Insert your panic here. I have yardwork to do.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.
“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”
The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.
Fuck these fucking interesting times.
There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.
We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.
We’re not going back!
I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!
Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.
“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.
How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?
Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.
Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.
It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.
Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.
Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.
So many bastards, so little time.
Let’s finish the job.
The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.
rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius
The gop is a fucking disgrace.
He really is that stupid.
Hot air and ill-informed banter
Captain Haddock
I just look forward to another Republican president so we can stop caring about deficits (they don’t matter!) and start another, absolutely massive, round of stimulus (checks in the mail for everyone!).
General Stuck
HIgher than expected job report this morning. Which is good politically, as was the tick down of the percent of unemployed.
And Now I await for my prog betters to point out that that number is way too low to mean anything, and a real dem president would have created 11,000 easy. Yawn.
I would appreciate it if some of the bravehearts here on Balloon Juice would loan me some of their
[[[{{PANIC]]}}
as I just can’t seem to gin up much of my own. Thanks
Dexter
Market is up by a bit. Just saying….
jwb
Have to update by the minute to know whether the market is way up or way down. At the moment, it’s headed back up.
Dennis SGMM
@jwb:
Dead cat bounce?
aisce
because if ever there was a clearheaded, informed commentator on the economic situation in this country, it’s john cole.
how is that whole “end of the world” thing working out for you guys this fine morning? is the recession monster threatening to huff and puff and blow your whole house down?
i bet it isn’t. not here. europe, perhaps. but we are in what is known as…gasp…a recovery. i know! it’s a lame one, a lot of people are struggling and may never really get afloat for a very long time, but it’s there. we are consumed by mediocrity. reasonably stable mediocrity.
learn to love mediocrity. and stop with the doomer shit 24/7.
jwb
@Dexter: And we’re back into negative territory…
Sentient Puddle
Can I instead panic about my AC unit dying?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Captain Haddock:
Deficit Attention Deficit Disorder is an episodic malady. Nobody can predict when it will strike next.
jeffreyw
Just noticed, type “dow” into google search and the first listing seems to be a real time quote, updated every few seconds
Mino
@Sentient Puddle:
What he said. 104 degrees for the forseeable future.
Nom de Plume
@aisce: Exactly. But “we are consumed by mediocrity” doesn’t have quite the elan of holding a flashlight under your chin and quoting William Butler Yeats while lightning flashes in the background.
jwb
@Dennis SGMM: After the big opening, we had a nicely executed panic dive and then a big bounce at 10 EDT, but now we seem to be settling in right around where it closed yesterday.
maya
Psst! Niger yellow cake futures. It’s the next best bet.
jibeaux
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Ha! I love the name. But there does seem to be a strong correlation with R presidencies….
chopper
snuh. i think it’ll be down today, but not too much. the jobs report is nice but not that great, but it’ll convince some yahoos that ‘nows the time to buy’.
i’m watching europe. also, 2-year treasury notes are absurdly low. t-bills are still crazy low too. of course, we won’t borrow as much as we should because there’ll just be another fight over the next debt ceiling, so as long as there’s a lot of demand pressure on yields is going to be even more downward (i don’t know if it’s possible for t-bills to go lower than they already are, it’s insane).
jwb
@jeffreyw: I like Google Finance.
PurpleGirl
@General Stuck: At 117,000 jobs, it will take 10 YEARS to just get the current 14 million unemployed working, not even talking about the new workers coming into the workforce. Let’s not forget those who have dropped out of the workforce.
Nobody is thinking about creating jobs — not the Republicans, the Democrats, or big or small business.
No panic for you General, but a steady state of despair (built up over 32 months) that we are off all radars. They really do want us all to just die and let them off the hook.
ETA: Saw the dentist yesterday… I need extensive work. Have no idea how I can pay for it.
Bruce S
The corporations are sitting on tons of cash. http://titanicsailsatdawn.blogspot.com/
The markets will bounce around – that’s really beside the point. What’s problematic is the stagnant job figures – even when they’re “better than predicted.”
Obama needs to generate some credible policy – running against “Washington” or the kind of vague bullshit I heard at his birthday party isn’t going to cut it. Folks here are welcome to their complacency – revel in it – but the country craves more credible leadership and the kind of assent to GOP-driven narratives we’ve been treated to this past year isn’t enough. I don’t happen to live in a nice middle class community where complacent bullshit gets me through the day.
Even if it’s an easier path because the GOP elects a crazy person, without a coherent Democratic jobs & growth-oriented agenda on the table and a sweep of Congress, it’s not worth a hell of a lot. (The major focus for this could be infrastructure, which isn’t “partisan” except among the purely ideological or resentment-driven who hate anything with Obama’s fingerprints on it, even if it were a 20-trillion dollar deficit reduction.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Nom de Plume:
Snap!
Southern Beale
This is my suggestion to the Democrats.
Just a thought. Because the longer this game gets played, the more real people suffer. Time to call ’em on it.
Enough of the bullshit already. Time to put country ahead of party.
Violet
I did all the yard work first thing in the morning. It’s so hot here, if you’re not done by 9:00 a.m., then forget it. We’re under a heat advisory and the air quality is crap. Even being indoors it’s tiring. I can’t wait for fall.
Amanda in the South Bay
Well, I’m off to get the facial hair on my upper lip zapped. Not the most pleasureable experience, but one that is, alas, needed.
Emma
@Bruce S: Folks here are welcome to their complacency – revel in it – but the country craves more credible leadership and the kind of assent to GOP-driven narratives we’ve been treated to this past year won’t cut it. If polls are to be believed, Obama’s numbers are holding steady (I know, they’re not great but they are pretty equivalent to other presidents at around this time) while Congress’s numbers are tanking. Hard.
And as far as policy is concerned, the President has already asked for a jobs bill. Unfortunately, there are these guys that would rather the Solar System got eaten by a black hole than give Obama anything he wants. And they’re the ones who have to pass the bill. Funny that.
Bruce S
Wow – this blog has way more than it’s share of empty suits.
General Stuck
@PurpleGirl:
Of course, I said “politically’ it was good news to be higher than expected. I am well aware of the reality of what it will take to get back to full employment. But this is a political blog, that used to primarily support the idea and result of getting and keeping democrats in office. So we take the politics one day at a time, and one mild improvement over “panic” and or “despair” . Unless you just can’t help yourself.
There is zero chance of improvement if republicans gain more power, especially if they get the WH. I will focus on keeping that as a priority. The rest of you can turn the pearls into clutched powder.
Ooparts
Every time there is a big drop in the market, I wonder if it’s time to buy in. Anybody here have thoughts on that?
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
It’s always that time, but one party is devoted, exclusively, not to governing, but to being in power for the sake of being in power.
Then you’ve got egomaniacs who put their own petty personal needs before country. These exist on both the left and the right.
Barter is Better because...
We worship the market especially the DOW because it is indicative of the job the POTUS is doing. Polling is only a guesstimate. The Dow Jones tells us how bad the Prez is doing. This is only used when the Dow is doing poorly and there is a Dem in the White House but it is very accurate for the MSM to follow.
Sentient Puddle
@Mino: That looks to me roughly where I’m at on the 10-day forecast as well. When I got home yesterday (when it died), I decided to drop all my evening plans and just do yard work instead because it felt cooler outside.
dpCap
@Ooparts: I bought in last summer about this time when everything was low. Now it’s even lower than it was last summer. So no, I wouldn’t recommend it. I could have made more money in my 0.001% interest savings account.
Best investment now are guns and canned food. I’m not even sure gold will be worth much in a few months.
cleek
all good libs need at least 4 hours of panic per day.
General Stuck
@PurpleGirl:
So do I, being likely just as poor as you are.
chopper
@Ooparts:
if you never bought in during any of the other down markets, why start now?
Violet
@General Stuck:
Huh? I thought John used to be a Republican.
Yevgraf
Higher corporate and capital gains tax rates are stimulative, in that they tend to spur hiring, the construction of bricks and mortar facilities that require inhabitants and machinery to run. The profits can then pay out in the form of dividends, which we should, quite frankly, extend some tax breaks on, just to get businesses back to thinking in terms of distributing real profits from actually doing stuff. All in all, it tends to make investors seek stability and long term business planning.
Violet
@dpCap:
Gold is a bubble just waiting to pop.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
La Moz has got your panic right here.
The Raven
After an early rally (of 200 points!), the Dow Jones has fallen back to its original level. As I write, it is falling around 1-1.5% per minute.
Quite a roller coaster!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Isn’t this the ending from the Cliff Notes version of Candide? A regular West Virginia Voltaire, this John Cole is.
chopper
@Violet:
man, i hope so. the gold bugs are going to eat it tho.
General Stuck
@Violet:
Well, then he became a democrat, and the blog changed in that direction.
Villago Delenda Est
@Yevgraf:
But bundling and reselling mortgages that you have no idea if they can ever be actually repaid is “doing stuff!”
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
So does M. Bowie, also too.
