The markets are tanking. Again. And it’s in part because they expect us to screw up. Again.
That, at least, is what J.P. Morgan is saying. Part of what’s driving the market down is that the company announced that it was cutting its global growth forecasts by a full percentage point for 2011 and 2012. Why? I’ll let them explain:
There are three main reasons for our downgrade. First, the recent incoming data, especially in the US and the euro area, have been disappointing, suggesting less momentum into 2H11 and pushing down full-year 2011 estimates. Second, recent policy errors – especially Europe’s slow and insufficient response to the sovereign crisis and the drama around lifting the US debt ceiling – have weighed down on financial markets and eroded business and consumer confidence. A negative feedback loop between weak growth and soggy asset markets now appears to be in the making in Europe and the US. This should be aggravated by the prospect of fiscal tightening in the US and Europe.
In other words: Growth is weak and policymakers are hurting rather than helping. The debt-ceiling debate hurt. The dithering response to the euro zone’s debt crisis hurt. And the expected austerity in both the United States and Europe is going to hurt even more. J.P. Morgan notes that one reason they think the United States might tip back into recession is that in the first quarter of 2012, there will be “an automatic tightening fiscal policy if, as our US team currently assumes, this year’s fiscal stimulus measures will expire.”
Someone should probably put Krugman on suicide watch, because he’s only been screaming about this forever.
DougMN
Maybe the New Mexico OFA guy can tell us how useless Krugman is again…
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
But even the wingers at my defense contractor company say you shouldn’t spend money you don’t have.
aisce
inb4 derf.
gloom and doom. baboon juice. john galt cole. the bottom’s in. now’s the time to buy.
Sasha
Under the circumstances, I think our boy K-Thug should have an alternate nickname to be used at times like this: Krugssandra.
Comrade Dread
You mean to tell me that if you threaten to default on your country’s debts and stop injecting money to the economy, the country’s economy could decline and shrink?
Hoocoodanode!
fasteddie9318
@aisce: Well played. I’m trying to figure out what Cole did to this Derf character or if it’s a DougJ spoof.
NR
Paul Krugman is a political rookie! WTF does he know?
But don’t worry. We’ve got all these job-creating austerity policies in place now, so things will turn around really soon.
ericblair
Yeah, but awareness isn’t the problem here. You’ve got three classes of elected officials here: the people who know all this, want to do something about it, and can’t; and the people who know all this, and deliberately don’t want to do anything about it for political reasons. The third class of people automatically ignore everything except what they hear from Approved Spokespeople, where the Approved Spokespeople are babbling gibberish slogans made up by economic and social cranks.
Bulworth
Interesting turn of phrase.
The teabag recovery is upon us.
mai naem
But the manliest of men Rick Perry just told me we shouldn’t be spending that gubmint money. Yesirree, Rick was spitting out his chewin’ tuhbakkuh and tellin’ me how that deeregulatin’ the chewin’ tuhbakkuh is gonna pump up this eeconomie agin.
Mike Goetz
Hey guys! Let’s have a long, pointless fight about Paul Krugman! You in?
The Worst Person In the World
But Stuck and Eemom say Krugman is mean to Obama, so there.
Emma
@NR: Jesus H. Christ. Are you trying to prove their point? Nobody said, ever, that Krugman didn’t know what he was saying about economics. What he doesn’t seem to have a solid grasp on is politics. Two different subjects.
cleek
this is what the US public voted for, last November. they wanted austerity, they wanted a halt to govt spending, they wanted a divided government split between middle-of-the-road Dems and knuckle-dragging reactionary doctrinaire know-nothing idiots.
so, we have a gridlocked congress and a president who is not a super-constitutional superhero.
nobody should be surprised at this outcome.
Villago Delenda Est
NO SHIT SHERLOCK!
Someone needs to start selling stimulus to the rubes. Like two weeks ago.
fasteddie9318
@Emma:
How are the politics of a cratering economy looking?
eemom
@The Worst Person In the World:
no fair. I NEVER said that. I have never once spoken an unpleasant word about Krugman, whom I greatly respect.
Also, SIR, I am not an Obot anymore. Get with the program.
Violet
@fasteddie9318:
Awesome, if you’re a Republican candidate for president.
Corner Stone
Man, there certainly are a lot of people about to get some rhetorical hit jobs put out on them. Ezra Klein, Maxine Waters, the CBC, all those people in the audience screaming at the CBC…
Of course, I’m pretty confident if you told all the unemployed people in the audience they were political rookies compared to the president, that would make it all ok.
Or is Maxine Waters also now crying crocodile tears over unemployment in the AA community?
cleek
@Villago Delenda Est:
there is no stimulus to sell. the stimulus factory has been closed, by lawful order of the House GOP.
eemom
@Mike Goetz:
don’t you know that you can count me out.
Corner Stone
OFA of NM! Mmmoooouunnt UP!
No One of Consequence
Answer seems fairly obvious: Moar Tax Cuts.
You’re welcome.
– NOoC
jheartney
@Emma:
I think the real point of contention is that some people seem to think politics trumps economics, when in actuality it’s the other way around.
And this basic fact is why K-Thug keeps screaming, and why he happens to be right in doing so.
Emma
@fasteddie9318: And what would be your point? Focus here. NOBODY said Krugman didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to economics. It was politics that people mentioned in their disagreements. Whether Krugman was right or not, the problem is called the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. Get it?
Jesus. You’re getting as bad as Tea baggers, with their talking points.
ericblair
@fasteddie9318:
A significant number of Republicans think that a cratering economy will help elect a Republican president. That’s the politics of it.
aisce
# of comments about paul krugman and the internecine bullshit of the online left: 10
# of comments about the republicans actually responsible: 6
keep fucking that chicken everybody.
KCinDC
@ericblair, I’m still assuming that Obama is in the first of those classes, but I’d feel a whole lot better if he were talking more about what he’d like to do and why he can’t, rather than repeating misleading Republican analogies about families sitting around the kitchen table. He may not be able to save the economy in the next 18 months, but unless he makes a herculean effort to get the public to understand why the main people to blame for that are the Republicans in Congress, he’s not going to get a chance to save it after that.
Dennis SGMM
The so-called stimulus was like sending a Cub Scout to fight Attila the Hun with a spork. The dickheads from both parties in Congress now blather without fear of contradiction that stimulus doesn’t work. On to austerity and the preservation of tax breaks for the wealthiest among us.
Edit: And it was those same Congress critters who pared down the stimulus to inefectuality.
aisce
wow, wordpress doesn’t like pound signs. that’s weird.
Corner Stone
@ericblair:
When I first read this I read it as “Approved Shakespeare”.
Mike Goetz
I’m just going to lay around here for a bit nursing various grudges, if that’s OK with y’all.
Jim Pharo
Besides being good news for Rudy Giuliani/John McCain, this is actually good news for most of us.
Inflated “asset” prices have allowed the elites to think of the economy as something that affects other people. A little pain to the elites will do a world of good for their worldview.
This crisis only ends when two things happen: rich people get hurt financially, pretty badly, and the government starts hiring anyone who wants a job. This is progress on the first point — maybe helping the 2d point come a little closer…
jacy
@aisce:
No, no, for true derfiness, it’s “Babboon Juice.” You know, because he’s a one-note idiot. Unless he’s really Doug J.
ETA – and if we had a Krugman/Hamsher steel cage-match thread in which was someone was referred to as a racist and someone was referred to as a retard, it could be the longest comment string EVAH!
MBunge
If we weren’t all going to get screwed for it, it’s kind of amusing to see big business slowly realize that the GOP/conservative monster they’ve created is now starting to eat them from the feet on up.
Mike
DonkeyKong
Hey, sometimes the best way to get the hitchhiking riff-raff (aka the middle class) out of your car is to drive it straight into a tree.
aimai
Not to get in the middle of a classic fight here at Balloon Juice but there’s a concept that I like to use when thinking about politics–as in the politics of getting things done and also getting re-elected. Its:
“Fan Service.” As I understand it “fan service” is when the writers of a long running TV show know what their fans/viewers want to have happen and they give it to them. Could be a kiss between romantic leads. Could be a long awaited come uppance for the villain. Whatever. Fan Service is integral to the narrative story line of wrestling where people play villains and heroes and have people rooting for them–sometimes they do something called a “face/heel” turn and switch from a “face” (hero) to a “heel” (villain). You can call it Fan Service if doing so gives the character’s fans pleasure and makes them happy.
To my mind the progressive left, among whom I count myself, want Obama and his team to recognize that his voters are his fans and they need fan service. That’s not to argue that its “right” or “moral” or easy for Obama and his team to offer his voters Fan Service (like not calling them idiots). Its just practical, desirable, and useful to do so.
And the first rule of Politics is to make all your voters happy–maybe its difficult to make a big coalition simultaneously happy. If they like cake and you can’t get it for ’em you need to explain to them why you can’t get it–not call them selfish pigs for wanting it. Maybe its hard to square former Republican “independents” with real progressive Dems but you still have to do it. The main thing is: don’t treat any of your voters as though they publicly don’t matter. Don’t diss the fans and don’t dismiss the fans.
aimai
MBunge
@KCinDC: I’d feel a whole lot better if he were talking more about what he’d like to do and why he can’t, rather than repeating misleading Republican analogies about families sitting around the kitchen table
Oh, brother. Now you’re no longer allowed to use an analogy if it’s been used at some point by Republicans? Yeah, that’s not being petty and stupid.
Mike
TK421
So, austerity during a recession hurts the economy. That was obvious to many before, but at least now we are all acknowledging it so we can move on.
Obama to issue new proposals on job creation, debt reduction
FlipYrWhig
Why should a growing number of people not otherwise inclined to be Krugmaniacs starting to talk like Krugman put him on suicide watch?
Tractarian
@fasteddie9318:
Bad, but guess what? Obama could be screaming from the rooftops about the need for more stimulus, he could appoint Krugman Treasury Secretary and Jobs Czar, and the economy would STILL be tanking – because the House won’t pass anything.
