Why Haven't Obama's Policies Helped The Economy?

[francoHFW]

UE was 7.8% when it passed, so it's obviously more Pubcrappe for the brainwashed...

 

[Avorysuds]

It's a very similar situation. Without the stimulus, the economy would have remained in recession throughout 2009 and we'd have several million fewer jobs today. If you think that's a better situation, I don't really know what to tell you.

Without the stimulus the bad companies would fail, new companies would prosper, and unemployment would have been under 8% like Obama's advisor said the stimulus would make it.

Doubtful. Without the stimulus, unemployment would likely be 12-13% right now (if not higher).

Prove it.

 

[Zander]

The same reasons they haven't worked in Japan for the last 25 years.

So true. Japan has been following the Keynesian prescription of deficit spending, government stimulus, and artificially low interest rates for 25 years and the only thing they have to show for it is a debt to GDP ratio of 280% and growing.

I challenge anyone to show even one case where Keynesian economics has worked*. It's a great theory, but it doesn't work in practice.

* by the way -WW2 was not a Keynesian policy prescription. It was a war.

 

[Wiseacre]

Everything Obama has done since entering office has been counter productive to doing business. Everything. He has made it harder and more expensive to start a new business or hire more people. True, he inherited a poor hand, but he played it very poorly by doing things to help his supporters instead of doing what was best for all of us.

 

[Polk]

The same reasons they haven't worked in Japan for the last 25 years.

So true. Japan has been following the Keynesian prescription of deficit spending, government stimulus, and artificially low interest rates for 25 years and the only thing they have to show for it is a debt to GDP ratio of 280% and growing.

I challenge anyone to show even one case where Keynesian economics has worked*. It's a great theory, but it doesn't work in practice.

* by the way -WW2 was not a Keynesian policy prescription. It was a war.

Multiple problems with that argument.

1. Japan hasn't tried that. They've shifted back and forth between stimulus and austerity.
2. Japan is a country with a shrinking population, so it has a lot of structural issues that our economy does not face.
3. I can give other examples, but you gave one yourself that you choose to ignore for some reason. The Second World War didn't happen as a measure to boost the economy, but it certainly meets the criteria set forward by Keynes.

 

[Polk]

Everything Obama has done since entering office has been counter productive to doing business. Everything. He has made it harder and more expensive to start a new business or hire more people. True, he inherited a poor hand, but he played it very poorly by doing things to help his supporters instead of doing what was best for all of us.

Please, name the ways he has "made it harder and more expensive to start a new business or hire more people".

 

[Foxfyre]

WhatObama should have done from Day #1:

1. Issue an executive order to freeze all federal employment at existing levels and do not replace any non essential workers that retired, quit, or were fired.

2. Issue a freeze on ALL non essential buying at the federal level - order federal employees to use existing equipment, furnishings, decorations, supplies unless new ones were absolutely essential.

3. Issue an Executive Order that only essential government contracts will be issued and those will go to the lowest bidder who qualifies to the do the work whether union or not, whether at union wages or not.

4. Ask Congress to cancel the second half of the TARP funds that President Bush left for President Obama to use.

The above four measures would have saved billions, set a magnificent example, and would have put most of the American people squarely behind him.

5. Make an empassioned plea to Congress to make the Bush tax policy permanent for the next ten years or until a fair and impartial permanent flat tax could be put together and presented to the American people for comment and input. (This would have freed up up to six trilion in investment capital that American businesses are sitting on here at home and abroad.)

6. Push Congress to relax as many regulations as possible that are not essential to protect the life, liberty, or well being of the American citizens. (This would have encouraged American businesses to put those trillions in investment capital to work.)

7. Leave Obamacare on the shelf or assign it to professionals to work on to come up with the most effective, efficient, and economical way to reform the healthcare system.

8. Assure commerce and industry that Cap & Trade was out of play for the foreseeable future.

9. Appoint a professional Commission to look at Medicare, Social Security, and the federal portion of Medicaid and present him with the more effective, efficient, and economical ways to reform these programs with the least pain for those currently dependent on them.

10. Put the best financial minds in the country to work to fix the flaws and holes in the banking and mortgage industry.

If he had done this, I am confident that we would have begun pulling out of the recession within a few months and would be back to a booming economy by now. Some businesses would have failed and there would have been some intermittant pain, but that happened anyway. But he would have laid out the blueprint for a successful economy for a free people and would have gone down in history as one of America's greatest Presidents.

