I'd be more interested in solutions then trying to fix blame, since in my opinion they all cause it.
It is crystal clear Obama and his admin have been making things worse.
What will be done about it?
1) what has the admin made worse?
2) How has it been made worse?
3) What stats do you have to back up your POV?
4) what would you have done differently?
5) what is the solution to Obama's so called **** ups?
First of all, Obama himself said the economy would get worse, Second, Biden is now stating that it IS worse than they thought it would be because "we misread the economy".
Questions 1, 2 and 3
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/business/01leonhardt.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
Obama Ponzi Scheme: Forbes Calls Obama Administration Worse than Madoff
Obamas Economy: May Unemployment Numbers Worse Than Projected, Long Term Unemployment Sets Record | KXNet.com North Dakota News
Questions 4 and 5 (partial answers)
From John Cassidy at Porfolio, shortly after the election
(quote)
On October 10, Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary and a senior economic adviser to Barack Obama, said that barring egregious errors, this is not going to be anything like the pictures people saw of the 1930s. A few days later, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. economy will emerge from this period with renewed vigor.
Among noneconomists, there is much more concern about what lies ahead. In October, a CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe another 1930s-style depression is very or somewhat likely. Dismissing feel-good suggestions that the turmoil on Wall Street wont have much impact on the rest of the economy, 55 percent of the respondents said the financial crisis would affect them personally within the next year. A separate poll for Condé Nast Portfolio shows that people working in the finance business are even gloomier: 77 percent of them say their industry is in a state of crisis, and 50 percent say the economy is the worst it has been in their careers.
So who are we to believe: the experts who failed to predict the current crisis or the great American public? With due respect to my fellow dabblers in the dismal science, I share Joe the Plumbers queasy feeling. Unless something miraculous happens in the next few weeks, the new inhabitant of the Oval Office will inherit an economy flailing under the weight of record debts and rising unemployment. If a depression is defined as a deep, extended recession of a severity that nobody under the age of 75 can recall, then it is quite likely that we are already in one.
(end quote)
Once again, the question arises, why have the professionals so consistently underestimated the problems?
Why did Obama say last week that no additional stimulus was being contemplated at this time?
Is it merely the fact that these people have jobs that are secure--no personal financial worries--that leads to the persistent underestimation of the severity?
Surely there must be someone tasked with the job of estimating just how much the real estate inflation and associated construction, spending and financing added to the economy in the boom times. Surely there must be people tasked with estimating the losses still to be named at the financial institutions.
Perhaps when they have that data they then might have an idea as to how bad it really will be. An adequate course for survival (yes, survival) could be planned.
We've already wasted 2 years of pretending that the problem is small or contained. The survey shows that Americans already know it is bad and getting worse. Get the information, lay it out, make adequate plans.
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In hindsight, the administration made a big mistake in allowing Congress such a free hand in drafting the Stimulus bill. Many voters have figured out that the Stimulus Bill passed in such haste was mostly aimed at getting Democratic votes in 2010, and not targeted to healing the economy.
And unfortunately for the Democrats, the non-stimulating "Stimulus" is the most salient part of their economic recovery effort.
Forecasting the Obama Economy
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WHY NOT just nationalize the banks and other financial firms, rather than keep spending endless amounts of taxpayer money to keep them going--like the $173 billion given to AIG so far?
DEFENDING PRIVATE property is the default setting of U.S. politics. Nationalization, we're told, is for Europeans and Third World leftists like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
But the more important factor is that the bankers have, in the words of economist Simon Johnson, carried out a "silent coup"--they've used their influence in Washington to block any attempt to make them politically accountable, let alone see their companies placed under government ownership.
Johnson should know what he's talking about. He's the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a job that involved dictating the terms of financial restructuring in several countries. Now, he says, the U.S. financial barons are behaving just like the entrenched business oligarchs in countries like Russia and Indonesia.
So instead of the U.S. government taking over the banks, the bankers have taken even greater control of government policy. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, for example, was formerly president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That is, Geithner was the main government overseer of Wall Street even as the big banks drove the economy off the cliff by loading up on mortgage-backed securities and complicated assets known as derivatives.
It was Geithner who negotiated the nationalization of AIG in a meeting that included Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, a major trading partner with AIG. Is it a coincidence that Goldman recently collected $12.9 billion in payment from AIG--or rather, from the U.S. taxpayers, since our money only paused briefly on AIG's books before being funneled into the most powerful company on Wall Street?
But the AIG ripoff is only the beginning of the government's stupendous transfer of wealth from the working class to finance capital. Under Geithner's bank bailout program--the Public-Private Investment Partnership, or PPIP--the government will match private investors' initial investment in mortgages and other toxic assets.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the government agency that guarantees your checking or savings account, will be pressed into service for the PPIP. Under Geithner's plan, the FDIC will finance up to 85 percent of the money that hedge funds and other firms will use to buy those assets. (This legally dubious maneuver allows Geithner to come up with money for the program without going to Congress.)
If PPIP investments in toxic assets pay off, the government and private investors split the profits. Yet since private investors are required to put up so little of their own money, their gains could be as high as 30 percent. If the assets turn out to be bad, though, the government guarantees investors against losses.
Geithner somehow keeps a straight face when he claims that PPIP will help revive the economy. By assisting Wall Street, the cliché goes, the government will help Main Street through a revival in lending.
In reality, the big banks remain crippled by bad investments and are using the money to cover current and future losses. Even so, with commercial real estate tanking and corporate bankruptcies in the offing, things are likely to get worse for the banks before they get better.
That's why Wall Street was so anxious to get details of Geithner's PPIP. The real aim of the operation is for the government to absorb as much of the banks' losses as politically possible--which means workers will pay the price through higher taxes. In other words, Wall Street has gotten everything it wanted from Geithner, and then some.
And if any more proof is needed between the interpenetration of Wall Street and Washington, consider the career--and income--of Larry Summers, Obama's top economic adviser. A former Treasury Secretary who was later forced out as president of Harvard for making sexist comments, Summers earned $5.2 million as a managing director of D.E. Shaw, a $30 billion hedge fund. He got another $2.77 million for speaking engagements, including $135,000 from Goldman Sachs.
Can Obama's policies fix the economy? | SocialistWorker.org
