Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

All hail the time of the bunny!

You cannot love your country only when you win.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

In my day, never was longer.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

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105Comments

  1. 1.

    Lolis

    You mean the same austerity they have pushed for months? The same austerity they supported by financing Republican and Tea Party campaigns?

  2. 2.

    Bulworth

    You mean the same austerity they have pushed for months? The same austerity they supported by financing Republican and Tea Party campaigns?

    Yes, that austerity.

  3. 3.

    Jay in Oregon

    Wait, so the DFHs were right again?!

    You’d think that someone might start listening to us one of these days…

  4. 4.

    Bulworth

    Markets crash after banksters discover to their horror that Washington embraced austerity budgeting during a recession.

    More tax cuts needed.

    Prepare for a media pivot to “growth” strategeries, comprised entirely of tax cuts.

  5. 5.

    TenguPhule

    Now we just need to step back and sell arms to both sides of the Wall Street/Teabagger civil war and root for casualties all the way to the bank.

  7. 7.

    no video at work

    The Japanese were on top of the world back in the 80s. Then they had a slight hiccup in the economy, panicked and went on an austerity kick. 20 years later they still have not recovered and the world has passed them by.

    We are well and truly screwed.

  9. 9.

    Maude

    The banksters are dumber than fence posts.
    We were all alone here and no one came to see us until you arrived.

  10. 10.

    TenguPhule

    You’d think that someone might start listening to us one of these days…

    Cassandra Truths? Never.

  13. 13.

    Derf

    If only people like Captain Doom John Galt Cole would take a few minutes out of his day to read stuff like this instead of spanking it to whatever mindless spew Greenwald is shoveling. Then perhaps he and the other lemmings around here could get a clue.

    BTW, the real investors aren’t dwelling on any of this. They are too busy bargain hunting. Only a fool sells when everyone else is selling and buys when everyone else is buying. In other words. Only people like Captain Doom John Galt Cole.

  14. 14.

    Jay in Oregon

    I love how the corporate media waited until after the debt ceiling bill was passed and signed to start with the “cutting spending during a recession is a bad idea!” after weeks and weeks of “The American People(tm) are worried about out-of-control federal spending!”

    I wish I could remember who in an earlier thread said that now that Obama has embraced cutting spending, it’s acceptable for the MSM to discuss the damage it will do to our economy.

  15. 15.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    Yet, on the local fox news affiliate here in Dallas, Doug Luzader (?sp) said that the markets are going down because there wasn’t enough cut. He couldn’t be lying, could he?

  18. 18.

    Mike Goetz

    None of the austerity starts until 2013 (and probably not even then).

    Nothing happening on Wall Street now has anything to do with the debt ceiling deal.

  19. 19.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Derf:

    If only people like Captain Doom John Galt Cole would take a few minutes out of his day to read stuff like this instead of spanking it to whatever mindless spew Greenwald is shoveling. Then perhaps he and the other lemmings around here could get a clue.

    BTW, the real investors aren’t dwelling on any of this. They are too busy bargain hunting. Only a fool sells when everyone else is selling and buys when everyone else is buying. In other words. Only people like Captain Doom John Galt Cole.

    FTFY

  21. 21.

    Dexter

    FWIW, looks like the market recovered a bit in the meantime. NASDAQ is now in the green although not by much.

    ETA: Crude oil and Gasoline futures are taking a beating for the last few days. This is a good news.

  22. 22.

    wrb

    These go together nicely

    The folks with the money are strangely unimpressed with government by teabagger

    Within hours of Moody’s and Fitch–two of the “big three” Western credit rating agencies–announcing that they would maintain America’s AAA credit rating, one of China’s major private credit rating agencies downgraded its U.S. credit rating from A+ to A–a level, Reuters points out, that puts the U.S. on par with Spain and Estonia. “The squabbling between the two political parties on raising the U.S. debt ceiling reflected an irreversible trend on the United States’ declining ability to repay its debts,” Dagong Chairman Guan Jianzhong told CNN.