Capice?
ericblair
@KCinDC:
“So while there’s nothing wrong with our country, there is something wrong with our politics, and that’s what we’ve got to fix. Because we know there are things Congress can do, right now, to get more money back in your pockets, get this economy growing faster, and get our friends and neighbors back to work…[lists several plans]…These are all things we can do right now. So let’s do them. And over the coming weeks, I’ll put forward more proposals to help our businesses hire and create jobs, and won’t stop until every American who wants a job can find one.” -Obama weekly address, 13 Aug.
He talks about it all the time. In public. In front of the media. Yet people don’t hear it from the media. Maybe the problem is,… naaah.
Mike Goetz
It’s getting to be Hail Mary time for Jon Huntsman:
“I believe in evolution and I trust the scientists. Call me crazy.”
What a sane, doomed man.
TK421
@MBunge:
No, using the “government is like your family” analogy is a bad idea because it’s a stupid analogy. Even if families don’t routinely go into debt to purchase an education, a house, a business opportunity, etc., it’s a ridiculous comparison because the United States government issues its own fiat currency.
The Worst Person In the World
@eemom:
Hmmm…I recall a mild slam a couple of weeks back, but I’m too lazy to try to find it, so I will take you at your word, Miss Thang.
My god, you’re not a Bot anymore? WTF happened? You’re right, I can’t keep up; my universe is tilting…
Xenos
My name is Morgan, but it ain’t J. P.
If I could only find the Blind Blake version… you cudlips would have liked it.
cleek
@Mike Goetz:
poor guy. he seems to think GOP primary voters are reasonable people.
Mike Goetz
“To my mind the progressive left, among whom I count myself, want Obama and his team to recognize that his voters are his fans and they need fan service.”
I predict that you are going to get mauled by the progressive left for this.
4tehlulz
@aimai: So the first candidate to provide panty shots wins the election?
fuckwit
I’m sorry, this is a democracy, at least in name and form, and we get what we deserve.
I’m tired of the whinging about how all this economic clusterfuckery is great for Rick Perry and Repugs. If this country works the way it is supposed to, this disaster should be a disaster FOR THE PEOPLE WHO CREATED IT, which is Repugs.
If people are so STUPID as to vote for people who are dumber than them, and who created the mess we’re in, and will make it worse, then, what can I tell you? It’s a race to the bottom, and they’re winning.
By the way, maybe Krugman has been on about this for over a decade, but the Founders were on about this over 200 years ago. They knew that an ignorant, idiotic mob could easily vote into power a majority of even stupider people, and permanently destroy the country; they designed a rather ingenious system specifically to make that difficult to do (separation of powers, staggered terms, electoral college, a mix of local/state/national representation scales, etc).
This shit was predicted in the Federalist papers, really. I think it was Hamilton who said, “the people are a great beast”. He didn’t trust uneducated people to vote. Most called him a monarchist at the time, and today I guess he’d be considered an elitist or racist or some such noxious thing, but he did have a point, and the system that he compromised on creating was at least supposed to prevent his nightmare scenario from coming true. He compromised his monarchist tendencies to yeild to Madison and the more democratic types, to help craft a system that was more democratic than he thought was wise or safe.
This is where Obama’s hope and change and optimism and faith in democracy really is useful too– and gets put to the test in a huge way.
There really is no choice other than to hope to educate people, and hope that they vote for people who are not idiots, and have faith that the people will do the right thing eventually. The alternative would be some kind of undemocratic elite oligarchy of the Hamlitonian variety, and I wouldn’t want that.
Derf
BAHAHAhahahaha!
Yea Dow is down today so time for Chicken Little Cole to pull out the “see the markets are ‘tanking'” bullshit!
Are you that dumb Cole? Or maybe you think the readers of Baboon juice are that dumb (maybe they are)?
Just askin..is all…pfft
Napoleon
@Emma:
I personally do not think that is nearly as true as some would like to believe, but let’s put that aside for a moment and even if you are correct so what. That is not his job. His is, among other things, to point out how f-up the course of action our politicians are taking. Can you imagine how different our public discourse would be on the current financial situation would be if a every appearance of the President and congressperson 100 people showed up howling at them along the lines of Krugman. It would push them in the position of Krugman’s positions.
Krugman is a policy analyst and advocate, not an officeholder looking to get reelected.
Glenn
Not that it changes the substance, but this was Morgan Stanley, not JP Morgan. (Not John’s fault, Ezra had it wrong)
jonas
Funny — nowhere in that Morgan-Stanley report, clearly written by a bunch of DFH’s, is there a discussion about how the main things impeding growth in the US are ruinously high marginal tax rates and excessive environmental regulation. I’m sure that was just an oversight, though. Paul Ryan sez so.
Corner Stone
@The Worst Person In the World: No, Lil Tim. She’s a full fledged and initiated member of The Church of the Bully Pulpit Reformation.
cleek
@aimai:
he’s signed plenty of legislation which should have pleased the left, if they weren’t so busy hating him for not measuring up to the stats that the Obama in their Fantasy Politics League puts up.
TK421
@ericblair:
What he talked about in the quote you posted is “there are things Congress can do”. But Congress isn’t going to do anything about the bad economy, because part of it is controlled by a party who perceives it in their best interest to have a bad economy. (and nice to see Obama is sticking with the “Congress is the problem” line, rather than the more honest “Congressional Republicans are the problem” formulation).
As for “over the coming weeks, I’ll put forward more proposals to help our businesses hire and create jobs”, all he ever offers are weak-tea proposals like tax cuts. He should be talking about the kinds of things that would really get the job done: massive direct government investment paid for by exhorbitant taxes upon the rich. And he should be pointing out which party is standing in the way of those programs, and trying to win voters to his side to remove that obstacle.
Instead, it’s “let’s creat jobs by cutting taxes, and reduce federal spending!”
mai naem
@Mike Goetz: Jon Huntsman is the one Repub who I actually think would give Obamaman a run for his money and actually probably kick his ass. He doesn’t appear to have any skeletons in his closet. Yeah, he’s mormon but he also speaks fluent Chinese. He has adopted a I believe a chinese baby. He’s got a large J Crew/Ralph Lauren ad looking family. Yeah, he’s a silver spoon but so are a lot of other pols. If his party wasn’t full of so many batshit crazy ding dongs I would vote for the guy. I actually think he may be more qualified than Obama for the job even though I like Obama a lot.
jl
Kthug knew, and The Stig, Johnny K’s little kid Jimmy knew. So did Berkeley Boss Big Brad, The Blanch, The Wolf, Kristy the Roamer, Jimmy the Switch and the Chin. Even Large Larry came around. They are laying low out at the Circle K, while the Very Serious Gang that Couldn’t Forecast Straight fight it out and shoot each other.
Corner Stone
@Napoleon:
It’s become canon. Praise him for brilliance on economics such that you can be doubly effective when you denounce him for political naivete.
Amir Khalid
@Derf: \
Would you like a teddy bear, little Derfie?
Emma
@Napoleon: ^sigh^ Maybe in smaller words? Personally, I have no objection to anything Krugman says. His column, his opinion. The problem is how Krugman is thrown around by the Obama-is-WWWWRRRROOOOOONNNNG, crowd. The seventh comment, 7th, SEVENTH, used Krugman to bash Obama AND the people in this blog, specifically using the erroneous inference that those who have commented negatively on Krugman’s political opinions were instead bashing his economic thinking.
TK421
@fuckwit:
So, are you saying that in 2006 and 2008 the American voter was a thoughtful and principled actor with a solid grasp of the issues, but in 2010 he became a stupid, uninformed, nihilistic mob? That’s quite a metamorphosis.
Lolis
@Violet:
Sure, theoretically this economy helps Republicans. However, they will have to present plans for the economy which none of them have done yet. I think tax cuts for corporations are not going to win a ton of votes.
MBunge
@TK421: “massive direct government investment paid for by exhorbitant taxes upon the rich.”
“The era of big government is over.” Didn’t you get the memo?
Mike
TK421
@The Worst Person In the World:
Glenn Beck posts here?!?
Mike Goetz
@mai naem:
I don’t know if Huntsman would kick Obama’s ass, but I agree he would be a tolerable President. He just chose the absolute worst time to run, and that makes me question his judgment. He’s getting embarrassed out there.
Emma
@jheartney: No. forgive for saying this, but that is a fairly naive construct. When it comes to governments , nothing trumps politics. Having been around the mulberry bush for several decades I can assure you that even those politicians I admire have done remarkably bone-headed things for political reasons.
Napoleon
@Glenn:
I thought it was Morgan Fairchild.
TK421
@MBunge:
Yes. But old ideas can always be brought back. Democracy waited over a millenium, so a few years is nothing.
Villago Delenda Est
I see in the local fishwrap that Obama is going to propose a jobs program.
The Rethugs, of course, will pronounce it DOA.
This is the key to smashing the GOP next year. Let these idiots take the bait…they can’t help themselves, their hatred of the near guy is far too great for them to not take it. It’s the briar patch all over again.
Obama (and the DNC) can run, endlessly, on look, everyone with a brain knows we need to address jobs, I had a proposal to do something, and the Repbulicans rejected it out of hand. It’s their mess, it always has been (just look who actually created the deficits that they whine about) and they need to pay the price for their lack of vision.
Slam them. Repeatedly. Hard. Don’t be afraid to be shrill and call them what they are: partisan dumbshits who don’t care about anything but themselves and their political prospects.
Oh, and by the bye…turn back on the machine that got Obama his WH gig in the first place. Inspire all those young people who came out and voted for him in ’08 and were forgotten about in ’10.
Tractarian
True, but he doesn’t just talk about economic policy, he talks about politics. He takes it upon himself to give political advice and should be held to account for it.
For instance, he believes (supported by evidence) that austerity during a liquidity trap is a recipe for failure. Great, that’s undoubtedly true.
But he also believes Obama is a failure because he hasn’t convinced the public that austerity during a liquidity trap is a recipe for failure. I’m pretty sure he’s wrong about that, because even if Obama convinced everyone of the need for more stimulus spending, the House GOP would still stand in the way. So the economy would still suck.
