More lucky duckies:
With the American economic recovery hanging in the balance, private employers added 71,000 jobs in July, up from a downwardly revised 31,000 in June but below the consensus forecast of 90,000. The unemployment rate stayed steady at 9.5 percent.
Over all, the nation lost 131,000 jobs in July, but those losses came as 143,000 Census Bureau workers left their temporary posts, the Labor Department said. June’s number was revised dramatically downward to a total loss of 221,000 jobs. The Department of Labor originally reported that the nation lost 125,000 jobs in June.
I bet those people could use a tax cut.
Comrade Javamanphil
No, they need to have their taxes raised because those lucky duckies pay nothing right now! But if we give tax cuts to the top .000001%, they can piss on the rest of us and we’ll have jobs cleaning it up. It’s a beautiful world, for you…
General Stuck
My take on the economy.
RIP Nicollete
PeakVT
Everyone in the Village is employed. What’s the problem?
gene108
After talking to people in business, I really think the Obama Admin needs to chill and let business digest the changes they have passed in the last 20 months.
When business gets guidance about how health care reform and fin reg will be implemented, I think business will start investing the cash they are sitting on, which will help the economy.
Michael
Business is full of shit. Fire up the fucking guillotines, because everything they’ve shoveled to date came from the ass end of the bull.
All the cash that’s being sat upon is now completely sequestered by their co-conspirators – the bankstas, all so they can fuck things up enough to be allowed to run everything again.
They want blood – let it run from their neck stumps and out in the streets.
CodpieceWatch
Maybe they could get in on that $22 million for IT training. Oh wait. Obama reserved that for the people in South Asia.
mr. whipple
@gene108:
I have heard the same.
Patrick
Not those people. The only way to solve any problem is to give rich people a tax break.
And enact tort reform.
scav
@gene108:
clearly, because the one thing business types can’t handle is a rapidly changing environment. which is exactly why they pay themselves the big bucks.
Bill Murray
I thought they paid themselves the big bucks, because conservatives and sensible liberals collaborated with them to make paying themselves the big bucks possible
Nick
@gene108:
I’ve interviewed a few business owners and asked them the question of “If you’re making a profit and your earnings are better, why aren’t you hiring” and this tends to be the answer I get. “Government is changing too many things for me to feel comfortable hiring, and I don’t particularly need to because I’m making a profit with the staff I have.”
Off the record, I get stuff like “Once that bitch from San Francisco loses the gavel, we’ll hire again” and “we’ll hire as soon as the government respects business and stops hurting us.”
Another words: Once Obama sucks our collective dick, we’ll help people.
Michael
@Nick:
Clearly, white Americans don’t deserve the franchise. They’re not smart enough.
Discuss among yourselves….
mistermix
@Nick:
This.
Business hires when they have profitable work to be done and they can’t wring any more productivity out of workers. With 9.5% unemployment, it’s easy to work people harder: slacking will get you canned, and if you’re canned, it’s tough to find a new job.
Government programs ain’t got nothing to do with it. You can always hire more contractors if you’re afraid of adding full time benefited employees.
Maude
Bloomberg radio always stresses that higher productivity means people are working more for less and companies aren’t hiring.
I would like to see a huge federal jobs program get us over the awful times. The Republicans will block anything that helps people.
And the Repubs holler about the deficit? The only deficit they should be worried about is the one between their ears.
I despise Bush.
Sanka
Didn’t President Obama give us all
an $13 extra a month in rationsa great tax cut?You talked about how great it was and how benevolent the Administration was in giving it to us.
Maybe the “stimulus” wasn’t big enough. Maybe instead of $13, they should’ve given us each of us $13 GAZILLION in tax cuts. Bigger is better, after all….
At what point do Democrats own up to how much they dropped the ball with the economy?
Sly
The plural of anecdote is not data.
