their own self-interest AND in the best interests of Obama’s (theoretical) wishes. It ain’t easy, but it can be done.
SFAW
Forum @ 210
Not trying to paint you as being just like St. Ralph the Pure, but that’s the same general line that he used to justify/rationalize the result of his candidacy in 2000.
It would have been nice if he had been right, but unfortunately he severely underestimated the ability of the US electorate to be stupid.
Cato
Harry Truman was invoked by such winners as Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole, and John McCain.
LOL…not even officially summer yet and they’re already invoking Harry Truman.
OzoneR
@SFAW:
The guy is retiring with a 30% approval rating, what more could you possible do to him? Why would he got quietly where he has Sunday talk shows to air his grievances on.
You people are maddening, you talk ins such vague fucking terms and think you’re geniuses.
“may him pay the price”
how exactly genius are we going to do that? And don’t say “like LBJ did” cause he didn’t force ANYONE to pay ANY price.
Donut
@Rob in DC:
This.
Do not understand all the gloom and doom in this thread. What is happening in Sept is way more important than June. Way more. And yes, the Congress is where productive politics dies a tortured death, right now, but Zandar is correct that voters will need to see Obama pushing that group of half-wit sophists as hard as possible. Getting actual good results from them is not so much crucial right now as is making a coherent case that the Congress stands in the way of progress. They, the GOP leadership, are in the way, and we will get more of the same from them, and worse, with a President Romney. Obama can sell this point, I think. Plus you add in that the Electoral College looks decent for the Prez right now and you keep some fucking perspective. Carry on.
gene108
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
McCain and Obama were tied, when the conventions ended in September of 2008. A week later Lehman Brothers collapsed.
If McCain had picked a person, with extensive knowledge of how “Wall Street Works”, like say Mitt Romney, there’s a theoretical chance of him winning. Obama and McCain didn’t start to separate until after Lehman and the Wall Street meltdown, as well as the total lack of confidence the non-27% had in Palin.
OzoneR
@SFAW:
I believe you’re wrong, completely. See: Booker, Cory
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: Those aren’t things, those are tautologies. You’re saying that the thing Obama could have done to sway “moderate” votes is the thing that would have worked to sway them. Uh, OK then. What if there isn’t one? Those dipshits believe in things too, you realize. Maybe as a matter of principle Ben Nelson doesn’t believe in the government spending a trillion dollars at a time. Sounds like a stupid principle to us, but what if he believes strongly in it? What if he’s unshakeably nonsensical and doesn’t give a shit about the Democratic party? I mean, Russ Feingold gets to draw lines in the sand about what he believes and won’t give in on, and Ben Nelson does too. Unfortunate for the cause and objectives of liberalism though it may be.
Donut
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Yes. Exactly.
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: Also too: Ben Nelson’s self-interest may well be in being known as the guy who put the screws to the too-liberal big-spending Barack Obama, who has strayed too far from the values of Heartland Democrats, or some such thing.
gene108
@SFAW:
Lieberman was a big player in the repeal of DADT.
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2010/12/10/177175/stand-alone-dadt/?mobile=nc
I’m not a big fan of Lieberman, going back to how he made Dick Cheney look lovable in comparison during the 2000 VP debate, but not dicking him over probably helped a good bit with DADT getting repealed and gays to be allowed to openly serve in the military.
liberal
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Of course there’s a difference.
Huh? You mean that if we did away with the debt limit law, all of a sudden we’d have raging inflation, regardless of what spending Congress had authorized?
You really have no understanding of the issue at all.
SFAW
I’m well aware of the numbers. That was not the point. You don’t start a negotiation with your bottom-line figure (only about half of which was actual stimulus, if memory serves). If the Rethugs hadn’t been previously acting like the traitorous bastards that they are, I could have understood BHO approaching them with the olive branch that he did. But they had provided tons of evidence since 2000 that they were going to do whatever they could to fuck over the Dems and Obama.
Yeah, but wasn’t something like $350B of that in tax cuts? So there really wasn’t $760B of “stimulus.” And, as you said “in context,” it weren’t that much.
Had Obama even TRIED to get a much better stimulus, and failed, I would not be bashing him now. Even more important, it would have given him something to beat the Rethugs over their collective heads with, plus provide him a ready-made campaign issue. And if he had gotten another $500B of non-tax-cut stimulus, Romney would probably be crapping his pants now, because the economy would be somewhat better.
But Obama didn’t, and now he’s reaping the benefits.
liberal
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
You must be one of those “low information” voters we all keep talking about, if you haven’t heard this phrase: No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law…
LOL. What a moran.
Pillsy
I was with Pierce until this part here:
This seems to be the sort of thing that only somebody who’s already convinced of a narrative that paints Obama as a corporate flunky would believe. Those people are either not going to vote for Ovama no matter what (whether it’s because they’re Paultroons or it’s because they’re Tea Partiers), or they’re guys like Pierce, who are going to grumble and complain and then crawl over broken glass to vote for Obama anyway.
Maybe Obama can’t sell the message that he’s the right guy to fix the economy regardless. But the idea that he won’t be able to because he’s been too conservative and too friendly to Big Business doesn’t make sense.
liberal
@SFAW:
Nope. It was 1994 at the latest.
OzoneR
@SFAW:
No, you start a negotiation where the other side is willing to meet you at. You can’t have a negotiation when the other side isn’t even at the table.
Imagine you’re a Republican in 2009 and all you want is vengence, you lost the Presidential race after being told for the past decade you’re the “permanent majority.” you lost to a n*gg*r, the perfect White WASPY world of the Reagan years are gone, replaced by a White House full of women, blacks, Latinos, and eek! gays.