    China’s state-run media is issuing even sharper critiques. In an editorial for the state-run news agency Xinhua today, Deng Yushan–who condemned U.S. politicians last week for playing a “game of chicken” as the global economy hung in the balance–once again criticized Washington’s “madcap farce of brinkmanship” and “blind eye to its runaway debt addiction.” The deal, he continued, “failed to defuse Washington’s debt bomb for good, only delaying an immediate detonation by making the fuse an inch longer.” A Global Times editorial similarly observed that “raising the debt ceiling simply means the U.S. can now borrow itself into further debt.” In the People’s Daily overseas edition, a Chinese researcher urged China to stop investing its foreign exchange reserves in volatile dollar assets, deeming the raising of the U.S. debt ceiling “a double-edged sword for China.”

    They look up to our advanced democracy.

    Teabaggers know it

    Tea Partiers love mentioning Thomas Paine because they think they share his “Common Sense” (otherwise known as a sense held in common) but they haven’t bothered to read it, and are clearly unfamiliar with essays such as “Public Good”, in which Paine wrote that, especially while at war (as America currently is, of course): “To have a clear idea of taxation is necessary to every country, and the more funds we can discover and organise, the less will be the hope of the enemy.”

    As Harvard historian Jill Lepore argued last year in her brilliant The Whites of their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History, none of the people voting for the Tea Party candidates knows any of this because they haven’t studied American history since grade school, when all American schoolchildren learn a simplified, cartoon version of the American Revolution (which we would never call the “War of Independence”).

    It is a Sesame Street version of the American constitution and politics, a myth that is being treated as the alpha and omega of our political and legal reality. This is one reason why it has a quasi-religious aspect: it’s a myth of genesis, it’s a creation myth about America that is just as simple as the idea that God created man and woman: the Founding Fathers created America.

    The Tea Party version of the American Revolution is not just fundamentalist: it is also Disneyfied, sentimentalised, and whitewashed. It rests on a naïve, solipsistic and exceptionalist faith that for America it will all work out in the end, because America is “the greatest nation in the world”. They take solace in tautology: America is great – this they know – because Fox News tells them so.

    Their goal, as others have said, is to roll back the clock a century and more. In 1892, when the robber baron and corrupt financier Jay Gould died, Mark Twain wrote a scathing epitaph: Gould, he said, “reversed the commercial morals of the United States. He had put a blight upon them from which they have never recovered, and from which they will not recover for as much as a century to come. Jay Gould was the mightiest disaster which has ever befallen this country.”

    It has been a century and we have surely not recovered: but we have managed to create an even mightier disaster. It remains to be seen whether we will recover, but it is long past time to stop making declarations of independence. We need to get back to work forming a more perfect union – or any union at all.

  23. 23.

    aisce

    @ mike goetz

    indeed. i heard there was some place called…what was it? yurp, I think? yurp. it’s like some whole other continent or something? anyway, it’s supposed to be pretty big.

    americans should look into it.

    also, too, the economy sucks no matter what washington does or doesn’t do at this point.

  24. 24.

    Shinobi

    Mother Jones blamed Fox News but the real culprit is the Wall Street Journal. “Serious businessmen” read this newspaper like it is the fucking bible, and it is being run by conservative morons.

  25. 25.

    Ruckus

    Ah the rich and upwardly mobile wantaberich, they do live in their own little world don’t they.

    It’s kind of a shame that they found out it depends on the rest of the world to survive. How’s that go? Can’t build a strong house without a good foundation.

  26. 26.

    Suffern ACE

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent): That is an alternative hypothsis, although not one I would subscribe to. I find the market decline to be very irrational. This deal will only have negative effects on the outlook of industries that rely on consumer spending and government contracting for growth an profits. How many companies in those sectors could there possibly be? I’m sure developments in cloud computing will more than make up for that.

  27. 27.

    MattF

    Please, folks, don’t get into the trap of interpreting market movements to prove a point or grind an axe. In fact, markets move as much from stupidity as anything else. I’m guessing that in this case, the habitual ‘buy high, sell low’ crowd has peeked over the edge of their mattress fortresses and are doing what comes naturally. And the professional Wall Street traders will proceed to pick their pockets, as usual.

  28. 28.

    Kane

    As a shareholder, I never like to see the market doing poorly. But if that is what it takes for the media to focus on the economy and jobs, so be it.

  29. 29.

    Thoughtcrime

    Of course, now that Obama and the Democratic leadership have embraced austerity.