Every indicator reveals that expected low earnings from poor sales is what is preventing businesses from hiring. We’ve already been through an intense round of slashing excess capacity, and there has been no “return to confidence”. Even surveys conducted by GOP-aligned business groups show that fears of further diminished sales are whats holding back business investment.
Back before he was swept out of office in the second largest landslide in American political history, Hoover met regularly with business leaders as part of his dual approach of volunteerism and boosterism as solutions to the depression. They would, of course, tell him things like “Yes, Mr. President. We agree completely. It’s all a question of confidence and we believe your policies are just the thing to get us back on the right track.”
Then they’d return home and slash 25% of their workforce, because that’s what businesses do when no one is buying their shit.
Sly
@Sanka:
You support a party that is willing to ruin this nation in order to regain power. Every measure attempted by sober minds to address this problem has been stalled, watered down, or eliminated by the intractable avarice of the modern GOP.
But Republican legislators aren’t to blame, really. You are. And every shit-kicking, mongrel idiot who votes for them.
Napoleon
@gene108:
If you believe them you are a sucker.
Nick
@Sly:
Except nearly everyone has seen great earnings last month and the last few months before.
Nick
@Sanka:
when they actually get to implement their plan without having to compromise it to get Republican votes.
Napoleon
By the way I suspect Christina Romer resigned because she was sick of the clusterfuck semi-nonresponse of the government to the jobs situation.
Nick
@Napoleon:
It’s irresponsible not to speculate
Sly
@Nick:
That’s what happens when you slash excess capacity, which is accomplished in more ways than firing people.
I’m making a distinction here between gross and net revenues, because net revenues can temporarily increase, even though gross revenues are falling, by gutting expenditures and liquidating assets.
Alex S.
Maybe the passage of the stimulus bill was too soon. They should have waited a little more and put some pressure on the Maine senators until they had given up on their petty demands . Christina Romer demanded a stimulus of $1,3 trillion and got one of $785 billion, half of them tax-cuts with smaller multipliers, so maybe only $600 billion de facto.
Now we’re stuck with half a recovery and half a recession. Housing prices still have got room to fall, I actually think that the Obama administration reinflated the bubble a little bit to keep some homeowners afloat.
People are saving and repaying debt now. The savings rate is at 7% (compared to 1-2% under Bush). This is how it was before the “Reagan Revolution”. So a lot of money is going to the banks right now. It would be imperative to find some kind of area to invest in, to create a new bubble (like the tech-bubble) with the benefits of creating some kind of lasting value (not a consumption/housing bubble). I would have loved to see some huge green energy project. Massive taxcuts for wind and solar start-ups, taxcuts for homeowners who install solar panels on their roofs.
Nick
@Sly: I’m pretty sure a lot of them are showing increases in gross revenue too.
Nick
@Alex S.: Assuming, of course, the Maine senators would have given up on their petty demands. That would imply that they were being rational and Republicans are not rational. Republicans have also been willing to sacrifice themselves and their constituents to bring down Obama.
Gotta keep in mind when you’re in a position to bring down the popular President of the other party, you’re going to do it. If the Maine twins voted no on the stimulus bill and it failed over and over and over again while they economy got progressively worse (which would mean the stimulus would need to be BIGGER every time it failed) would they get blamed? or would Obama for not compromising. Would we be hearing “Obama fights for people” or would we be hearing “Endless partisan fighting while Rome burns!”
Look at who gets the blame for holding up state aid. Hint: It’s not the Republicans. Matt Yglesias has been twitter-fighting about this all morning.
Tsulagi
Don’t forget the dead. What this economy really needs to spark some life into it is permanent repeal of the estate tax.
Nick
@Tsulagi:
Don’t laugh, I know firebagger types who think we should permanently repeal the estate tax. There’s a little teabagger in everybody
Mnemosyne
@Sanka:
But you guys have been telling us since Reagan that tax cuts are magical and solve all problems. When Bush II came into office, he said we needed tax cuts because the government didn’t need the money. Then when the economy tanked, he said we needed more tax cuts because it would stimulate the economy. Tax cuts solve every problem Americans can ever face. Finance the Iraq war? We’ll do it with tax cuts!
