It appears the plan for economic revival has pretty much been reduced to Evan Bayh’s war on regulation and vaguely reassuring (not really) words from Ben Bernanke:
The economy lost some momentum recently, Ben Bernanke acknowledged Tuesday, but the Federal Reserve chairman is still optimistic that the recovery will pick up again in the second half of the year.
In a speech on Tuesday, Bernanke twice called the job market “far from normal” and conceded, “the economy is still producing at levels well below its potential.”
But he also said the factors behind recent weakness are likely to fade in coming months.
If you thought there might be a brief bit of urgency about employment once the numbers came out a couple days ago, forget about it. The market has already forgotten and is working on tomorrow’s pump and dump scheme or figuring out which commodity to fuck you with next, and the powers that be have apparently decided they can do nothing and ride out the political storm.
We’re just screwed. We’ve got Krugman and a bunch of bloggers, while everyone else is on the payroll.
Culture of Truth
You’re not fooling anybody.
Culture of Truth
Don’t be such a baby. This is supposed to be a happy economy! Let’s not bicker and argue over ‘oo wrecked it!
Hill Dweller
If the jobs number won’t move anyone in the White House, hopefully those poll numbers from Fred Hiatt’s rag will. Trailing a candidate as weak as Mittens should be motivation enough to rethink their political strategy.
Chuck Butcher
I was pretty sure Bayh made it clear who he worked for right along. I know he said some shit about CU decision, but that was before the biggest beneficiary held out a handful of money.
PeakVT
Translation: no QE3, no higher inflation target. Alternative translation: suck it, unemployed.
JPL
One reason I think we are screwed is the right recruiting a secret service agent to run for Senator in Maryland. Good bye to safety nets, hello Pakistan.
edit..the poll was abc’s/post way of handing the nomination to Romney
Chuck Butcher
What signal or microwave or whatever the fuck was it you saw (not heard in some fucking campaign speech) that ever gave you any idea that there was some agenda beyond the plutocratic one? Oh sure, traitorous leftist talk, this is really some nth degree board game play ….
Jeffro
Hmm…corporations are sitting on record piles of cash and we have huge numbers of unemployed/underemployed…hmm…let me think about whether there’s any connection here…
Fred
Since you brought it up John Galt Cole. What exactly is KThugs solution?
I am not talking about his “if this were China or Sweden” fantasy solutions btw.
And we both know when the next months upward revisions and above expectations jobs numbers come out you will ignore them and talk about whatever shiny object got your attention at that moment.
DonkeyKong
Hey c’mon, it’s 11th dimensional chess, it’s rope-a-dope. it’s Obama makin moves on the inside of the inside he’s on the out……..ahhhhhh FUCK!
PeakVT
@Fred: Are you too lazy to figure out what Krugman proposes by yourself?
Fred
@Jeffro: Maybe you should think harder. It’s just so complicated. Hire more people if you think you can make more money by doing it. Don’t hire more people if you think you can’t.
I know your brain must really hurt after that incredibly complicated concept of market dynamics.
So you think because corporations are making tons of cash they should just hire more employees just because?
Warren Terra
It took me a couple of readings to realize the source of your post title.
Fred
@PeakVT: He doesn’t propose anything. That’s the whole point. To anyone who knows anything about it KThug has become something of a joke!
A Farmer
The economy will pick up in the second half of the year? So within a Friedman unit.
PeakVT
@Fred: A simple “yes” would have sufficed.
Anne Laurie
Thanks for the hat tip, Cole. (Note to self: Explicit headlines won’t lure him into reading, either… )
Fred
@PeakVT: A simple point to make would have been less of a waste of my time.
JC
Is the fix in? Are Rethugs are going to be allowed to destroy any further economic recovery and job recovery in its crib, through the debt ceiling or whatever, over the next year, to guarantee Mittens in 2012?
Now granted, Mittens seems like the best of a bad bunch – and we can HOPE that the worst he’ll do is continue us on the glide path to pragmatic corporate serfdom.
Still – jobs, jobs, jobs.
Carter all over again. Even given such a stellar President in Obama, that has very few weaknesses, and a huge inventory of strengths.
I guess the question I’ll always have is, to the degree that Obama and his finance team were co-opted by the banksters – and clearly they were – was it – and is it – a necessary evil, in order to even play the politics game, or was it a sellout?