Frankensteinbeck
@PurpleGirl:
I disagree. Democrats are thinking about creating jobs. Obama talks about it frequently, and about the things he’d like to do to create those jobs.
All they can do about it is think. The GOP strongly controls the House and they don’t want the economy to recover, don’t care about jobs during a recovery, and actively wish to thwart anything liberals might want out of sheer spite. They fought against a jobs bill tooth and nail before the 2010 midterm House was sworn in. Now it’s utterly impossible until the Tea Party is kicked out of power.
aisce
@ violet
stuck, as always, lives in his own little universe.
for a blog allegedly devoted to democratic political organization, it seems strangely fixated on the likes of megan mcardle, adam green, and the contents of cole’s garden…
Bruce S
Lawrence Summers is a Firebagger! : “the economy has at least a 1-in-3 chance of falling back into recession if nothing new is done to raise demand and spur growth.”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@cleek:
If your panic lasts longer than 4 hours…
PeakVT
@Ooparts: Unless you are a pro, you’re likely to get burnt trying to time the market precisely. Buy in gradually – though this is probably not the time to start.
Villago Delenda Est
@Frankensteinbeck:
Besides, it is Republican cant that “government can’t create jobs”, as though GOP congressmen and their staffs are not employed.
General Stuck
@aisce:
So says the newest blog scold, who showed up like yesterday.
Samara Morgan
/yawn
wall street profits dont create jobs.
that is empirically obvious.
let the fuckers jump.
wrb
@General Stuck:
Here you go:
My bet is that unless something very vigorous is done immediately we’ll have a 12% unemployment rate by the Spring and the damage will be unfixable. People need to see strong signs of improvement and they need solid reasons to believe that the improvement is continuing.
I keep hearing reports of weird stuff going on in the real estate market as those who were holding off foreclosing and those who thought the bottom had been reached decide there is no reason to think things will be better next year or the year after.
That raises at least the possibility of a value collapse that would devastate middle class wealth, the financial sector, and the economy in general. Everyone would be underwater.
Avoidable, but it would probably take much more vigorous action much faster than I’ve heard anyone propose.
Villago Delenda Est
@General Stuck:
Likely just an old blog scold with a new name. Matko does that every so often, and really fools no one.
aisce
excepting kay, the only “political activism” this site concerns itself with is a random actblue page and a call-your-congressmen visit from tim f. once every couple of months.
and you know it.
it’s as much a social blog as it is a political one. nothing wrong with that.
General Stuck
@wrb:
Thanks! I am made whole again.
jibeaux
Wait a minute — saying “insert your panic here, I’m going to do yard work” is suddenly = panic and 24/7 gloom and doom? I kind of interpreted it more as an open thread. Or possibly an invitation to panic about the possibility that John has decided to do yard work naked, or with sharp objects.
wrb
@Bruce S:
On NPR this morning Roubini said he thought there was a 2/3rds chance of falling back into a recession.
aisce
@ villago
i’ve been here since like last winter…
Frankensteinbeck
@Villago Delenda Est:
Matoko’s speech (well, text) patterns and obsessiveness are really distinctive, though. You can spot him/her/it a mile away.
jibeaux
Y’ALL HE COULD BE OUT THERE RIGHT NOW — NAKED. WITH SHARP GARDENING IMPLEMENTS. HYPERACTIVE ANIMALS ALL AROUND.
AIIEEEEEEE!!!
eemom
another day, another Krugman:
Sorry General. I am certainly not going to do anything to put more republicans in office, but I am done being an apologist for this idiocy.
Bruce S
wrb – I think you’re wasting a serious thought here.
eemom
meh. I “do not have permission to edit” block quote fail.
lacp
If I’m feeling especially chipper ‘n optimistic ‘n shit, I just read some Dean Baker or Yves Smith and I’m right back in my default “Despair” mode. Unfortunately, I find them both to be pretty credible people.
barath
@Ooparts:
Don’t buy until this indicator reaches a bottom. It’s a sentiment indicator – when it’s very bearish, that means things have bottomed out. We probably have a couple of weeks before that happens.
http://www.market-harmonics.com/free-charts/sentiment/nasdaq_sentiment.htm
It was as of a few days ago at a bullish extreme, which perfectly forecasted the current downturn.
Bruce S
eemom – actually Krugman gave Obama some great advice in that column. After the predictable “shrill.”
Judas Escargot
I wish there was a way of knowing who was selling stocks: Sellers clearly waited until after the debt deal was struck. But the bond markets –always more reality-based– seem to like the debt deal (rates went down yesterday).
So, who out there is either “harvesting” their gains, and/or intentionally trying to crash the Stock Market?
And why now?
Ooparts
@PeakVT: Good to know. That’s primarily what’s kept me out in the past.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
@General Stuck: Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.
~
General Stuck
@eemom:
Well then, I say let yer freak flag fly. That’s what it’s there for. And never mind my dweebish blatherings of glass half fullism.
No doubt. And one of the funniest comments I’ve ever read here, on Balloon Juice, land of hot air.
The future is not set, and hasn’t even happened yet.
I’ll leave you all to your scholarship. I admit I don’t know what the fuck is going to happen. But won’t be drinking my cup of koolaid, just yet.
General Stuck
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
Brilliant comment, brimming with class. And who says firebaggers have no sense of humor? untrue.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
@Judas Escargot:
There’s no contradiction. Austerity in the face of a weakening economy? Leave the stock market and buy bonds. See Japan’s lost decade for a recent example.
~
General Stuck
@eemom:
No one is asking you to. Unless you are laying the reality of obstructionist republicans at Obama’s feet. If you are , then you are an idiot. Like all the other idiots that populate this blog.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@eemom:
Does Dr. K not see that preventing a default was a pretty serious attempt at keeping jobs around? I would love to see Obama running around the country talking about job creation instead of debt, but 1) The media does not cover him running around the country, and 2) The Republicans control the House.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): What’s the excuse for the years before the Republicans controlled the House?
~
El Tiburon
@General Stuck:
Kind of like finding out you only have cancer, not cancer and AIDS. I think game over as far as jobs are concerned. 9-10% unemployment is the new norm – get used to it. This President, other than extending some tax breaks to hire some veterans (give me a fucking break) cares not about jobs.
The ONLY solution is a massive public-works program with TRILLIONS in spending to get people earning a paycheck. And unless those TRILLIONS are for Wall-Street Bonuses, this President is not going to do a goddmann thing.
Fuck, he pisses me off. Never has such a golden opportunity been squandered.
General Stuck
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
He will be, soon. Now that he can say he’s done his part for deficit reduction via spending cuts. Cuts that were not the degree of horrible, so many of the left make them out to be.
It’s politics, and Obama is doing okay with the thrust and parry of insane wingers that run a branch of congress. He will not likely get anything passed, but Obama is for more stimulus, and always has been. He is a keynesian, regardless of what the clueless to politics Krugman puts out.
chopper
@eemom:
as funny as it is to hear the press sec say we’re not going back into recession, i wouldn’t expect the WH to say anything else. come on, you want the guy to step up in front of the cameras and say ‘yeah, we’re totally going in to recession any minute now’?
Strandedvandal
Man, I am loving this pie filter. The Eeyore brigade loves them some pie. I do declare!
Brachiator
@wrb:
I listened to this story this morning. I can’t fault anything in Roubini’s short sound bite.
But what got me was the utterly insufferably smug tone of the NPR report. There was much concern about the movement of the stock market, trivialized the way that somebody would talk about movie box office winners and losers, as opposed to discussion about more real world stuff: jobs, employment and wages, and the impact of the economy on the average citizen.
Worst of all, the interview was held at some annual retreat that the top economists were invited to, somewhere in Maine, I think. So the reporter mentioned how he interrupted some moke’s fishing to get a soundbite on this guy’s prediction on the future direction of the stock market.
The story can be heard here.
wrb
The biggest reason nothing is going to be done (other than that the Republicans are traitors) is that Democrats are unwilling or unable to face the fact that with the Republicans holding the house only Republican-style stimulus will get passed. Krugman’s Truman-style,”take it to the people Obama” is unlikely to move many of these Republicans.Repub stimulus can work, and is entirely in keeping with Keynesian theory, it is just isn’t ideally efficient. But neither is a wiped out economy. It seems to be hard for people to understand that under Keynes the tax cut that is bad in good times is good when the economy is weak.
Here are the multipliers indicating the efficiency of various types of cut from testimony Krugman cited by Moody’s chief economist.
There are some sweet spots
Blue Neponset
@General Stuck:
Obots have no imagination. Dealing with obstructionists in the other party (eta: or in your own) is what politicians do. Truman had his ‘do nothing Congress’, LBJ had his southern democrats, and Obama has the teabaggers. The idea that Obama has no way of dealing with the obstructionists seems to be an article of faith in the Obot community but it isn’t reality. Obama choose to respond to the teabaggers as he did. He had options as to how to respond and he now needs to take responsibility for choosing those options.