The point is, there’s going to be a non-negligible number of people who voted for/contributed to Obama in 2008 that will not do so this time around, because of Krugman’s faulty political advice.
aimai
@cleek:
Yes, yes, of course. That’s it precisely. The first thing that Obama and his team should do is always point out what ungrateful, stupid little bitches his voters are. These are not people who didn’t vote for Obama the first time. These are people who not only voted for his but who worked for him, who donated tons of money to his campaign. My point is that whatever you, or I, or Obama and his team may think about these people they are VOTERS. At the end of the day you have to make your voters happy anyway you can. If they are unhappy with you you can explain what you’ve done better, or explain it away, but the one thing you can’t do is continually tell them to fuck off if they think they could get a better candidate or if they think their problems and desires amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Did you ever go door to door for a candidate? Even when I think the person I’m talking to is deluded, unclear on the concept, or wants the wrong thing I *never* tell them that. I try to figure out what they want, whether my candidate can supply it, and I try not to piss them off. That goes for Republicans as well as Democrats. Because the voter has the last word when they go in the booth–or the last word when they refuse to turn out for my candidate.
If you, or Obama, think that any candidate can rest of his laurels in running the next campaign you have another think coming. But luckily I don’t think Obama is as stupid as some of his most rabid supporters. I think that the people who go out of their way to attack Obama’s own voters as stupid, ill informed, ill intentioned, etc… are simply being very badly trained by OFA and aren’t suited to their job of getting out the vote.
aimai
Violet
@Mike Goetz:
Huntsman’s probably running to to set himself up for a run in 2016, when he’s hoping the batshit crazy has worked itself out of the Republican party and they’ll be looking for a sane candidate. I don’t think it’s going to work out that way for him but you never know.
jl
Our weird and harmful economy in literature, my thesis for the day.
For awhile the economic scene reminded me of the opening lines of Welles War of the Worlds, which i think is where my ‘1939 forever’ feeling came from. The sentiment was appropriate for the season of green shoots that never quite got out of the ground:
” In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. It was near the end of October. Business was better. The war scare was over. More men were back at work. Sales were picking up. ”
But the “1939 forever’ moment may be soon past its time.
Now things are truly weird, with codependent ideological nastiness, with the hawkers at the carnival stalls trying to sell old wineskins wrapped around festering old wine, and a gnawing aimless angst in the air.
Yes, kids, it is John Berryman time.
For awhile we were merely bored and impatient, without the inner resources to do anything about it, heading nowhere but sideways, In some ways, the economic times resembled the number 14, in suspended red:
‘ Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) “Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.” I conclude now I have no
inner resources, ‘
Let us hope we are not heading for the snow line, and the following lines will not be relevant:
Dream Song 28: Snow Line by John Berryman
It was wet and white and swift and where I am
we don’t know. It was dark and then
it isn’t.
I wish the barker would come. There seems to be eat
nothing. I am usually tired.
I’m alone too.
If only the strange one with so few legs would come,
I’d say my prayers out of my mouth, as usual.
Where are his note I loved?
There may be horribles; it’s hard to tell.
The barker nips me but somehow I feel
he too is on my side.
I’m too alone. I see no end. If we could all
run, even that would be better. I am hungry.
The sun is not hot.
It’s not a good position I am in.
If I had to do the whole thing over again
I wouldn’t.
Judas Escargot
@Mike Goetz:
He is crazy… to stay a Republican, at this point.
Come on over to the dark side, Gov. Huntsman. Plenty of room: Our Senate leader is a pro-life Mormon ferkrissake.
fasteddie9318
@Tractarian:
All true and fair points, but then it makes it pretty fucking stupid for OFA folks to be wasting their time bitching about Krugman or, for that matter, about anything other than Congressional Republicans.
No?
Davis X. Machina
@mai naem: That’s why Obama appointed him ambassador.
This man, he is not stupid.
The Dangerman
All is well; we’ll elect Bachmann and get $2 gas. She promised!
aisce
@ aimai
you want “fan service?”
what, the biggest mandated increase in fuel economy history wasn’t enough for you? no congress, all administration, and the result was nothing but an unmitigated win for the environment.
your premise is false. you can’t provide fan service to people who refuse to be fans of anything.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@TK421:
Even if 45% of the country were liberal, this kind of statement would get him about 10% support.
Are we going to have to do more research for you? He talks about that as well.
AlphaLiberal
So has the Obama campaign attacked JP Morgan yet, as they did Nobel Laureate Economist Paul Krugman?
Still waiting for their apology to Krugman and for that Sandoval’s head to roll.
NR
@Emma: Fine. You want to talk about politics? Let’s talk about politics.
Here’s the political reality: Voters want a focus on jobs, not deficits. The president’s approval rating is dropping, and on the economy it is plummeting.
In 2009, many of us on the left (including Krugman) said that the president’s economic program was inadequate. The president’s biggest supporters responded by saying that it was just fine and we didn’t know shit about politics. In 2010 we warned that the Democrats were going to take a beating in the midterms because the economy was still stagnant. The president’s biggest supporters responded by saying that the economy was turning around and we didn’t know shit about politics.
Now it’s 2011 and it’s the same thing all over again. We keep saying that austerity has been and will continue to be a disaster, Obama pushes weak market-based jobs proposals, we warn that we need something stronger, we warn about the election next year, and we again get told that we don’t know shit about politics.
Once again, the political reality is this: Voters want jobs. Austerity is not going to give them what they want, and if Obama doesn’t give them what they want, he is in trouble. Political trouble.
Corner Stone
OT, but is it just me that laughs uncontrollably every time I hear the name Carly Fiorina?
Hewlett-Packard Nears $10 Billion Deal and P.C. Split
“Hewlett’s chief executive, Leo Apotheker, has said he wants to focus on higher-margin businesses like software and de-emphasize the personal computer business.”
Thoughtcrime
I see everyone’s enjoying Cole’s new mixer and interest in baking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0BOOgW7rHE
“BRANDY! Throw more brandy!”
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est:
Make sure you update their addresses as they’re living with mom and dad now, if they’re lucky.
aimai
I think this is interesting but wrong:
What do people think a campaign for a second term should look like? Obama ran against Bush last time. This time he has to run against the Republicans. It is in fact the case that Obama and his team couldn’t get much done on the economy because of Republican intransigence. If Obama doesn’t point that out, in an educational and informative way–if he doesn’t in fact make that the centerpiece of his campaign–he’s not going to get back in. So making the case that we need and needed a bigger stimulus isn’t some kind of wasted effort. Making the case for anti austerity isn’t a losing proposition. Its actually what Obama and the Dems need to be doing in a focused way. Otherwise, what are people turning out to vote for? You’ve got to be arguing that a second Obama term plus the House means progress for the country.
Some people vote out of fear that Republicans will make it worse. Some vote out of hope that Democrats can make it better. We’d better hope that Obama has a good strategy for making both cases because he needs all his voters and then some to get over this time.
I don’t understand why pointing out this eminently obvious fact of political life is seen as somehow traitorous–Obama’s my candidate. I want to be able to sell him successfully. Like a ton of other critics my only complaint is that he does a piss poor job of keeping his friends close and his friends closer.
aimai
Derf
@Tractarian: Doubt it. Only people who continue to listen to Kthug are the same people who continue to read Fluffington Poo and Hamsher etc.
In other words, bunch of nobody’s who have little influence on the core electorate and have no ability to elect people or keep those people elected. Ie. Grayson for example.
Napoleon
@Tractarian:
I would love you to show me where he has said that, because I think his criticism, like much of the nuanced criticism of Obama’s passive performance is not that at all but instead along the lines of 1) he should be pushing for such things because even if he loses he has drawn a bright policy line for the public and after the failure of the Republican’s preferred solution he can use that to his advantage and 2) it never hurts to try – Obama does not go down fighting the good fight, he just folds, which leaves you wondering what he left on the table.
By the way, I think that line of reasoning is write and I consider Obama complete screw up for folding without almost ever drawing a line in the sand.
fasteddie9318
@Emma:
Then it boggles the mind why OFA personnel are WASTING time WORRYING about KRUGMAN and BITCHING about HIS criticism. WOULDn’t that ENERGY be better sPENt aTTACkINg THE RepubliCANS IN the HOUSE?
“THE PRESIDENT IS POWERLESS” has become a talking point, but don’t let me interrupt.
AlphaLiberal
@aimai:
It is true what you say. And the Obama Administration and campaign is telling their activist base and (small) donors to fuck off.
That’s more political malpractice from Democrats. There is a rule in politics which Democrats have run away from since the birth of the DLC:
“Dance with them what brought ya.”
Democrats, especially our President, love to turn that on it’s head and demonstrate the are Very Serious People by shunning, denouncing and ridiculing “them what brought ya.”
It’s a terrible, failed practice. Yet there they go again.
jonas
@mai naem: I agree that Huntsman is a reasonable guy and, all things being equal, would probably be tolerable as President, as far as Republicans go. But that’s the problem. He’s not running as an independent — he’s running as a Republican and a Republican Huntsman administration would inevitably be infected by the high levels of Teh Crazy currently dominating the party. I live in a purple Congressional district that generally swings between electing moderate Republicans and blue-dog Democrats. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue, but our current GOP congressman — an otherwise fairly moderate, country-club type — is a freshman with little clout and consequently votes with Cantor and his batshit insane Tea Party colleagues in most instances. Hence he’s very, very dangerous and I want him un-elected as soon as possible. For the same reasons that, though he may be personally appealing, I could never vote for Huntsman.
FlipYrWhig
@MBunge: I was just talking about that on one of the threads last night. It’s very strange to declare _analogies_ off limits. Even using someone else’s analogy and giving it a twist is verboten by that standard. That’s screwy.
gex
@Lolis: Their plan is 1) constitutional amendment against SSM and 2) the incumbent is blackity black black black. No economic policy, but their voters don’t seem to care about that from the GOP.
ETA: not necessarily in that order.
Just Some Fuckhead
I don’t think the 40% of Wall Street trades executed by computers front running the market care about [insert reason of the day for Wall Street going up or down].
cleek
@aisce:
this.
Villago Delenda Est
@Judas Escargot:
Yeah, I feel a bit for Huntsman, but this run is just prep for ’16, when there’s a real chance of Republicans doing something…when the inherent power of incumbency isn’t in play.