I guess the current Republican message on tax cuts is, “You fucked up. You trusted us.” Silly Democrats, thinking that the Republicans actually believed all of that shit about tax cuts increasing revenue.
Rick Taylor
The comparison is unfair to Nero. Unlike our representatives, at least he made some pleasing music as he fiddled.
gene108
@Nick: I’ve heard similar things regarding the Democratic leadership.
I don’t think everything’s lost regarding Obama and business, but whatever bridges he’s had with the business community have almost collapsed and need to be rebuilt. I’ve heard speculation that business will sit on profits to make sure the economy is still weak in 2012, so Obama doesn’t get re-elected.
I think the polarized political environment we’re in doesn’t help. There isn’t any sort of consensus on policy from any direction and everything is about running over the opposition and getting your agenda passed.
20 years ago, for example, FMLA and ADA became laws, with a Republican President. There was general agreement on policy goals, even though how to get those goals achieved differed. The Republicans in Congress didn’t filibuster to death cap and trade legislation for limiting pollutants that cause acid rain, for example, since cap and trade was a conservative alternative to top-down government regulations.
The bigger issue which I think underlies a lot of the moves by this Democratic government is the increasing instability of the middle-class, which the last economic expansion did very little to help. Unfortunately the laws, which have been passed, do not address – and maybe no laws can address – the insecurity caused by technology and global competition.
There’s some legit concerns about how Health Care Reform will impact businesses, but acting like you don’t have to care about people, who have been unemployed when you do have the resources to invest in expansion just makes people angrier at businesses and more likely to want to “punish” businesses. This makes politicians want to appease their constituents, so they may come up with things, which further run over businesses and a vicious cycle is born.
There has to be a way to bridge the concerns of the middle class, with the needs of business, but right now saying, “I understand your position and will consider amending my views” is equivalent to waving the white flag of surrender and be perceived as (a) selling out to special interests, (b) being ripped to shreds by the opposition as being “weak”, and (c) potentially being mocked by whatever media narrative is floating around at the time.
I really don’t know how to calm things down, but Republicans hyper-opposition to everything isn’t helping and businesses becoming petulant because they aren’t getting what they want will just make Democrats and liberals push harder to knock those people over, which will of course make Republicans more stubborn and businesses more petulant in opposing Democrats.
Back in the “good old days”, President Obama could’ve had a “business summit”, but doing this now will just make the liberal base further believe he’s a corporate whore, so any contact between this Administration and the business community comes with a steep political price. Doing nothing and letting businesses continue to be jumpy about what Administration policy will be going forward and not investing has a price.
I don’t see a way to “win” and move people’s common interests forward. No one’s willing to take a chill pill.
Napoleon
@Alex S.:
I am almost a poster boy for this over the last 2 years. I am scared shitless of loosing my job and not having a cushion.
Alex S.
@Nick:
Back then, Obama had one free shot, so to say. I think he could have gotten the stimulus bill he liked (or well, the one we got might even be the one he wanted). The Republicans hadn’t infested the media narrative with their Tea Party/anti-establishment crap yet. He had to use this one chance, because a half-baked measure, half-successful, would be declared a failure. Now, everyone can ask if we’re better off or worse with the stimulus. A continuing economic deterioration would have made more people call for stimulating measures and the effects would have been more visible, I guess.
When the stimulus bill got passed, I thought Obama had already won the midterms because the stimulus would lead to a robust recovery. Nowadays I wonder whether the Republican obstructionism exceeded Obama’s expectations or whether the Obama economic team just did sloppy work.
Napoleon
@gene108:
Why? Screw them. If they want to sit on their money fine, someone else will invest and take their markets.
Alex S.