Brachiator
@Yevgraf:
Unfortunately, every tax plan currently on the table calls for lower corporate tax rates, and flirts with eliminating taxes on capital gains.
I’m not sure what you mean about “extending” breaks here. Thanks to the Bush tax cuts, the tax rate on qualified dividends for people in the 15% tax bracket is ZERO. You can’t extend it much more than that. The December tax “compromise” threw other huge incentives to businesses.
And yet, the economy still sputters.
Bender
Here’s The Graph.
Brilliant.
The Raven
@Judas Escargot: I don’t think it’s conspiracy: my speculation is that the institutional investors have put a lost decade into their models and have decided that bonds look like a much better bet.
As of this moment, the DJI has dropped another 100 points. I’m not sure that it means much, though–after all it rose and fell 200 points within an hour of opening.
cleek
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
the filibuster is a pretty big veto point. it’s not so important right now because the GOP isn’t going to send anything they don’t like to the Senate.
Joel
I have trailing stop limits everywhere.
scav
@Joel:
Have you consulted a vet about that? Or maybe a botanist specializing in vines.
chopper
@wrb:
like the teabaggers. the only constituents the teabaggers in the house care about are fellow teabaggers. these guys aren’t even that interested in having more than one term, they think they were sent to washington on a mission to gum the works up and make sure obama doesn’t get reelected.
no amount of trumanesque hell-giving is going to change that. basically, in terms of real federal intervention, we’re boned until 2012 assuming the dems take back the house then. if the goopers keep it, or obama loses the WH, we’re continually boned. pretty much forever.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Brachiator: I think that is “mook”.
Dennis SGMM
@scav:
Curse you for putting your snarky comment up before I could put my snarky comment up. Damned arthritis!
Derf
9.1%
Employment was expected to stay at 9.2%. It was upgraded to 9.1%. Non-farm employment change was expected to be 89k. It came in at 117k.
Where are the breathless headlines from Captain Doom John Galt Cole saying we are all doomed??
Everyone else see the pattern?!
When the news is not good Captain Doom is all over it. He revels in it. He is Karl Rove’s bestest buddy whether he realizes it or not! Probably a bit of both. After all Republican strategists rely on peoples unlimited capacity to be dumb. That is how they are constantly trying to divide and conquer. Demoralizing is a big part of that.
But when the news is good…like today. And Captain Doom doesn’t know how to make it look like a turd. Well, it’s all about his baker rack, what his mutt did, pictures of half eaten food and semi coherent thoughts emanating from an open bottle of wine.
Stay gloomy John!
scav
@Dennis SGMM: So, you wont share it with me at least? ! Selfish beast.
General Stuck
@Blue Neponset:
I guess he could decree the filibuster unconstitutional, and maybe could declare 50 or so tea tarders in the House enemy combatants, and send their happy asses down to Gitmo for some attitude adjustments.
dpCap
Well everything is crashing again. Now I wish I a just sat on my money until this year. Jeez, who’dve thought a year ago that things would crash again.
And again…
And again…
And again…
Meanwhile CEO’s are racking up huge salaries while the stockholders (ya’ know, the REAL owners?) are getting shat upon.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@aisce: You forgot the pets. Tunch will get you for that.
TooManyJens
Fox should just change its name to “White Supremacy News” and get it over with:
http://twibiu.com/post/8515787039/dropfox-this-is-actually-the-top-story-on-fox
Brachiator
@El Tiburon:
I’m not sure that this would work, but in any case I don’t think anything like this could ever happen now. I get the impression that since the “compromise” that everyone agreed to mandates spending and also sends the Super Congress out on a stupid Grail Quest to find the Balanced Federal Budget, you could never have a stimulus spending plan that increased the deficit because you must have (or the Republicans and their Tea Party masters would demand) offsetting spending cuts.
Bender
With great campaign slogans like “The White House Doesn’t Create Jobs!” how can they lose?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@General Stuck: Did you read where General Honore suggested sending all the congressers to boot camp? Some 4 star had this long rebuttal about how that would violate their rights!
jwb
@Bender: You’re missing on all cylinders today.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
@General Stuck:
…but Obama is for more stimulus, and always has been. He is a keynesian, regardless of what the clueless to politics Krugman puts out.
Is this why Geithner, who opposed more stimulus, is still in the administration, and the people who (correctly) argued for more are all gone?
Reality. Try it sometime.
~
General Stuck
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
LOL, no, didn’t see that. But Honore is a character and it doesn’t surprise me much he suggested such a thing. And idea which I support, in the abstract.
KG
For what it’s worth… The family business is in construction, commercial tenant improvements (office build outs). They’ve been seeing a steady uptick in work lately, and especially in bidding. I’ve always been able to use their business as something of a leading indicator. They get busy it means either things are about to pick up (people need more space) or slow down (people are downsizing and have to remodel the space to do less). Right now, it’s more Column A than Column B.
cleek
@Blue Neponset:
could you describe how he can “deal with them” ? Please?
jwb
Nasdaq has dropped off a cliff.
Blue Neponset
@General Stuck:
Thanks for proving my point General. The only path you can see is the one Obama took. All other options are unrealistic.
scav
Image
Martin
@El Tiburon:
Seriously? That’s the only solution? Or that’s the proper talking-point solution?
I think we have a lot of opinions on solutions without a lot of understanding of what the underlying problem is.
Blue Neponset
@cleek: LINK
General Stuck
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
I’d need to see some links on this, but it should be obvious to even true liberals that Geihtner is not the president. And Obama is, and continues to call for public works programs for infrastructure and the like. As his main pol adviser David Plouffe said the other day.
Next stupid observation
Frankensteinbeck
What part of ‘our number one priority is to make sure Obama is a one-term president’ do people not get? The GOP controls the House right now. No legislation is going to pass that would create jobs or fix the economy, because that would ensure his reelection. No legislation is going to pass that they realize Obama wants, because they’re spiteful assholes. Anything stimulative would count as both. Barring flat-out tricking them (which Obama’s had some success at, to my amazement) we are in deadlock punctuated by hostage crises until the Tea Party is broken.
@Blue Neponset:
By itself, this is a good argument. However, it’s contradicted because Obama is actually facing the most obstructionist opposition in living memory. The use of legislative tricks like blocking appointments and filibusters has set a new record with every Republican congress of the last… what, 30 years?
You’re right that a smart president can find ways to work around it, which is why Obama has a list of legislative accomplishments as long as his arm. With the Tea Party controlling the House so solidly, we’ve hit a temporary limit. They’ve gone ‘religious zealot’. The wave of successful primary challenges on the Right in 2010 was not political business as usual, and the normal rules are not in effect.
Martin
@jwb: I just saw that. I might be buying options today after all.
General Stuck
@Blue Neponset:
Cool, Neponset comes out for Dictator Obama to fix this shit.
The Raven
Down another hundred points. It’s a dead cat bouncing down the stairs!
Brachiator
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Actually, I was going for jamokes, but tripped over my own keyboard.
But yeah, mook (pace Stephanie Miller Show) was rattling around in my brain as well.
@TooManyJens:
How could this be? I have it on good authority, from all those morons who try to bash ABL, that bigotry on Faux News and anywhere else is just a figment of the liberal imagination.
jwb
@Blue Neponset: Rude Pundit is rude. Also even more useless than Krugman on the point in question.
chopper
@Frankensteinbeck:
i would like to add to the record that i agree with all of this.
General Stuck
Here is how I see this insanity playing out
The wingers are stuck on NO, and will not give Obama the time of day until the election
Obama, like I said, and Plouffe said, is going to pivot hard to creating jobs and the put forth the leg to do it.
Then the supercommittee meets and all of this turns into a giant standoff between the parties. With nothing but slung mud getting passed. This is the reality.
I think it is constructive for liberal and progs to offer plausible advice on what and how Obama should go about fighting the wingers. But calling for him to start acting like a dictator is not plausible and is in fact, quite insane
burnspbesq
@Blue Neponset:
“He had options as to how to respond and he now needs to take responsibility for choosing those options.”
Talk is cheap. Tell me exactly what you would have done differently, and convince me it would have worked.
Or SDSU.
wrb
@Frankensteinbeck:
So let them run against a tax holiday for 95% of the population. Multiplier 1.29
If they are stupid enough to do it, it would kill them.
If it lasted past the expiration of the Bush Tax cuts, the upper income cut would be effectively decoupled from the mid-income ones, and could be allowed to die.
Tim Connor
Look at the bright side. WaPO and Kaplan profits fell 50%:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/05/washington-post-profits-dive
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
@General Stuck: It should be obvious, even to Opologists, that Geithner is the person the President listens to on economic matters.
And here’s a link.
~
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Brachiator: Mook from “Mean Streets”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Blue Neponset:
Which he neatly parlayed into getting himself re-elected by the thinest of margins. And then what? What legislation did Truman sign into law? What bills were passed during the Truman admin? Last time I checked, Taft-Hartley doesn’t exactly count as a win.