Because right now, the crazies are fully running the show, and it’s clown car destruction derby all the way up to the Republican National Convention. Huntsman has even tried out floppy shows and a nose bulb.
TK421
@aimai:
Not true.
Here’s what I would do if I were president:
1) Destroy HAMP and start over. Create an effective program in its place that will help homeowners lower the principal on their mortgage with direct payments. There are tens of billions of dollars left in the HAMP fund—money the president needs no one’s permission to spend.
2) Once that money runs out, order Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance more mortgages, borrowing if necessary, to get more homeowners above water. The president needs no one’s permission to do this.
3) There is between $100 billion and $300 billion left in TARP. The president can spend this money any way he wants, and there is enough to boost the economy in productive ways (Cash for Clunkers only cost $3 billion).
4) The Federal Reserve took trillions in worthless assets off the hands of big banks and is holding it now. It could put these assets (“toxic waste”) on the open market and force banks to match their own toxic waste to the market value. This would ruin them. Then the FDIC takes them over, pink-slips their executives, breaks them up so they aren’t too big to fail and gets them lending again.
5) Use quantitative easing to take bad risk off of working people’s hands. The president needs no one’s permission to do this. If any member of the Federal Reserve refuses to go along, the president can legally fire them for cause and replace them with a recess appointment.
6) Several months ago, Congress approved a $30 billion fund to help small businesses hire people. So far, none of that money has been spent thanks to foot-dragging by the department of the Treasury. Obama needs no one’s permission to order his department to straighten up and fly right.
People who answer with “but the media would say bad things about him!” will not be dignified with a response.
terraformer
@TK421:
THIS. But the Bully Pulpit just won’t work, dontcha know. No matter what he says. “Persuader in Chief”? That’s not what he can do, man!
cleek
@fasteddie9318:
something i wonder, every day. but not about OFA.
ericblair
@TK421:
I guess we both agree on this, and Congress controls the money, so there’s no point in slamming Obama about not getting anything through Congress no matter what speeches he makes or doesn’t make. So it’s down to the political approach.
He’d get mauled, and rightly so. Taxes on the rich don’t have to be exorbitant to get the budget balanced and have enough money for government infrastructure spending; they just have to be higher than they and in line with historic and world norms. If you phrase things like you did above, it sounds like you’re spending money just to spend money and beat up on rich people just to beat up on rich people, instead of trying to solve a problem. It’s red meat that gets the partisans riled up, so if that’s your only goal, fine, but I don’t think it is.
AlphaLiberal
@Emma:
A) No shit about the House. This is not news. The question is how to deal with bullies and knuckle draggers? We disagree with Obama’s approach.
B) Bullshit that “NOBODY said Krugman didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to economics:” From New Mexico State Director Ray Sandoval, passing along what are probably internal official talking points:
This is a lie. An attack on Krugman over ECONOMICS. There has been no apology from the Obama campaign to Krugman or the left. Why? Most likely reason is that they did this on purpose, to triangulate.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/17/new-mexico-ofa-firebagger-lefty-blogosphere_n_929231.html?1313601833
Why is Sandoval still working for the campaign?
aimai
@aisce:
No, my “premise” isn’t false. The fact that Obama’s team has a hard time getting the word out about their successes doesn’t mean Obama’s fans can’t be pleased by him. I’m sure there are (some) people who are really anti Obama. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about true blue, lifelong, Democrats who worked and donated to Obama and who think he’s doing a piss poor job of communicating with all his voters and of triangulating the imaginary independent voters he wants and his own donors and workers.
I just don’t get why people think it proves that Obama doesn’t need to please all his voters to argue that some of Obama’s crowd pleasing gestures didn’t work for all his voters simultaneously. Its just a fact of politics. I’m sure its harder for Obama than for previous presidents for reasons having to do with Racism, envy, spite, fear and etc… But so what? He knew it was a hard job and he accepted it. I think Obama’s a big enough man, and a great enough President, to take a little constructive criticism without crying–and he sure doesn’t need people on a blog to cry for him about how ungrateful his voters are.
aimai
Anarcho-Syndicalist Communes Now!
So J.P. Morgan, a bank bailed out by Obama and whose former Vice President is now Chief of Staff for Obama, has come out with a sloppy lie-beral wet kiss.
More politicizing of a real problem in America (cue Lee Greenwood) Please stand with Rick Perry and don’t let these banksters hijack our country.
TK421
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Yes, the guy who proposed stuff like the TVA and the WPA got slaughtered in his re-election bid, didn’t he?
Mike Goetz
@AlphaLiberal:
Sandoval is the new Rahm. Keep nursing that grudge, it’s very attractive.
And Aristotle disapproves of things like “Nobel Laureate Economist Paul Krugman”.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mike Goetz:
I’m in!
Paul Krugman is a big fat meanie!
OzoneR
@NR:
Once again, I refer you back to my comment in the last thread where voters want focus on BOTH because many of them blame the deficit for lack of jobs.
TK421
@Anarcho-Syndicalist Communes Now!:
Rick Perry or Rick Parry?
jl
” Huntsman has even tried out floppy shows and a nose bulb.”
That was a sad performance, they did not fit, and the crazies did not even care enough to notice.
Looks like Huntsman will not try them out again, since I read that he has ventured, in response to Perilous Perry, that evolution and global warming just might be more than theories that are ‘out there’.
Huntsman is such a radical.
OzoneR
@TK421:
This is not 1935 and you’re really an idiot for thinking that it was.
If it was 1935, Obama would’ve won 475 electoral votes and there would be 300 Democrats in the House and 75 in the Senate.
TK421
@OzoneR:
I wonder where they got that idea.
OzoneR
@ericblair:
you’re talking to someone who thinks the infrastructure bank is not a good idea because it’s not all government money. He does want to spend money just to spend money, cause it’s not what the Republicans want to do.
Corner Stone
@OzoneR: Thank God you’re here Nick! Thank God you’re here.
Tractarian
@fasteddie9318:
Agreed.
TK421
@OzoneR:
So, how is today different from 1935 that people won’t support big jobs programs? Is the electorate more conservative than it was back then? Is our country poorer than it was then? Is there less crumbling infrastructure now than then?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
Weird, I thought he GBCWed when you outed him a second (or was it the third) time. Wish I had that link because it was funny as hell.
TK421
@OzoneR:
Thank goodness I don’t have hay fever, because all the straw men that get beaten here would drive it up the wall.
daveNYC
@MBunge: The problem isn’t that the Republicans used it, it’s that it’s a fucking bad analogy. Which is why the Republicans used it. It’s an analogy that doesn’t apply to the federal government, and using it just leads people to think that we should be going all in on austerity policies. Austerity is the last thing the economy needs right now.
OzoneR
@TK421:
Ronald Reagan and Fox News. They held these views long before Obama was in office.
cleek
@AlphaLiberal:
OMG.
this is such stupid, petty, jerkoff, inside-baseball bullshit.
a staffer sent an email which approvingly linked to a blogger who said a mean thing about some other bloggers who said mean things about Obama! which proves …. ?
literally dozens of people will be mildly offended !
heavens!
OzoneR
@TK421:
yes. next question.
FlipYrWhig
@AlphaLiberal:
Because it’s accurate. The deficit ceiling deal is not “austerity,” and the Rotisserie League Keynesians who use Krugman to please each other are wrong to simply total up “cuts” and complain about them without looking into what is being cut and how deeply. My example from before was that if a policy was passed to give a billion dollars to the Koch brothers, that would certainly be “stimulative,” but that doesn’t mean we should advocate that. Tax cuts for the wealthy are stimulative, but inefficiently so; tax hikes for the wealthy are anti-stimulative, in that they suck money out of the economy, and yet we’re all for that. We’re falling into this trap where we act like all cuts are bad, all spending is good, and cite Krugman at each other as the patron saint who authorizes that view. That, IMHO, was Sandoval’s complaint, and I think it’s true.
Dennis SGMM
@Just Some Fuckhead:
And he picks his nose.
TK421
@ericblair:
Engineers Give U.S. Infrastructure a ‘D’ Grade, $2.2 Trillion Price Tag
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that 2.2 trillion dollars is a “massive” amount of money. That’s the kind of live-on-the-edge man I am.
cleek
@TK421:
in 35, FDR had a 200+ seat majority in the House. how big of a majority does Obama have in the House?
whatever big jobs programs the people want today is kind of irrelevant, cause ain’t no jobs program getting through the teabaggers.
TK421
@OzoneR:
That’s absolutely hilarious.
Tony J
So the general consensus is that Obama should campaign on a massive Government program to stimulate the job market through investment, but to shiv the Republicans he should call it The Surge?
I think you’re all really clever. Golf clap.
Mike Goetz
A guy in New Mexico sending around an e-mail forward is proof positive of a deliberate Obama-approved strategy to insult liberals. Until I receive a personal apology and notarized copy of Sandoval’s dismissal letter, I will nurse my grudge until I die.
TK421
@cleek:
He might win the House back for his party if he proposed programs people like, instead of “my new trade deal with Panama and my 2% payroll tax cut will turn the economy around.”
chopper
LOUD NOISES!
OzoneR
@TK421: That’s your response? weak.
FlipYrWhig
@daveNYC:
You can’t give up on analogies when they aren’t perfect in every respect. No one is ever going to understand budgeting except with reference to the way they spend their own money. There’s no reason why using that analogy inevitably leads to “austerity policies,” especially when VIRTUALLY EVERY FUCKING HOUSEHOLD borrows money routinely.
For example: “Governments need to live within their means, like families do. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t get a mortgage, a college loan, or a small business loan, improve your family’s lives and its future, and pay back that borrowed money responsibly over time. And that’s just what we’re doing.” Is that offensive? Is that a backdoor case for “austerity”? I hardly think so.
TK421
@Tony J:
How about “Surge 2: The Quickening”.
Max Power
@fasteddie9318:
It’s not about how the “politics of a cratering economy looks.” That wasn’t Emma’s point. Her point is that Krugman is politically naive. He’s a brilliant economist, but he naively believes that Obama and Democrats can pass Teh Most Awesome Stimulus Bill through Congress with the wave of a wand. Sadly, he’s subject to the same magical thinking the PL suffers from.
