Friday, March 06, 2009

Obama goes all-in - The Times (UK) "Barack Obama bets the farm in a $4 trillion poker game": "The President believes he can change US politics for a generation.  If he's wrong he could bankrupt the whole country."

Exactly my fear: where is the evidence that this level of government spending had a proof-positive effect on improving this or any economy?  And even (through luck or design) if it does, we're leaving future generations a huge pile of debt, one that will crowd out capital and drag on the economy for decades.

Related - WSJ: "Obama's radicalism is killing the Dow."  Investors don't like what they see.

More - Charles Krauthammer has "The great non-sequitur"

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

on improving this

Because as that chart clearly shows, non-farm unemployment merely dropped from 37% to 21% in five years. That's not even half! But it probably would've plunged to 4% or 5% if not for the New Deal. That FDR, what a loser.

Eric said...

It's pretty obvious that wartime economy is what started driving down unemployment and not the New Deal.

Even so, FDR was responding to a world depression that saw unemployment rates above 20% along with a World War. What is Obama's rationale for the same level of deficit spending other than to send the U.S. on a glide path towards more government control.

Taxes only go up, never down. It's for the children.

Anonymous said...

The current "The New Deal failed!" meme that's jazzing up the rightwing blogosphere is funny to watch. The reasons why it has become the premise du jour in Q1 of the right's Great Freezeout are obvious, both on a tactical and a psychological level.

Let's see if I have my history straight now... FDR's policies had zero effect, but Reagan ended Communism, and GWB will be Truman.

Getting back to the chart, it's obvious that WW2 had a huge effect on employment. It's also obvious that the unemployment rate had already been dramatically slashed before a wartime economy even *existed*. Golly, TWO causes and an effect... how can we ever handle it?

Anonymous said...

Re: stimulus. If we've learned one thing about the market-driven economic clusterf**k, it's that the market must decide how the market is to be treated. It's the only way out!

Anonymous said...

The current "The New Deal failed!" meme that's jazzing up the rightwing blogosphere is funny to watch.

You want to see something really funny, ass-clown? Go look at your 401K.

Ha-ha. That's pretty funny, isn't it?

Anonymous said...

From ass-clown to ass-hat. Anonymous For a Reason has really mastered the gamut of quality humor, from A to A.

Sometimes I wonder how I would react, if everything I valued was slipping away. I wonder which ass-related zinger I'd cling to, to avoid contemplating the wreckage of my worldview? Would it be -munch, -waffle, -goblin, -wipe, -pirate...?

But hey, Anonymous, you're obviously the professional comedian here. Which one would you advise?

Anonymous said...

WSJ: "Obama's radicalism is killing the Dow." Investors don't like what they see.

Nice timing. Really nice timing. The right's winning streak continues.

But what's happened to the market in the past 5 minutes? Because that could tell us EVERYTHING.