The Summer of Recovery Ends, Epic Fail Fall Begins

[GG]

Summer began on such a hopeful note. Vice President Biden was trotted out of seclusion to announce in January "you're going to see, come the spring, net increase in jobs every month." Certain he'd not mislead us, we waited full of optimism only to see our hopes dashed on the audacity of dopes.

Looking back on it that line will prove as memorable as the promise that once the voters saw ObamaCare and read it (unlike the solons who passed it) they'd really love it.

The President took one small stop between his sixth summer vacation of the year and a return to the Oval Office -- New Orleans, where his critics claimed he tried to revive his claim that he wasn't G.W. Actually, if you study the photos of his trip there, you'll see that he was just doing a little advance advertising for the September 7 Judith Jamieson tribute at the White House.  She, as you may recall, is artistic director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, and one of her most famous dances is "Wade in the Water", a lyric ballet she performs with an umbrella held high above the water.

That bit of heavy lifting over, the President returned to the Oval Office that had just been redone into what appears to be a suburban TV room to the tune of $800,000. Brown cotton covered comfy sofas and a new cocktail table, which appears to be something covered in contact paper, but which we are told is walnut and mica. I held my breath when I heard the rug had been redesigned as well. I feared our new seal would be a leftward facing capon clasping arugula, but it was tasteful even if the bumper sticker like quotes encircling it misattributed to Martin Luther King, something someone else had written.

Anyway, the big guy made it home just as the chairman of his council of economic advisers, Christina Romer, was leaving to return to academia where people apparently are far less demanding about actual results. She confessed she didn't now what had gone wrong, why things were so bad and why they are proving so hard to correct. Contrary to Vice President Biden's chirpy prediction, over 4 million American jobs were lost in a year and a half, 350,000 alone in June and July of recovery summer.

Read More:  http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/the_summer_of_recovery_ends_ep.html

[GG]

Ok, don't get all exercised................. tongue in cheek kind of article. Interesting to read, grain of truth here and there. 

[Hoss]

This isn't a dig on you per se, but why do you respond to your own posts no more than five minutes after you post them?

Just curious, and a pattern I've been noticing.  You haven't been going to 'Guido's school of forum posting and how to make friends', have you?

[GG]

Uh?  I don't know what you are talking about? 

I post them, then the dog wants out.   Then the timer dings and it's time to turn the steaks and corn on the grill. 

Then it's time for another beer.   

What does 5 minutes later have to do with anything?   

Have you heard of multi-tasking?

[Hoss]

Uh?  I don't know what you are talking about?  

I post them, then the dog wants out.   Then the timer dings and it's time to turn the steaks and corn on the grill.  

Then it's time for another beer.  

What does 5 minutes later have to do with anything?  

Have you heard of multi-tasking?

Uh, yes, do it at work x20.

I just wonder why you don't include it in your original post (via the 'edit' function).

Lighten up, Francis..sheesh.

[RecycleMichael]

I sometimes post a news story in a complete post, then comment on it directly afterward. I don't know if it takes me five minutes to post the second one, but it probably does.

I did not know that it was odd posting behavior. But then I don't have a real good sense of what is odd to others.

[Hoss]

I sometimes post a news story in a complete post, then comment on it directly afterward. I don't know if it takes me five minutes to post the second one, but it probably does.

I did not know that it was odd posting behavior. But then I don't have a real good sense of what is odd to others.

And in many forums I moderate, posting an entire web article will get you the internet version of 'stoned', because I'll remove the content.  I've had two or three publishers in my day threaten with the C & D.

But you can also comment on the piece by using a separator.  I just think responding to your own post makes it feel like a 'bump', if you know what I'm talking about.

To shorten it, RM, it's usually considered by most, bad forum etiquette.  But I'm not the mod on here, so no harm no foul.  I was just curious and was being a little turd about it; I think he took me a little too seriously.  Maybe one too many Marshalls.



Come to think of it, there's no such thing as 'one too many Marshall's'....

[we vs us]

Re: the article . . .

Yeah, they underestimated the depth of the Recession and got into cheerleading too early.  That's life, unfortunately.  I don't mean that to minimize the national pain we're still feeling, but only to emphasize that the Administration's fix isn't a scalpel.  It's a sledgehammer, and it had to be swung a year ago. 

A question worth asking: if this swing of the sledgehammer wasn't enough (as swung in 2009), did we have enough political strength in 2009 to swing the thing harder?

Mindless partisans tend to think that, because the economy isn't exploding forward in the time frame advertised, it nullifies the entire idea of Keynesian economics.  That's yet another failure of rightie logic (but a success of rightie rhetoric).  Most economists agree that the stimulus (which is, after all, Keynesian economics in action) saved us from a full fledged Depression, and actually has put us on the growth trajectory -- however weak -- that we're currently on.

There's a lot of righteous anger on the conservative side of the fence about how long the recovery is taking, and the amount of economic destruction we're surrounded by, including the expanding deficit, but there's been virtually nothing substantial from that part of the ideological spectrum about how to fix the economy as it currently stands.  Given that many corporations have the money to hire but aren't, what's to be done?  Given that Obama and the Democrats have favored and pushed through this traditional Keynesian stimulus, what's the alternative? More tax breaks?  How do we square that with deficit reduction, when every time we reduce taxes we have to make a corresponding cut? 

This is a well written article, but nothing can really obscure the empty center of its argument.  There're a lot of gotcha passages but it's all just tarted-up Hannity.  I have to ask:  if you didn't want this, what did you want? 

[Red Arrow]

Yeah, they underestimated the depth of the Recession and got into cheerleading too early. 

