A frustrating day here for me — I whacked my funny bone and it hurts to type for me more than a few minutes, but there’s a ton to blog about today!
But here’s a short New Yorker piece on the new meme (pushed by Bobo and throughout Kaplan, for example) that the economy sucks because Obama hurt Mort Zuckerma’s fee-fees and made all the business geniuses go Galt:
There’s also a pervasive feeling that Obama’s tone—as evidenced by tough rhetoric against Wall Street and BP—is dampening the spirits of business leaders, making them unwilling to take risks. The implicit idea here is that when businesspeople feel poorly treated they’ll just take their ball and go home, even if that means giving up chances for profit. This isn’t a completely crazy idea: as Keynes argued, “animal spirits” play an important role in driving business decisions, and there are historical examples of so-called “capital strikes”—where investors pulled capital out of an economy in reaction to anti-business policies. But there’s no evidence that anything like this is happening in the U.S. right now. Corporate profits are healthy. Investment may be low, but, given how slowly the economy is growing, it’s about where you’d expect. If businesses truly were holding back on hiring new workers or building new plants in the face of real opportunities, we’d see them working their current employees and factories to the limit. But they aren’t: weekly hours worked have scarcely budged in two years, and factory usage is at just seventy per cent of capacity, which is historically quite low.
If businesses aren’t hiring or investing, in other words, it’s because they don’t need to: they have enough workers and factories to meet the demand for their products. And there are few signs that this is going to change any time soon: consumer demand remains weak, economic indicators—inflation rates, consumer confidence, the stock market, bond rates—aren’t forecasting a quick return to boom times, and, just last week, the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, told Congress that the state of the U.S. economy was “unusually uncertain.” So it’s no wonder that companies are feeling cautious. The uncertainty that’s keeping businesses from spending or hiring isn’t uncertainty about what Barack Obama is doing or saying. It’s uncertainty about whether the economic recovery is going to stick.
BTD
Wow! That is as dumb as it gets.
Svensker
Are you fucking kidding me? Folks, it is time for the pitchforks, torches and guillotines. Now. (Of course, I only mean that in a peaceful, Quakerly, non-violent way…)
Zifnab
I can’t wait to hear the Republican Presidential Nominee for 2012 run on the promise of being more business friendly. Because the real losers in the New Recession have been the mega-corporations and the stockholders. Indeed.
Allan
It would be great if economists could come up with some kind of theory about the relationship between supply and demand so this could finally become a settled issue.
The Moar You Know
Para 1: utter Bloomberg-fellating bullshit.
Para 2: Stone-cold truth.
An interesting combo you found, Doug.
Kryptik
I fucking hate this. I hate that this is going to be the conventional wisdom, because right wing bullshit like this always is. I hate that the burden on the corporate assholes and the top wealth carriers in this country are given a pass by the people we’re supposed to trust to give us news and inform us, and instead decide to push the idea that it’s all because the business owners’ feelings were hurt by those poor plebes and little people. I hate the fact that this is the same goddamn song repeated ad infinitum for decades and proven not to work, and yet we’re still putting it on loop because it’s ALWAYS the fault of the Gov’t and those goddamn little workers demanding too much like safe working environments.
God dammit, god dammit, god dammit, god dammit, Green Balloon Juice already. Get me off this goddamn roller coaster, even if it means a long fall. Better to get the pain over with quick than this goddamn decade long mental and political torture.
ChrisS
It ain’t Obama’s fault, but he’s certainly not the kind of president that can fix the problems the US is facing.
I’m not sure if the political will for this kind of change exists anywhere in the country. It involves going against all the conventional wisdom people have been being force fed for the last 40 years.
BattleCobra90000
This argument only makes sense if you believe (erroneously) that animals have feelings. Animals are like robots. Cold, deadly, furry, robots.
El Cruzado
For a bunch of people who earn millions of dollars just for waking up in the morning (and a lot more millions for going to the office), they sure seem like a bunch of delicate flowers.