    All part of Obama’s reverse psychological warfare.

  31. 31.

    dollared

    @Dexter: No, futures are dropping because commodities drop during a recession. This is investors predicting double dip.

  32. 32.

    Bender

    The “austerity” Drama Queens are so adorable. The Whiniest Generation earning their black mascara.

  33. 33.

    Han's Big Snark Solo

    But think about all the jobs that will be created by cutting spending, what are these investors thinking?

    Sigh… This whole ordeal has been embarrassing.

    Bennen has a post up about how the rest of the world, even the fucking Greek, are mocking us. The Scrotum of Teabaggers that rule this country have, through their actions, redefined “American Exceptionalism” to mean, “America is exceptionally stupid.”

  34. 34.

    WyldPirate

    @Jay in Oregon:

    I wish I could remember who in an earlier thread said that now that Obama has embraced cutting spending, it’s acceptable for the MSM to discuss the damage it will do to our economy.

    Don’t go blaming the media for that..Obama pushed the austerity kick plenty on his own.

    Now he is goiong to have to eat his own motherfucking peas….betw2een his infatuation with the austerity chickenshit and his insistence on treating the Rethugs as reasonable people, it’s going to cost his ass re-election.

  35. 35.

    burnspbesq

    The Brits embraced austerity before we did. Will be interesting to plot movements in our broad stock market indices against the movement of the FTSE 100 so far in 2011, with an appropriate lag built in.

  36. 36.

    no video at work

    All you happy-thoughts- folks, please don’t forget that we are not out of the woods yet. The new sooper-dooper gang of 6 still has not played its part in this little un-mellow-drama.

    It is marginally possible – though highly unlikely – that they might not inflict the maximum damage they could. It’ll be bad but until they finish we won’t know how bad. You can chose to believe they will suddenly come to their senses, tell the teabaggers and the Koch whores to fuck off while spewing unicorns and rainbows out their asses making everything alright. But it is much easier to imagine the Republicans will continue to play to their base, the Dems will be stacked with Blew Dogs and the morans will be ensuring their ‘low-information’ status while we are all taking it up the ass for more tax cuts.

  39. 39.

    burnspbesq

    @WyldPirate:

    it’s going to cost his ass re-election.

    Care to bet the title to your house on that proposition? I could use a rental property to supplement my income.

  41. 41.

    Thoughtcrime

    The pensions/401ks of the working class continue to tank, while the smart money of the wealthy is on the sidelines waiting to scoop up all assets at bargain basement prices – as always.

    Wealth will become even more concentrated.

  42. 42.

    Legalize

    @Shinobi:
    Christ, ain’t that the truth. I’m convinced that in order to get through an MBA program all you have to do is memorize the fucking WSJ opinion page and regurgitate it. I’ve attended some business/commercial/fiance/securities seminars with these clowns – all dumber than a box of hammers.

  43. 43.

    jl

    I don’t think it is possible, in general, to interpret day to day, or even week to week, variations in the stock market and attribute them to specific events.

    ‘Cause other economic news is coming in daily, which indicate continued very weak recovery and slightly increase probability of a double dip recession.

    So, Cole should not use stock market jigs and jobs as an excuse to fume (Cole will fume, but he should find a better excuse, and there are always Rosie and Tunch for that).

    However, in broader terms, even if the debt ceiling deal was essentially to punt the issue another 4 months down the field, it did establish that any further government stimulus is very likely, so maybe stock market is reacting more strongly to each piece of uninspiring macroeconomic news.

  44. 44.

    scav

    mmmm, does make one wonder about short term thinkers intent only on an immediate “victory” to trumpet in the media and for campaign literature in upcoming elections might not have bothered to take into account whether same policies would actually work as advertised. Or, in fact taken into account that reality has a lot of things going on all at once that might make individual loudly trumpeted actions largely insignificant. Damn the world for not acting like the movies with a tidy ending, a single leading role and a comforting moral to be learned. And the markets? Reminds me mostly of reading sheep intestines any more. Just cause it may have carried a signal when it essentially reflected the considered opinion of a few hundred titans of industry in NYC doesn’t mean it carries the same signal now with all the automated trading and mass participation.