Funny how dealing with obstructionists in your own party, such that you control the levers of intra-party patronage (which were far more powerful back then than they are today), while being able to find ideological allies from the liberal wing of the other party, and having massive support from a sympathetic mass media, is a little easier than dealing with monolithic opposition from a party which you do not control and a media cowed and in part outright owned by the opposition. The whole national trauma after JFK was killed thing, which temporarily discredited the right wing, didn’t exactly hurt either.
This revisionist history which completely glosses over the huge political and structural advantages which our progressive heros of the past enjoyed (while ignoring their mistakes) compared with today is really tiresome and self-defeating.
Yevgraf
It would be awesome if Obama could announce his initiative against eating ground glass and guzzling bleach, a freedom-oppressing measure that liberals would truly support and get behind. I can picture Paul Broun, Rand Paul and Jim DeMint with their nourishing bowls full of broken lightbulbs and decorative steins full of clorox, ready to gobble and guzzle on live TV….
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The bully pulpit only works if the media deigns to actually cover you, instead of chasing after sharks or Caylee.
Also, it’s questionable whether or not the Republicans actually control the House. Some people who are nominally Republicans but actually screaming three year olds, led by a vile asshole named Cantor, are contesting whether a relative adult like Boner has any control at all.
Stillwater
@eemom and those who think like her: I’ve never been an Obologist, or even a Demologist, but I think there is an underlying reality that people either aren’t aware of or aren’t taking very seriously: due to neoliberal policy, US labor rates over time are going to go down. Substantially. That means a lower overall base of revenue generation as time goes on. Coupled with this are liabilities in the form of entitlements, some of which have funding issues of their own (Medicare) that need correctives.
So here’s the problem: people on the left want a stimulus to create jobs, which in turn is supposed creates labor scarcity, which in turn drives up labor rates and therefore spending therefore job growth, etc. But that’s an ‘artificial’ structure which isn’t sustainable given 1) the reality of capital flexibility and labor offshoring and 2) the current wage disparity between the US and emerging economies.
Stimulus, which Krugman advocates, is intended to be a remedy for the effects of policies which no one has any intention of changing. So the new reality for ‘wealthy’ countries is austerity. There is simply no way to sustain overall government spending in the face of offshoring and global labor competition.
One corrective we all would like to see is raising taxes on the wealthy. Doing this would sustain certain government programs etc., for sure, but raising their marginal rate won’t create private sector jobs, and it won’t stem the decline of labor rates.
There is a very real problem here.
ETA: Btw, I’m not saying this is the only factor in high-level decision-making, but it’s a definitely a component of it. The math demands it!
Martin
@KG:
Ah, nice. My residential real-estate barometer has always been commercial occupancy. When commercial vacancy rates in my city get low, and sq/ft lease costs climb (corresponding to when your family business is booming), I know the residential housing market is about to move upward with about a 6 month lag. Aside from 2008, it’s never failed.
Unfortunately it’s fairly localized, so unless the family business is national, it might only be a local economic improvement. Not nothing, though, and certainly good news for the family.
chopper
@Yevgraf:
i joke with my wife that obama better not adopt another dog saying ‘dogs are great, aren’t they?’, cause the teabaggers would go to go out and burn down every animal shelter in the country.
TooManyJens
@chopper:
No shit. People in my Congressman’s office are openly pissed about having to talk to constituents who disagree with them. This doesn’t seem like a great strategy for a guy who just got redistricted into a far bluer district, but they don’t seem to care.
General Stuck
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
What kind of link evidence is this, some unsourced allegation from some wanker on the internet.
Some of you act like Obama doesn’t even exist as president, and everything that matters is what some of his employees say or do. I have my own ideas what that is about.
Linda Featheringill
@General Stuck: #94
And what is the phone number for agitating to get these measures done?
:-)
Tim Connor
@General Stuck: As usual, Stuck, the problem is that you think politics always trumps economics. And while Krugman may or may not be clueless about politics, every time he (and Avent, DeLong, etc. –all the people who remember who Keynsian economics actually works) have disagreed with Obama relative to their predictions about the economy, they have generally been correct. Not Obama.
You think Obama is going to take effective action to create jobs? I hope you’re right. How is he going to do that? By legitimizing Republican Bullshit and asking nicely if we could please,please, put some of our citizens back to work?
I don’t hate Ob ama. I just don’t see the sand required for the situation we’re in –wherein one party has gone mad and is essentially a Quisling institution.
So since you’re such a realpolitik kind of guy, why don’t you explain it to us?
El Tiburon
@Martin:
Yep. That’s the ONLY solution.
Private industry and weak consumer demand is not going to suddenly put millions of people to work. (unless it’s in China).
A massive public-work program is the only solution. If only we had some form of leader who would push it like his political life depended on it.
Derf
@cleek: Yes, I would love to hear what he manages to pull out of his ass to explain it as well.
General Stuck
@Linda Featheringill:
1-800-our-hell
Woodrowfan
WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!
there, i feel better.
signifyingmnky
@El Tiburon:
Please tell us how you pass a multitrillion dollar public works program with this Congress…I’m intrigued.
ferd
Another day of stupidity on Babboon piss.
When the employment news is good focus on the dropping stock market. When the stock market is good focus on the dropping employment numbers. When all those are good complain about the war in Libya.
Stay gloomy Cole.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©: He passed a stimulus, which he admitted was too small, and then Brown moved into the Senate, and the Republicans, who care more about regaining power rather than help the country, voted as a block to prevent anything else from passing. I’m not sure LBJ could have done much in the Senate these days. Remember, the House passed lots of bills that died in the Senate.
jwb
@Stillwater: The other structural problem is that to the extent that transportation costs remain low, it is possible to think in terms of a global market, and the world’s upper 5% in wealth constitutes a mass market that gets you reasonable economies of scale.
Villago Delenda Est
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Yup, that’s all true. The fact that the media is totally owned and operated by Galtian overlords is a significant factor in Obama’s difficulties. There are no guys like Sarnoff or Paley around who have priorities OTHER than accumulating all the money there is and pushing an political agenda in favor of accumulating all the money there is.
The notion that news divisions are loss leaders to provide a public service was utterly trashed during the Reagan administration, mainly because public service is NOT in the interest of the Galtian overlords. They’re all Cornelius Vanderbilt (“the public be damned!”) in Armani suits.
Derf
Another day of stupidity on Babboon piss.
When the employment news is good focus on the dropping stock market. When the stock market is good focus on the dropping employment numbers. When all those are good complain about the war in Libya.
Stay gloomy Cole.
Martin
I was wondering about this:
The suggestion here is that the 2011 deficit could be almost $300B lower than forecast. States have been seeing higher tax receipts as well. The problem, however, is that due to how Congress treats the budget, they often run around at the end of the budget cycle and treat those extra dollars in the budget as an earmark bonanza, and whatever savings we might have had vanish in a hail of bridges to nowhere.
But if it should materialize, and because we do baseline budgeting (those numbers would set the baseline for 2012) that deficit reduction we nearly destroyed the country to achieve might actually happen all by itself.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
@General Stuck: Oh, don’t worry, I hold Obama completely responsible for the failures of his Administration.
I brought up Geithner because 1) it is he (and Orszag, now at Citibank) who opposed more stimulus, and 2) Geithner is still Secretary of the Treasury, in spite of getting it all wrong.
Care to provide some evidence of Obama’s actions that would support whatever point it is that you are attempting to make?
~
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Linda Featheringill: Beachwood 45789, you can call me up. . .
Linda Featheringill
@General Stuck: #138
:-)
Linda Featheringill
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): #147
Good tune!
fhtagn
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/05/washington-post-profits-dive
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@TooManyJens: Jesus Christ being chased down the street by sheet-draped yahoos.
In the not too distant future some Republivangical cobags will appear on Faux and puzzle over WHY so few African-Americans voted for the Republican presidential candidate. They will likely conclude that we’re too stupid know what’s good for us and/or dependent on LIEburul welfare programs.
And I will laaaaaaaugh.
General Stuck
@Tim Connor:
I already did in this thread, like all the other times in a bunch of other threads. If you want to continue with the president must be a tight ass ideologue to beat the wingers, then have at it. I don’t agree.
Regarding the debt ceiling deal, I look it as Obama now being free now to brandish his long term deficit cutting credentials, WHICH ARE FULLY KEYNESIAN , and an issue that voters care some about, and now being inoculated from the tax and spend liberal canard, which is a powerful one for wingers to use on libs.
And now he can pump passing short term stim spending more easily. But in the end, that will be simply political theater, because nothing is going to get passed on extra spending, and maybe not current spending to keep the government running. But by all means, keep the focus on clubbing the dem president TO DO SOMETHING, instead of on the wingnts. That ought to be a winner. rolls eyes.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tim Connor:
I’m not sure what ‘the sand required’ means here. Do you mean that he has to be tough? What kind of tough? Since he can yell blue in the face and that will make them think they’re totally awesome and encourage them to be more obstructionist, that’s not going to help. Do you mean he should flat out refuse to sign any bill that involves any compromises? Because I really liked getting the ACA passed and not having the country go into default. Without some willingness to compromise, neither of those results could have happened. Do you mean that he should go on television and say that what we need is to increase taxes, regulate the medical industry to stop spiraling health care costs, and invest in more infrastructure and create jobs? The media doesn’t want to cover it, and they must be doing a good job of not covering it if you don’t know that he’s already doing that.