Kryptik
@ChrisS:
That’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re just never going to get anyone who can actually heal the gaping, sucking wound we have. The best we can do at this rate is get someone who won’t decide the best way to take care of it is to jab a rusty knife in and twist it further open.
Martin
Library of Congress, change we can believe in.
It’s now legal to bypass security and encryption measures for fair use. Not as broad as I’d like, but quite a nice removal from the Patriot Act bullshit we’ve been saddled with for the last decade. Among other things the ruling also allows you to unlock your cell phone to be brought to another carrier.
Allan
@The Moar You Know: I think you might be misreading the quoted paragraphs. The first one BEGINS by attempting to summarize the “blame-it-on-Obama” argument as neutrally as possible, but the author rapidly pivots to the evidence that counters that meme. His use of the phrase
is telling.
Marion
Larry Summers put this one to bed the other day saying in effect ‘are you @#$#@ kidding me? These companies got into the CDO market and bet the company and almost brought down the world economy, they have off balance sheet entities whose risk to them they can’t even quantify and you’re saying WE scare THEM?”
jrg
At what point did reasonable regulation become “anti-business”? These fuckers crashed the economy and seriously damaged the gulf of Mexico in the past two years.
What planet do Bobo, et. al. live on? Perhaps they believe that laws against murder are “anti-freedom”, too? Or does their “logic” extend only to corporations, not to individuals?
…and at what point did “journalism” become the art of warping a story to meet a narrative, any narrative, regardless of evidence (or lack thereof). Who believes this idiotic crap?
joe from Lowell
I’ll say this for the management of BP: those were some “business leaders” who weren’t afraid to take a few risks.
If every single person with an MBA at BP had gone Galt in April 2009, and the decisions about that rig were made by people with engineering degrees and people with grease under their fingernails, the Gulf fishing fleet would be having a terrific summer right now.
mr. whipple
Riiiight. Call the whaaaaambulance.
Martin
@jrg:
Reagan
Rush Limbaugh
SATSQ
Zifnab
@Kryptik:
Obama was one dude. And he tried like hell to heal that gaping wound. But it’s a wound that stretches across the entire nation. He’s just one man. His own party is barely interested in anything past the next election cycle. His opposition thinks running on “Bigger Gaping Wound” is the path to victory in 2010 and 2012. And the rest of the country is still recovering from the eight year shit storm that was the Bush Administration.
So, no. We were never going to get a Magical Unity Pony to heal our wounds with delightful tongue tickles. I don’t know who gave you that idea.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Pluto? Damn it!! That’s right. That’s not a planet anymore.
danimal
This is why we need to allow the Bush 2011 tax hikes to go into effect. They’ll find some BS reason to whine and moan anyway, so we might as well let them pay their taxes in the process. No matter what he does, Obama will be called the job-killer, so he might as well do the right thing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@danimal: I was just channel surfing, and CNBC has a ‘debate’ going on (the anchors might as well be from AEI) about letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Why does no one, not even the stammering, desperate-not-to-offend liberal (I don’t know who he is) mention that the economy was a lot stronger under the Stalinist taxation rates of the Clinton years?
Kryptik
@Zifnab:
I didn’t mean it as a slight on Obama. I just meant that the problem seems so ridiculous at this rate as to be unfixable by anyone or any combination of people. And as you said, we have a significant group in this country that wants to twist a rusty knife in like it’s not only A solution, but the ONLY solution and trying to stitch up the wound is crazy alien talk.
Zifnab
@danimal: The GOoPers set themselves up in a Catch-22 with all the “Spare the Deficits! Cut the Taxes!” bullshit. They are going into 2010 and 2012 once again talking out of both sides of their mouths and praying the Laffer Curve holds up under another round of economists picking their jaws off the floor.
Given the track record of the right, Obama will be called a job killer if we return to 5% unemployment tomorrow morning. The only thing that is going to matter is whether the economy actually gets better. If the tax cuts are allowed to expire and Obama can use the revenue as leverage for jobs spending, we’ll get back on track for recovery. That’s all that will matter.