Dennis SGMM
@cleek:
May be that the better question to ask is why he doesn’t have a House majority at all. Or ask why, in the face of energized Republican voters, the Dems didn’t spend every last dime on turning out Democrats. OTOH, we could all just blame the hippies, be confident that Obama’s “got this” and then be terribly surprised by a bitch slap in 2012.
OzoneR
@TK421:
well people like not raising the debt ceiling and they like not spending any more money
http://people-press.org/2011/02/10/fewer-want-spending-to-grow-but-most-cuts-remain-unpopular/
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh, bullshit. Squared. Cubed.
The money isn’t being spent, or invested. It’s sitting there, waiting for the next “big thing” in the filthy fucking rich getting even filthier and richer. They don’t create jobs because they can’t stand being separated from their precious money, even to make more. These are the morons who go around dining on geese that lay golden eggs because, at the time, without any regard to the future, it seemed to be a really cool thing to do.
The rich, by themselves, cannot fuel an economy for a nation of 300 million. Can’t be done. Oh, they won’t starve…but everyone else will. Until the gates come down, the security goons are overwhelmed, and the ones who aren’t total selfish idiots get strung up with the ones that are.
SOME rich people (see Buffet, Warren, and Soros, George) understand this.
Infrastructure upgrades and repairs will pay off in future economic activity, which they foster. History demonstrates this. Adam Smith, who most Republicans, if they read him, would call him a soshulist, knew all about this.
The rich are not paying for the infrastructure, both physical and legal/social, that makes their wealth possible. Some of them are freeloaders, and demand that everyone else pay to maintain the apparatus that makes their wealth possible. There is no one more entitled in this country than someone who inherited a ton of money (see Norquist, Grover, and the Brothers Koch) and insist that they have some moral right to it. That can be taken away in a heartbeat, and should be. They’re unwilling to pull their weight. Screw them. Let the shotgun sing the song.
TK421
@OzoneR:
I literally don’t even know where to start with “the USA is more conservative now than it was in 1935”. All I can do is laugh. I’m stumped.
eemom
this conversation is so, like, new and different.
Calouste
Well, Bachmann is going to bring back $2 gas
I think she’s confusing gas with hot air.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dennis SGMM:
I got a better question:
Obama, best president ever or most amazing president ever?
TK421
@OzoneR:
Interesting. The public used to overwhelming support more federal spending, but in the past year or two they have changed their minds. I wonder why that could be.
Just Some Fuckhead
@eemom:
If you don’t have something petty and mean to add about Krugman, piss off.
Respectfully, of course.
Mike Goetz
Education Secretary Duncan let fly a little chin music today, saying that he feels very, very, very sorry for the children of Texas that their state’s school system sucks so bad. That’s the stuff.
Speaking of education, if Obama can get some billions to upgrade the deplorable condition our schools are in, that would be a major win, even if he has to give up other cuts to get it.
NR
@Dennis SGMM:
Didn’t you hear? The Dems lost the House because progressives got their fee-fees hurt and took their ball and went home. It had nothing to do with the shitty economy and high unemployment at all. Get with the program.
Dennis SGMM
@OzoneR:
People think that they like it because they figure that it will affect anyone but them.
ericblair
@TK421:
No. It’s a reasonable amount of money in a $15 trillion economy. $2.2T over five years is about 3% of our economy to fix critical infrastructure that got put off for years. Now, does that sound so massive?
Most people, and I’ll go out on a limb and say almost all persuadable voters, don’t self-identify as radicals. You’re trying to make this idea into “spend HUGE money by taxing the FUCK out of the rich”, making it sound like a radical idea when it’s really not. It’s raising the taxes on the rich to historic norms to spend 3% of our output on infrastructure.
It’s reasonable, it’s moderate, and the shit that the Republicans are doing now is unreasonable and radical and without historic precedent. Phrasing things that way is not going to make the radicals piss themselves with excitement, but that’s not what we’re trying to do, is it?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Villago Delenda Est:
Just over half of the workforce is employed by small businesses. Only 3% of small businesses pay their principals more than 250K/year.
FlipYrWhig
@Max Power:
I don’t think it’s naivete exactly. I think he has too much faith in the idea that a president can make a case for good policy, energize the public, lead the public to pressure its representatives, and push those representatives towards embracing the good policy in order to please voters. That’s typically how politics works. It doesn’t work that way anymore. Republicans don’t budge just because their local voters get mad at them. That’s why Teh Bully Pulpit doesn’t make policy happen. It makes for good rhetoric, but doesn’t translate into votes.
TK421
@Dennis SGMM:
Well said.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@NR: For the most part, that meme has died. The poll numbers have been shown enough that it was pretty much all the people who never vote in midterms did not show up, and that those on the right who don’t like that man in the white house showed up in droves.
Dennis SGMM
@NR:
Those stinking progressives; they aren’t worth listening to but they can tank an election. Their ability to masquerade as a tiny fringe of starry-eyed dreamers is what conceals their devastain’ super powers.
chopper
@TK421:
shrug. by the political standards of the day (in other words, ignoring social standards that have changed a lot) it sure as shit was. shit, back then we actually had a viable communist party in this country. can you believe that shit? an actual fucking communist party!
Mike Goetz
@Just Some Fuckhead:
He sucks on television. How’s that?
FlipYrWhig
@Villago Delenda Est: I think you’ve gotten the wrong impression from my comment. Maybe I was less clear than I thought. I meant that evaluating policy purely in terms of what’s “stimulative” is totally wrong, precisely because of the effects you just described. Raising taxes on rich people would not, in fact, be stimulative. But we should still do it, IMHO, because it’s better policy, and can be parlayed into positive economic effects.
Tractarian
@TK421:
The public definitely isn’t “more conservative” than they were in 1935 – that notion is indeed laughable – but they are more concerned about federal spending and debt. And not without reason – even after the New Deal, the debt was only about 30% GDP, but in 2011 we’re approaching 100%, see this chart.
(There you have it, by the way: the tiny needle of truth in the giant haystack of crazy that is Tea Party Republicanism.)
So that’s a reason why today’s electorate might be less responsive to a large debt-financed jobs program than they were in FDR’s time.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@FlipYrWhig:
And because it worked in 2010. Now, I think they are misreading the election results and are going to pay for it in 2012, but they won in 2010 by yelling stop a lot.
TK421
@Mike Goetz:
How does it help the country to gain $50 billion in school renovations at the cost of $50 billion in home heating subsidies for the poor and food stamps?
FlipYrWhig
@TK421:
I’d be curious to know where you saw a poll result that the public used to “overwhelmingly support more federal spending.”
eemom
@Mike Goetz:
his voice is a little on the squeaky side.
Which is kind of weird, cuz in his picture he doesn’t look like a squeaky-voiced guy.
also too: I can’t stand him on the telephone.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Tractarian: Plus, remember, the country had two years of Hoover cutting spending, which failed miserably. What we have right now is a president trying to get something going, and a Republican party trying to prevent anything from happening. So it looks like stimulus is failing because Obama talks about it, and nothing happens to the economy.
Dennis SGMM
@Mike Goetz:
And he has a beard! You know who else have beards?
Stillwater
@TK421: I think your criticisms are valid. Well, they’re valid after you cleave off political realities like TP and GOP obstructionism, conservative Democratic Senators and voters, and a media that reflexively gives credibility to views from the lunatic fringe.
After all that, you gotta a helluva hand to play. It’s all Obama’s fault!
FlipYrWhig
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Agreed. But for the moment, they’re going to use a strategy of doing what they want, sticking out their chins, and daring us to vote them out.
OzoneR
@TK421:
Care to back this up with some links, or do I have to prove you wrong?
KCinDC
@ericblair, I agree that the media is a huge part of the problem, and I don’t have a solution to that. And Obama does say good things too. The problem is that it’s interspersed with the at least half-heartedly pro-austerity bullshit and bipartisan dreaming, which is what the media prefers to hear.
Villago Delenda Est
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Fuckin’ facts. Obviously have a liberal or even soshulist bias.
jwb
@Max Power: Krugman never argued that. He argued that the Obama administration continually claimed that the stimulus as passed was just the right size, so they were never in the position to argue for more stimulus. Put me in the Krugman is politically naive camp, but he does understand politics better than that, and on the politics of the stimulus he was a good deal more astute than the White House.
Tony J
@TK421:
I would love to say yes, because that’s far better than I came up with, but no. I just checked and it turns out that’s already been copyrighted by some group calling itself ‘President Perry’s First Tax-Cutting Budget Team’.
Surgulus is still free though.
Mike Goetz
@TK421:
How about $50 billion in weapons appropriations?
OzoneR
@Tractarian:
Which is why they’re more conservative.
Spiros Vondas
Job creators.
More job creators.
TK421
@Tractarian:
That’s a good chart, but I don’t see where it says that today’s debt is almost 100% of GDP.
It’s true that debt was more than 100% after World War II, but then it fell because our economy grew, not because we cut federal spending. (we spent a whole lot in the 50s: NASA, the GI Bill, the interstate highway system, etc.)
I can sympathize with a voter who is worried about the federal debt, but the response to this worry–by a politician who knows what he’s doing, anyway–would be to use the New Deal (and the war if they want) as an example of how governments can spend their way out of a depression.
harlana
@TK421: cuz it’s a “compromise”
DougMN
@ Emma I’d like a correction – I meant for the 1st comment to do what you said….
OzoneR
@jwb:
Except they never said that, Obama often said the stimulus was a first step, not the only step, the media just spun it that way.
eemom
“We are all pencils in the hand of writing God, who is sending love letters to the world.”
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig:
If you tax the rich, it would put that money that isn’t working to work. Right now it’s all on vacation. The rich can’t even figure out what they should be doing with capital.
daveNYC
@FlipYrWhig:
Really? Taxes suck money out of the economy? What do you think the government does with the taxes it collects? You think the IRS burns it or something? Taxes are spent, spending stimulates.
Mike Goetz
@Dennis SGMM:
Rick Perry?