Unfortunately, his model seems to be a bigger, stronger, more intrusive, and ever more authoritarian government governing an ever more dependent and submissive people. And I don't think he CARES whether unemployment is high or the economy is hopelessly bogged down. I think the more we need the government to 'save us', the happier he is.

Would have indeed put us on a different path than the one we currently are on. But for a man that has his whole life surrounded himself with subversives, leftists, Communists, Marxists, Domestic Terrorists?
It just didn't fit his ideology. Many of us knew it from the begining and tried to warn others.

A different path of many more private sector jobs and much lower employment. The mortgage defaults would have bottomed out by now and we would be pulling out of the housing slump. We never would have accumulated those enormous deficits and the debt would be several trillion dollars lower than it is now and we would still have our AAA credit rating.

Obama, however, did not campaign as the Marxist he is. He campaigned on lower taxes, less onerous regulation, a fully transparent up front government, remember? He was going to go through spending bills with a fine tooth comb and eliminate all special interest and earmark spending, Remember? He was going to do a full audit of government agencies and eliminate duplicate staff and close those departments that were not performing. Remember?

But alas, all that was for naught. In order to empower government, increase its authority, and persuade the people to clamor for salvation from Washington, it is necessary to rachet up the misery index. And that seems to be exactly what they are doing.

I'm still an eternal optimist though. I believe the large lion's share of the American people are still freedom loving and reject losing power to govern themselves. I'm seeing signs of a non-violent revolution in the making. We all should get behind it.

 

[Polk]

Obama also delivered on lower taxes. They're lower now than they've been at any point in the last 50 years.

 

[8537]

Without the stimulus the bad companies would fail, new companies would prosper, and unemployment would have been under 8% like Obama's advisor said the stimulus would make it.

Doubtful. Without the stimulus, unemployment would likely be 12-13% right now (if not higher).

Neither one of us can prove either one of those claims now can we?

Prove? No. But we could ask a wide range of people who understand the economy. We could start with the three most respected economic forecasting firms in the nation. What do they say? They say the stimulus added between 1 and 3 million jobs and unemployment would be higher, GDP lower without it.

We could ask John McCain's economic advisor - what does he say? That we would have a couple million fewer jobs and the economy would be smaller.

We could ask just about every academic economist not being paid off by Heritage, what would they say? Overwhelmingly, they agree that unemployment would be higher.

We could ask the Congressional Budget Office - what do they say? Stimulus created between 1 and 2.9M jobs and added a a point or so to GDP in each quarter.

But instead, we'll just go with a hunch that meets our intellectual bias and say the stimulus failed. Then we don't have to admit something government did was effective.

 

[8537]

Remember when Japan failed to arrest its housing collapse and failed to provide adequate monetary stimulus?

How'd that work out for 'em?

 

[The Rabbi]

Because they suck.

There really isn't any more that needs saying.

 

[Avorysuds]

Remember when Japan failed to arrest its housing collapse and failed to provide adequate monetary stimulus?

How'd that work out for 'em?

Really, Japan... you wana compare all this with Japan...

 

[francoHFW]

Japan has 2 1/2 times our debt...

 

[Raoul_Duke]

The 2008 meltdown created a three trillion dollar hole in the economy. Obama tried plugging it with a less than one trillion stimulus. We're also facing massive unemployment, something that's a legacy of the 2008 meltdown and that can't really be blamed on Obama. We're also facing a consumer strike, as consumers (consumer spending is 70% of GDP) cut spending as their equity (house, stockls) is shot to bits and they don't know if they'll be in employment next month.

So there's really not a lot he can do. Further stimulus is off the table due to the GOP, consumers aren't going to feel like spending until they've reduced their debt and feel secure in their jobs and the economy in general. It's going to take a long time for things to get better, and it doesn't look like they will anytime soon.

There's actually a lot he can do, Raoul but it's all counter to his core belief that more government is the answer to every problem. Instead of spending another half a trillion dollars on a stimulus that won't work any better than the first stimulus...how about if he did these three simple things...repatriate corporate profits earned overseas by not taxing those profits if they use that capital to either hire new employees or buy new equipment made here in the US...announce a two year moratorium on all new regulations...and reform the tax code so loopholes are taken out but the overall rates are lowered. Doing those three things will interject over a trillion dollars in additional investment capital to the US that would have been spent elsewhere...allay business uncertainty about looming regulations and make our tax structure less punitive to small businesses.