Obama Administration's "Mission Accomplished"

[we vs us]

Obama Administration's "Mission Accomplished"

Well, sorta.  On one level, sure.  On a whole lot of other levels, not in the least.

[nathanm]

This is one subject on which I am pretty far from the Administration on. Their tepid Keynesian-lite original stimulus (over a third of it tax cuts) has soured the mood even further for the spending we need. Whether they were ideologically opposed to something larger, thought they couldn't get something bigger through Congress, or just didn't realize that the severe contraction in state budgets would negate most of its effect, it was too small. It did some good, but not nearly what they said it would.

On the bright side, if the Democrats can get the small business package through and the $50 billion in transportation spending for next year there will be some good done, although it probably won't be enough to create any kind of recovery on its own. My hope is that if the small business loans package makes it, more private dollars will move with it. The velocity of money is way down, which has been exacerbating everything else.

It's unfortunate that there's a large bloc of people in this country who haven't really been impacted much by the economic situation. I read the other day that among degreed professionals, the unemployment rate is only about 6 or 6 and a half percent. Construction workers? Over 15. Under 25s? Even higher. While we're all aware on some level of the broader situation, I think that among the politically-active set there's not as much of a perception of urgency.

Well, except for the gold bugs and those who are counterfactually claiming that Obama has been pursuing anything but a moderate agenda. Those folks have quite a sense of urgency, just about the completely wrong things.

Either way, Summers and Geithner need to go away. Things tend to work better when the people in charge actually believe in what they're doing.

I think we should give ourselves a big old Keynesian push, and if that fails, think up something different. The trickle down bullshit the Republicans are peddling and the neoliberal bullshit most of the Democrats were peddling prior to the meltdown have both been pretty well debunked at this point. Markets don't self-regulate and tax cuts in an already low tax environment aren't stimulative. If Keynesian intervention fails, the last thing we need is a repeat of previous mistakes. I hope someone out there is thinking up a completely different solution, because we may end up needing it.

Our only other option is to accept 10% unemployment as the new normal and just learn to deal. Not a pleasant scenario, to be sure.

(Well, there are other options, like mandating shorter work weeks, thus redistributing some pay from the employed to the unemployed, but that's not much of an option)

[we vs us]

Good post, but this:

. . . The trickle down bullshit the Republicans are peddling and the neoliberal bullshit most of the Democrats were peddling prior to the meltdown have both been pretty well debunked at this point.

isn't correct. 

Nothing has been proven to anyone.  All the old rhetorical and ideological beliefs are still in place, and while the facts have aligned in your direction, they are purely secondary.  A generation of conservatives rely absolutely on trickle-down working for their belief system to function.  It's an ineluctable part of Reaganism, and since Reagan is the end-all be-all of modern conservatism, there's no universe in which our economy can function -- while still remaining "American" -- without trickle-down being in effect. 

But in any event, there's no further stimulus coming, no matter what Obama proposes.  There's not enough time and not enough spine to get the lame duck Democrats to act.  Come November, we'll not only have nothing coming down the pipeline whatsoever, we'll also have a smile-ton of investigations to wade through to actually enact bills. IMO, we're looking down the barrel of two years of total congressional paralysis.  Some people will argue that this is good for the Republic but in actuality only the most nihilistic of our fellow citizens believe that.    Especially now, when we need guidance, and governance. 

/blah

[nathanm]

But in any event, there's no further stimulus coming, no matter what Obama proposes.  There's not enough time and not enough spine to get the lame duck Democrats to act.  Come November, we'll not only have nothing coming down the pipeline whatsoever, we'll also have a smile-ton of investigations to wade through to actually enact bills. IMO, we're looking down the barrel of two years of total congressional paralysis.  Some people will argue that this is good for the Republic but in actuality only the most nihilistic of our fellow citizens believe that.    Especially now, when we need guidance, and governance. 

/blah

I think you are confusing facts with opinion. It has been proven, but nobody wants to believe it. That doesn't make the facts any less factual, it just makes them unlikely to be acted upon. Neoliberalism sounds great. Make the self-regulating market work for us and combine it with a strong social safety net to help curb its excesses. Too bad that particular flavor failed to work just as much as the trickling down didn't happen.

You're probably completely correct that there will be no more stimulus. God forbid we enact the two to three year program it would take for it to work. It's too expensive, don't you know? That's false economy, though. Reaganites believe with all their hearts that tax cuts pay for themselves. Keynesianism has been shown to actually pay for itself. The increased economic activity leads to increased tax receipts and a higher GDP. (One must also keep in mind that around 40% or so of any government spending is already paid for from the outset, in that it will come back in the form of taxes)

I read last night that Obama is keen on the road package being paid for with offsetting tax loophole closures. Sounds like a good way to do no good at all..

[we vs us]

I think you are confusing facts with opinion.  It has been proven, but nobody wants to believe it.

And that's actually my point.  The GOP platform for these midterms -- what platform there is -- is all about being pissed off and all about ignoring facts.

[nathanm]

And that's actually my point.  The GOP platform for these midterms -- what platform there is -- is all about being pissed off and all about ignoring facts.

Sorry, I missed that somehow. I do agree with you on that, though. From ignoring the past failures of economic policies to attempting to lay blame on Obama for the financial crisis and so-called debt explosion (which isn't really that much of an explosion unless you think that the banks will go under and the new GM is about to fail on the eve of its IPO) to blaming furriners for the balance of our difficulties, I get the sense that a large part of the electorate isn't interested in facts, instead preferring to wrap themselves in the comfort blanket of Presidents past.

Edited to add: wow, that's quite the run on sentence. I'll leave it there for its pure impressiveness.