@Napoleon:
I think that’s very rational behavior. After all, people aren’t too big to fail. The spending and borrowing beyond your means of the Bush economy was very irrational.
Corner Stone
People who think multi-billion dollar market cap companies are sitting on their hands in an effort to hurt Obama are out of their damned mind.
They are doing exactly what any publicly traded MNC should be doing in the market environment we are facing. I’m not saying I like it, but this is what EPS and stock driven companies do.
Outside of the financial sector, non-utility companies have a limited domestic pool of consumers who can/will buy their product.
They aren’t going into their room size safe every afternoon, having a martini and toasting Obama’s downfall while they roll naked in their cash stockpile. They are sitting on cash because it’s the most profitable short term decision.
Corner Stone
@Alex S.:
Whatever Obama in his own mind really wanted, I think it’s clear the stimulus we got was what he decided on.
Whether he was properly served by his advisers is a discussion I’m willing to have but at the end of the day he is the boss. Congress passed what he asked for.
Nick
@Alex S.:
Obama never had a free shot and if he did, it was before he became President. If you remember, the tea party/anti-spending/deficit crap was born out of two things. One was the ever changing price tag of the stimulus, which started at about $600 billion when Obama was President-elect and went up almost weekly as the economy got worse. By the time he took office, the narrative of “How high will the liberals make it and what about the deficit?” had taken hold.
That killed his attempt at cramdown, the second thing, which sent Rick Santelli into conniptions because government was now gonna spend bailing out irresponsible homeowners. “Oh, here we go, he couldn’t spend more money in the stimulus, so he’s going to do it now!”
Nick
@Corner Stone: But that conveniently ignores that what he asked for came out of weeks and months of discussion with Senate and House leaders. Congress passed what he asked for only after they told him that’s what they can pass quickly and easily
Nick
@Alex S.:
Calling for what though? That’s the problem. As the economy declined, we’d probably be stuck in a tax cuts vs. jobs program battle that would only end up with exactly what we got in the first place.
Nick
@gene108:
i’ve had people flat out TELL me this is what they were doing
Svensker
@Napoleon:
The problem is, the interest rate is fer shizz. I had $10K that I hadn’t moved out of a rather dormant savings account but I thought, well, at least I’m earning some interest. My earnings for last month? $.61. Yup, folks, that’s what the banksters are giving me to use my money. Meanwhile, the same bank is charging 27.99% on their credit cards. So every time I look at my bank statements I send a big FU their way.
Way to go boys, way to go.
Mike in NC
The Sunday morning TV shows will boast their usual Parade of Republicans calling for more tax cuts for the ultra wealthy.
Alex S.
@Nick:
Hmm ok, I admit that the bailouts limited his political capital. But still, he should have gone for more, somehow… Over at TPM, Josh Marshall just posted something similar. Maybe Obama was fucked either way, because of Congress and his predecessor, I guess he didn’t want to break any glass during his first dealings with his caucus so he went for the $800 billion range. He could have gone up to $1 trillion though, I guess, or $999 billion. I think that would have been the real line in the sand.
Napoleon
@Svensker:
No joke. That in part is why I am refinancing my house with a shorter term. At least with that I am “making” 4.375% “after” tax.
Nick
@Alex S.: I forget who said it this morning, but I read someone argue that a bigger stimulus wouldn’t have mattered, because we’d all be here decrying the horrors of 8% unemployment rather than 9.5%
The amount of stimulus needed to bring us down to, say, 5% with like 5%+ sustainable growth would have so astronomical, it would’ve been laughed right off Pennsylvania Avenue. On top of that, it probably wouldn’t have ben fiscally viable, ballooning the deficit so fast, so quickly, we’d have a debt crisis.
I suspect that in the end Obama, Pelosi and this Democratic majority are going to be seen as tragic figures, thrusted into a political climate where they couldn’t possibly win, forced by a toxic political climate, an irresponsible media, and forces beyond their control like Euro issues and the fiscal situation they inherited, to sacrifice everything just to get something done to improve the lives of at least a few people.