TK421
@OzoneR:
This is the second line in the article that you linked to:
“Americans are no longer calling for increased spending, as they have for many years. “
ericblair
@Tractarian:
I can definitely see the public now being more economically conservative than in 1935. As someone mentioned above, we actually had functioning Communist and Soshulist parties, the Progressive Party and Farmer-Labor won seats, and Huey Long was going to run on a “Share Our Wealth” ticket before he got shot.
We’re a lot less socially conservative now. It’s actually a lot easier for a society to be more economically liberal when it’s socially conservative (i.e. where everyone else you see looks like you and thinks like you.)
Villago Delenda Est
@TK421:
I’d be a whole lot more sympathetic if they’d been screaming about borrow and spend in 2003 when the deserting coward was pissing away treasure and blood like there’s no tomorrow in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But they were not. As long as we’re borrowing and spending to kill brown people, it’s cool! If we’re using it to actually build shit, it’s bad!
TK421
@Mike Goetz:
If we cut that much to fund schools, that would be most excellent.
Mike Goetz
@daveNYC:
Who authorizes spending?
Tonal Crow
Which is why Perry is threatening Bernanke with lynching if he does anything to improve the economy before Perry can use its awful state to win the election.
Stillwater
Re: the public being more/less conservative now than in 1935: the public is certainly more socially liberal than they were back then. But I think it’s just as obvious that people are now more economically conservative. Is that really even debatable?
OzoneR
@TK421:
In all the issues listed, Americans didn’t want to increase spending in any but 4 things in 2009.; They weren’t interested in spending more in 2009 and they’re less interested in 2011.
And since this poll was taken BEFORE Obama started making the deficit an issue, I’d wager a bet the moves are thanks to a Fox News/Koch Bros epic anti-spending campaign from 2010.
TK421
@Villago Delenda Est:
So very true.
At noon on January 20, 2009, all of a sudden a lot of people decided they didn’t want the government to spend a lot of money. Hmm, what happened at that time to change their minds?
@Tony J:
I like “Surgulus”. It reminds me of Humungus from “The Road Warrior”.
fasteddie9318
@Villago Delenda Est:
Is it on a hip-hop do-rag vacation to the Martha’s Vineyard hood? Because I know where we could get some super clever postcards to send it!
AlphaLiberal
@FlipYrWhig:
Mike Goetz
@TK421:
Indeed it would. And it would cut wasteful, useless spending and replace it with useful spending with a great long-term ROI.
Thoughtcrime
@TK421:
Economically, yes, the USA is more conservative today than in 1935. The spawn of Nixon and Reagan have seen to that.
Is there any movement like this in the current USA?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA#The_Third_Period_.281928.E2.80.931935.29
jwb
@OzoneR: Yes, because ever since it became evident that we needed more stimulus, we heard the White House calling for more stimulus on a regular basis. What I was hearing was “green shoots, green shoots, green shoots”—oh, yes, and “we need to tighten our belts,” which you have to admit was a very effective way of arguing for more stimulus even if it polls well. The White House did sneak some stuff through in various deals, so it’s not like they weren’t doing anything, but well before the 2010 election they conceded that there would not be another round of significant stimulus.
TK421
@OzoneR:
Are we talking about the same page?
http://people-press.org/2011/02/10/fewer-want-spending-to-grow-but-most-cuts-remain-unpopular/
@OzoneR:
The page you linked to is dated February 10, 2011. The president was pushing for austerity long before that. Remember, he froze federal workers’ pay in November of 2010.
If we are talking about a different poll, then I apologize.
cleek
@jwb:
it was Obama’s job to say it was the right size. stimulus works at least partially by helping to convince businesses that things are going to get better if we just give the economy this one little push to get it through the current rough patch, so feel free to start hiring! right now! see all that new income coming in? that’s real demand! the stimulus will get us out of the weeds, and then things will get moving again. the demand will be sustained because all the other businesses will have to hire to help absorb all that new money and demand, so feel free to start hiring ! right now!
he couldn’t say “yeah, this is too small and won’t actually produce enough sustained demand to justify hiring anyone else. but, if you feel like hiring some people anyway, that’d be great. kthxbye”
Villago Delenda Est
@TK421:
Yeah, yeah, I know spending on weapons is Keynesian stimulus.
After all, spending on weapons (there’s that government doing shit it shouldn’t, according to wingtard economic theory, be able to do!) got us out of the Great Depression.
But it’s not as efficient, by a long shot, as maintaining, upgrading, and expanding boring non-sexy infrastructure, be it sewage treatment plants, water distribution systems, high speed fiber optic networks, highways, bridges, high speed rail, public transit, things that CREATE economic activity where none existed before. Things that the private sector shys away from because it’s a long term investment, and they are totally dominated by utterly retarded short term end of this fiscal quarter MBA thinking.
That Smith guy figured all this out pretty much 235 years ago.
harlana
@FlipYrWhig: But what’s wrong with making the case to the American people that not only he, but the Dem leadership, has plans to help the economy and create jobs, but the republicans obstruct everything we wish to do for the people. Of course, nothing you propose will pass, much less introduced, which is why you are left with nothing but rhetoric. And you can just stand there and propose anything that sounds good, the people will like that you are responding to their fears, the republicans will look like insane, rabid assholes standing in the way of rescuing the economy and creating jobs. We need to get our House back. (eh, anyway, I think Obama is starting to do that now which is good)
TK421
@Thoughtcrime:
You are right: of course the Communist party is dead in America today. But look at the millions of Black voters who have been added to the electorate, the millions of 18-21 year olds who have been added, and the improving public views on a whole slew of issues like civil rights or the environment.
Corner Stone
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Except for right here at BJ! Where it’s trotted out every god damned thread as proof of arglebarglemcargle.
jheartney
@Emma: For politicians, one of the best ways to get booted out (particularly if you are POTUS) is to preside over bad economic times. (Note the three wave elections in 2006, 2008 and 2010. Or consider the case of GHWB, who went from 90% approval to losing to the Clenis by 370-168 electoral votes.) Even politics eventually must give way to reality, particularly economic reality.
OzoneR
@TK421:
People believed in global warming in 2008, they didn’t in 2010, did Obama convince them it wasn’t real?
Democrats in the White House scare people into becoming more conservative, we saw it will Bill Clinton too, and the right wing message machine has been relentless, the left has absolutely no stable infrastructure to counter it
Villago Delenda Est
@fasteddie9318:
Win!
TK421
@Villago Delenda Est:
Everything you said is true. Military spending is better than nothing, but it’s not my first choice personally.
Corner Stone
@Max Power:
Case in point, call him brilliant then the naive charge sticks twice as hard.
I’d like to know something. Why is Krugman a “brilliant economist”? Have the people here who keep parroting that phrase ever read any of his work? And I don’t mean his blog bits with the purty charts and the para of analysis. I mean any of his actual work on economics?
Because I’m at 99.999% that not a single person who repeats the “brilliant economist” phrase right before they slag Kthug has even the slightest of passing familiarity with his work.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@FlipYrWhig:
Tax hikes are anti-stimulative, except the tax money ends up in the hands of the middle and lower classes who spend it, which more than makes up for the effect on the upper class. A dollar given to an upper class person earns something like 20cents for the economy. A dollar given to someone in the low or middle class earns something like $2.40 for the economy.
OzoneR
@TK421:
and you think these people are economically progressive in a way the Communists and Socialists were in the 1930s?
Seriously, where do you live?
Corner Stone
@Tonal Crow:
Actually I honestly believe it’s just because Perry simply has zero idea how the governmental and monetary systems interplay.
Or cosplay. Whatever you’re into.
AlphaLiberal
@OzoneR:
Really? What about the promises that Unemployment would below 8%?
TK421
@cleek:
I think there’s some mistaken assumptions there. Stimulus isn’t primarily to increase business confidence. Anyone who proposes a stimulus to increase confidence is using a hammer to turn a screw. And anyway, survey after survey shows that low consumer demand, not confidence, is business’s main problem so making confidence a high priority is a mistake.
If he couldn’t get a larget stimulus passed, President Obama should have told the public “this will stop the bleeding, but we need more to get the patient back on its feet.” Then he would have drawn a difference between himself and the Republicans and given the public reason to support him.
AlphaLiberal
Excellent Krugman line on cuts/austerity now:
Bruce S
I am absolutely certain that I was assured in these very comments threads by a certain “Anti-Firebagger Caucus” that no way would any of the administration-proposed spending cuts impact recovery because they were a couple of years off.
Too bad “Krugman isn’t on Obama’s side” because if he was “on his side” he’d feed him the same crappy, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot advice that he gets from too many of his “close friends.” Me? I’m on the side of tough love for the Prez and a critical eye on the policy that comes out of that White House inner sanctum. The very fact that Christy Romer and Larry Summers are able to be much more clear-headed and assertive about good policy having left the White House suggests to me that there’s some “structural problem” with being an inside adviser, and it does the President no good.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@OzoneR: OK, I think you and TK are agreeing on something. Don’t talk past each other.
geisha gurl
@Calouste:
Yeah the “Hombre-ette” will get gas prices back in line.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20094169-503544.html
daveNYC
@cleek:
If the stimulus had been even close to what the numbers said it should be, then I’d give him a pass. Problem is that the stimulus was crap, though it was the best crap we could hope for. No amount of Green Lantern will power or increase in the level of clapping was going to change that.
TK421
@AlphaLiberal:
Now THAT is a good analogy.
@Bruce S:
Good post.
Stillwater
@Corner Stone: I think it’s because he’s going crazy early to get TP Commitments, then when he moves back to the center during the meat-phase of the campaign, he won’t lose the crazy base.
It’s a pretty good strategy.
jwb
@cleek: Krugman’s point was that framing the stimulus as just right almost certainly eliminated any possibility of additional stimulus. His analysis convinced him before the stimulus went into effect that it would be grossly inadequate, so I think he believed that convincing business owners to buy in would not be enough to get us across the gap, so that point was moot. Whatever the reasoning, I think you have to admit that the White House made a massive political miscalculation in this case.
Poopyman
It didn’t turn out so well for Casandra, either.