  45. 45.

    burnspbesq

    @Thoughtcrime:

    The pensions/401ks of the working class continues to tank

    Really? I’ve got a big stack of statements that suggest otherwise. Maybe you need to take a fresh look at your investment options.

  46. 46.

    Ruckus

    @aisce:

    Actually there is much the government could do to ease the recession. And that would probably help the rest of the world.

    Print more money. Fix the mortgage business. Print more money. Worry much less about inflation. Print more money. End 2 going nowhere wars. Print money. Fix infrastructure.

    All of these things are doable in a non-fantasy, working government. So none of them will be done with any government that we will get in the next 30-40 years. And some of these things take time and that runs past our next election cycle so they won’t happen and if they did they’d probably be repealed.

    So in the end you are correct. The economy sucks. With no positive change in sight.

  47. 47.

    Poopyman

    @MattF: Bargain hunting has already started. Dow up 170 from 10:40AM. It’ll be interesting to see where we end the week.

  48. 48.

    Citizen_X

    @wrb:

    “The squabbling between the two political parties on raising the U.S. debt ceiling reflected an irreversible trend on the United States’ declining ability to repay its debts,” Dagong Chairman Guan Jianzhong told CNN.

    How do you say “Both sides do it!” in Mandarin?

  49. 49.

    Ripley

    Let’s see: Derf, Bender, and WyldPirate have chimed in. Where’s Uncle Clarence? It ain’t The Four Horsemen of the Stoopocalypse without him.

  52. 52.

    jrg

    @MattF:
    This. It’s a mistake to blame this or that for market behavior, when it’s impossible to know how it would have behaved if conditions were different. It sets you up for stuff like “well, the market is not doing well because Obama was elected”. It’s a complicated thing that can’t really be explained with anecdotes.

    I’m not saying that teabagger bullshit cannot hurt the economy, just that it’s impossible to prove.

    I also agree that now might be a good time to start buying in again… Slowly, though, because it might have further to drop.

  53. 53.

    Poopyman

    @Legalize:

    I’ve attended some business/commercial/fiance/securities seminars with these clowns – all dumber than a box of hammers.

    Dubya was “The MBA President”, right?

  54. 54.

    Bender

    The folks with the money are strangely unimpressed with government by teabagger

    Good luck running on that in November:

    “We Democrats are so weak and bereft of ideas that one-fourth of one-half of one-third of the government controls everything that we do! We can’t handle that 4% minority! Now vote us in again so we can continue blaming 4% of government for all its troubles!”

  55. 55.

    Davis X. Machina

    Seeing a successfully-resolved hostage drama in a really crappy neighborhood wouldn’t make me any more likely to buy real-estate there.

    Only if I were buying fixer-uppers.

    Urban renewal would help.

  56. 56.

    Yutsano

    Wow. Bender went off the deep end. I don’t know whether to feel sorry for him or giggle maniacally. I guess they’re not mutually exclusive.

  57. 57.

    trollhattan

    @burnspbesq:

    Mine have tracked nicely since Jan ’09 after a two-year savaging (some were chopped more than 50%) but I’ll be dreading the next set of quarterly statements. The current bloodletting may not end for awhile.

  58. 58.

    Blue Neponset

    @Ruckus:

    Actually there is much the government could do to ease the recession. And that would probably help the rest of the world.

    Print more money. Fix the mortgage business. Print more money. Worry much less about inflation. Print more money. End 2 going nowhere wars. Print money. Fix infrastructure./blockquote>

    This is my biggest problem with the debt deal. Now that Obama has embraced austerity there is little the gov’t can do to react to the god awful economy. Even a tax cut laden stimulus bill would be a big help right now but thanks to our President there is no chance of even that.

    I would love to hear how the Democrats are gong to pivot to Jobs now. If they can’t spend more money then there is really nothing they can do to address jobs. Obama really screwed the pooch.

  59. 59.

    wrb

    @Bender: @Bender:

    Good luck running on that in November: one-fourth of one-half of one-third of the government controls everything that we do!

    Yup. The fact that many voters are too dumb or uninformed to recognize the truth does make the countries future less hopeful than it might be.

    The teabaggers do control whether new bills are passed. The voters should punish them. Will they?