That's what he should do, Raoul. All of those things wouldn't cost us any money at all...yet would actually boost job creation in the Private Sector, which will in turn boost the revenues that make it possible to pay for jobs in the Public Sector. I won't hold my breath though because the progressives now running the country are intent on having us relive the Great Depression just so Barack can play FDR.

US corporations aren't going to invest any money in the US that they're not currently investing. A few years ago the GOP give them a tax amnesty on corporate profits anyway and next time the GOP are in the White House they'll do the same again. And how much of the repatriated money did US corporations invest back then? None, it was paid out in dividends or kept in the bank.

Which regulations has Obama introduced that weren't there before he took office? Can you name some? Some that are holding back business? Bush slashed regulations and taxes when he took office, created a tiny number of jobs and his newly-deregulated financial industry caused the biggest economic meltdown since the Depression. Sure deregulating the economy is such a good idea?

Businesses are already sitting on top of trillions of dollars of cash. Cutting taxes is just going to add to the pile. Like I said, bush slashed taxes and had the worst job creation record of any president.

And the uncertainty thing is nonsense :


The people creating jobs in this country are small and medium sized businesses, large businesses are offshoring everything as fast as they can. And what do small businesses say is their biggest problem. luckily there's an extensive monthly survey of small businesses so we can find out! here it is in graph form :

and here

so you can clearly see the biggest problem for businesses is lack of demand -- 70% of US GDP is consumer spending and consumers aren't spending as their equity has been decimated by the house price collapse and equity market falls. Plus they don't know if they're going to be employed next week so they're just not spending, so business isn't investing or hiring.

The stuff about business being worried about regulation is just a GOP talking point that lots of people are parroting. You can see from the graphs that business is as worried about new regulation as it was back in the booming 90s when 22 million jobs were created. Bush slashed taxes and regulation and we got the decade in history where we actually lost jobs.

The GOP are pushing this "regulatory uncertainty" nonsense because they're shilling for their paymasters at the banks, healthcare corporations, energy corporations etc. who want to block any healthcare reform, regulation of banks etc. etc. That's it. Bohner is just a corporate shill. his claims have no basis in reality.

 

[8537]

Remember when Japan failed to arrest its housing collapse and failed to provide adequate monetary stimulus?

How'd that work out for 'em?

Really, Japan... you wana compare all this with Japan...

Sure.

 

[8537]

Japan has 2 1/2 times our debt...

In 1991?

 

[The Rabbi]

Remember when Japan failed to arrest its housing collapse and failed to provide adequate monetary stimulus?

How'd that work out for 'em?

Really, Japan... you wana compare all this with Japan...

Sure.

Japan has had zero interest rates and stimulus after stimulus for over a decade and they are still mired in slow to no growth.
Obama followed pretty much the same playbook and the results have been the same.
By contrast Germany did much less and their growth rate far outpaced ours. Granted there are many differences but it is suggestive enough.

 

[nitroz]

Throwing money in the economy here and there wont cut it.

Having something like the space program and other projects will.
America can reach new goals and whatnot while maintaining a steady economy.

People have jobs where I live, but if you get laid off, you wont be getting a job anytime soon.
(they are an endangered species here)

 

[MeBelle]

Yep, that guy was one of george Bush's biggest supporters and he supported all of Geiorge's successful policies like deregulating the financial industry. He's a big GOP donor and here he is repeating GOP talking points. So what?

Steve Wynn is a Democrat, you fucking Tool

Since when? He was Bush appointee to the Kennedy Center board and while he's given money to candidates of both parties, his donations to Republicans have been much larger.

The man who played a major role in revitalizing Las Vegas is bashing President Barack Obama as “the greatest wet blanket to business, progress and job creation in my lifetime.”

Speaking to investors on a Monday conference call, casino developer Steve Wynn — calling himself a “Democratic businessman” — went on a rant against Obama and his policies.



Read more: Steve Wynn: Obama a bad bet for biz - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com

 

[editec]

The economy has been going down because it is structually designed to go down.

Until we change the things that have been causing this economy to stagnate, reducing taxes, or even more spending is going to not help much.

The first thing we must do is ask ourselves WHY so many American are out of work and unable to find a job.

Ponder that while sitting in front of your computer that are not made in the USA.