But the new administration’s future relies on how the economy does and there needs to be a stimulus and your vote is needed to pass it because there are only 57 Democrats and you need 60.
Meanwhile your party faithful wants you to vote “no.”
Now you tell me, why the fuck would you even WANT to save the economy?
Then tell me how Obama was supposed to win them over?
OzoneR
@SFAW:
BULL
SHIT
yes you would, because you would have told us how he didn’t try hard enough or really wanted it to fail. He should’ve used the bully pulpit more and all that
see: 2010 tax cuts debate.
SFAW
Yes, and their tactics were/are so fucking different from anything they had done in the previous years when they didn’t have majorities.
Gee, maybe you could come up with a new abbreviation/acronym, something like IOKIYAR, to let us all know what a deep thinker you are, and that you, alone, apparently have figured out that the Rethugs do that shit. And maybe you could speculate that they pulled a Lucy-and-the-football routine.
I’m a-gonna nominate you for the Nobel Peace Prize for Being a Political Genius.
Donut
@Rhoda:
I know Brachiator already replied to this, but I think it bears repeating: Romney is and will be beholden to the far far right, for good. He’s sold what little soul he had for the nomination, and to have any kind of record of so-called achievement as a President, he will need to make many many capitulations to the Tea-hadists. These people are obsessed with destroying the democratic (small “d”) character of our government. Period. And they are terrified of the changes the country is going through demographically, and know that Romney is their last best chance to keep their places of priviledge, even for just a little longer. They will triple-down on every thing they want if they have a President Romney,
lacp
@liberal: This is why I don’t understand how people can keep repeating nonsense about the President ordering the creation of a gazillion-dollar dilithium coin or a 50,000,000-job Works Progress Administration. If he gets the Mint to create the coin, Congress has to authorize expenditure; if he creates a WPA (“by executive order, just like FDR!”), it won’t provide one fucking job until – you guessed it – Congress funds it.
SFAW
You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, but that’s what makes you so cute and lovable.
As with your other comments, you’re talking out of your ass. But please keep it up, it makes you easier to ignore.
SFAW
OK. I sit corrected.
MomSense
Ironic that a post with “nut up and go the full Krugman” is right beneath a post about the negative press coverage our President enjoys.
Just Some Fuckhead
Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen in this scenario? Up to and including Obama losing? He’s the steely-eyed realist who conceded to POLITICAL REALITIES and CONVENTIONAL WISDOM and POST-PARTISANSHIP and CHANGING THE TONE IN WASHINGTON. He’s the one that thought Bowles-Simpson (BS) was a good way to wake up the confidence fairy, who was more worried about a decades-away social security shortfall than the clear and present Depression.
No sympathy here.
Brachiator
@SFAW:
This really makes no sense.
Had Obama tried to get a better stimulus and failed, we would still be where we are now, and the Republicans would still have a campaign issue.
He wasn’t going to get another $500B of non-tax-cut stimulus.
The biggest opportunity lost was probably agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts in exchange for getting an extension of unemployment benefits. But nobody, not even most Balloon Juicers, wanted to see anyone get hurt. As a result, more people got hurt. Had Obama let the Bush tax cuts die, he still might have risked re-nomination, let alone re-election. But we would have had more revenues and the Republicans would have lost one of their cherished economic pillars.
Also, too, I get tired of some of the Krugman worship here. He is untouchable on macro economics. But even his shit implying that what the stimulus was spent on didn’t matter as long as sufficient spending took place just doesn’t work.
So, the bottom line is that some here are rehashing their disappointment with Obama.
Who gives a shit? A Romney victory will have you gnashing your teeth and rending your garments.
mclaren
No worries. Thanks to Bush II and Obama, we no longer live in a viable political democracy.
As the unemployment rate rises, Obama will simply order the DHS to coordinate with mayors around the country to beat, tase, mace, pepper-spray and, if necessary, LRAD-blast into deafness or death, any of the hoi polloi who gather in a surly demonstration of their now-obsolete constitutional “rights” (so-called).
As the economy worsens, Obama has a simple solution: expand his drone kill list to include protesters. When riots break out, Obama can simply order Rahm Emanuel and other mayors to buy and use the military microwave pain rays against protesting crowds as well as the LRAD sound cannons they have already bought and used against protestors (and innocent bystanders: but anyone who ventures out into public nowadays in America nowadays is by definition no longer “innocent,” but merely a drone target not yet neutralized).
This has been yet another edition of “simple answers to simple questions.”
Mnemosyne
@OzoneR:
Actually, it was worse than that — Obama had to start the negotiation where his side was willing to meet him at. He had to start with a place where Nelson, Lieberman, Feinstein, etc. were willing to start, and then he had to go to the Republicans.
It amazes me how many people here think that Obama had all of the Democratic votes he needed in hand and kowtowed to the Republicans when it came to the initial amount when it was the other way around — it was the Democrats in the Senate who demanded that the stimulus come in under $1 trillion, or they wouldn’t vote for it.
Cassandra Vert
I don’t think the job numbers are fooling economists. Krugman certainly isn’t fooled. The “expert” cited belongs to this private investing group: http://theblackbaygroup.com/
Black Bay has a futures division involved in oil contract trading, and the whole company profits from capital tax breaks like the carried interest tax exemption. In other words, he will say that the economy is stalling and we need new leadership because President Romney means more money for his firm than President Obama.
Reporting is often slanted by choice of expert to quote, and I rarely see this called out. After the flash crash, WSJ quoted two “members of the investment community” who argued essentially that high frequency traders should have free rein to profit from extreme volatility like the flash crash. Can you imagine what our market would look like if President Romney allowed that? Anyway, the two experts were from two different high frequency trading firms–which was not mentioned. So of course they will say HFTs should run loose.