That doesn’t mimimize the administration’s accomplishments, from saving the auto industry, to ACA, etc.
But the financiers and banksters are going to ride that Mittens train, when it pulls into the station.
“Be thankful that we got what we got!”
For the regular Joe, more and more, it’s crumbs from an increasingly rich table, hoovered up by the fat banksters.
Was it ever thus?
Lolis
@JC:
The swings are getting too wild for me. Last week, everyone was euphoric about an Obama win. Now everybody is doom and gloom based on one poll. Neither side is right here.
I do worry that the president and his team do not seem to have focused on how he can improve the economy by using the Fed or other methods. Also, too recess appointments.
Corner Stone
@JC:
Do you need some moist toilettes?
Corner Stone
I’ve said for a bit that if U3 is north of 8% Obama is most likely in some real trouble. But thank the gods for the most vapid bunch of Republican contenders + the Ryan Plan.
At this point I’m thinking even if U3 is around 9% President Obama will coast to election by 4 to 6 percentage points.
And we shouldn’t kid ourselves. U3 will be close to 9% or more by the 2012 election. Nobody gives a fuck about changing that.
“Headwinds”
JC
Lois
FWIW, I personally haven’t been euphoric. A month ago I pointed out the ‘jobs jobs jobs’ thing.
Cornerstone
My name is Tito, and yes, I need a tissue. (Let’s see how well you know your 80’s comedy – what is the reference? Of course, you can use google-fu, and pretend you’ve always known!)
Yes, I’m being ‘woe is us’, but whatev, I’m allowed, it’s Balloon Juice.
Daddy-O
We’re doomed.
My new mantra. It sure as hell fits.
WyldPirate
Well, we do have the dumbassed dipshits here like Steve and other Obama fellaters that think the President has no responsibility in leading the country…
…and those like JC (the poster in this thread, not the board host who happens to “get it”) that think Obama is a “stellar President”…
These sorts of folks are otherwise best described as being double-barreled dumbasses….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Lolis: What can Obama do with the Fed if Bernanke won’t do anything, as I gather from today’s speech he won’t? (question, not passive-aggressive trolling). and whoever’s making the decision, what can the Fed do? Cut interest rates again?
Fred
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Have you not been following or is it willful ignorance? The Fed is using their second most powerful tool! Quantitative easing.
Their most powerful tool is lowering interest rates but since they can’t go below zero that isn’t an option anymore.
I wish you people would spend less time bitching and more time educating yourselves.
JC
WyldPirate,
I know this is an old record by now, that you pretend doesn’t exist, but:
a. Fair Pay Act for Women
b. Expanded Children’s Health Insurance
c. New Hate crimes legislation
d. Tobacco regulation
e. Credit card reform (such as it is)
f. Student loan reform
g. Stimulus which included – large investment in education, alternative energy ever
h. Saved the auto industry
i. ACA – health reform
j. Food safety bill
k. Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
there are probably more, but the list above was done in the face of unified Rethug opposition, and a bunch of Democrats that are also bought and paid members of company lobbyists.
So yes – lots of evidence of ‘stellar President’.
and yet – financial regulation could and should have done more, HAMP, and the way it was implemented (or not) was a bust.
You’ve gotta get off this kick, remember a thing called ‘reality’, and ‘nuance’.
I’m not sure to what degree Obama is a creature of the financial world and banks. Certainly, the administration made a judgment call to play along with these powers, in order to get other things accomplished.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@JC: Eddie Murphy. No Google required.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Fred: Christ Almighty. This place is eat up with trolls.
Rick Taylor
__
Haven’t you heard? This is all Paul Krugman’s fault. If only he’d pushed for more stimulus spending when it counted, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess. Via Atrios. (and yes that was sarcasm)
Jeffro
@Fred: Fred, Fred, I thought I was being clear…I don’t think corporations should hire more people “just because”. I think they should hire more people primarily because the thought of less people being screwed in this economy would probably pain you. And that pleases me immensely.
Actually, I just want all their extra cash seized and redistributed to the workers and wanna-be workers in this country…is that so wrong?
Corner Stone
@Rick Taylor: I just read that but was too gob stopped to comment on it.