ChrisS
So, no. We were never going to get a Magical Unity Pony to heal our wounds with delightful tongue tickles. I don’t know who gave you that idea.
Oh for fucksakes.
Vote Obama! He’s all you got, you fucking morons! ™
Makes a helluva campaign slogan. A lot better than that Hope and Change ™ bullshit.
I’d have a lot more sympathy for Obama if his supporters didn’t keep calling me a stupid dirty fucking hippy every time I didn’t clap my hands and proclaim him the best of all possible candidates.
Cris
So see, we just need to manufacture more demand.
cat48
Well, I hear Bloomberg is running in 2012 as an Independent I think so all the corporates will finally have the leader they desire!
In other news Scocca over at Slate mocks Zuckerman & Politico which both deserve it:
“Anyway! That was old news. What matters now is that if Zuckerman and his peers don’t get treated better, they will stop trying to participate in the economy at all, and we will all just have to stay in this recession till we’re sorry.
The Obama administration, Politico reports, already blew one chance to make things better when it failed to include leaders of the banking industry in the signing ceremony for the financial reform bill they had tried and failed to defeat.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
CNBC anchorbot argues that businesses won’t invest if taxes are too high. I confess finance isn’t my strong point, but doesn’t that 1.3 trillion dollar pile of cash obviate that argument? I know there are a lot of individuals who will cut off their nose to spite their face when it comes to taxation, but Wall Streeters really say to themselves “I don’t want to make a million dollars if I only net $800K instead of $850K”?
Zifnab
@Kryptik: They say that about a lot of problems. Fortunately, this problem is human-centric and humans are a lot more malleable than climate or deficits. We can turn attitudes around fairly quickly. But you do need a minority concerted effort. That’s what we’re still looking for. A rapidly expanding, popular core group working for positive change.
We’ll know it when we see it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ChrisS:
When you say “It ain’t Obama’s fault, but he’s certainly not the kind of president that can fix the problems the US is facing”, that implies pretty clearly there is a “kind of president” who can fix those problems. Who is that person and what would s/he do to fix these problems?
Mark S.
Well, I’ve already exceeded my daily intake of rageahol. Fuck this, I’m not reading any more news today.
Kryptik
@Zifnab:
I still remain horribly and cynically unconvinced for one reason:
Who has the fucking megaphones? After all, if your voice is systematically kept from the ears of people who you’re supposed to persuade and assist, can you really call it a movement?
rootless_e
@ChrisS: You can’t imagine how tiresome self-indulgent whiners demanding reasons to do the basic fucking minimal thing decency requires can be after a while.
It’s really not the job of other people to praise and cajole and beg so-called “progressives” to think about someone else for a moment.
danimal
I should note in all fairness that my passionate hatred for Bush comes from the all-too-evident snake oil sales job he used for his 2001 tax deferral plan. It’s a tax deferral plan because eventually we have to raise taxes to cover the deficit increase that his plan created.
It’s tremendously important to me that the Dems hold the line on this issue and not compromise with the CEO class. They can pay the Clinton rates easily without firing a single servant.
Class warfare is a winning issue for Dems. Also, too.
NobodySpecial
I really want them to go Galt. I can have a pitchfork business up and running in no time.
ChrisS
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The kind of president that understands that globalized labor pools and multi-national corporations backed by a trillion dollar war machine and a simple consumer base with low taxes for all and great services for the poor shouldn’t be the end goal of the US. A population that is 1% wealthy and 60% poor with some semblance of a social safety net isn’t an ideal situation.
ChrisS
@rootless_e:
Whatever.
Jim
Can one of you guys do a post about Sullivan going off the deep-end with his Journolist crap? His latest on how Journolist has proved to be a liberal media conspiracy to shield Palin from coverage is just hilarious.
General Stuck
It’s hard to duck when the horseshit is thrown from all directions. But what do I know being a simple Obot?
Omnes Omnibus
@General Stuck: Do as I do, wear a poncho and wait it out.
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus: I think that is good advice, that I will take.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Zifnab:
Yes. This will happen
This on the other hand, natgannahappen.