I also would not bet against a scary market decline in the fall. Wall Street controls enough of the market to make that happen.
Patricia Kayden
@Stuck in the Funhouse: Hope all those positive forecasts are correct.
I would hate to see Romneybot in the White House.
Neo
Prediction is very hard, especially about the future – Yogi Berra
I’m sure Recovery Summer will kick in any moment now
Brachiator
@mclaren:
What you say here will make for a great alternate history fantasy novel.
Good luck with that!
But useless as any comment on contemporary politics.
@Mnemosyne:
Totally agree. Also, Obama and the Democratic Party leadership agreed to go soft on Blue Dog Democrats, thinking it might help the Blue Dogs get re-elected. These morans still got whipped by the Tea Party People.
A lot of Balloon Juicers brag about being “high information voters.” But a lot of the commentary still pretends either that the GOP did not exist, or that there was some magical bully pulpit that Obama could have mounted and got everyone his or her unicorn and sparkle pony.
But that’s not what happened.
mclaren
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Damn right.
All the obots lockstep-march over the cliff with their beloved idol, not realizing that their frantically futile efforts to defend the indefensible “lesser of two evils” merely enables the Republicans supersonic powerdive into barbarism and depravity.
If the Republican candidate proposes we impale all poor people, the obots tell us we must vote for the Democrat who merely offers legislation to tear out all poor peoples’ eyes. The lesser of two evils!
And when the Republican candidate suggests that we herd all gays into concentration camps and exterminate ’em, the obots assure us we must vote for the Democrat who offers the mild alternative of surgically removing all gay peoples’ genitals. The lesser of two evils!
And when the Republican candidate announces “I’ll triple Guantanamo,” the obots announce that we must vote for the Democrat who sits around ordering U.S. citizens murdered by drone without even charging them with a crime, let alone a trial. It’s the lesser of two evils!
Hey!
Obots!
When some guy sits around in an office ordering Americans murdered just because he thinks they ought to die, that’s not the president of the united states…that’s this guy.
All Obama needs is a white cat to stroke and hollow volcano.
Pillsy
I really cannot believe how many people think the major problem is that Obama didn’t fail to get additional stimulus funds the precise way they wanted to see him fail to get additional stimulus funds.
brantl
@Cato: Keep dreaming, asshole.
Donut
@Brachiator:
I just read TBogg’s thread challenging Firebaggers to come up with a plausible “Why Romney?” argument; fucking pathetic.
Some of you are just never going to get over it.
You act like you go through your lives never having to make choices that suck.
Are you all 6 years old? My six year old kid understands this kind of stuff better than a lot of you: sometimes all of your choices suck.
Some of you lay all the blame for where we are now at Obama’s feet like you, as a voter and a citizen, don’t also share equal blame. News flash, dummies, Obama can only get done what we voters push him to do and allow him to do. This whole fucking laundry list of Obama didn’t do such and such or Obama is doing something I don’t want him to do is just as much madness as Teabagger unicorn fantasies about cutting spending and taxes. A lot of liberals put on the proverbial cruise control in Jan 2009 and let off the pressure. Look in the mirror to see who I am talking about. Be honest now, you know I am right.
So why are you fuckers so shocked that we didn’t get better liberal/democratic/progressive outcomes?
You bear some responsibility for this,, Yes, you.
So what the fuck are you gonna do about it? Keep whining, or suck it the fuck up and reelect the president we’ve got now, because Romney is just about the most craven personality we have ever had standing for presidential election in the US.
Brachiator
@Donut:
Yep. You nailed it.
mclaren
@Brachiator:
And where did that “1 trillion dollar” figure for the stimulus come from?
From Asshole Larry Summers, who gutted Christine Romer’s report in which she suggests a 1.7 trillion dollar stimulus.
Team Obama’s besetting sin was in starting a negotiating position from a point of massive weakness, with a stimulus figure much much much too LOW.
Negotiation tip: you start high and let the opponent bargain you down. If you really want to negotiate adroitly, you start so high, with such extreme demands, that your opponent finally naggles and natters and table-beats you all the way down to…what you originally wanted.
Obama was stupid and ignorant for going along with Larry Summers, the guy who trashed the Russian economy and oversaw the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act, when Summers stripped out Christine Romer’s and Paul Volcker’s full-on emergency heavy-duty stimulus and subsistuted a pale weak-ass Lite version of the stimulus.
Obama should’ve known better. Larry Summers is the guy who single-handedly trashed the entire Russian economy by mismanaging its transition to capitalism. After that performance, Obama should never have let Summers anywhere near the council of economic advisors, let alone the Oval Office.
But because Obama is a chronic temporizer who always foolishly picks the middle position two extremes, Obama heard the call for a serious full-bore hard-core stimulus of nearly two trillion from Volcker and Romer, and then a call for next to nothing in stimulus by the ignorant incompetent fool Geithner (who called economic stimulus “a temporary sugar high” and thus useless — in effect repeating every economic error of Herbert Hoover’s secretaryof the treasury Andrew Mellon, who made exactly the same ignorant incompetent claims about government intervention to prop up the economy back in 1930)…
…And Obama the Temporizer foolishly chose the middle course.
Just as Obama the Temporizer got faced with neocons screaming for U.S. military invasions of Syria and Lebanon and Iran and and Yemen and Saudi Arabia and Oman and Dubai and the UAE and Afghanistan, and advice that the U.S. military needs to stop its endless unwinnable foreign wars, and Obama foolishly chose the middle course of pursuing just one endless unwinnable foreign war in Afghanistan.