I am with Stuck on this one. Beyond ‘don’t compromise’, which is a magical pony solution because the Republicans are not going to give in, what does anyone expect him to do that he’s not doing?
flukebucket
I can remember when the market lost damn near 25% in one day. I think Daddy Bush was in office at the time. It was either him or St. Ronnie.
Anyway, my $1,500 gold fund fell to about $450.00 by the time the smoke cleared. I never put another dime in it after that.
It is worth about $45,000 and climbing now.
Let the good times roll!!
And help me out here. I am trying to learn.
The progressives do not like Obama. The progressives did not like Clinton. The progressives did not like Carter.
I have only been alive since Eisenhower. Has there ever been a President the progressives liked?
Villago Delenda Est
@fhtagn:
That sound you hear? World’s tiniest violin being worked to death.
Original Lee
Down about 5% in combined accounts (but I’m cheating a little to make myself feel better – I included CDs and cash savings accounts). *Sigh*
Frankensteinbeck
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
I can handle this one!
He passed the stimulus. He got serious unemployment extensions twice. He hugely increased the safety net, which is anti-austerity. He passed finreg, which busts Wall Street’s chops even if you want it to bust them more. In two hostage crises so far against a radical Tea Party he’s negotiated deals that afterwards turned out to contain no significant spending reductions in the near term and possibly no long term reductions (since those tend to not materialize). Both deals specifically protected the poor and included stealth infrastructure investments.
And that’s just the stuff he’s actually accomplished, leaving out proposals he’s made that didn’t pass and lengthy rhetoric you presumably don’t trust. Oh, and he never did jack squat about Simpson-Bowles despite having every opportunity he could dream of to actually dive into the austerity well. Compared to all of this, yes, your linking him to Geithner is conspiracy theorist logic.
General Stuck
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
How about we wait and see what happens, instead of wanking about it on a blog. LOL, so you have no credible evidence of Geihtner convincing Obama not to do stimulus, so you want me to help you out. Too funny
shortstop
@Brachiator: The hell? In Chicago, “jamoke” just means “regular guy.” Regular doh-de-doh guy, yeah, but not abysmally stupid guy.
@chopper: Not seeing the downside.
Stillwater
@jwb: And this was especially true when households in the wealthy markets were purchasing on credit and rising home equity values. It all comes full circle at some point. The logic of open trade obliterates (to some significant degree) the wage-based wealth disparities that economically justified it to begin with.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Linda Featheringill: Not to be outdone by the Wickett Pickett
Danny
@wrb:
No, it wouldnt. Republicans are (most likely) going to say it’s gonna add hundreds of billions in deficit spending (which it would), and they’d definitely say that more deficit spending is gonna “destroy jobs”.
Yglesias had a piece on polling re Keynesian economics the other day that showed pretty clearly that a majority of americans more or less believe Hooverism over Keynesianism. Arguments based on multipliers are gonna go nowhere fast.
That’s not to say that winning public support for more payroll tax holiday is impossible in any way (though getting it through the house probably is), only that any action taken on the assumption that netroot conventional knowledge is shared by the population at large is sure to end in tears.
Elie
@wrb:
Lets talk it down just to make sure, right?
Seems to me a fair number of people supposedly on our side actually WANT that. There is more energy in the negative aspiration for our now, unfortunately, entrenched, firebaggers. There is no good news EVAH in your universe and there is never any hope for – uh – PROGRESS either.
Bender
@chopper:
I can see why you’re all frightened. Those Tea Partiers have been so violent!! I can’t believe they aren’t all in prison, can you? Why won’t our police go to the suburbs and round them up? You know they’d find all sorts of bomb-making materials and plans to break into government buildings, if they’d just get warrants on those golf-course subdivisions where they live. You think that their fertilizer is for their award-winning rhododendrons?
They’ve probably got a Tea Party madrassa there, too, where they teach kids, using cute cartoons, to hate deficit spending!
Of course, they’d burn down buildings. Because that’s all they do in Shady Acres Retirement Village. You can’t go three steps in my town without seeing a Tea Partier with a Molotov cocktail, waiting to burn something down. It’s all over the news every day.
Watch out, man, Tea Partiers gon’ getchu!
4tehlulz
@flukebucket: The one before the last Republican administration.
lacp
Debating whether or not the President is a stealth Teabagger or somewhat to the left of Karl Marx is pretty pointless, regardless of what one personally believes. Revenue bills have to originate in the House; Republicans control the House; therefore, no stimulus bill is going to go anywhere in the next year. So what is all the discussion about?
shortstop
@TooManyJens: Is Joe Walsh your rep?
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@ferd:
@Derf:
I think there’s an echo in here.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©: I have one off of the top of my head: Remember when Rahm wanted Obama to pull the ACA because it wouldn’t pass? Yeah, Obama wouldn’t pull it and it passed.
wrb
@Elie:
No, in addition to personal concerns, I’m concerned that complacency will result in possible helpful actions not being take, and a resulting disaster for the country and its people.
There is a line that is difficult to locate between destructive negitivity and destructive happy talk.
Frankensteinbeck
@lacp:
Mostly trying to explain this to the people who think there’s no further stimulus because Obama and/or Democrats in congress don’t want it.
Blue Neponset
@Frankensteinbeck:
I just don’t buy that argument. We aren’t talking about a Kobayashi Maru scenario. There are ways to win against obstructionists. Clinton won the gov’t shutdown battle. The Dems got HCR through the Senate with 59 votes. Those things happened within living memory.
Also, if your argument that nothing can be done against these tactics is true then the Republicans have already won every budget, legislative and nomination battle we will face as long as Obama is President.
chopper
@Bender:
you’re a buffoon.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@lacp: Because, sadly, some of us keep having arguments with people who think a dictatorship is the only way to go. They’ll deny it, but they only way the stuff they want to happen will occur is if Obama eliminates congress.
Frankensteinbeck
@Blue Neponset:
I already addressed your counterargument in the other half of my comment.
Martin
@El Tiburon:
And how many accountants and secretaries are expected to be bending rebar? And when these public works are done, are we dumping trillions of dollars more money to keep those people employed? IOW, how will the public works necessarily lead to long term employment? We can’t have a nation perpetually tearing down and building ranger stations for the next 60 years.
You aren’t at all addressing, or even acknowledging WHY there’s a lack of jobs. You’re simply tossing out a patch that, sure, it’ll work until the next election, but has nothing to do with the actual problem. Fuck, wouldn’t it be cheaper to the nation to just give these people permanent unemployment and save the construction materials costs?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Blue Neponset:
Except, if you remember, Snowe voted for cloture, and then came up with some excuse that the Democracts lied to her, even though her “lie” was exactly what the bill said, and she never voted that way again. For one brief moment they had 60 votes, because a Republican helped.
different church-lady
OMG IT’S RED! No, wait, it’s green now. WAIT, IT’S RED AGAIN!!! No, hold on, it’s green again. HOLY FUCK IT WENT BACK TO BEING RED! Wait, sorry…
Danny
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Not to mention that yesterdays model of emoproggers hated LBJ and that generations extremely successful democratic establishment with a passion. Mostly over the Vietnam war, sure. But still. Sometimes LBJ is convenient, sometimes he isn’t.
wrb
@Danny:
I agree. If it passed it would be due to good old American greed, not the theory, and because in opposing it Republicans would be opposing something that they’ve told us is good, and creates jobs, ad nauseam.
That should create some opportunities when campaigning against them.
catclub
@The Raven: … and bouncing back up again and hour later.
Martin
@Blue Neponset:
Only because Newt was so fucking butthurt over having to sit in the back of the plane that he couldn’t help but spill that to a room of reporters. That admission took the blame off of Clinton.
Clinton got lucky that the public wound up viewing the shutdown battle as they did.
General Stuck
Gotta go folks. If you want to leave a love letter from this thread, click my handle to my blog. I am going take it out of mothballs soon and start writing there again. Reading comments here will lead to despair, and there is no need for that, at least on an industrial scale, and there is also no benefit, beyond expressing rational frustration.
Not quitting BJ, just reduced spending time there.
And just got word, my co blogger is moving to Kazakhstan which will be so cool getting reports from there.
Peace out
Bender
Not “stupid.” I think we’re rather more likely to conclude that black people voted for the Democrat candidate, as they always do, especially if that candidate is black.
We realize that the majority of a group is not as dumb and gullible as its most gullible members.