Why? Because the GOP will pull out all the stops to filibuster anything which carries the risk that it might improve the economy, because if the economy improves on Obama’s watch, they are dead meat with the electorate. They cannot let that happen not matter what it takes to stop it. And so now they are in full blown right out in the open where everybody can see it Treason mode. Anything they can do to destroy the economy, they will do that. Anything. If Obama and the Dems in Congress were to somehow manage to sneak a jobs bill thru Congress, the GOPers would be out at midnight pouring sand in the gears and sugar into the gas tanks of the bulldozers and earthmovers, if that’s what it takes to stop them from rolling.
They are out to ruin the US economy, no iffs ands or buts.
wheaton pat
OK let’s assume they are participating in an unpatriotic Galt strike.
Let’s tax their wealth. Excess accumulation….. whatever. Since they don’t care about the country and care only about themselves….screw them.
Omnes Omnibus
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I guess the challenge now is to make them do it completely in the open and make sure that everyone sees what they are doing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: at this point, the Dems oughta just go for a Hail Mary jobs/infrastructure bill. When they start squawking about the deficit, just keep saying high unemployment will only make the deficit worse. Just keep hammering that over and over again. Let Krugman and whoever else call the Webbs and the Bayhs and the McCaskills flat out stupid (which has the added advantage of being true).
Allan
@ChrisS:
Look who’s punching the DFHs now.
Zifnab
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s absurd for that reason. But it’s also absurd because you have to understand what is being defended. Namely, salaries in raw cash.
If the corporation spends the money on a plane, it’s tax deductible. If the corp spends the money on a new office building, it’s tax deductible. If the corp sends the accounting staff to Vegas for a weekend, it’s tax deductible.
But if the corp spends the money on the CEO’s salary, then the CEO has to pay income tax on the money. And that is what will destroy capitalism as we know it. Because otherwise, the business will take the money and spend it on economically destructive ventures like capital investments and employee incentives.
The CEO of Ford Motor Company, as of this year, is the highest paid automotive CEO in the world. Higher than Toyota and Honda, even. Why, if not for the US tax system?
The Other Andrew
Apparently, they won’t be happy until we have a President who writes love poems to the stripmine-mentality corporatists and recites them on national TV, making sure they feel warm and fuzzy enough to come up with new ways to plunder us.
Davis X. Machina
And if they do it completely in the open, and no one cares, so long as they get to keep their guns, and liberalwomengaycoloredimmigrants know their place, and foreigners fear us, and basic cable doesn’t suddenly cease broadcasting?
What then? We used to ask “What if they gave a war and no one came?”. How about “What if they gave a revolution, and no one came?”
jl
I think one thing Krugman is correct about is that the economic reactionaries have become completely incoherent. They are just saying stuff, any stuff, in an attempt to get their way. I cannot see any connection at all between what many of the mainstream austerity macro and business economists and what they have been saying is their theory, or their previous empirical results.
Don’t like government spending for fiscal stimulus policy, then say Keynes was totally wrong. Need an argument why some talk about possible policies is wrecking everything because business is afraid of resulting uncertainty? Go Keynesian and talk about animal spirits and investment.
Have a macro theory and empirical approach for 30 years that depends on the economy always being so close to equilibrium that it can be modeled as a linear system, and use that logic whenever convenient. Don’t like a policy? Well, then start waving your hands an talking vaguely about scary nonlinearities (that is Trichet).
Have a macro theory and empirical results using that theory that say expectations along cannot make a big difference in the short run? When that reasoning gets you the policy you want, use it. When it doesn’t, and some one says something in public that you don’t like, use expectations to explain every swing, no matter how large and how quick.
Can’t explain historically very high sustained long term unemployment with your real business cycle model, or your dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that assumes classical results? People laugh at your when you keep trotting out the old line that the workers have all taken advantage of some occult increase in net wealth, or real wage, and are taking a long welfare increasing vacation? Suddenly declare that you kniow somehow that all these unemployed workers are really worthless unproductive bums. Obviously they are, or they would not be unemployed and not be whining about it.