Just as Obama the Temporizer listened to advice to double down on the Bush financial deregulation from Wall Street weasels like Geithner (who had been one of the culprits and main perpetrators in the massive criminal financial fraud of the 2000s) and then Obama listened to recommendations that he nationalize the banks and put all the Wall Street crooks in jail, and Obama the Temporizer foolishly chose the middle course of not nationalizing the banks and not putting any of the Wall Street crooks in jail.
Just as Obama the Temporizer didn’t start out the health care reform negotiations by threatening to nationalize all doctors and nurses and place a sharp salary cap on all doctors and disband the AMA by executive order and if necessary press-gang every doctor in America and al the hospitals into the U.S. military at sub-minimum-wage because we’re in a national health care emergency that’s killing 45,000 Americans a year, and let himself get bargained all the way down to a national single-payer health care system. Instead, Obama the Temporizer started by giving away everything the corrupt greedy health care cartels wanted, and then found himself forced to cede ever more and more and more ground until he wound up with a worthless non-reform ACA bill that does nothing to control health care costs while forcing all Americans to buy unaffordable private health insurance whose premiums are guaranteed to rise infinitely forever.
Obama screwed this pooch. Now he can deal with the consequences. I’m not voting for Barack Obama this fall. I am going to write in Elizabeth Warren on my ballot.
And I urge everyone else to do the same.
Mike E
Settle!
Too many clean, white beds for Willard to shit in, too much time, and Sporty has some hilariously explosive diarrhea. Which he cannot contain, let alone control. Seriously. Recycle these trolls.
Suffern ACE
This is silly. O.K. what would we have spent another $500 billion on? I know, I know, it doesn’t matter. But of course it does. There were some rather major infrastructre projects (a new tunnel to New York, High Speed Rail in the Midwest, a new replacement bridge for me!) and voters elected people who campaigned on stopping those things. There was actually money allocated for those projects, and the people elected governors who specifically campaigned against stopping them. You can say what you want about Walker and unions, but he made cratering the train a center of his campaign promises and he won. If folks in NJ wanted another tunnel to New York City, Chris Christie probably wasn’t the right person to elect to that job.
This isn’t 1932 where we have idle farmworkers and idle factories that would be put to work if there were government orders. We have mothballed factories and no one is going to start them up for a year of production. We have an issue with debt service in the middle class putting a damper on demand. Unfortunately, there is probably even less political will to cancel that debt than there is to build a tunnel.
mclaren
@Donut:
Brachiator
@mclaren:
The rest of your long post is a waste of time and, as I noted, nothing more than a lame rehash of why you and others are so unhappy with Obama.
Your proposed solution is just flat out stupid. At least we know that Elizabeth Warren is your fantasy progressive Avatar.
Have a nice day and good luck with that fantasy alternative history novel. Might make a swell computer game as well.
mclaren
@Suffern ACE:
You’re not real bright, are you, skippy?
Read John Maynard Keynes.
You just don’t get it. You don’t know shit-all about basic economics 101. It doesn’t matter what the fuck you spend that 500 billion on, and John Maynard Keynes pointed it out 76 years ago!
All that fucking matters is that you prime the pump by getting money into consumers’ hands to stimulate aggregate demand. That’s all that counts.
You want 5 simple suggestions for things to spend that 500 billion on?
[1] Massive income transfer payments to the poor. Economic studies and surveys of programs actually put into practice in South America show that simple cash payments to the poor have a fantastically energizing effect on the economy — because, unlike middle-class or rich people with debts, poor people typically have no houses or cars or college loans to pay off debts on, so poor people fucking spend the money right back into the economy, with acts as a tremendous stimulus. Write a government check for $5000 to every poor person (bottom income quintile) and you’d see economic stimulus like you couldn’t believe. (Brazil has tried this and it’s been fantastically successful.)
[2] The government is paying negative interest rates right on T-bills. Under those circumstances, why the fuck are we even collecting taxes? The rest of the world is paying us to hold their goddamn money! So shut down income taxes for everyone making less than $100,000 for 5 years. That will generate an economic stimulus you won’t believe.
[3] Use that 500 billion for mortgage cramdowns. Pay off the nearly 40% of homeowners who are now underwater. Without those crushing killing debts, homeowners will start spending on something other than paying down their underwater mortgages, and you’ll see goddamn economic stimulus that will give you whiplash.
[4] Use that 500 billion to write off all the college loans of all the young people who haven’t been able to find a job. Did you know that college loan debt is now bigger than the sum total of credit card debt in America? When those young people stop spending on their unpayable ever-increasing defaulted college loans, they’ll start spending their sub-minimum-wage lawn-cutting money (because those are the only “jobs” they can find) into the economy, and the economy will see a huge fucking stimulus.
[5] Use that 500 billion to pay back all the millions of people ripped off by the Wall Street criminals. Those people who lost their houses and cars and are now living in the street? Fucking buy Jamie Dimon’s mansion and put them in it. Throw Dimon in assrape prison. Buy Dick Fuld’s penthouse and give it to the people he defrauded and sent Fuld to prison to get done by a conga line of Aryan Brotherhood guys with lightning bolt tattoos on their necks. See if that doesn’t kick start the economy with some serious stimulus.
Christ on a minibike, you’re whimpering and whining like a little girl that “there’s nothing we can do.” There’s tons of things we can do to stimulate the goddamn economy, and I’m not the only person pointing it out — Brad DeLong and Ezra Klein and Paul Krugman and countless others have pointed this out.
But no, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh no, you prefer your learned helplessness to doing anything to fix this economy. Fuck-all, why don’t you just cut your losses and take poison?