OzoneR
@AlphaLiberal:
That doesn’t say “this stimulus will solve everything,” even when he made those forecasts, he also said we needed to do more.
TK421
@AlphaLiberal:
Economist Christina Romer regrets saying jobless rate would stay below 8 percent
@Corner Stone:
“I honestly believe it’s just because Perry simply has zero idea how the governmental and monetary systems interplay.”
But he has such great hair! Doesn’t that win him any credit?
OzoneR
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I see TK trying to imply Obama’s endorsement of austerity, pushed people toward austerity. I’m saying they were always there, they took a leap of faith when Obama came in and then snapped right back to their common wisdom on spending when it didn’t fix everything right away, what Obama says is irrelevant.
Darkrose
@aimai:
My problem with this analogy is that fan service implies throwing the fans a bone to shut them up, or to give them something to giggle about that isn’t going to have any impact on the main plot. A Stargate: Atlantis episode where Sheppard and McKay hang out that will make fangirls squee and point at the McSheppiness is fan service, because the writers throw it in there knowing that it’ll make the fans happy for an episode, not because they have any plans to follow-through and make their male leads a gay couple. Fan service is Bioware writing party banter in Dragon Age 2 about a character’s chest hair, as a nod to a running joke on the game forums.
The Republicans play the fan service game all the time. No one really thinks a balanced budget amendment is going to pass the House and Senate and get approved by 3/4 of the states. But it makes the ‘baggers happy to think that their representatives are paying attention to them, so it’ll get tacked onto various bills and die quietly in committee. I’d much rather Obama actually do something substantive than placate me.
ericblair
@TK421:
Sure, absolutely, but those are socially liberal achievements and not economical liberal ones. (Really, environmentalism should be “conservative” in the purest, most basic sense of the world, but that’s life.) They don’t naturally go together, and there’s pretty good evidence that social liberalism makes economic liberalism harder: the social conservatives start yipping “I don’t want MY money going to THOSE people!”
The right has been mining the Cold War and social resentments for decades and rolled back a lot of economic populism. Sucks, but it’s where we are and getting it back is hard.
jwb
@OzoneR: No, Dems in the White House do not scare people into becoming more conservative; the media, bought and paid for by the right wing, scare people in order to delegitimize the Democrat in the White House.
jl
@Stillwater:
Yeah, maybe Perry is going to do the crazy ideo dance in the primary and then try to move back to the center.
But there is a reason a candidate is supposed to use dogwhistles for that. Perry is using an air horn, backed up by a calliope. With a little shit kickin’ West Texas belligerence thrown in.
There will be plenty of scare clips for the campaign. So not sure Perry’s approach will work.
TK421
@OzoneR:
Yes, but the problem is the “do more” from the president was usually something in the wrong direction, like deficit-cutting.
One thing he wanted that was in the “do more” category was HAMP, which has been a disaster. It has helped few people and harmed some.
Here’s an article that illustrates what I’m talking about:
Obama: Stimulus lets Americans claim destiny
A few paragraphs in, we see this:
As we now know, focusing on “taming deficits” rather than creating jobs was a catastrophic mistake.
Villago Delenda Est
@TK421:
It’s the only credit he needs with the shallow fuckwits of the Village.
It is, after all, a currency that they are most familiar with.
harlana
@jheartney:
i must agree!
jwb
@Bruce S: Larry Summers seems to have been a major part of the problem while he was in the White House, and I find his conversion since he left the White House to be very convenient.
Derf
@fasteddie9318: What did Cole do? He mentioned that that he voted for the Texas dummy twice. Also likes some libertarian ideas as per New Mexico Gov. Johnson. Lastly, he faps to Greenwald but that is no surprise given his other actions.
So why would you be surprised that I think Cole is a mouth breathing moron that needs to be berated at every opportunity? He is no better than some dumfuck teabagger as far as I’m concerned. Just the fact he voted for Bush twice is enough for me to have ZERO respect for him.
Oh, and he tried (unsuccessfully) to ban me. I was holding back before that.
cat48
cleek
of course. i did write:
that was kindof the basis of all the rest of what i wrote. give the people some more money to spend (either by direct cash, or by giving them some jobs), and that will get the rest of the system pumping again as that new cash gets spent. but if you say, up front, “this isn’t going to lead to real sustained demand”, that’s an argument businesses can use to just pocket the extra cash instead of turning it into wages. sure, they will evaluate the situation for themselves, but you don’t help convince them it’s inadequate.
which is where we are now. businesses are sitting on huge mounds of cash because they don’t see enough demand to justify hiring.
Villago Delenda Est
@TK421:
Indeed. Bill Clinton figured out, 11 years ago, how to tame deficits, and actually had a plan IN PLACE to pay down the national debt.
Then the deserting coward was installed into office by five fascist fuckheads, and that was all she wrote for balancing the budget.
TK421
@ericblair:
You make a good point: let’s draw distinctions between social conservatism and fiscal conservatism.
But I don’t think people are more fiscally conservative than they were back then, either. And even if they were, a good leader would use the New Deal (and World War II if they are so inclined) which are iron-clad proof that governments can spend their way out of a depression.
Would that work? It’s better to try what works and fail, then do what won’t work and…well, there’s no succeeding there, is there?
Corner Stone
@Darkrose: Hmmm, you’ve intrigued me with your versatile definition of “fan service”.
So maybe we should petition Obama to use the bully pulpit to get the writers of BSG to have an arc where Number Six from BSG and Seven of Nine from ST: Voyager somehow meet and rumble in an epic lesbiotic cyborgian orgy deathmatch to determine the fate of mankind.
I mean think about it. It’s just crazy enough to work.
Elizabelle
@cleek:
What cleek said at comment 14.
Learn this and repeat it, over and over, to those who voted in the 2010 midterms, and those who did not.
ETA: um, maybe you’ll have to soften the first paragraph to “Tea Partiers” or “extreme conservative Republicans who don’t live in the reality-based world.”
The Bobs
@FlipYrWhig:
“Tax cuts for the wealthy are stimulative, but inefficiently so; tax hikes for the wealthy are anti-stimulative, in that they suck money out of the economy, and yet we’re all for that.”
Bull. Taxing the rich doesn’t suck money out of the economy. The government is part of the economy, and spends the money, all of it. The question is whether the government spends the money in ways that are better for the economy overall than what rich people would spend the money on.
Stillwater
@jl: I’m with you there: I don’t think (60-40 against?) it will work in the general. But I do think all this craziness is a way to entrench himself in the TP camp and distance himself from his contenders, from GW, and of course from the current administration. Without the TP he’s not gonna get the nomination. The balancing act comes in when he has to actually reach the moderate conservative and indie voters.
Like you said, come general election time, I think there’s too much divisiveness for him to overcome.
OzoneR
@TK421:
not when it’s done in the long term as he said. Even Paul Krugman admits that.
Pangloss
Maybe if O interred Japanese-Americans in camps or issued a Gulf of Tonkin Resolution he’d get some of that sweet, sweet Progressive love.
Corner Stone
@The Bobs:
And you’d know the answer to that if you watched the recent HGTV special Million Dollar Rooms. Please note, the title is not Million Dollar Homes.
Anybody else see that shit?
TK421
@OzoneR:
You linked to this survey:
http://people-press.org/2011/02/10/fewer-want-spending-to-grow-but-most-cuts-remain-unpopular/
That Pew Research survey was released in February 10, 2011, so it implicitly takes Obama’s presidency into effect. Then it explicitly addresses Obama’s time as president with paragraphs like this:
So I don’t see how that disproves the thesis that Obama’s constant hammering of austerity and belt-tightening has driven the public to oppose federal spending.
OzoneR
@TK421:
because there was NO constant hammering from Obama on austerity before February, 2011.
aimai
@Darkrose:
Sure, good point about the analogy fail. But you know what? If it gets his/our voters to the polls I don’t really care about the difference between “getting something substantive done” and “pleasing the fans.” First of all, as all my political betters keep telling me, *nothing* substantive can be done against Republican intransigence. So what does Obama have to lose by trying to figure out what will make his voters happiest and giving it to them rhetorically? I’d submit that lots of them just want to feel that he is really fighting for them and will fight harder and smarter if we just put him back into power for another term.
Again, I don’t need a lecture about how unfair that is to our President-Trying-So-Hard-Already. I agree that its sad and all that but the voters are losing confidence in the President for whatever reason. If he wants to get back in he has to reverse the slide.
Anyway, its never a choice between telling people what they seem to need to hear and getting things done. Obama is, in fact, trying to do that right now–his entire shtick is aimed at the voters–the “balanced approach” line, the “grand bargain” line these are all aimed at the voters and at forcing the Republicans (as he thinks) to crack up against the voters going “yeah, I like that balanced approach” and necessity. The question that Krugman and others are raising is whether this shtick is the best shtick for getting over on all the voters going forward?
Its an illusion to think that Obama, unlike any politician before him, is all about getting stuff done and not about pleasing his voters. He has to do both. They always have to do both–some can rely on one line for a while, some on the other, but in the end, especially at election time, you have to do both.
aimai
TK421
@OzoneR:
Right. But what the president has done has been in the immediate term, such as freezing federal workers’ pay. Not only do those workers need yearly cost-of-living increases, the economy as a whole needs that money as well.
@The Bobs:
Taxing the rich doesn’t suck money out of the economy.
OzoneR
@TK421:
The pay freeze didn’t happen until January 1 of this year, long after the President already lost the argument on spending and was done to prevent layoffs.
Also the freeze was nill because there was so little inflation that they were barely getting raises anyway, what’s better for the economy? Workers who don’t get a pay raise, or workers out of a job?
Also, most of America works in the private sector, and few there have been getting pay raises for years, that’s where it matters more.
chopper
@TK421:
we do? my cost-of-living increase is based on a complicated formula that resembles core CPI, which has been pretty low for a while. why would i expect much of any cost of living increase this year when core CPI was low in 2010?
also, private sector employees haven’t gotten shit for raises in years.
TK421
@OzoneR:
That simply isn’t true.