  60. 60.

    jl

    @wrb:

    I thought the teabaggers had retired Paine as spokesman, since Paine would be considered not only progressive, but communist, by today’s standards. Let’s see what this s h o s u l i s t proposed: progressive taxation on wealth, to finance cash bounties for kids, newly weds, and the elderly to serve the function of educational assistance, social subsidies for family formation, and social security.

    Pain started scribbling his commie ideas in the second part of the Rights of Man, which he sent to Jefferson, as he did all of his works.

    Below is a link to Agrarian Justice where Pain lays out his vision of social insurance:

    http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice

    Some one should watch to see if any teabagger groups still use a fake Tom Paine as a mascot and send them Agrarian Justice.

    Edit: sorry about mistake in previous comment. I thought Cole wrote this post.

  61. 61.

    Butch

    Can we agree that we all get to throw up on the shoes of anyone, and especially anyone associated with the White House, who uses the term “pivot to job creation?” (That and “grand bargain.”)

  62. 62.

    Mnemosyne

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):

    Yet, on the local fox news affiliate here in Dallas, Doug Luzader (?sp) said that the markets are going down because there wasn’t enough cut. He couldn’t be lying, could he?

    Is it lying to re-state your faith-based position that the Republicans are always right even when you’re presented with evidence to the contrary?

    Saying that he’s lying is like saying that a Mormon is lying when they say Joseph Smith read magical tablets from God inside his hat.

    Also, I have to say I’m having a bit of schadenfreude today watching the media and Republicans scramble to explain how they totally weren’t wrong to insist on austerity. Nope, that mean ol’ Obama misled them!

  63. 63.

    catclub

    @Kane: “As a shareholder, I never like to see the market doing poorly. But if that is what it takes for the media to focus on the economy and jobs, so be it.”

    But as a sharebuyer, one would like to get shares for less rather than more. warren told me so.

  64. 64.

    Mike G

    I’d like to trademark the phrase Nobody Could Have Predicted(TM), because we’re going to see it used even more on the economic issues by teabaggers in the next few years, than we saw with their Partners in Incompetence in the Chimp Assministration in the 00s.

    On the other hand, teabaggers seem more into It’s Never My Fault(TM), Jeebus Told Me To Do It So Shut Up(TM), or My Awesome Ideology Only Failed Because You Weren’t Pure Enough(TM).

  65. 65.

    Bender

    The Democrats are like a morbidly obese 8-year-old whining to his mommy that she took a French fry from his Supersized Happy Meal. “Austerity!”

  67. 67.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Jay in Oregon:

    Wait, so the DFHs were right again?!

    You’d think that someone might start listening to us one of these days…

    You seem to forget that like with war, civil rights, the environment, energy policy DFHs are wrong when examined threw the counter factual lens.

    LOL this the most hilarious thing ever. The conservetards got so caught up with their hippie punching they screwed themselves. Idiotacy is here NOW baby! YEA!!

  68. 68.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @wrb: If you’re going to ignore the constitution, then make sure you go all the way.

    (Bet Bender brings up something about Lybia. Then he needs to explain the House’s we’re-against-it-but-we’re-not-going-to-defund-it vote).

  69. 69.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bender:

    So much for the party of personal responsibility. You can’t even accept that your own policies led to poor results — nope, it must be Obama’s fault for listening to you. He fucked up, he trusted you! Doesn’t he know that you guys don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about when it comes to economics?

  70. 70.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @jl:

    So, Cole Tim F. should not use stock market jigs and jobs as an excuse to fume (Cole will fume, but he should find a better excuse, and there are always Rosie and Tunch for that).

    Correction.

  71. 71.

    WyldPirate

    Hmmm..Seems like African-Americans don’t like the peas Obama is wanting them to eat…

    More Americans unhappy with Obama on economy, jobs:

    The Post-ABC poll found that the number of liberal Democrats who strongly support Obama’s record on jobs plunged 22 points from 53 percent last year to 31 percent. The number of African Americans who believe the president’s actions have helped the economy has dropped from 77 percent in October to just over half of those surveyed.