KG
@Martin (sorry can’t figure out the link on the iPhone version)… Not national, but in OC/LA, and a lot of larger, national type businesses are at least looking for numbers; along with smaller businesses. Yeah, anecdotal, I know, but the difference between anecdote and data point is one of perspective
Danny
@Stillwater:
Wouldnt it be more accurate to say that Conservative/Libertarian economic policy of the last decade have left the poor and the working middle class with less money, thereby stifling growth of domestic aggregate demand?
If that’s what you’re getting at then I’d like to point to PPACA. That legislation is scheduled to substantially improve the finances of ~30 million members of the poor and working middle class in the years to come. Spending much less on HCI and out of pockets costs has the potential to really make a difference for families who live on the margin.
There’s an example of recent legislation with real potential to improve our longterm economic trajectory. But nutrooters hate the PPACA, and many of them doing their best still to mobilize opposition towards it.
Go figure.
Suffern ACE
@different church-lady:
http://www.andyfoulds.co.uk/amusement/economists.htm
There’s a game where you can play along!
Blue Neponset
@Frankensteinbeck:
Sorry I wasn’t clearer. You seem to be saying that my argument is wrong because the teabaggers are something we haven’t seen before. I don’t agree with that. As you mentioned, even Obama & Co. have found ways around their obstructionism. It seems to me you are contradicting your own argument. Either the teabaggers are a unique menace that is incredibly difficult to neutralize or they are just another group form the other side with a spotty record against someone even as mild as Obama. Which is it?
My take is the teabaggers are nothing new. If Obama and Co were more aggressive with them from the beginning (think death panels of August) then they would have been marginalized.
Blue Neponset
@Martin: Clinton didn’t get lucky. He thought up a plan to defeat the Republicans during the shutdown battle and he executed it well. He got the public to turn against the R’s and used Newt’s own arrogance against him.
shano
I just think that the real solutions to our problems are never talked about.
Why not stop subsidizing corn and oil and put that money into R&D for alternative energy and legalizing industrial hemp?
Why not put a small transaction tax on high speed computer trading and 3rd party derivative trading?
Why dont we have massive defense cuts and use some of that money to end suffering all over the globe? etc,etc,etc,
All our problems stem from the capture of our government by giant corporations. The main reason why we never get to hear real solutions being discussed in the media.
Elie
@wrb:
I will agree with you there. That said, difficult times and difficult situations aren’t made better, nor solutions found from a place of cynicism or complete mistrust. Too many times also, prog people are deciding win or lose at intermediate points, rather than end points. Don’t know about you, but I would rather a little more acknowledgement of that reality rather than complete condemnation of progress made at each point in the necessary series of decision points in a complex undertaking.
patroclus
The ECB is gonna buy Spanish and Italian bonds!!
What stocks can I buy?? The Dow is already up 100+!
Villago Delenda Est
@Bender:
Bender is going to need a bigger backhoe in his ongoing effort to dig a hole that quintuples down on the stupid.
PurpleGirl
@General Stuck: I’m not clutching pearls and I will vote for Democrats — even Obama again — because I’ve had enough time to watch Republicans and know how bad they are for working people. (I don’t believe I’ve ever said not to vote for a Democrat or Obama.)
But I find it very hard to find the current jobs numbers heartening in any way, shape or form. I don’t look forward to spending the next 20 or 30 years in poverty. You can take that for pearl clutching if you want or hyperbole but right now, I have no income.
Martin
@KG:
Your anecdotal information for LA/OC then lines up with mine. And if SoCal is perking up, that’s a good sign since we’re toward the worse end of the national employment spectrum.
Danny
@wrb:
I’d have to see polling on the framing both sides are likely to use before I felt as confident on the aftermath of such a fight. Also taking note that for this PR strategy to have a chance to work, Dems and Obama would have to go all out pitching “these tax cuts will create jobs” which would certainly be very popular with his True Progressives variety discontents.
I’m willing to wager 50 bucks that the usual suspects would consider that…. “proof that Obama is a secrit republican”.
You know we got a regular around here who likes to break down the ARRA as 30% Infrastructure (progressive), 30% Tax-cuts (conservative), 30% Block-grants to states (conservative), hence ARRA was 2/3s conservative legislation: Obama is a conservative, QED!
wrb
@Elie:
I agree.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Martin: Clinton also didn’t face the prospect of a US default seriously damaging the US economy or the global economy being in such bad shape that a US default would severely wound it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
The thing is, bending all that rebar is part of doing something useful that has economic multiplier effects down the road. In the case of transportation infrastructure, literally.
wrb
@Danny:
Yea, I know.
Which is really a drag if the situation toward the bad end the possible range. There are good solutions, but they will be opposed by baggers of one sort or another.
patroclus
Dow up over 140 now! You guys are missing the rally by arguing politics!
Elie
@PurpleGirl:
As a fellow unemployed person, I am pretty upset at the situation. Being older in an industry that is changing and filled with uncertainty right now, healthcare, also doesnt help, but there it is…
We had a lot of job, particularly in construction, attached to the housing balloon and another bunch on the financial industry. Looking ahead, healthcare is definitely going to experience some contraction and we already know a lot of retail and manufacturing reflect the loss of consumers who are out of work. We are also pre-implementation of health care reform which will reposition and create some new jobs — but in the next 2 – 5 year or so.
There is no magic swith on the wall to fix this unfortunately. As Martin stated upstring, we don’t want to “make” a lot of false jobs that then have to be stopped again, putting people back on the streets.
Clearly, its not just our economy influencing confidence and demand. Its even worse in some European economies. I was hearing on the radio that Spanish farmers are having to hire their relatives and lay off their regular farm workers during spains major recession/depression.
I remain hopeful about my prospects, but each month that goes by gets harder for sure. I will do what I need to do long term and make my assessment of next steps in a couple more months. I surely feel your pain, though.
Tim Connor
@Frankensteinbeck: No, I think “tough” is some kind of male BS viewpoint.
But here is the bottom line. Cutting Federal spending –in the near to mid term future, until there is a self-sustaining recovery –is going to increase unemployment, and the risk of a “double dip” recession. Summers, his former advisor, puts the probability at one in three. Offering to “give away” reductions in Medicare or Social Security do not make sense without a plan to put people back to work and fix our crumbling infrastructure.
Bragging that Discretionary spending is at its lowest level (this includes road, dam, and bridge repair) in about 50 years doesn’t seem like an impressive way to highlight the following facts: 1) Things have to be fixed, and we –Americans –will have to pay for that. 2. The government could currently borrow money on a 10 year basis at the lowest rates in my lifetime (around 2.5%).
Add the additional fact that the best ways to reduce the deficit are to 1) Let the Bush Tax cuts expire (which he could have done a year ago) 2.) Get a self-sustaining recovery started. Government infrastructure spending has –empirically –a far higher multiplier to generating jobs and recovery than idiot tax cuts on our Galtian overlords and you come to the fact that Obama should not be playing the short-term deficit reduction game, except via increased revenue, and investment in the national infrastructure to put people back to work.
He has given no sign that he is willing to play hard ball on the Bush tax cuts –not because he is “tough” –but because it is what is REQUIRED to generate a self-sustaining recovery.
You don’t believe that? Go look at UK economic performance, where the application of the solution created for the US by Obama and the GOP is playing out.
The problem is that –while politics is a kind of reality –it does NOT inherently trump more fundamental realities. The world is not flat. Things don’t fall up. Failure to appreciate that leads to misery and failure.
chopper
@Blue Neponset:
sorry, but newtie shot himself in the foot. clinton certainly took advantage of it, but it wasn’t his doing and he certainly got lucky.
General Stuck
@PurpleGirl:
Please forgive my politicking, that should never be substituted for those in financial or other kinds of pain endured by the hard times we are experiencing. I do apologize to you for that, and hope things get better for you . :-)
Suffern ACE
@patroclus:
Don’t buy too quickly, Mr. Day trader. The ECB said it is willing to buy those bonds if the Itallians do things that they aren’t likely to do.
Danny
@flukebucket:
Not since the New Left claimed rights to the title of “leftest of the lefts”. Liking the top dog went out of fashion. How can you be a Tru Radical (c) and at the same time be a flack for the guys in charge? If we’re winning, we’re selling out. Ipso facto.
El Tiburon
@Martin:
I’m thinking you may not have a very firm grasp of history circa The Great Depression.
We need people working now. If some secretaries and accountants get left out, well, tough titty.
And while these people are working making a decent wage, they can then go out and buy clothes and braces for the kids and maybe take a weekend getaway, you know, the kind of trickle-down that actually works. These jobs were never meant to last a person’s work-life, just a couple of years.
And while this is occurring, we begin to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. I know, I shouldn’t even contemplate such a notion because it’s not realistic.
I know I should just accept our new reality.
Blue Neponset
@chopper: Clinton vetoed the budget. That took balls. When Newt made his dumb remark Clinton & Co. used it to their advantage. That took an effective messaging machine.