From Wikipedia:
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (often called Bowles-Simpson from the names of co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles) is a Presidential Commission created in 2010 by President Barack Obama to identify “…policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run.” The commission first met on April 27, 2010.
Do you think the president was AGAINST austerity, but he was forced to embrace it? Does his forming of a commitee to find ways to be austere support that position?
gelfling545
@Emma: Well, both are true in their turn. Politics always trumps economics or anything else (morality, legality, common sense, science) first because nothing is done without politics and sometimes (like now) there are those who choose to deny reality for political reasons. Ultimately though, economics or some other reality will trump politics because all the political will in the world can’t stop the results of inaction or bad action in the face of reality.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@TK421:
On social issues the country is profoundly more liberal today than in 1935. On economic issues however the country is much more conservative now than it was then. The 1932 election came a mere 20 years after Debs, an actual honest-to-Marx socia1ist, polled well in a 3-way race with TR and Taft. The Communust Party was active in the US. The IWW was one of the largest blocks in organized labor. We had an active left wing of the mainstream press corps. The Kingfish in Lousiana was constantly pushing FDR (who privately called him “the second most dangerous man in America”) from the populist left. None of those things have counterparts today.
No, but our stuctural role in the global economy is the opposite. Back in the late 20s and early 30s we had surplus manufacturing capacity and prior to the Great Depression acted as lender to the rest of the world, loans which supplied the cash flow for them to purchase the products made in our factories. Today that role is played by China. We are in a structural position equivalent to Great Britain in the 1930s, a net borrower of money and importer of manufactured goods. Without tarrif barriers in place much of our domestic Keynesian stimulus spending will leak out to stimulate the economies of other nations like China (which have excess manufacturing capacity) rather than pumping up our own economy.
More or less, yes. Much of the infrastructure we still use today had not yet been built in 1935. Numerous Hydro-electric dams, roads, bridges, most of our housing stock. One of the reasons why Eisenhower pushed the development of the interstate highway system after WW2 is that before the war he had been involved in an exercise in which it took more than a month to move a US Army division across the country because there were so few paved roads. Today we have heavy deferred maintenance needs but not nearly as much of the sort of starting-from-nothing construction projects they could use in 1935 to boost construction employment, and additionally our employment in our construction industry is being retarded by the largest overhang of residential housing in our history (see CalcRisk for details).
So the short answer is, yes this is not like in 1935. Not even close.
Lit3Bolt
@AlphaLiberal:
Aimai, cleek, I have a political question that’s genuine and not snarky. Is there any evidence that Democrats are rewarded for their bashing of their party’s base? I mean, I assume this helps assure the media to give them a pass in someway, somehow, but knowing how big corporate donors operate with a typical 2:1 Republican slant of donations, is the hippie bashing part of some Clintonian triangulation strategy by having anonymous staffers say “fuck off” to Krugman and the hippies over and over?
Sorry for the babble, but I’m really curious in why national Democrats keep shitting on their base and then feel like they’ve accomplished something. Does it really impress anyone else, the media, independents, anyone? Or do they simply do it out of habit lest their technocrat credentials and bipartisan laurel crowns get taken away?
Yevgraf
Re: the wealthy and taxes.
I’ve yet to figure out how Paris Hilton’s purchase of $800.00 shoes and $5000.00 handbags trickle down to the rest of us. Is locking up vast stores of wealth in unproductive luxury real estate or gimmicky structures stimulative? how about the effect of installing solid gold toilets on the new G6?
Bottom line is that tax increases on the capital class force changes and force some trickle down. It requires bricks and mortar, “make stuff” investment for the purposes of security and genuine profits resulting from activity as opposed to mere price increases.
Our current tax code is unbalanced and overfavors capital.
chopper
@TK421:
certainly you’re a lot higher than people were back then. sho nuff.
chopper
@Corner Stone:
no. i actually work for a living.
TK421
Here’s a clip from president Obama’s first state of the union speech, on January 27 2010:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/us/politics/28obama.text.html?pagewanted=all
He likes austerity. He wants to tighten the belt–and he has for a long time.
El Cid
Morganbagger.
Yevgraf
Another thought I’d like to add –
Citizens United advocacy is being paid for through
1. The Bush era tax cuts; and
2. The Texas Teatard Tax, otherwise known as $4.00 buck a gallon gas. That money is going straight from the pump to Crossroads ads. Were energy a rational, functioning market, given the economic downturn, gas should be running about 2.70 a gallon.
OzoneR
@TK421:
The commission was created because Congress demanded it. so yes, he was forced to embrace austerity by Blue Dogs and Republicans. That was well reported, but he endorsed it in the long term, focusing on stimulative spending in the short term. Then the public decided they wanted austerity in the short term last November.
And yet, despite all that, we’re still not getting budget cuts for a few years.
OzoneR
@TK421: The same speech where he said this;
yeah saying we need to pass jobs bills now and deal with our fiscal situation next year is a sure sign he loves austerity.
ericblair
@aimai:
Pleasing which fans, exactly? If you’re talking about the broad mushy mass of persuadable voters, I’d say that arguing that you’re trying to get something substantive done is going to go over better than just calling goopers assholes. We know goopers are assholes and we like hearing it, but we’re not the ones who really need the rhetoric.
The problem with fan-service is that it can rapidly turn a show into a confusing bunch of in-jokes and convoluted references to trivia that normal viewers can’t understand, then fuck up the overall plot to make a few overly-committed junkies happy for a few minutes before they start to bitch about something else. Sound familiar?
Corner Stone
@chopper: You show up in a lot of dead threads taking stupid and pathetic shots at me. Glad you could get a stupid and pathetic one in a live thread, workingman.
D.N. Nation
Fucking primary him yesterday or deal with the choice you’ll have in 2012. Instead of adding to his near Jonah Goldberg-sized paunch with cocktail parties with David Brooks and churning out boilerplate for the Gray Lady, perhaps Krugman should’ve taken it upon himself to collect some signatures and raise funds.
Anything beyond that is accountless bitching. And if some nobody in the bowels of the Obama campaign express says as such and it moves you to do anything and everything equivalent to voting Republican, well bye then.
Mino
I think the current vocabulary coming from the White House is going to hurt downticket Democrats, too. Obama is blurring the lines between the parties instead of lighting them up.
aisce
ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached that very special milestone again.
paul krugman…is fat.
Darkrose
@aimai:
Didn’t mean to give you one. All I’m saying is that fanservice is not a good analogy, because it implies an empty gesture. I don’t want empty gestures–my problem with Obama is that too often, that’s what we ge. I want results.
Tractarian
@TK421:
Sorry. That would be here.
The point is that you can’t just say “there were actual Communists back in the 20s” and assume that proves that people are more conservative today. People change, but circumstances change too. In the 20s, the federal government was nothing like it is today. The progressive community has made great strides over the course of a century – Medicare, Medicaid, EPA, OSHA, CPSC, VRA, ADA, the list goes on. It’s no surprise that there are more anti-government zealots out there today, simply because there’s so much more that the federal government does that they can rail against.
General Stuck
Here is your fan service, Aimai Numbers don’t lie.
Yawn. Clowns gonna clown. Obama doing just dandy with his base, thanky you very much. This has been an Obot public service announcement Now back to the regular scheduled wanking.
chopper
@Corner Stone:
well, you are an idiot. i mean, sometimes you just can’t help yourself.
Bruce S
That may be true – I don’t have a lot of love for the guy. But if it’s “convenient,” it’s also welcome. I don’t think he’s a complete idiot by a long shot – and if his mega-ego doesn’t qualify him to be as open and humble in retrospect as Romer (who I like very much from her excellent recent op-eds and having seen her interviewed recently by none other than Bill Maher) at least he’s making the right noises. It must have some impact on those left inside the circle for Summers to be talking some sense.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Tractarian:
And the social safety net is working from the point of view of the status quo: by providing a cushion against the level of misery and desperation we would otherwise be experiencing without it, agitation from the grass-roots for revolutionary change in the US is a non-factor. That makes rallying popular support for a Keynesian stimulus harder not easier.
FlipYrWhig
@The Bobs: It’s not the “tax hike” that stimulates the economy, it’s the government spending the money that comes in that stimulates the economy. Two separate steps. (And by the logic you used, raising taxes on poor people would stimulate the economy as well, because the government would take that money and put it to good use… that’s not the way most people understand what stimulating the economy involves, I don’t think.)
At any rate, I was not arguing that we shouldn’t raise taxes on rich people, I was arguing instead that we _should_ EVEN THOUGH strictly speaking that is not a stimulative economic policy. And that’s a case in point: there are factors that help shape what a progressive economic policy would be _beyond_ simply taking the billions of dollars going out the door and trying to increase that figure as high as possible. If that’s what we’re trying to accomplish, why are we also advocating higher taxes at all on anyone? Why are we concerned about the rising tide of medical costs? Why are we concerned about military weapons system? Let the money flow down like manna from heaven, right? IMHO that sounds suspiciously like a case for trickle-down economics.
debbie
@ aimai:
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. Obama has to remember who voted for him, but it seems that the progressives who feel he’s betrayed them think Obama should have and could have gotten them everything they wanted — that he should have acted just as unilaterally as Bush did when he was in office. Which, as I recall, really pissed them off.
priscianusjr
@aimai:
Just Some Fuckhead
@priscianusjr:
Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.
priscianusjr
@Napoleon:
FlipYrWhig
@priscianusjr: As I’ve said before, if Paul Krugman has ever been in a committee meeting, he should be well acquainted with the dynamic that even if you are right on the facts, your position may not carry the day. Even academics should know that correctness and winning are two disjoint things.
priscianusjr
@FlipYrWhig:
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Corner Stone:
What really odd about the move to focusing on software and possibly spinning off their PC side is this:
So he wants to spin off the side that makes 97% of their revenue in favor of boosting that 3%? WTF?! It sounds like something Gnarly Carly would have done.
I use nothing but HP (prior to that, Compaq) enterprise-level servers and I hope they stay in that sector. I don’t care for their PC models but they do know how to build a damned good server (since they bought Compaq anyway!).
priscianusjr
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Robert Waldmann
Yes but they are very savvy dirty fucking hippies.