    Although we have a ways to go before it gets this bad here, If this shit keeps up, don’t be surprised to this sort of backlash in ‘Murica:

    ATHENS, Greece — They descended by the hundreds — black-shirted, bat-wielding youths chasing down dark-skinned immigrants through the streets of Athens and beating them senseless in an unprecedented show of force by Greece’s far-right extremists.
    __
    In Greece, alarm is rising that the twin crises of financial meltdown and soaring illegal immigration are creating the conditions for a right-wing rise — and the Norway massacre on Monday drove authorities to beef up security.
    __
    The move comes amid spiraling social unrest that has unleashed waves of rioting and vigilante thuggery on the streets of Athens. The U.N.’s refugee agency warns that some Athens neighborhoods have become zones where “fascist groups have established an odd lawless regime.”

  72. 72.

    Kane

    It has finally dawned on Wall Street that cutting federal spending during an economic downturn wasn’t a good idea afterall. Go figure.

    While the market does a nosedive, I hope Wall Street ponders the thought that the tea party that they empowered isn’t likely to sign on to another bailout.

  73. 73.

    Davis X. Machina

    Doesn’t he know that you guys don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about when it comes to economics?

    ‘Economics’… let’s see. That’s either a branch of moral theology, or a division of theater arts, or something to do with the ancient Greek word for ‘Yakuza’.

  74. 74.

    Bender

    @wrb:

    The teabaggers do control whether new bills are passed.

    So when Bush and the Republicans had the Exec & 1/2 of Congress, then everything was the Republicans’ fault.

    Now that the Democrats have the Exec & 1/2 of Congress, then everything is still the Republicans’ fault.

    Gotcha. Again, good luck with aaaaaall that in November.

  75. 75.

    Tom65

    So let’s see if I got this right:

    Default: market tanks
    Raise the Debt Ceiling: market tanks.

    fuck you, Wall Street.

  76. 76.

    Dennis SGMM

    It’d be nice if the debt ceiling deal was the end. It’s the beginning. Now that the Democrats have jumped onto the austerity bandwagon there is even less chance of any spending to to create jobs than there was before.
    We’re looking at a couple of lost decades where unemployment at 9% becomes the norm. Re-elect Obama, don’t re-elect Obama, it won’t make a dime’s worth of difference to those who are unemployed or underemployed.

  77. 77.

    Bender

    @Mnemosyne:

    You can’t even accept that your own policies led to poor results—nope, it must be Obama’s fault for listening to you.

    Obama has never listened to anyone except his campaign committee as regards the economy. If you think he listened to me, then hit that glass pipe again.

  78. 78.

    Brachiator

    @Han’s Big Snark Solo:

    But think about all the jobs that will be created by cutting spending, what are these investors thinking?

    They’re thinking about profits, which can happen even if there is no decline in unemployment.

    @no video at work:

    All you happy-thoughts- folks, please don’t forget that we are not out of the woods yet. The new sooper-dooper gang of 6 still has not played its part in this little un-mellow-drama.

    The other side of this is not just tax cuts, but possible tax legislation.

    Aside from Obama’s mild plea for increasing taxes for higher income individuals, every major tax plan on the table would reduce or eliminate many deductions used by the middle class, and preserve benefits and low tax rates for the wealthy and for big corporations.

    Here is one comment that I find provocative in an analysis of the Budget Control Act:

    The future of the federal estate tax has hardly been discussed, at least in public, during the deficit negotiations…. Like the individual tax rates, debate over the estate tax is virtually guaranteed by sunset provisions that require the estate tax to revert to pre-2001 rates and exemptions if no Congressional action is taken.

    A lot of what pops up in the mainstream media, and in Balloon Juice conversations, barely scratches the surface of tax and budget issues that will have to be dealt with.

  79. 79.

    gene108

    Markets are forward looking. Basically, if this sell of continues, it will be because investors expect earnings to be down or flat during the 3rd Quarter.

    The debt deal doesn’t play a big part of it.

    What Wall Street wants is a set of rules, with which they can game the system operate.

    For what it is worth the 111th Congress passed two huge changes to how Wall Street operates with Financial Regulation reform and the PPACA.

    The PPACA pretty much effects every business.

    The pieces of legislation are huge and the rules aren’t that well thought out, in my opinion. You end up with situations like the PPACA requiring every business in 2011 to issue a 1099 for every vendor they pay money to. HHS sensibly waved that provision, because it would have been too onerous for many businesses.