Several of these suggestions (which ignorant incompetent fools like Mnemosyne who are comprehensively clueless about Econ 101 will ridicule as “insane” and “crazy”) have already been suggested by Klein and deLong in economic posts on their blogs.
Steeplejack
One glimmer of light that might help in November is that more people than I would have thought seem to realize that the Republicans have been obstructionist assholes and blame them, not Obama. I don’t know how strong or widespread the feeling is, but it is at least noticeable.
sherparick
@mclaren: That is what people said in 2000 about Gore being no different then G.W. Bush. So many words, but I will say two off the top of my head: Alioto and Roberts.
Why anyone who is progressive or even just wants to preserve the Country as a semi-Republic will vote for Obama. First, I admit that there is no question that the Democratic Party of 2012 is a far distance for the Democratic Party of FDR, Harry Turman, JFK, Robert Kennedy, and LBJ. It is the bastardized, lobbiest dominated, merger of spirits of George McGovern and Robert Rubin, that latter was until 2008 the figure most Democrats looked on as their economics palladin. And Obama was enthralled with the whole “Hamiliton Project” thing and had run for two years bashing Bush for his budget deficit. In his bones on economics and Fiscal issues he is his Grandma and Grandpa’s kid, a prudent Eisenhower Republican.
But that is still a lot better than what Romney/Boehner/McConnell/Ryan/Norquest Government will bring us next Spring. And this winter, probably by design and in accordance with Naomi Klein’s shock doctrine I expect the Republicans to run the Government and economy off the Fiscal cliff so they can spend the next 4 years blaming Obama and using the plunge to justifiy “reforming” social security, medicare, medicaid, and unemployment insurance out of existence. And they will do their best to “fix” election laws pretty much to make it voter “fraud” to vote Democratic or look like you are inclined to vote Democratic. There is always a choice, maybe not a pleasnt choice, but there is choice.
Rob in DC
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Same I’m done with this fuckhead nation we live in. All I care about is securing a place for my children in this world where I need not concern myself with threats to their safety and well-being. The idea of a liberal backlash is nonsense, it’s never going to happen. We will slide further and further into a neofeudal hybrid first/third world nation, it’s as inevitable as the sun rising and setting.
In fact its already happened, witness the rapidly expanding pace of gentrification in certain rich regions of this country. NY, DC, San Fran. all of them are unleashing an invisible energy shield called higher real estate prices to drive out the poor. The unfortunate and imbecilic who can’t hack it in our society are driven to the fringes, flyover towns populated by 40% methheads. Expect this trend to accelerate.
At some point the methhead zombies will not be content to live out their lots in Alabama and South Carolina trailer parks. Once they go hungry civil society is over. My kids are either (a) gone from this country to somewhere safe, or (b) in the 21st century equivalent of a fortress by then.
Brachiator
@mclaren:
Your posts here today are getting longer and more shrill. Problem is, you’re still wrong.
Especially your 5 simple suggestions.
The maximum Earned Income Credit was upped to $5,751. This, along with the refundable portion of the child tax credit comes close to writing a poor person a check. This has rightly done much to keep some people from the worst of poverty. But it has not succeeded as priming the pump of economic stimulus.
And what’s your income cutoff for the 5 grand check?
No income taxes for anyone making less than $100,000. Interesting. Does that include payroll taxes as well? How you gonna fund Social Security? And is this wage income only or are you including coupon clippers? What about pensioners?
Mortgage cramdowns. The elepant in the room is that a lot of these people don’t have the income to sustain a mortgage at any level. What are you going to do about that? And, oh, yeah, what about the Mortgage Relief Act?
Forgiving all college loans? Without any kind of government service in return? Would they have to pay back any education credits they or their parents took, or would you just look the other way on this double dipping?
Pay back the millions ripped off by Wall St criminals and buying the mansions and giving it to the people affected? So, would a bunch of folks be living in Dick Fuld’s penthouse like the gaggle of folks on an episode of “Big Brother?”
Econ101 is cool. mclaren101 is hilarious.
But I note that your heart is in the right place.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW:
Maybe he should have asked for a jillion squillion dollars in non-tax-cut stimulus, and then he could have gotten half a jillion squillion, and we’d all be living a bonobo-like existence of unceasing sexual bliss.
You’re over-committed to the idea that negotiations end somewhere near the midpoint. A bigger infusion of stimulus money would be better, but the conservative Democrats wouldn’t do it, despite all the best arguments. I’m pretty sure it was because they didn’t like the idea of ONE TRILLION DOLLARS, regardless of how it was spent. They’re stupid. But that’s what we’re dealing with: people who tenaciously believe stupid things and won’t be persuaded by smarter arguments. And no amount of arm-twisting, pulpit-pounding, arm-pounding, or pulpit-twisting can change that.
Have you ever been in a staff meeting where you have a great idea to fix something, but the other people won’t do it, because they’ve always done it the other way and don’t want to change? That’s what it’s like to deal with Ben Nelson et al.
Pillsy
Obviously if Obama hadn’t blown up Anwar al Awlaki, unemployment would be at 4.5% right now.
Neo
US and European regulators are essentially forcing banks to buy up their own government’s debt—a move that could end up making the debt crisis even worse, a Citigroup analysis says.
Regulators are allowing banks to escape counting their country’s debt against capital requirements and loosening other rules to create a steady market for government bonds, the study says.
While that helps governments issue more and more debt, the strategy could ultimately explode if the governments are unable to make the bond payments, leaving the banks with billions of toxic debt, says Citigroup strategist Hans Lorenzen.
I think this says that the “full Krugman” is off the table.