It is an intellectual mess of the highest order.
Mpls
Oh what a freakin pile of crap.
I was (briefly) in an argument with some moron commenters at the Atlantic that claimed that business was not investing because of ‘uncertainty’ about regulation and taxes.
Business isn’t investing because a) sales suck right now, so why plow money into things people aren’t buying and 2) it’s a better deal to suck money out in profits/dividends to their rich crony selves.
—
Tribute to my dear departed moms to list things a), 2) and then I dunno, she usually stopped after that…
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Stop watching CNBC!! They’ll make you dumber by the minute. You understand that CNBC’s resident hero, Rick Santelli, is a teabagger, right? Look at their line-up. Jim “Carnival Barker” Cramer. Larry Kudlow. CNBC is a home for RWNJ’s and Glibertarians.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: Honestly, I am not sure what to do in that case. I do think, however, that flushing the Rebublicans into the open is the first step. I would hope that disgust and self-preservation would cause voter revulsion, but I cannot guarantee it. What do you suggest?
Davis X. Machina
@jl: It’s not a mess, it’s a spurious neatness. For the economic reactionaries, it’s all over-determined — they know the answer, dammit; they just have to rotate through a large number of questions first.
Like when I did my HS chem lab reports, they’ve figured out the teacher — or the boss — likes things neat, and in that case you look up your values in a handbook, draw your curves and then plot your data.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Jim: I think he’s proving the opposite, frankly. He’s basically calling Ezra and the rest (insert derogatory name about women here) because a lot of them were as skeptical as him in private but wouldn’t touch it publicly.
Sentient Puddle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know about anyone on Wall Street, but if I had a time machine and could short the entire CDO market in 2005, I’d gladly pay a 99.5% tax on my gains.
Davis X. Machina
@Omnes Omnibus: Tumbrel racing. Americans like vehicular races of all sorts. And building them would create jobs, too — at least until the Committee of Public Safety got a lower bid for them from overseas.
Tonal Crow
I’m investing largely overseas (especially in Scandinavia) because companies there show an innovative spirit that many American companies lack. Plus, American companies spend too much of my money on electing GOPers, on promoting harmful policies (e.g., denying climate change, supporting the War on Drugs), and on enriching their executives.
I pay for performance, not for propaganda.
That’s right: I’m Going Galt ™ on Republicans and those who support them.
jl
With regard to income taxes, I am not sure why all the downside of uncertainty lies in not extending the Bush tax cuts. After all, they were written to expire in ten years.
Is the uncertainty caucus saying that the common expectation was that they would be extended, even over last several years with Congress and then WH held by Democrats.
If anything, I would think the common expectation would be that they would not be completely extended, and now that WH is proving more centrist than people expected, we should be seeing a beneficial effect of common expectation being that more of the tax cut would be extended than seemed likely two years ago.
If you want to try this argument, there is a good chance your opponent will jump into the hall of mirrors talking about what business expected expectations to be, or expecations about expectations, or something like that.
At which point you should say, OK good, you are a Keynesian then. Let’s do a second fiscal stimulus, ith gummint spending, not tax cuts. One of the advantages of that approach is that if a hall of mirrors expectations about expectations game is going on among investors, then just having the gummint spend kind of cuts the Gordian Knot, and reduces many small business peoples’ and consumers uncertainty about whether they will have customers or an income.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: “Sentence first, verdict afterwards.” Gotta love the Red Queen.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@jrg:
The instant Reagan took the oath of office.
These fucktards are acting this way and cranking up the right wing noise machine because they see that Democrat control of gubmint, even spineless Democratic control of gubmint, could mean the unraveling of their 30 year effort to scrap the New Deal and take ‘Murka back to the 1890s.
It’s obvious to many that the collapse of the last couple of years was the realistic fruition of Reaganomics. Their idea is to blow enough smoke up the collective asses of the American electorate as to hid that fact.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: I find Sullivan is a lot easier to take if you put aside questions of ideology or good/bad faith and simply look at him as a sometimes-insightful crackpot.
valdivia
Have not read the thread but WTFF? Today is one of those days I wish I had just stayed on vacation in germany drinking beer & enjoying the company of the Cologne Fire Brigade. Shoot me now.
jl
@Davis X. Machina:
I disagree. In normal times, the HS chemistry approach, which I used myself, is SOP for some of the real business cycle macroeconomists.