    I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff in Fin Reg that’s out there that would effect Wall Street in ways no one understands, because how the legalize legislation is written in will be interpreted still needs to be defined by regulatory agencies.

    Anyway, I’m not sure what people expected from the financial markets, with two quarters in a row of very anemic growth and relatively weak employment numbers for the past 3 months.

  80. 80.

    chopper

    best statement in the comments at the link:

    Now that Obama has endorsed austerity, it’s okay for the wingnuts to realize that it’s a shitty idea.

  81. 81.

    Violet

    Someone on MSNBC just said the market crash had little to do with our economy and everything to do with Greece and the Euro. Uh huh.

  82. 82.

    kindness

    Money talks.

    We’ll see how Wall Street feels when we see who keeps funding the Republican Party in the next several elections. Me, I think they’ll keep funding the idiots. Does that mean they are idiots? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck….

  83. 83.

    wrb

    @Bender:

    So when Bush and the Republicans had the Exec & 1/2 of Congress, then everything was the Republicans’ fault.

    Doesn’t it embarrass you when you realize that you’ve been so overcome by heat that you’ve posted something completely idiotic.

    Right now bills can’t be passed without Republican support. So they can prevent stuff from happening, like most actions that might improve the economy. They have very limited ability to make anything happen. They aren’t responsible for everything. The executive can do some things. Bush managed to torture people on his own initiative.

  84. 84.

    The Populist

    They got into bed with the fucking tea party nuts, so they should accept whatever comes their way. Sorry, I am no fan of this bullshit, newly found austerity in a time of deep recession BUT I laugh that even these business tards who gave all their money to the right couldn’t see this shit coming?

  85. 85.

    chopper

    @Mike Goetz:

    the austerity doesn’t begin until 2013, but any additional spending which we desperately need is basically off the table. maybe the fed can start pumping more cash in to the economy, but that so far has only been enough to keep it limping along these last few years.

  86. 86.

    The Populist

    @Violet:

    China’s real estate bubble has been spooking some so there may be some truth to that. But this new found “austerity” is definitely the reason they are driving the market down.

  87. 87.

    The Populist

    @Tom65:

    LOL, no difference between “give us tax cuts so we can invest in the economy!” That hasn’t worked out too well either. Time for people to wake up.

  88. 88.

    jl

    People should remember that there are two business communities with different interests.

    The banks and financial companies want low inflation and low interest rates, as long as the federal government will continue to subsidize them to maintain the face value of all their bad mortgages and mortgage backed securities. The benefits to them of low inflation and low interest rates outweighs the cost in terms of low economic growth and low employment.

    Edit: and this ‘extend and pretend’ policy will fail, but I think this sector has an interest to hold on to the bitter end, thus, endless 1939 for us.

    Manufacturers and service industries, from big to small, are hurt more by low unemployment and low growth.

    The big banks and financial firms are experts at retaining access to big piles of cash, and they are a relatively small cartelized community. So they have outsize influence on politics. It’s not clear to me that they give a hoot about what the stock market does.

  90. 90.

    Ruckus

    @Blue Neponset:

    Ah yes. Hence the rest of the post. All of those things would do now the same as they would have done 3-4 years ago. But we will never see any of them and it’s not just the presidents issue. He may have influence on writing the laws but he does not write and vote for them. There is a reason that congress polls so low all the time. They rarely do a good job. Or even a mediocre one. The only thing congress seems to do is to try to make people in their district think they do a good job. They have taken on more and more responsibility over the last few decades (how many federal jobs need conformation? That didn’t used to.) Yet they fail to live up to the job.(anonymous holds, committee chairs who won’t allow votes on bills)

    I think this is Obama’s point. Congress is broken. A strong executive will not make up for this and is not the kind of government that we are supposed to have. If we don’t want a monarchy/faux dictatorship then we have to reform congress. We have to make them do their job. If they won’t the country is doomed. If we do nothing, we will rumble along till it comes to a complete halt and then who knows what will come next. Well, maybe we are seeing what will come next. Not a pretty picture. We have a dysfunctional government. The answer is not to tear it down, get rid of it as the conservatards want to do, the answer is to make it work like it was intended.