Bruce S
Obama’s state by state economic message strategy –
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-takes-regional-approach-to-touting-his-economic-plans/2012/06/01/gJQASIPl6U_story.html
wrb
@mclaren:
I don’t often agree with your comments, but I agree with all of these. We’re going down because Obama is pinned between fundamentalists on both sides.
It doesn’t matter what the money is spent on nearly as much as that it is spent, as Keynes pointed out. It is best if it is borrowed. It shouldn’t come from increased taxes, even on the wealthy.
There was only one way to revive the economy after the Rs won the House and that was to pass a stimulus bill that spent on Republican priorities or spent in ways that they couldn’t oppose- such a tax holiday on the first $100k and/or on FICA (borrow at negative interest rates to fund the SS). The only way. Liberal fundamentalists and illiterates prevented this, and as a result the economy is in the tank and Republicans are probably going to run the whole show-and for a good long time. Mitt will stimulate the hell out of the economy and get the credit.
FlipYrWhig
@wrb: I don’t see how Romney could do anything but slash taxes and slash services. Which wouldn’t help the economic picture one bit.
SFAW
The key phrase is “Had Obama tried …”
If he had started at, let’s say, $1.5T, and backed that up with job-creation estimates from the appropriate people (i.e. Keynesians other than Krugman), it would have been a lot harder for the Rethugs to get him down to $800B without paying a greater political price. After he fired his opening salvo (the $1.5T proposal), he and his surrogates could have worked the refs (the SCLM) daily. Eventually, the message would take hold with enough of the non-27-percenters that the screeches of ZOMFG DEFICITS!!! from the Teabaggers would have been marginalized. I tend to believe that it would have had the additional benefit of heartening the Dems who ended up staying home in 2010. Leading to low turnout which in turn led – at least in part – to the nutcase Teabaggers taking over the Asylum.
I’m still going to vote for him, I think he’s light years ahead of Romney on most things, but it would have been nice if he had focused more on jobs in 2009-2010, than on his legacy (i.e. Health Care). Yes, I understand that the hand he was dealt (economy, traitorous Rethugs, quisling Dems) was problematic. But he’s smart enough – at least in theory – to have figured out how to get through it with two-thirds of a loaf, instead of one-quarter. It ain’t rocket surgery.
SFAW
Please try NOT to be an imbecile, OK?
No, I’m committed to the idea that you don’t start an adversarial “negotiation” at your expected/desired endpoint. I realize negotiations rarely end at the midpoint. But I also know it’s exceedingly difficult to get what you want from your mortal enemy if you assume you only need to give up 3% to have a “meeting of the minds.” If you start at 40, 50, or even 100 percent more than what you really want, you give yourself a lot more cushion, and it’s a lot easier to harden your position earlier, and make your adversary pay a greater price for what little you give up later.
wrb
@FlipYrWhig:
Slashing taxes will help the economy, just not as efficiently as would building infrastructure
or hiring. The consensus multiplier for slashing taxes on the non-wealthy is actually pretty good. Slashing services won’t help but slashing regulations and selling government assets can provide a big bang– let loose stalled projects (every damn pipeline and power plant ever proposed), shield those who will build anything -refinery, nuke plant- from liability, unlock the forests and conduct massive timber sales.
The Republican can stimulate but they will do it in a way a lot less palatable than the sort of Republican lite stimulus for whicht Obama probably could have either gotten Republican votes, or used to kill them at the ballot (Republicans blocked my pocketing all my tax money for 3 years? Really?!)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yahoo today
“Let the finger pointing begin: President Obama blames Congress for weak jobs report”
Remember both sides do it.
brantl
@SFAW:
Apparently you don’t pay attention to history, since their use of the fillibuster since 2006 is unprecedented. These Republicans are a logarithmic factor batshit crazier than they have ever been before. Smarten up, slowpoke.
gaz
@wrb:
At current tax levels, I doubt slashing taxes any further will have much, if any measurable net beneficial impact on the economy – and are likely to be harmful in the long haul.
We have a revenue problem and a demand problem.
Tax cuts at this point are being pushed for two reasons:
1. They are easy to sell to both the rubes and the sycophants
2. They are part and parcel to continue the drive to slash government services.
The economic benefit at this point is likely to be so negligible to be meaningless. In fact, I’d posit that the only reason they would not be directly harmful is that we are at a bond interest rate of something like 1.6%-1.7% so we can borrow cheaply in the face of a revenue shortfall. The long term effects however, still arguably indicate that tax cuts would do more harm than good.
Aside from that, I agree with the thrust of your argument.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: You’re still envisioning a bazaar-style negotiation where A and B are a couple who want a rug and C is a merchant who wants to sell them a rug. That’s not what this is. This is A not wanting a rug, B only wanting a certain color rug, and your advice for C is not to check for that color but rather to set his price higher.
jl
Sorry, late back to the thread. Still no time to wade through.
I should have mentioned that the whole stimulus versus deficits dilemma is bogus.
Raise taxes on the rich and upper middle class, increase fiscal stimulus spending, maintain accommodative monetary policy, the ‘balanced budget multiplier’ can be very effective in these circumstances.
No reason at all not to do it.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: Also, the negotiation isn’t with “your mortal enemy.” The Republicans didn’t negotiate at all. Zero House Republicans voted for it. Collins, Snowe, and Specter did. But it wasn’t like all the Democrats were on board and then (all Democrats) negotiated with (all Republicans) to peel off three. In order to get the Democrats on board, they _already_ had to dial back the biggest numbers that were floating around. I think you underemphasize that aspect of the whole thing.
FlipYrWhig
@jl: The reason it doesn’t happen is not because it isn’t a good idea but because politicians often are un-persuaded even by good ideas.
wrb
@gaz:
I actually believe a lower/middle income tax cut or holiday would actually provide more stimulus
now than it would typically, because so many of the affected taxpayers are hurting. They would spend all they get, immediately.