What do you guys think happened back then? Do you think Big Dog just stumbled his way through it and only won the day because Newty is a moran? Clinton drew a line in the sand and made very very clear arguments about why he chose to veto the budget. As usual, the R’s couldn’t actually explain their dumb ass positions in anything other than bumper sticker speak, so that dovetailed well into the Newt temper tantrum talking point.
It wasn’t luck.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Danny:
Since when did Block-grants to states become conservative? Most of that money goes straight to the working class by funding state level economic relief services; it doesn’t get much more progressive than that. Or are you ironically paraphrasing somebody else’s stupidity, not just in the final conclusion, but in the details as well?
Elie
@Danny:
Hit the nail on the head, Danny. But how the hey do we stop them from being so persistenly annoying. Jeez Louise, they aren’t even witty or funny. That could at least be entertaining. They are, most unforgivable of all, boring.
The Raven
@catclub: oh no! It’s a rubber superball cat!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Tiburon:
So you think the solution is to take people who currently have neither the occupational skills nor in many cases the physical conditioning for hard physical labor and send them out to build bridges and clear brush? Or did you somehow miss the massive structural shift away from a manufacturing economy and into services over the last 30 years? The equivalent today of the WPA and the CCC would be for the govt to open up surplus (but stimulatory) tech support call centers, real estate offices, coffee houses and Victoria’s Secret retail shopping outlets to put people back to work doing more or less what they were doing 4 years ago before they lost their most recent jobs.
CaseyL
I have to tell you, I’ve been wondering if my intense admiration – hero-worship, to behonest – for the 60s activitists needs some serious re-examination.
The issues were stark and the moral imperative beyond question – I’m not doubting the anti-war, pro civil-rights movements as a whole, mind you.
But watching the firebaggers at work now, with their spoiled brattiness, intellectual dishonesty, and blatant privilege… really demands I take a new, harsh look at how and why the Movement splintered and then disintegrated between 1968 and 1972.
chopper
@Blue Neponset:
yes, and newt fucked up. that wasn’t clinton’s doing. clinton got lucky that newtie shot himself in the foot and took advantage of the situation. how is this so hard to understand?
i know what happened. clinton said he was drawing a line on a clean debt ceiling bill and vetoed the budget. the government shut down. newt made a boneheaded PR mistake and clinton took advantage of his good luck as the polls tilted in his favor. clinton then crossed over the line he had drawn and signed a bill that was half debt ceiling, half newt’s ‘contract with america’ economic garbage.
overall, it ended up the way it did because clinton talked tough, got lucky and was willing to compromise in the end.
PurpleGirl
@Martin: Okay Martin, you understand that white collar office jobs are gone and not coming back because of computers and technology. So, mayb e we should give people a permanent unemployment benefit — say 50% of last salary. But that would be called welfare and we can’t have that, you know. Remember in the 1990s when Clinton declared “welfare as we know it is dead” and they restricted it to 5 years lifetime total? So how do we set something up for the unemployed?
And we do need infrastructure improvements and repairs — bridges, roads and stuff are falling apart.
LABiker
Too funny.
Danny
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Paraphrasing stupidity, yes. I’ve forgotten the name of the poster, though.
It all seemed to come down to him considering Block Grants to be part of the States Rates agenda and then considering that to be the opposite of Progressivism.
Which mostly illustrates that the guy doesn’t have a clue what Progressivism is. And yet he’s a True Progressive.
Blue Neponset
@chopper:
It is hard to understand because you don’t seem to be giving any credit to Bill Clinton for taking a bold action and putting his opponents in a position where they can make a mistake.
chopper
@Blue Neponset:
so newt crying over a seat on an airplane was part of clinton’s plan all along? why didn’t he loan some of those magic powers to obama these last few weeks?
clinton certainly took some bold action. i’ve never denied that. he also was willing to compromise with the GOP. i’ve never denied that. but you’re daft if you don’t think he got lucky.
wrb
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
There are currently around 3,000,000 unemployed in construction, natural resource, production, trucking and related industries, not counting the many who have stopped looking.
Those are some of the only living wage working-class fields left.
And a lot of the other unemployed could work building useful stuff, if it came down to it. They aren’t all potatoes, some went to gyms.
But the point is moot for now, because that type of stimulus is not getting through the house before 2012. No matter how tough Obama acts.
wrb
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
There are currently around 3,000,000 unemployed in construction, natural resource, production, trucking and related industries, not counting the many who have stopped looking.
Those are some of the only living wage working-class fields left.
And a lot of the other unemployed could work building useful stuff, if it came down to it. They aren’t all potatoes, some went to gyms.
But the point is moot for now, because that type of stimulus is not getting through the house before 2012. No matter how tough Obama acts.
patroclus
@Suffern ACE: OMG! You may be right! That Jean Claude Trichet dude is worse than Bush – he sold us out! Sell Sell Sell! You guys are missing the sell-off by arguing politics!
Oh wait…the Spanish PM just talked to Sarkozy. Buy Buy Buy! Y’all are missing the rally again.
Danny
@CaseyL:
Making the mistake of thinking that the New Left deserve a big part of the credit for Civil Rights. Hubert Humphrey was a Civil Rights hero. The New Left hated Hubert Humphrey. They rather nominate a pig over him.
The New Left was first and foremost about being against the Vietnam war. I respect the individuals and their convictions – they belong in the progressive movement – but not their way of going about things, and not their pathological distrust of leaders, or unhealthy obsession with concepts like betrayal and “selling out”.
They can not be allowed to run the show or set the agenda, because they habitually fuck up.
Bender
@Villago Delenda Est:
Wow. Really? I’m well-used to the brainless “you poopyhead!” non-responses from the Pedophile Ball-Juicers, and that’s cool if it makes you happy, but I do just have to say quickly that yours might be the worst attempt at an insult in the history of the intertrons. I’m def sending that one around, and don’t worry, I’ll be sure to credit you.
I’m frankly stunned that you sat there at your PC and thought, “I just have to unleash that ‘backhoe’ bit — it’s too good to keep to myself! I bet I’ll get loads of ‘attaboys’ for that slice of magic!” Yikes.
Anyway. Wow. Nice one. Made my day.
Danny
@Elie:
I wish I knew… Ratfuckers like JH should be named, shamed and kicked out of polite company IMHO.
Cain
@different church-lady:
That’s exactly what someone said when I dropped my pants.
chopper
@Cain:
have time to listen to the list of presents i want this year?
themanintheguyfawkesmask
WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! AEEEIII!
@chopper:
exactly what bold actions did Clinton take? That’s a serious question.
Elie
@CaseyL:
Check out what happened between the left and the union movement during Viet Nam. The democratic coalition of the unions, minorities and working class split along the war policy, law and order and busing (which the working class generally opposed). The Republicans exploited that and the Democrats were labeled incorrectly as the party of the hippies.
The Democrats never evolved a good strategy to re-integrate that old coalition and unfortunately, to my mind, allowed an elitist view of the white working class to settle in (and you hear a lot of our lefty commenters speaking with contempt about the “red necks”)
We have avoided the use of “class warfare”, at least explictly, though I think we are moving in that direction with the bellweather Wisconsin union situation. Boy, what an opportunity for us and I hope that we don’t drop that thread! We have to go national and figure out how to amplify that message and spin it. The time is ripe with a lot of dislocation and suspicion of the markets and a lot of “little guys” out of work or underemployed. With a carefully thought out message, we can really really MAKE PROGRESS (ha ha)
Just my two cents anyway
Cain
@chopper:
Sure.. can I still drop my pants?
Blue Neponset
@chopper:
You make your own luck. If Obama had the stones to invoke the 14th Amendment trick during the debt limit negotiations who knows what stupid things Boehner or McConnel would have said.
Elie
@Blue Neponset:
You are an ignoramus.
You don’t even SEE the victory wrought in having used the Congress to do its job — for a change.
You wanted the Emperator to pull the 14th instead — to install an new system by his decree. We would now be in turmoil having to fend off impeachment and the markets, bad as they are today, would have fallen through the floor 50 times worse.
chopper
@Bender:
that’s the worst attempt at an insult you’ve ever seen on the internet? just as an aside, do you need any help learning how to compose an email? i’m assuming your mom finally got you a big-boy computer now so you may need a little aid.
chopper
@Blue Neponset:
that’s idiotic. ‘invoking the 14th amendment’ is an idea that had no merit. his own treasury department laughed at the idea.
and no, you don’t ‘make your own luck’. clinton didn’t make newt fuck up. he fucked up all on his own.
chopper
@themanintheguyfawkesmask:
he vetoed the budget bill, that was pretty ballsy. of course, all the shit about a ‘clean bill’ went out the window when it came back.
Bender
@chopper:
Great, great smack there, chop. Never heard that stuff before!! I see you trying to take the title from VDE, but you’ll have to do much worse than that to overtake “backhoe-digging-quintuple-Down” Syndrome boy upthread.
Try slamming your head in the car-door (a car which — get this — your mom must’ve bought you! Ahh, pure genius!) about 20 times, then posting your comment. That might help you take the crown.
eemom
@Tim Connor:
Sounds like solid sense to me.
