[excon]

There are several facts that you seem to miss.
Nobody likes a President who whines about stuff being other people's fault. They elected Obama, they expect Obama to take responsibility.

Hello again, El:

Again, you want to pretend that the little teeny chip stack that the dufus left Obama doesn't count. But it does... And, it takes more than 6 months to fix a real broken economy. As a banker, you should KNOW this...

But, when you wear your right wing hat, it covers your bankers eyes... Don't you worry, though. I'll be here to bring you back to reality.

excon

[ETWolverine]

Hello again, El:

Again, you wanna pretend that the little teeny chip stack that the dufus left Obama doesn't count. But it does.... And, it takes more than 6 months to fix a real broken economy. As a banker, you should KNOW this...

But, when you wear your right wing hat, it covers your bankers eyes.... Don't you worry, though. I'll be here to bring you back to reality.

excon

If it takes more than 6 months to fix a $480 billion budget gap, how long is it going to take a $3 trillion budget gap?

[excon]

If it takes more than 6 months to fix a $480 billion budget gap...

Hello again, El:

So, the only problem was a $480 billion budget gap, huh?? That's your story and you're sticking with it? Jeez, El, as a banker, I would have thought that you understood the problem... But, I guess you don't. What is the name of your bank? I want to make sure to avoid it.

excon

[ETWolverine]

Hello again, El:

So, the only problem was a $480 billion budget gap, huh??? That's your story and you're sticking with it? Jeez, El, as a banker, I would have thought that you understood the problem... But, I guess you don't. What is the name of your bank? I wanna make sure to avoid it.

excon

No, the problem is the $3 TRILLION budget deficit.

The recession, however, was caused by the existence of CRA and FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC.

But I don't see how increasing the national deficit 8-fold in a year and then raising taxes and printing more money fixes that problem. Do you?

It's all Bush's fault, right? He didn't create Fannie, Freddie or CRA. He didn't create the $3 trillion deficit. But it's all his fault.

Right. And I'm sure that people are going to continue buying that one at the same time that they are buying the health care bill.

Keep pushing that excuse, though. I'm sure you're winning lots of support for Obama that way.

Elliot

[paraclete]

What you need over there is a good old painting rocks white program, it fixes unemployment, it is cheaper than the current stimulus and you get to tidy the place up. You could extend it to a painting over the graffiti program and get some civic improvement. Only problem is you would probably run out of rocks and buildings to paint so you could convert it to a demolish old buildings program, I know you have lots of those in the right places. What do you do with the rocks when you have painted them white, you build boundary walls with them, very pretty. The demolish old buildings program supplies bricks to the paint rocks white program and the wall building program. See, a little lateral thinking and your unemployment and budget problems are solved

[tomder55]

You joke about that but all you are doing is repeating the parable of the broken windows by Frederic Bastiat. It is a fallacy of course that it brings any economic advantage.
And of course this cash for clunkers program is a 21st century example of that . It give temporary boost to new car dealers while the unintended consequences hurts others.

If we were to extend your example to the construction business we could pay homeowners to bulldoze their old homes with the provision that they use the money to help pay for a new home.

[galveston]

I'm not a banker, but I don't see how the US can start printing monopoly money.

Wouldn't that just drive the rest of the world to drop the dollar and go to something else, the Euro maybe?

What would the effect of that be?

[paraclete]

You joke about that but all you are doing is repeating the parable of the broken windows by Frederic Bastiat. It is a fallacy of course that it brings any economic advantage.
And of course this cash for clunkers program is a 21st century example of that . It give temporary boost to new car dealers while the unintended consequences hurts others.

If we were to extend your example to the construction business we could pay homeowners to bulldoze their old homes with the provision that they use the money to help pay for a new home.

Of course Tom that's why the cash for clunkers program provides a bit of a laugh, it's very much clutching at straws. You see it's hard to see why your legislators would do this yet baulk at providing health care packages.

Our politicians took a different view on the car industry and made sure finance was available to keep things turning over. They didn't actually part with any money which I thought very innovative of them

[paraclete]

I'm not a banker, but I don't see how the US can start printing monopoly money.

Wouldn't that just drive the rest of the world to drop the dollar and go to something else, the Euro maybe?