I wonder where the impetus for this is coming from? Maybe Kthug is the next iteration of the Professional Left who must be demonized/marginalized ahead of an election?
John Cole
@Anne Laurie: With Allah as my witness, I read your post earlier, but when I was writing this I just could not remember where I saw the Koch stuff.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: Salright, Ban-she reposted the Palin wiki thing after one of yer commenters pointed it out and you posted about it. There’s too many of you and yer stepping all over each other’s dicks.
Triassic Sands
U3? U6? Who cares? The only important economic statistic is the size of CEO salaries and bonuses.
Judas Escargot
@Lolis:
GOP has blocked that option with pro forma sessions.
FDR did a lot with executive orders. So did GWB for that matter.
OzoneR
On the whole, I do think Bernanke has a point. We all freaked out this time last year when the job market faltered and it did come back within a few months. it’s likely that’s how this will be, a few month of strong job growth, followed by a lull.
Oh sure it would be nice to see some more stimulus, but that was spent when the country decided to give the keys back to the Republicans to drive the car off the cliff because they thought Obama was going too fast when he was doing 35 mph. Anyway, I’m not really sure how much infrastructure projects would help since most of the unemployed aren’t laborers. You aren’t going to hire a laid off teacher, bank teller, computer programmer or secretary to build a highway. There’s a skills mismatch.
I don’t know what the answer is except try to entice the private sector to start hiring again, and it’s pretty clear they’re holding the country hostage out of fear that their Randian paradise will be moved even farther away if they actually help the country recover.
We must all be content with our lot, ours is a stupid brainwashed country where fascists have the upper hand. Often we can make some good headway, like we did in 2009-2010, but it’s a slow and frustrating slog.
OzoneR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Whatever needs to be done, it needs to FORCE people in hiring.
I do think 9% unemployment is the “new normal,” and I think that may very well have been an unavoidable thing. This is a dying power, this is how empires fade, what goes up, must come down and we’re coming down
cleek
oh noes. we’re all gonna dies. it’s the ends of the worlds and everything and i dont even know what to do and its [email protected]!VOEf!
get a grip.
cleek
also, fuck your temperamental edit script.
oh noes. we’re all gonna dies. it’s the ends of the worlds and everything and i dont even know what to do and its over! over! voer ! evoer ! [email protected] ! VOEf ! woe is to me and to you and to all your wassails too and there ain goonna be nko crimis or jesus baby santa and soup kichents are gonna be the next wallmarks and thats the end of it anll an then the debbil gonna eat my salad and then toss it in gravy and bermnankee bite on my peepee till the mrevolushun and the pichfork save us all froum the fashit!
Corner Stone
@cleek: Good to see you got scared straight.
Nick
@Lolis: The left is always like this. I can’t count how many times Obama was finished during the campaign.
srv
@Rick Taylor:
I am trying to envision a universe in which Krugman didn’t rant several times a day for more stimulus and thought QE would work. What fucking drugs do these people take?
Boudicca
@OzoneR You’re correct that you wouldn’t hire unemployed white collar workers for infrastucture jobs, but more employed construction works means more spending by them and more taxes paid by them. More spending by contruction workers means more small businesses get business and then pay more taxes and maybe hire more workers who then spend more, etc. Eventually it floats up to having more money to hire teachers and more opportunities for other white collar folks.
Of course, reducing taxes on the wealthy also accomplishes the same thing /snark
OzoneR
@Rick Taylor:
Well in fairness, Krugman originally lowballed the number the stimulus should be too, because everyone failed to realize how deep the recession was.
The timing was also disastrous. Trying to propose a massive spending bill as Obama’s first policy item, and then trying to convince people in a country that always gets their thongs in a twist over spending, that the size of it needed to be increase weekly.
It just wasn’t going to happen. Perhaps six months later, or if the economy had began to slowly rebound, it would have been easier
OzoneR
@Boudicca:
while true, it also needs to occur in the right place. Florida and Ohio, where construction workers need jobs (and vote Republican anyway) rejected infrastructure spending. The money was given to New York, where construction workers don’t really need jobs, and New York isn’t going to hire Floridians and Ohioans.