But these are not normal times, and they are just saying stuff.
There is no handbook full of economic constants that allows you to get a stable parameter of measurable productivity of labor. They have no back calculations to match that nonexistent parameter. I am aware of no analytical or empirical work that they have to show that suddenly unexpectedly all the long term unemployed suddenly suffer from what might be called ‘inherent essential unproductivity.’ They are just saying stuff, any stuff, anything that might work and influence public or elite opinion.
Zifnab
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Amazing how blowing smoke up one’s ass will obscure one’s vision. Does this empirically prove we are a nation of ass heads?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Zifnab:
Which then explains where the term “asshat” comes from.
The Moar You Know
@Omnes Omnibus: They are doing it out in the open. The Democrats seem to be silent, aside from the five or six that are unabashedly helping. The populace just sits – aside from the teabaggers who, to their credit, have figured out that there is something horribly wrong. To their everlasting failure, they’ve decided that what is wrong is that there is a nigger in the White House, and that, put mildly, is not the problem.
We just sit, all of us, with a big fucking crosshair painted on us, waiting to get picked off one by one and dumped into the ranks of the servile poor. The lack of understanding of the reality of the situation is dismaying, but inevitable given the trust placed in our media by the populace.
Davis X. Machina
@Omnes Omnibus: We’ll know we’re getting close when you see a new competition “Expropriate the Expropriators!” listed on the cable guide for ESPN or Versus.
fucen tarmal
@Svensker:
nah, we have to wait til the end of the year, when the estate tax returns.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina:
The French Revolution got Louis XVI, but it also got Danton and Robespierre. It is hard to stop the tumbrels once you put them in motion.
Davis X. Machina
@JL
Fixed on edit.
Cato the Elder, according to Cicero (de Divinatione 2. 24), used to wondered that one haruspex did not laugh when he saw another in the street.
We have RBC economists instead of the old Etruscan gut-gazers…..
gbear
@ChrisS:
Hey ChrisS, you stupid DFH, he IS the best possible candidate. Who is your electable alternative?
jl
@Davis X. Machina: I have no Latin, but have read enough history to think that we should bring back the haruspex (haruspexes?).
They would watch the clouds, or examing dove entrails on the steps of the Capitol (or should I say Capital) and when something they didn’t like looked like it might happen, announce that the signs were not auspicious and evreryone should go home for awhile.
cat48
Well cable won’t even carry a brief stmt by the prez any longer. He’s ranting about the DISCLOSE Act that the Senate is filibustering but not important enough to cover. I wouldn’t count on his bully pulpiting being effective if they don’t cover it!
burnspbesq
@BTD:
All due respect, I think this is dumber.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/23/terry-graham/
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Because they don’t care that the economy was stronger. All they care about was that their tax rates were higher during the Clinton years, which means they were bad. Their tax rates are low now, so that’s good. What else do they need to know?
burnspbesq
@Martin:
Don’t run to the nearest T-Mobile store with your iPhone just yet. All that ruling says is that jailbreaking your phone doesn’t violate copyright law. Says nothing about any other law.
This action is going to tee up a nasty bureaucratic turf war. I imagine the FCC’s lawyers are already hearing from the carriers’ lawyers, and someone will be requesting a TRO before happy hour today.
burnspbesq
@ChrisS:
“I’d have a lot more sympathy for Obama if his supporters didn’t keep calling me a stupid dirty fucking hippy every time I didn’t clap my hands and proclaim him the best of all possible candidates.”
If the Birkenstock fits …
Keith G
@Kryptik:
What we need is a champion. Someone who can gain public attention and who can persistently energize those of us who are increasingly concerned about the devolution of American society.
If only there was someone of prominence and influence
who could at the same time teach and exhort about the problems and solutions.