Especially this
Regardless of who’s to blame, the bottom line is that what needs to be done, is not being done — and that in fact we are moving in the opposite direction.
If folks want to say Obama did the best possible with the fucking lunatic assholes he has to deal with, fine — but let’s not pretend that the “best” was anything other than making things worse.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@wrb:
I’m not against stimulus money spent on building infrastructure. We need more of that. I should have directly quoted the point I was trying to smack down in the exchange between Martin and El Tiburon which pissed me off, namely this:
which is both needlessly cruel and misses the point that today we have two labor force problems: both cyclic unemployment and a structural problem with an economy that boomed in the service sector almost exclusively and (now that the bubble is gone) has left millions of people stranded with occupational skills which don’t match up well with traditional govt funded infrastructure building programs. Which means the latter are not a cure-all, but only part of a much larger solution. We need the infrastructure building programs to take care of the folks who are well suited to do that kind of work, but we need something else for the other folks, and it isn’t just a few secretaries and accountants either. The economy is much more complicated and diverse today than it was back in 1935, so handing everybody a shovel so they can go out and build something isn’t good enough.
Suffern ACE
@chopper: He vetoed the bill. It would have been great if there was a bill to veto back in May when we first reached the debt limit so he could show them the what’s what. But vetoing a bill in August would have been a different ballgame. What’s he gonna do? Tell the senators to allow the Ryan Budget to pass in May so he can stamp his disapproval on it?
wrb
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I entirely agree
Maude
@Blue Neponset:
Clinton was boffing Monica Lewinsky during the gov’t shutdown.
He harmed the poor more than any president in decades.
Elie
@eemom:
What can I say, eemom? Its a long War with many battles and some of those look terrible…
The progressives “won” the passage of civil rights and voting rights legislation. And it worked. Made life better for lots of black people who had a shot at fair treatment by the system in getting jobs, housing and voting for representation. Of course, there continue to be glitches in the opposite direction all along the way since then from the anti busing to “law and order” and other legislation and regulation to undo the intent of those laws. Still we keep on pressing forward towards progress and progress is happening — but not in a smooth upward arc..
I am sad that you are so dispirited but understand in some ways that none of us is impervious to discouragment and the need to sit on a rock and take stock. It IS a long long struggle rather than just an effort. We battle our selves as much as the other side. But just please don’t give up. Rest. Regenerate. But don’t give up.
chopper
@Bender:
can you guys help? i’m trying to get the internet to take me to the google. i keep punching “google.aol” into the thing but nothing happens. i called compuserve’s 800 number but the dang thing’s disconnected!
chopper
@Suffern ACE:
i’m not of the camp that clinton was way better at this whole thing than obama. i do believe that clinton made a bold move or two, and i think vetoing the bill and shutting the government down was pretty bold. but mostly he got lucky and was willing to compromise, although as you can tell by the revisionist history that has come out of the whole deal the whole thing made him look better – people still think that he drew a line on a clean bill and got one and chumped the GOP, when in fact the GOP got some of their economic shit in the bill.
the situation he had to deal with and the one obama faced were more different than they were the same. different times.
Danny
Who was the President most hostile ever to the workers of America: Obama or Clinton?
Cmon you gaiz… How about this; Which House was the most hostile ever to the workers of America: House of 1995 or House of 2011?
Brachiator
@El Tiburon:
Are you being serious?
It’s not 1930. People who make a fetish of fearing the Depression, or who want to call for solutions that worked in the past may be blind to new realities.
Both the nature of work and the workforce have massively changed since the 1930s. It takes far fewer people to do all kinds of work that required massive (and mostly male) workers. And there are far more women in the workforce than in the past. I couldn’t quickly find workforce numbers going back to the 1920s, but there is this:
In 1953, women made up only 31% of the labor force. That number has risen dramatically since then. Any job plan that excludes women or minimizes the importance of getting women back to work is a nonstarter.
And the sheer dumbass sexism (even if not fully intentional) at play here is underscored by this little tidbit about the Great Depression in Australia:
Emphasis sadly added.
boss bitch
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
He has. frequently. there’s video proof of this. He’s also taking a tour of the mid-west to talk about jobs but I’ve only seen it reported on only ONE of the liberal sites I visit.
Elie
Brachiator and ThatLeftturn —
You both hit on some huge issues in the employment picture and the fixes for those are not clear cut — unfortunately. It will take some time and restructuring of the economy to reflect demand for new areas for employment. People talk about creating “green jobs” but there has to be a demand that is sufficient to drive their evolution. Clearly, recycling, clean energy are two paths but there are others. Change as you know is freqently resisted to the very very last and people keep doing things and thinking things the old way until the last and then they have to change.
We will get through this. Its tough and painful and the patience to wait and keep trying is hard, but we and I will do it.
dollared
@Martin: Yes, genius, the underlying problem is outsourcing to China. It destroys the Keynesian model, since it lowers the recirculation value of stimulus and while it simultaneously continues to hollow out employment.
So what’s your solution to 15M unemployed, call it 10M over the normal number?
dollared
@Elie: Elie, I would love to hear your suggestions.
IMHO, we need a massive public works program now – $1T or more over 3 years. Then we need Fair Trade, not Free Trade, enacted, so the bleeding of jobs to China and India stops. Then we need a huge restructuring program, including higher taxes that funds free public preschool, much broader technical education, green energy initiatives and removing health insurance from the burdens placed on domestic employers.
But if there are other ideas that would move 1M people back into employment, I am all ears.
dollared
@Elie: This. We need to remake the Democrats as the party of the workers.
Brachiator
@shortstop:
The word has quickly taken on a range of meanings.
“Mook” has had a similarly twisted history, which is understandable for words that just sound so crazy cool when you say them.
Tim Connor
@eemom: I agree. There is an excellent Ezra Klein post on what needs to be done today. I have added the link below.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wonkbook-dont-worry-about-the-bond-vigilantes-worry-about-the-growth-vigilantes/2011/08/05/gIQA5op6vI_blog.html#pagebreak
Brachiator
@dollared:
A problem not going away anytime soon. In fact, it is mutating in expected ways.
The recent stories about a Chinese company investing in robots suggests that Chinese labor costs are rising, and China may soon no longer be the best source for manufacturing and assembly.
Not surprisingly, Brazil has been cited as a probable location for new manufacturing operations.
US based companies always look to find the cheapest labor costs, and have no loyalty to American workers.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Elie:
For the most part I agree with what you said. There is one area that I’m not so optimistic about however. It seems to me that lurking behind progressive arguments about politics and policy is a broadly shared vision of a better society that even Firebaggers and Obots share in common with each other. And this vision isn’t a utopia, an ideal society that has never been, instead it is a historical pastiche of the one we live in now and our recent past, with the good parts emphasized and the bad parts mitigated. Basically we want to keep the social gains we made over the last 60 years on behalf of women, ethnic and religous minorities, gay people, and other Americans who were marginalized and oppressed in our past history, but we want to roll back the clock on socio-economic issues to something more like the 1950s and early 1960s, when the disparity in wealth and income was lower, the middle class was broad and growing and had a historically high share of our national wealth, the economy was relatively stable except for short business cycle driven recessions (as distinct from the panics and depressions of the late 19th and early 20th Cen.), and We Were All Keynesians Now.
So far so good. But I don’t think that is a vision we can achieve with any amount of patience and hard work, and here’s why: the economic nirvana which the US middle class experienced post-WW2 was IMHO to a considerable degree the product of a unique historical moment in which the latent advantages of the US in terms of population, culture, natural resources and prior level of economic activity came together with the massive destruction of much of the productive capacity of the other advanced economies in the rest of the world as a result of two world wars and the Great Depression. After WW2 the US for a brief time owned slightly over 50% of the manufacturing capacity of the entire world, and our middle class benefited from that overwhelming predominance.
Additionally, we also enjoyed a disproportionate share of the world’s intellectual talent because many highly educated Europeans and East Asians had fled to the US during WW2. The US economy of the 1950s harvested investments made in higher education and scientific and cultural progress made in other climes and on other shores over the preceding 30 years, which came here to bear fruit.
I don’t think that combination of factors is going to repeat itself, ever. That was a unique moment from which we’ve been slowly climbing down ever since, and to the extent that our present day policy prescriptions are designed to attempt to recreate the best aspects of that era (while leaving out the racism, sexism, etc.) we may be peddling false hopes. We can’t go home again, we can only go forward.
dollared
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I hear you, but I think moving forward includes recognizing that we can keep our gains for a very long time if we invest and take care of all of our citizens. That means more European-like policies, and less and smarter immigration.
Assuming that all our high school grads have to live and work at FoxConn is elitist and unimaginative (I’m not accusing you, but I think MattY would not object)
TenguPhule
I like to think my calls for a bloody purge of the GOP is the only voice of sanity left in a mad mad world.
Max Power
Actually, a decent day on the street, all things considered.