The work that will be done on high speed rail in New York won’t begin until late 2012, and most of the workers, if not all, are workers already employed doing other jobs like the Second Avenue Subway. Basically instead of creating jobs, we’re just keeping already employed workers employed for another 10 years, nice and all, but not helping.
FormerSwingVoter
I wrote my Senators with a plan – exempt the first $10k of income from payroll taxes for 1 year, increase the cap on payroll taxes $20k from 2014-2017, and don’t call it stimulus. Probably in vain, but it made me feel a little better at least.
El Cid
I would express my views on the bleakness of ‘the economy’ and unconvincing arguments about how ‘it’ is improving and people are to be significantly better off with jobs within some medium term (a few years?), however, I cannot phrase them within the confines of discussions of the best efforts of President Obama, how the most positive policies politically possible (!) were put into place, by definition, or without giving step-by-step instructions on how to pass / implement the sorts of policies or programs which would more substantially help.
OzoneR
@El Cid:
All infrastructure jobs, what lefties have been proposing, are medium term. Once said project is done, everyone gets laid off. Even the WPA only lasted like 5-6 years.
El Cid
@OzoneR: True, but WWII replaced the WPA. People seem to forget that.
The WPA ran for 8 years, and was ended in 1943 because that other public hiring and stimulus program known as WWII brought industry back to strength.
The US’ WWII spending was, domestically, a massive hiring program, a national savings program, an infrastructure buildup and industrialization diversity program, a national training program, you name it. What the WPA should have been, obviously, given the results. Political realities or no.
It wasn’t the war itself which ended the Depression — it’s what public investment was implemented as a result.
Though it’s a moth farting in a hurricane to mention, had we run public employment programs instead of much of welfare and similar aid programs, our poor would have been much better off and able to emerge from poverty, we would have spent far less, and the country would have received astounding investments in its infrastructure and human capital.
My actual point I guess will be confirmed — why discuss what appears to be a pretty bleak (short? medium? what do we wish to call some time greater than say 2 years but less than 10? Subdecadal?) economic future for so much of our population? After all, if there isn’t an immediately politically acceptable and implementable alternative, is it whining to discuss such views anyway? Too lefty?
When various sources, official and otherwise, assert a more positive view which appears weakly argued at best and downright misleading at less best, but they’re the ones who are politically the ones I’m to favor, is it immature to react to that?
I guess I’m often not sure what role my own head is supposed to play in these matters, whether I should bother wondering what I actually think about the matter or if I should just leave it to people higher up in various political positions and party-influential positions.
Maybe one or two of us on here are policy advisers or some such, but I’m pretty sure most aren’t, so I’m never really going to follow a general rule that in a comments section on a blog named “Balloon Juice” I need to stick with what appears to be politically possible or helpful for some leader or party which is better than the immediate other option.
El Cid
@El Cid: I’m obviously tired and grumpy and pissed at still having to do bullshit work. Work will wait. Blogging too.
OzoneR
@El Cid:
The problem is, your option, is not an option. It’s an option in so much as a gay man becoming a woman so he can marry his boyfriend in Texas is an option; he CAN do it, it’s possible, but it’s not really an option.
There are mitigating factors in your idea, least of which is, there aren’t the votes to pass such a plan, not when there was a Democratic majority, nor especially now.
Beyond that, whatever the Obama administration proposed that even remotely sounded like that option was rejected by states; high-speed rail for example. WPA wouldn’t have worked if it was rejected by state governors, it wasn’t, even Republican members of Congress were happy to support WPA jobs programs; The Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, a major WPA program, was named for its champion, Republican Congressman Schuyler Merritt. WPA wouldn’t have worked if Connecticut and other states rejected the money for the programs.
There are a lot of things standing in the way of your option, and a lot of things that just aren’t overcome-able, the least of whom are the American people who keep electing leaders who reject your option.
mclaren
It’ll really get ugly when they privatize all the water supplies and the water bills go up to $1000 a month.
You can live without a car (not well in most urban areas, but it’s possible)…you can live with high food prices (by eating less)…but you absolutely positively cannot live without water.
Say hello to the water cartel and nationwide water riots as Global Warming pushes temperatures in the American Southwest up past 130 degrees Fahrenheit.
fuckwit
We’re all going to die anyway. When the Repubgs decide it’s my time to go, then it’s my time to go.