Is there anyone like that around?
Corner Stone
@Keith G:
You know who else gained public attention and energized concerned people about the devolution of society?
That’s right.
Keith G
@Corner Stone:
The public stage can be used for good or ill. Propagandists work in the fourth oldest profession. In our conservative-made society, they are essential. In USA, the S stands for stasis.
Lynne
There are five job seekers for every job. Businesses don’t need to hire, even though productivity is up, because those of you who haven’t been replaced by robots have been replaced by guys in India or in other countries. More demand can’t be created because so many people are out of work that we’re not buying as much as we used to. Businesses certainly are not going to hire Americans out of some sense of patriotism (perish the thought!), so we either need to force them to hire Americans – or – the government should provide the jobs that the private sector is not willing to provide.
Nick
@ChrisS:
I’d have a lot more sympathy for the DFH if they’d wake up and realize we have a country whose political leanings need to change and until we actually work on changing them, this is the best we’re gonna get.
Nick
@Keith G:
yeah that person can’t exist in today’s world, they’d be demonized the moment they grab the public’s attention and turn into an ideologue.
And if this person can exist, he or she isn’t going to hold elected office (i.e. Martin Luther King)
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus:
it also didn’t do much for freedom in France as they had successions of dictatorships and restoration of the monarchy for the next half century.
Nick
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No, and they won’t if they’re too low either. Frankly, as long as they’re making money, they’re not going to invest either, and if they’re not making money, they’ll just cut jobs until they do, and there’s nothing the government can do about it outside of going the communist route.
Nick
This is why I love to punch me some hippies. Because all while they winnie, bleep and moo about how Obama hasn’t gone far enough, they’re ignorant to the fact that he’s gone too far for this country already, and instead of presenting themselves as a counterweight and prove their belief that we don’t like in a country where the right wing is larger than the left (any idiot knows we do), they beat up their own guy.
You want this to stop? Make the left wing bigger, louder and more powerful.
Keith G
@Nick:
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, well I was being a bit sarcastic. Obama is (or maybe was) in a position to do those things. I know, I know, it’s not in his nature.
He might well go down in history as a successful, level headed POTUS, and that’s cool.
But we need more.
Nick
@Keith G:
no one disagrees, but it doesn’t mean it’s possible to get it.
I mean if you have $50 and you need $100 worth of rice, do you blame the merchant because he’ll only give you $50 worth?
No, you go out and find some creative way to make another $50 each week, while living off the rice you can afford in the meantime.
I use this analogy because we probably will all be making this decision pretty soon.
Arclite
We are hiring right now and have already hired 7 people (in a division of about 50 or so). 3 years ago we cut both employees and salaries, and worked a lot of OT to make sure our products were great. As a result, we’ve had a lot of sales, even as our existing customer base has shrunk (we make Real Estate software, and agents are leaving the industry in droves). So we’re growing, thus the need for more employees.
Keith G
@Nick: Nick, that might well be the judgment that history puts upon this time of our society:
Identifiable and definable problems loomed around the corner, yet this group of people and their leaders would not work beyond their comfort zone.
Will you take a check for that rice?
General Stuck
@Keith G:
I think there is more to it than that. I look at the economy when Obama took office as like a critical care patient arriving in the emergency room, moribund from 30 years of abuse and injury. What to do? It is obvious the patient requires a lot of major surgery, but it is also obvious, that much major surgery may well kill the patient in it’s current condition of near death.
I think Obama has maybe looked it sorta this way, and tried to breath life back into the economy, in liew of performing immediate radical surgery, not wanting to be the presnit that drove the last nail into the coffin of America’s near dead economy, so to speak. And unfortunately, that has meant a degree of the same medicine that has made the patient so sick over the long term, like a shot of morphine to ease the pain, that the patient is also addicted to.