It would also prevent some foreclosures, which might help stem the ongoing collapse in the property market, a potentially very significant secondary benefit.
SFAW
I’m guessing you woke from your drug-induced slumber around 2006, because although the Rethugs didn’t need to filibuster before 2006 (since they controlled the Senate from 1995 until then, with the exception of Jeffords’s “defection”).
I agree that they’re crazier (or whatever) than they were in 1995, but it’s not as if they suddenly turned that way – they’ve been telegraphing that for awhile.
BTW, you probably mean “exponential”, not “logarithmic”, but what do I know, since I’m apparently a slowpoke. But it wasn’t exponential, even after the 2010s. It’s partly strategic, partly tactical, and partly insanity.
But far be it from me to suggest you need to buy a clue before posting further.
NR
@sherparick:
It’s okay. Nobody can do anything without sixty votes in the Senate. Or so I was repeatedly told in 2009 and 2010.
SFAW
FlipYrWhig –
There will always be negotiations. (Hmm, sounds like “We have always been at war with EastAsia.”) Even the Rethugs will negotiate, even though not in good faith (see “Lucy, football”). But if they choose to stand athwart Teh Crazy yelling “Stop!”, you use that against them, again, and again, and again, until the SCLM gets off their fat asses and starts paying attention.
I never said it would be easy – in fact, the underlying assumption is that the Dems actually stick with it for more than 3 months, which I realize is a questionable assumption. And, it would require them, to borrow from Zandar, to “nut the fuck up” – something they appear to be relatively unable to do.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: But Republicans _don’t_ negotiate when they’re in the minority, by deliberate strategy. They’d rather vote no on everything and then wait for the next election to see if they pay a price for that. And so far they haven’t. That was the lesson they learned from the Clinton presidency: don’t vote for policies palatable to conservatives even when Democrats propose them, because the Democrats will get the credit.
“The Democrats” don’t “nut the fuck up” because The Democrats have completely antithetical economic ideas. “Moderate” Democrats need A LOT of stroking and cajoling to move towards anything that can be portrayed as Big Spending. They either really believe it or think they’ll lose their next elections if they stray from that view. And it’s not just a handful of them, it’s probably 20 of the Democrats in the Senate. They have to be dragged into anything Keynesian, anything that might be demagogued as Tax N Spend.
We can’t just discount that element in these discussions of What Democrats Should Do. They _should_ do a lot of things, and would if they were liberal populists, but they’re not, and we need to deal with the Democrats we have, not the Democrats we wish we had.
4tehlulz
This is all Obama’s fault; if he pushed for a bigger stimulus, the European meltdown wouldn’t have happened.
Hsquared
What they said:
“…take a moment to consider a hypothetical: what would the economy look like today if Congress had followed Obama’s lead, responded to public-opinion polls, and passed the American Jobs Act? In 2012, do you think the nation could use those 1.3 million jobs or not?” http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/01/12007563-the-road-not-taken?lite
“Special thank goes to “Progressives” and ”Liberals” pundits, bloggers and their followers, who told people to stay home [in 2010], because Democrats were not “Progressives” and “Liberals” enough. Thank you, really.” http://blackwaterdog.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/2010-staying-home-to-punish-obama-voters-this-is-all-on-you/
OzoneR
@SFAW: Boy you sure told me lol
SFAW
Flip –
I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree (even though I’m right, as Cole says). I’m more hopeful than you re: negotiation possibilities, and less cynical regarding what could have happened with the original stimulus.
But I agree that the Dems today are a shadow of what we used to think of as Democrats. I hope I live long enough to see them become liberal again, but I’m not making plans in that regard.
FlipYrWhig
@Hsquared: Oh, jeez, not this again. Look, people who style themselves on the left of Obama didn’t stay home, and didn’t cost anyone any elections. If anything, the people who didn’t bother to vote were those who like Obama better than they like their local Democratic candidates, who sat out an election where they couldn’t vote for Obama.
OzoneR
@Hsquared: The problem in 2010 wasn’t liberals who pouted and stayed home, it was liberals who thought they couldn’t lose and Independents who said “lets have a split government cause then they’d totally have to work together”
OzoneR
@SFAW:
did he now?
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: I think we’ve gotten to a place where Republicans no longer vote for the things that sheer interest should dictate they support, and where voters no longer punish them for it. And I think that’s highly worrisome, because it’s a grave breach of the basic gentleman’s agreement that the point of being in government is to try to use the government to improve people’s lives. Republicans think the point of being in the government is to stop Democrats from using the government at all.
And that’s why hard-core ideologues like Tom Coburn suddenly sound relatively reasonable: because he still believes that the government has a purpose and needs to function; he just has a fucked-up view of what that purpose is.
So I think things look very bleak — which is why I mind, less than other people do around here, the presence of conservative Democrats in the caucus. Yes, they pull everything to the right and scale everything down. And, yes, a liberal majority would be a lot better than a squished-together liberal-conservative majority. But at least they respect the basic goal of policy-making. And if they get replaced by Republicans, we’re all lost for several years.
FlipYrWhig
@OzoneR: SFAW means John’s line about “Let’s agree to disagree, but I’m right.”
SFAW
OzoneR –
What Flip said @295. Sorry for the inside-baseball thing.
Edit: Besides, Cole would never say that I’m right, after I gave him such a hard time for not collecting on his $1000 bet with that cabron Jonah Goldberg.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@FlipYrWhig:
You’re not getting it. The conservative movement is controlled by a bunch of media clowns who want outrage and who could careless about governance. Republican congress men have to vote no because they instant they do anything they will be denounced as a RINO. Go read up again about Boehner’s problems getting the basics done in the House.