What would the effect of that be?

you caught on, great pity that those in charge of your treasury have not. This is why China expressed its concern recently, they are virtually underwriting your position at the moment

The effect of the USD no longer being the base currency of international exchange would mean an immediate drop in value as countries switched their holdings. It's unlikely that your treasury could sustain a buying program to keep the value up so immediately a whole lot of things you import become much more expensive and inflation starts to run up the bill for wages and internally produced goods. Of course it could start a revival of your industries as your product is now cheaper for overseas buyers, but wait a minute, you sent those offshore didn't you. Bummer!

if you want to understand take a look at Argentina a few years ago

[450donn]

That is it! We have turned from a producing economy to a consuming economy. And it is unsustainable! We are headed for double digit inflation, and double digit interest on everything we purchase from now on. It has already started with local car dealers touting 9.99% APR car loans. Credit cards are already pushing 25% in many cases. If China stops buying dollars or if the world finally decides that our government is totally bonkers and gets off the dollar as a world currency, it would spell the end of the USA as we know it. That push is already on to change oil to the Euro. That one step alone would spell doom.

[ETWolverine]

450donn is right.

Once again, in its attempts to be "socially conscious" and do its social engineering, the government has again created a situation wherein their actions have unintended consequences.

They created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in order to induce banks to make loans that would make it easier for people to buy homes. They created the Community Reinvestment Act in order to force banks to make loans that they would not normally make in order to make it easier for people to buy homes. These resulted in the economic collapse we saw last year and are still feeling today.

Now, with this cash-for-clunkers law, they have again created an environment in which they are making it easier for people who would not otherwise do so able to buy a new car and gert rid of their gas guzzler. But in doing so, they are inducing the creation of car loans that these people can't really afford, which is the same recipe for disaster that caused the mortgage meltdown.

Once again, social engineering has its unintended consequences.

Elliot

[excon]

Hello again, earl:

I want to correct a little bit of history here. Republicans had total control of the government for 6 of the last 8 years, but when things went wrong, it was the Democrats fault...

Only a fringe right winger would say something that outlandish, and observably WRONG!

excon

[ETWolverine]

Dems have been in control of Congress for the past 3 years. They've had both houses of Congress and the Presidency for the past 8 months.

The Dem Congress passed TARP 1, TARP 2, the Stimulus Bill, the Omnibus Spending Bill. They took over 10 of the top 12 banks in the country, 2 of the top 3 auto makers, the largest insurance company, bailed out their buddies and Goldman Sachs, allowed Lehman to fail, have spent the country into a $3 trillion budget deficit (which was only $480 billion when Bush left office), increased the national debt by 9% this year alone, and are trying to take over your health care system.

But everything going wrong is the fault of George Bush.

Only a partisan hack would make a demonstrably idiotic comment like that.

Elliot

[excon]

Hello again, e:

Let me see, you got the NEW group in charge for 6 MONTHS... and the other group was in charge for 6 YEARS.... But, when things go wrong, it's the NEW guys fault...

Yup. That's right wing logic, OK... Ain't nobody buying it, though.

excon

[ETWolverine]

Hello again, e:

Lemme see, you got the NEW group in charge for 6 MONTHS... and the other group was in charge for 6 YEARS.... But, when things go wrong, it's the NEW guys fault...

Yup. That's right wing logic, ok.... Ain't nobody buying it, though.

excon

Excon, see my edited post above.

You're wrong. Deal with it.

[tomder55]

I want to correct a little bit of history here. Republicans had total control of the government for 6 of the last 8 years, but when things went wrong, it was the Democrats fault...

I want to correct the history further .

Although the Republicans controlled the Presidency for 8 years and the House of Representatives for 6 years until 2006 . In fact; the Democrats controlled the Senate the 1st 2 years of the Bush Administration until 2003(because the Jeffords defection gave the Dems a majority ) .

The Republicans total control of the government was for a 4 year span between 2003-2006 . They never retained enough of a majority to impose their will on the Senate .

[galveston]

No one has disagreed with my assumption that we can't print fiat money, so that leaves just two other things.

Cut spending and/or raise taxes across the board.

There are no signs that Obama has any intentiion of cutting spending. Quite the contrary.

So everyone's taxes will go up seriously.

After all, Obama said it himself. "Words, just words".