Joseph Nobles
Well, I’ve heard two statistics that will go into combat numero-a-numero this election season.
No incumbent president with U3 north of 7.2% has won re-election for quite some time.
Every incumbent president lacking a primary challenger has won re-election for quite some time.
Which statistic will? Go? All? The? Way?
The Duc d'Fuck
Oh, shit, when did Nick(s) return to using that sock?
El Cid
@OzoneR: If you think that there are no reasons to intellectually explore ‘options’ other than those appearing to be immediately possible, then you’re both quite sad and confused about your role here, and likely elsewhere.
When has that ever been a precedent in science? Oh, no use thinking through these thought experiments, since no one can test them and in any case we don’t have the technology at the moment to put them to use. The American People have rejected your time-wasting.
And, secondly, who are you? Are you sitting in a chair somewhere determining policy right now? Is the clock ticking? You’ve got to make a decision right now?
If not, then just shut up. The American People Have Not Rejected The Notion Of Thinking Things Through. Really. I mean, they might be against it, but there wasn’t a vote for it. Not directly. Though I guess, yeah, the re-election of G. W. Bush Jr. means I should probably stop trying to think about things because The American People Rejected My Approach.
Are these blog commenters so god-damned used to blowing smoke up their own ass that they think that any moment, any second, spent thinking through situations for their own sake, for understanding, for thought experiments, to understand what better policies might be, is somehow wasted time because “Americans keep electing political leaders who reject my approach?”
Who gives a fuck? Who the fuck are you people that think that your fucking blog comments are too god-damned precious to ever risk thinking about things in a way which isn’t about running the next election?
Jeebus, fucking, CRIPES!
You think Thomas Fucking Jefferson sat around avoiding basic philosophical questions and his thoughts on the goals of a republic and what institutions might lead to better and more just government?
You think he fucking started off thinking about these matters only at the moment they could then be implemented?
Where the fuck do you think all these New Deal programs came from?
You think that it was useless for social research groups to have been working on many of these topics (national pensions) in the 1910s and 1920s because there was no possibility right then of getting it passed?
If you don’t know the long and twisted origins of these plans and many of their idealistic thinkers and pushers, then shut the hell up. Go look up Abe Epstein and tell me how immediately viable his little plans were, and then what happened a couple of decades later.
And did the response just flash in your mind regarding Thomas Jefferson or that ‘well you’re not one of them,’ think about what that sort of view implies for anyone who thinks they’re curious and want to consider the bases and implications of policies in themselves.
What the fuck is wrong with you people? When did Balloon-Juice become the War Room of the Oval Office? I didn’t see the label on this blog as being for instructions on organizing whichever next upcoming elections.
The American Voter Is Not Visiting Balloon-Juice To Decide Whose Ideas To Reject. You Are Not Poised At A Critical Juncture Making Sure These Blog Comments Avoid Ideas Harmful To Immediate Electoral Success.
I don’t see anyone going off on front pagers who mention science fiction movies which are totally about stuff that couldn’t really be done yet!
Is this how you’d fucking teach a class in high school to think about national or world affairs?
“You don’t need to think these issues through and come up with your own solutions, that’s a waste of time and no one needs your fairy dust notions, and your personal attempts to understand what you think as far as better and worse policies is a misunderstanding of why you’re here; here, let me outline for you what is politically possible, and then you can choose a relevant option from that list so that I can next put you to work organizing a neighborhood campaign office.”
Every time anyone wants to discuss something not immediately possible do you freak and start screaming “FIREBAGGER OMG FIREBAGGER”?
[And by the way, dumbass, I didn’t recommend those New Deal programs to be attempted now. You said something offhanded and stupid about when FDR implemented the WPA, so there was the reality. Now you know. I didn’t even recommend a fucking policy. Just because someone talks strongly about something which once happened does not mean he or she is therefore saying this needs to be attempted right now argh argh argh move move move do it. Good lord.]
Yutsano
@El Cid:
Faster than light space travel at this precise moment is a physical impossibility. But that doesn’t keep scientists from making advancements in that particular field. Even if they know the real answer to the question won’t be answered in their lifetimes. The Nick sockpuppet is dastardly wrong. Despite Republican and religious desires, the nature of humans is to evolve and improve. The process never ends. Even if it goes on for a very very long time.