I have despised Geithner and Summers from day one, as they both make my skin crawl, but can anyone really deny they and obama have at least kept the economy alive and somewhat stronger than when they came into office. Can any of the economic progressive geniuses out there reliably claim that immediately breaking up these giant corps and not keeping them largely whole and propped up with taxpayer cash, would not have pushed us all over the edge into another great depression, instead of a slow recovery from a great recession? I doubt you can. I know I can’t, in all honesty, even though much of what has happened has made me want to puke.
rootless_e
@burnspbesq:
they’re poseur hippies anyways.
Keith G
@General Stuck: If that is true, and it likely is, Obama is performing a disservice to himself by not communicating this to his supporters and to the country.
General Stuck
@Keith G: I didn’t completely pull that analogy out of my ass. I remember him early on once describing the situation along those lines. But agree, he should flesh out his usual current rhetoric of “getting the economy back on track” with more background of the reality when he took office.
Corner Stone
@Keith G: Actually, I was looking for Huey P. Long. Huey Long.
We might also have accepted JRR Tolkien as well.
And the next time you lump me into a comment response with the completely vile and reprehensible Nick I am going to disown you.
slightly_peeved
@Keith G:
Unfortunately, no-one will vote for someone because they prevented a disaster from becoming a catastrophe.
Nick
@Keith G:
he is, nobody is listening, the media is screaming about spending and debt, while his “suppoters” are lost in fantasyland where Howard Dean ushers in socialist paradise riding a unicorn and turns Rahm into dust.
NobodySpecial
I love Nick, he’s already conceded before he even gets started.
Nylund
The Libertarian argument against legislating against racism is that a racist company would lose business to a non-racist one. So in the case of business leaders “going galt” cuz the administration is being meant to them, does this imply that a) this theory is utter bs or b) there is a market failure as no one is stepping into make the profits that the whiny ass titty babies are choosing to forgo?
So come on Capitalists, choose! Is it your theory of this particular instance wrong, or your whole dang ideology?
Personally, i vote for: c) Both.
mike
If the leaders of publicly held corporations are “giving up chances for profit” because Obama is making them feel bad, then they are guilty of malfeasance. The leadership of a public corporation is supposed to work for the benefit of stockholders and if they are bypassing opportunities to make money in order to express their personal hurt feelings, they are screwing the stockholders and breaking the law.
Keith G
@Corner Stone: I wouldn’t have minded the King Fish, much. The entertainment value alone would be phenomenal.
We get stuck with Nader and Kucinich (Gollum and an elf). Just not fair.
Oh, and I’m sorry. I’ll have a Negra in your honor. What?
Corner Stone
@Keith G: Speaking of Negras…
Anyway, after we discussed beer I decided I had forgotten how good a really good beer could be. So I bought Paulaner Salvator Double Bock.
Little heavy if you’re doing something outside, but if you have a fan blowing your junk then it goes down just right.
Keith G
@General Stuck: Tut, tut now.
I was positing that Obama may well be telling the truth about his priorities. I wasn’t commenting on the reality of your comment.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. Advanced age has made me cynical even about pols I like.
General Stuck
@Keith G: umm. I know you weren’t commenting on the reality of my comment. I just added that anecdote only because it was true, not to take a shot at you in any way.
Keith G
@Corner Stone: I followed your recommendation and you were (choke) quite right.
Talk about heavy…also bought some Brooklyn Pale Ale. Nice initial taste but it finished bitter and hard. It’s better after round two.
Nick
@mike:
Not really, they have a defense…Obama’s policies lead to believe they won’t be profitable in the future, so they’re organizing for tough profit-making (he’s gonna tax us to death!!)
Even though they’re doing it for spite, publically, they have some irrational excuse to defend themselves.
mclaren
Why don’t we turn this around?
“Recessions end and business improves because businesses hear liberals restoring confidence to the financial markets by ending the thievery and scams, so businesses have renewed confidence to invest again. If we want businesses to grow faster and the economy to take off like a rocket, we need more liberals and less conservatives praising Ponzi schemes on Fox News.”
Nick
@mclaren: Well first we’d have to accept that the economy is ACTUALLY improving.
Principis
A confused mind always says no. I think that’s what’s happening. Another way to put it is: An uncertain mind takes no action.