  91. 91.

    Derf

    @Jay in Oregon: What a thoughtful post. Which leads to the question, what are you doing here of all places? Thoughtful posts from the main bloggers and their lemming commenters is practically illegal here.

  92. 92.

    Bender

    Me, I think they’ll keep funding the idiots. Does that mean they are idiots?

    Yeah, you’re right. I’m also guessing Wall Street will continue to donate more to Obama than the GOP candidate, just like last cycle. What, you didn’t know? #AnotherBallJuicerFail #SeriouslyHowCanYouPeopleBeSoStupid

  93. 93.

    pete

    @Ruckus: Yup. Congress is indeed broken, and that’s really not Obama’s fault. The President has undoubtedly made mistakes (unlike the previous incumbent, he’d probably admit as much) but one of the major problems is viewing the POTUS, whoever he happens to be, as either all-powerful or devilish. It’s not just Congress that needs to grow up, it’s most of the country. I am not optimistic.

  94. 94.

    Bender

    @wrb:

    Right now bills can’t be passed without Republican support. So they can prevent stuff from happening, like most actions that might improve the economy. They have very limited ability to make anything happen. They aren’t responsible for everything. The executive can do some things. Bush managed to torture people on his own initiative.

    I’d take your criticism of my posts more seriously if you could express yourself more clearly. Maybe if you used fewer hanging pronouns and vague words like “stuff” and “things,” you could make a point. As it is, I have no idea what you’re trying to say.

  95. 95.

    Sanka

    Oops. Markets just turned green. Guess Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Al Franken, John Kerry, etc., and the rest of the left wingers who voted for austerity as well, were right. Or are they wrong?

    Try again genius…

  96. 96.

    Blue Neponset

    @Ruckus: Bush didn’t write the Bush tax cuts be he sure had a lot of say about them. The idea that Obama or any President can wash his hands of what Congress does is an idea I reject.

    We basically have team government. Obama is the captain/manager of the Democratic team and by agreeing to the embrace austerity Obama has basically handcuffed the government when it comes to responding to the economy for the rest of his term. It seems like we both agree that this sucks, but you are letting Obama off easy by saying he doesn’t write or vote on laws.

  97. 97.

    Original Lee

    Of course, the markets could be reacting to Ryan talking about expedited spending rescission authority. That would be fun.

  98. 98.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bender:

    Obama has never listened to anyone except his campaign committee as regards the economy.

    John Boehner is on Obama’s campaign committee?

    Sorry, sweetie, this wonderful “plan” is what the Republicans came up with. To complain now that the problem is that Obama actually listened to your crappy ideas is childish.

    But, like I said, the Republican ideal of personal responsibility is, “Blame somebody else!” so I didn’t really expect to see you saying anything different.

  99. 99.

    different church-lady

    Oops. Markets just turned green.

    Amazing, ain’t it? Liberals can figure out the difference between climate and weather, but can’t yet seem to grasp the idea that markets gyrate.

  101. 101.

    Ruckus

    @Blue Neponset:
    What I’m saying is that you are right. That is how it works now. That’s not how it is supposed to work. That’s the only point on which I let Obama off the hook. I think that he is trying to get congress to do it’s job. That they won’t and that he has a major shit pile on his hands means that he has to do something. I’m still not sure what he did is as wrong as it sounds but if it is we are totally fucked.
    The question I have is what is to be done about it? I sure don’t have answers. Anyway not easy or fast or maybe even possible ones that’s for sure.

  103. 103.

    Mnemosyne

    Here’s the LA Times story about the same thing. I think that Wall Street had the same thought process as Bender — “Wait, Obama did what we wanted? Doesn’t he know that what we wanted was a really bad idea?”

    Obama didn’t save them from their own stupidity, and now they’re pissed off.

  104. 104.

    TenguPhule

    We need economic stimulation through the “Execute the Republican with a Gold Bullet and bill the family for the costs at a vastly inflated rate” program.

    A Revenue raiser without taxes involved, everybody’s happy!

  105. 105.

    someofparts

    Wouldn’t the investors doing the complaining just be the ones who didn’t have the sense to short the U.S. market?

    Maybe we have the makings of a new reality show here – Dumb Investors. Sounds like a laugh riot to me.

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