Nick
@Alex S.:
Keep in min too that as an effect of the primaries and general elections, a lot of the most powerful members of the caucus, from Baucus to Bayh, Nelson, Lincoln, Lieberman and Landrieu had no loyalty to him as a person, just to the party elites and political realities in their respective states.
gene108
@Napoleon:
Why would international companies want to invest in the U.S., if the basic feeling is the U.S. government will screw businesses?
I’ve heard that too, but I’m trying to be an optimist about human nature and think people will be looking beyond their own self interests, but I guess broad minded people aren’t the ones who rise to the top in corporations.
Sad thing is the people I know in NYC financial firms are socially liberal. They don’t care about gay marriage, abortion, etc. They may not go door-to-door working for those rights, but they aren’t going to stop them. They aren’t against Social Security, unemployment insurance and other social safety nets.
Unfortunately the people, who they think would give them a business environment to thrive in, Republicans, do want to dismantle social safety nets and are very culturally conservative.
Basically they want Bill Clinton back. Someone who made government work efficiently and kept the country’s finances in order.
I just don’t see the Democratic base or the Republican base ever going for someone they perceive to be in the ideological center again. President Obama got a lot of liberal hopes up, especially with his initial opposition to the war in Iraq, even though he was always relatively centrist.
gene108
If they can reassure business that they won’t keep passing new regulations or at least what’s left on the agenda, I think some of the economic issues will unwind by themselves.
There was a massive response by the government to the economic crisis, whether it was the stimulus, the home buyers credit, TARP, cash for clunkers, the Fed’s policies, etc.
Right now businesses are stable. They just need to know what to expect.
I think there’s a ton of misinformation out there on all sides. The indignation about foreign operations of U.S. based companies not paying domestic taxes isn’t about cheating and breaking the rules. Do you really think GM’s Chinese operations (which is their main area for growth and subsidies the struggling U.S. operations) aren’t paying taxes to China? I don’t. Why should a business with overseas operations be taxed twice for having the “privilege” to keep their headquarters in the U.S.?
Yet as noise about foreign tax “loopholes” keeps being bandied about businesses get agitated.
The situation now really is fixable. The Administration and the Democrats in Congress need to lay out what they are going to do, so businesses know what to expect, then the economy will start growing at a faster pace.
Trying to remake this country like FDR and the New Deal did probably isn’t as warranted, because many of the problems faced in those days have already been addressed by FDR and the New Deal and subsequent Administrations.
Nick
@gene108: So who blinks first, the Democratic base or the Republican base?
I’ve always said that progressives gave in first because they actually believe in working for the good of the country, and for the good of the country, they’re willing to compromise some of their agenda to get something passed that works for people. They were always willing to be the ones who would put country before party. They were the bigger men in the room.
I don’t know if that’s true anymore.
Nick
@gene108:
and what’s the base supposed to say? I mean, honestly, if that’s true and the economic issues unwind by themselves, it doesn’t matter because like Clinton, Democrats can win without the base being excited when the economy is good and Republicans are batshit crazy, but as a progressive myself, are you telling us that we have to sacrifice everything we believe in, just throw it all away, because business leaders and corporations are holding the country hostage?
Because that’s what I’ve suspected all along, but it still makes me angry and makes me feel we need to really go French Revolution on the aristocracy now.
Corner Stone
@gene108:
This is nonsensical in the extreme.
Any reform, regulation, change, etc will take many months to craft, more time to pass, and years to fully come into effect.
for HCR a lot of it is 2014 and for FinReg “many of the law’s provisions will not take effect for at least a year as regulators scramble to write new rules and implement them.”
The idea that large businesses are scared of what’s coming down the pipe is a laughable excuse they trot out for right wing talking points. Anyone who believes this is the actual way MNC’s make business decisions is being played.