FlipYrWhig
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I don’t know what you think I’m not getting… I think I said something similar a few posts later. Aren’t we saying the same thing? What’s the missing piece?
SFAW
Flip, Enhanced –
Boy, I never thought I’d see the day when I was the least cynical one here.
I better amp up my game, I’m gettin’ soft.
gaz
@wrb: Tax rates are at historic lows. It’s time for direct relief in the form of more services like unemployment benefits (rather than slashing them), federal grants for state and local programs that alleviate suffering, infrastructure investments and direct mortgage relief, among other things. When you are looking at more than 14% of potential labor pool being shut out of work, and consequently being broke as fuck, no matter how much you cut their taxes, they aren’t going to spend.
Slashing taxes among the working class is generally stimulative (even if not as efficient as other measures), but after a point, the diminishing returns make it negligible. I agree with Charles Pierce “Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs, People Got No Money”. Taking it a bit further, people are out of work and have little to no income. Cutting the taxes won’t do much to get those folks to increase spending, especially when we are scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of tax cuts as it is.
FlipYrWhig
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Oh, you mean that they don’t even care what the next election holds? I think deep down they have a few more qualms than _that_, but that’s probably pretty close to true.
wrb
@gaz:
Your points are true, but they are points for an acedemic presentation on what would the ideal policy prescription be?
None of those worthy things have any chance of passing.
Rather than what stimulus can pass and actually relieve suffering, now? Who gives a fuck about the sanctity of “historic lows.”
Krugman sort of responded to people pressing him on this months back and his response was very disappointing. It was more or less “well yes it would improve the economy, but it would not be the most efficient form of stimulus and when it worked it would be taken as validating the argument of those in the academy who argue against those who argue for better policy.”
Tenure must be nice. There is a component of the left who make clear in their arguments that they aren’t and won’t going to suffer personally so can sit about the fire, shaking their pipes, demanding that we accept nothing less that the perfect Platonic forms while people are dying in the gutter as a direct result.
The best achievable is the best, for the dying.
rda909
Oh boy. With apologies to Sonny Curtis, Zandar fought the stupid and the stupid won. (on this post at least). We know you won’t fall into the same trap twice, right? Right?!?
mclaren
@Donut:
Well, let’s try to clear that up for you.
From Raoul Pal’s Global Macro Investor forecast for 2012, presented in Shanghai in May 2012:
The world has no engine of growth, with most of the G20 countries approaching stall speed at the same time.
For the first time since the 1930’s we are entering a recession before Industrial Production, Durable Goods Orders, Employment and Private Sector Employment and Private Sector GDP have made back their Previous highs.
These are the weakest ever-foundations on which to enter a recession.
“Financial Armageddon Approaches: Spain is About to Enter a Full-Scale Collapse,” Alexander Higgins blog.
From Forbes:
“The Perfect Storm At JPMorgan Chase,” Steve Denning, Forbes, 21 May 2012.
“Warming gas levels hit ‘troubling milestone,'” The Guardian, 31 May 2012.
30% of California’s economy is agriculture. From a highly irrigated desert. And California is the world’s 6th largest economy. What do you think will happen to the U.S. economy when global warming hits the California central valley?
Or try Paul Krugman’s 15 May 2012 op-ed
“Europe’s Economic Suicide,” from the New York Times.
“Monetary policy: A central-bank failure of epic proportions,” Ryan Avent, The Economist, 1 June 2012.
“China and the impending global slowdown”:
Source: “China and the Impending Global Slowdown,” Menzie Chinn, econbrowser blog, 31 May 2012.
Source: “The Part-Time Economy (Redux),” Tyler Durden, 9 March 2012, Zerohedge.
“Housing Market Rebound Not Likely To Happen In Our Lifetimes: Shiller”
Source: Reuters news service, 24 April 2012.
.
Source: Dairyland Peach blog, 16 April 2012.
Beginning to see it now?
Everything looks it’s converging in an unholy combination of economy-destroying bad news, from Peak Oil to congressional gridlock to the Eurozone imploding to automation + offshoring annihilating the U.S. middle class and driving the “natural” rate of unemployment relentlessly up above 8% to 9%, 10%, and who knows where that will end, to China entering an economic slowdown as its economy matures, to economic drivers like the tech industry hitting a long-term plateau (CPU speeds have hit a wall, hard drive prices are permanently up due to global warming flooding in Thailand where most of the hard drive are manufactured, insane copyright laws like SOPA and CISPA are locking down and throttling the internet just when the world needs it as an engine of economic growth), to global exhaustion of basic raw materials and foodstuffs (scientists predict the world’s oceans will be fished out of sea life by 2050, the world is running out of fresh water, helium, rare earths for semiconductors, etc.).
Basically, it looks like the next 8-10 months of the global economy are going to be something out of a horror movie like The Omen.
So the last thing anybody needs is more temporizing, more kicking the can down the road, more tinkering around the edges without fixing any of the real problems, as Obama has proven himself fixated on doing.
If you’re not freaked out yet, permit me to quote once again from Raoul Pal’s 2012 economic outlook:
Or try this prophetic post from the Euromoney blog in 2011:
SFAW
In out next installment from mclaren:
We learn more regarding the friendship between Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky, and about life in the upper echelons of Saint Petersburg society.
mclaren
@SFAW:
Shorter SFAW:
Ow! My balls!
SFAW
Shorter mclaren:
[Trick question. EVERYTHING is shorter than the most recent comment.]
Donut
Ok. Thanks for clearing that up.