Corner Stone
@Nick:
What are you Nick? A liberal or a progressive? Or a liberal progressive? Or do the two terms have no meaning for you?
Because you keep using them indiscriminately to describe yourself and they are starting to have no meaning for me.
Brachiator
@Nick:
Good point. Since the stimulus has already been tried, there ain’t much point in arguing about what might have been. It might even be that the stimulus, whatever its size, has done about all that it could do, i.e., keep us from plunging into a depression.
There have also been good points made here that companies are behaving as expected in holding onto their earnings. However, this also tends to refute once again the lame GOP fantasy that tax cuts and deregulation magically induce companies to spend and hire.
The NYT article and comments by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich point out the degree to which we may be seeing a long term jobless recovery. Companies can pare down inventories to the bone and squeeze productivity from remaining workers without new hiring, without raising wages, and without increasing their own spending, and still eke out acceptable profits. From a recent Reich blog:
Meanwhile, I still believe that one weakness in the Obama Administration approach is its over-reliance on the Treasury Department in directing overall economic policy. Geithner and his crew are more comfortable with macroeconomics and with stabilizing financial markets, and they have their hands full in fleshing out new regulatory policies (and strangely they have a major role in administering the health care plan), but they are woefully unimaginative when it comes to new ideas about stimulating the economy.
I’m sorry to see Christina Romer go, but I would like to see new secretaries of Commerce and Labor (I thought Locke would be more forceful at Commerce and hoped that Solis would offer something at Labor), and more of a stick than carrots from Treasury in getting banks to lend more.
gene108
@Nick:
I think there are two separate issues at play, which are getting conflated together. The primary economic goal of liberals is to stop the economic instability felt by the middle class. The goal of the Democrats in Congress seems to pass a bunch of laws changing business regulations, which won’t have a direct impact on most Americans.
Health care reform may play a part in this, but that depends what insurance gets offered on the exchanges for people, who can’t get employer based coverage and how the caps on deductibles effect prices on low cost plans.
Other proposed or enacted laws, such as carbon emission cap and trade to financial regulations, won’t have a direct impact on the middle class, but will indirectly effect us because of the impact on businesses.
Businesses are buckling at cap-and-trade legislation for carbon emissions and are spending most of their creative energy on how to game the new financial regulations. Liberals are pissed because more isn’t being done for the poor and middle class.
What’s a liberal to do? Tell the government to relax sweeping business regulations, such as energy policy and focus on ways to invest in other areas such as retraining job skills, making college more affodable, etc.
I don’t see it as an either-or situation, but rather a matter of what problem to tackle first for the best results.
Good article, says what I want to say better than I can. Read the whole thing. I’ve only posted part of it:
Seventy four years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of Barack Obama’s heroes, came as close as any US president to declaring war on America’s business leaders. “We know now that government by organised money is just as dangerous as government by organised mob,” thundered FDR. “They are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.”
Things are not quite that bad for Mr Obama – nor are they ever likely to be. Indeed, relations are perhaps less bad than some have recently portrayed. But for a president who just 18 months ago was helped to office by the largest ever war chest, including record donations from Wall Street’s denizens of “organised money”, the souring has still been pronounced.
Nor has the disaffection been confined to the financial sector, which is switching loyalties to a Republican party that promises to repeal the financial re-regulation bill Mr Obama will sign into law next week. From metal-bashing to telecommunications, business leaders have been joining the chorus of those who believe the president is “anti-business”.
Pointing to the rhetoric on “corporate greed” Mr Obama has deployed against Wall Street, health insurers and the oil industry – the sectors the White House has sought to overhaul with big regulatory bills, two of them successfully – the US Chamber of Commerce has accused him of “demonising” the private sector.
In the past few weeks the Chamber has been joined by less partisan outfits, such as the Business Roundtable, which represents largest companies. BRT member Jeff Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, told a private dinner party in Rome this month: “[The US is] a pathetic exporter … we have to become an industrial powerhouse again but you don’t do this when government and entrepreneurs are not in synch.”
Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of mobile phone operator Verizon and BRT head, last month accused Mr Obama of fuelling unemployment by loading regulations on businesses. “We have reached a point where the negative effects of these policies are simply too significant to ignore,” he said.
Even those drafted into joining White House initiatives – such as Jim McNerney, CEO of aircraft-maker Boeing, head of the drive to double US exports within five years – have taken their disquiet public. Speaking for many in the private sector, he says Mr Obama is doing too little to revive trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, let alone the stalled Doha round of world trade talks.
“The Obama administration, in my view, is not moving fast enough,” he said in a recent speech. “As we talk about pushing exports – which we’re going to do – you can’t do that without a framework that gives both [countries] a chance to win in this game of comparative advantage.”
The complaints against Mr Obama can be divided into three. First, he is loading too many regulations on to a weather-beaten private sector. Of these, the vast, complex health and capital markets bills top the list. Partly because of frenetic lobbying by the Chamber and others, the cap-and-trade climate change bill that passed the House of Representatives last year looks unlikely to pass the Senate.
Business leaders say the health and Wall Street reforms have created huge uncertainty since they will generate hundreds of federal rules, which will affect how companies operate. They cite this uncertainty as the explanation for why there is a record $1,800bn in cash sitting uninvested in US corporate treasuries.
As Keith Van Scotter, owner of Lincoln Paper and Tissue, a small Maine-based business, says: “Till we figure out what is happening with this humungous government bureaucracy it is difficult to get too optimistic and say: ‘I want to expand.’”
Second, they worry about rising taxes. In addition to fees imposed by the big reform bills, they point to plans to reverse George W. Bush’s tax cuts on those earning over $200,000 a year, which would push dividend taxes to levels not seen since the early Clinton years.
There is anger, too, about moves to end tax deferral provisions on worldwide earnings, which lessens the tax bills of US multinationals, even though almost every other developed economy maintains a territorial regime where companies are taxed only on their domestic revenue. Doug Oberhelman, CEO of Caterpillar, the biggest maker of earthmoving equipment, says the US is also going in the opposite direction to others on overall tax rates.
“When I started at Caterpillar in 1975, the US had the lowest tax at 35 per cent. Japan was at 60 per cent, Germany was at 65 per cent,” Mr Oberhelman said in a recent interview. “Now everyone else is lower than us. I’m worried about what that means for our manufacturing base.”
Finally, business groups complain that the administration lacks anyone with a business background. Apart from Valerie Jarrett, the close friend and adviser who once headed a Chicago property company, Mr Obama leans heavily on Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, who has always been in public service; and on Lawrence Summers, who, barring a short stint advising a hedge fund, has always been either an academic or a public official. “It is not that they are hostile towards us – in fact they’re very welcoming,” says a senior business lobbyist. “But they just don’t seem to get how businesses operate.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1c91b182-911f-11df-b297-00144feab49a.html
celticdragonchick
McMegan seems to be coming around to the notion that maybe unemployment needs extensions.
Her commitariat doesn’t seem to agree. She isn’t showing sufficient Galty spirit.
Flugelhorn
Wait a second. On the last EveryBusinessOwner/CEOInAmericaConferenceCall I was on, I don’t remember colluding to sit on my assets and destroy the economy so Obama would lose in 2012. I must have been sick that day.
Nick
@Flugelhorn: Do those conference calls happen often?
Brachiator
@gene108:
You do realize, don’t you, that this quote means the opposite of what you say it does.
The oligarchs hated FDR and declared war on his policies. He was reacting to their hatred, not initiating a war against them. Let’s put your quote in the fuller context of the 1936 presidential campaign:
In other words, FDR was one of America’s heroes, not just the special hero of our Stealth Muslim Kenyan president.
What is this, National Historical Revisionism Day?
And let’s see, what else? Oh yes,
In other words, Obama is not moving fast enough, but he’s moving too fast and business leaders are stupid and can’t read but they can lobby frantically but are dissatisfied with the results they are getting.
It’s not like the good old days when they got to write the laws compliantly folded into public policy by Bush and Cheney, and when they could count on do-nothing regulatory agencies that turned a blind eye to their excesses and wrongdoing.
gbear
John, if you put that on a t-shirt and sell it at The Tunch Store, I promise to buy one of every color.
gene108
Eh…don’t know about that…this ain’t the 1930’s…
The battles being fought are a lot different than they were in the 1930’s. You didn’t have shoot outs between unions on strike and law enforcement 5 years before President Obama ran for office. If I remember there was a big shoot out between West Virginia miners, on strike, and local law enforcement in 1927.
Here’s where the rub is. There are so many agendas, which over lap a bit here and there that agreeing to work with one group, will get you pulled into stuff you either don’t care about or want to still remain law.
People in finance want environmental protections in place, so they can drink their tap water, for example, though there are political ideologues who want to drop all government regulations and would give the finance folks what they want on financial regulations and use finances support to curb environmental laws.
The whole issue on the economy is getting very complicated with divergent views on macroeconomic problems, like the lack of demand, versus microeconomic problems like how regulations will effect businesses.
I personally think serious people who matter should use the powerful healing power of hugs. Get everyone body in a room together and start off by hugging each other. With the good mojo flowing, maybe some common ground could be hashed out.
Corner Stone
@Nick:
from TPM
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
This isn’t meant to be glib or anything, this is straight up. Nick, you’re a piece of shit. You’re just an awful piece of shit.
You spend all day crying about how your family doesn’t respect your jobless ass, and then you’re somehow ok with millions of families forever ruined just because “The Internet Left is unappreciative and whines too much.” Liberals were right, we will continue to be right, and those policymakers who disregard our economic prescriptions will inevitably receive their historical comeuppance. They always do. Nationwide unemployment will never sniff 5% in Obama’s assuredly accomplished remaining six years. Millions of people will never see a full time job again in their lives. It didn’t have to be this way. But hey, those libruls sure are irrational in their economic standards…
Obama isn’t a martyr. He didn’t “inherit” anything. He spent hundreds of thousands of man hours and hundreds of millions of dollars to get himself ELECTED by a majority of this country’s voters. He wanted this job with whole heart. This is that job.
Brachiator
@gene108:
In a sane world, citizens would have to be restrained from burning down the mansions of the financial weasels who wrecked the financial system and are still posting big bonuses. And instead of arguments about regulation vs deregulation, the Congress would be debating what might be the most appropriate jail sentence for some of these CEOs.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw: I have a job, and i’ve spent the better part of the last few years trying to convice my family and friends and not everyone whose unemployment is like me. To the point where I’ve been called the most horrondous things and been told I should be killed by terrorists or that I was shitting all over my grandfather who fought communists (even though he never actually did)
So…go fuck yourself, k?
oh and…
Except for a $1 trillion deficit, two wars, an unpopular bank bailout and a country that probably hasn’t been so partisan since the Civil War. All of which are being laid upon his lap
Yes, he is, in fact, a martyr.
Bob Loblaw
1. Apparently, you have declined to retract or clarify your stance that 1.5% of all working adults deserve to be unemployed in furtherance of liberal marginalization in this country’s politics. Natch.
2. Which one of those was unknown in 2007-08? Just out curiosity. Which problem was so “unexpected?” (That word, of course, being the defining mantra for this generation.) I really do remember some sort of election process that was devoted to all of these “unexpected” little issues that crop up now and then. I even recall voting in such a process. Your either accusing Obama and his staff of incompetence or complete naivete. I fail to see how this is a position of strength.
I’d be thrilled to hear what almighty sacrifice Obama’s had to make personally in all this that makes him such a martyr, but points 1 and 2 are more pressing.
Corner Stone
@Bob Loblaw:
Co-sign.