Obama destroying the economy

[_moksha]

The stage has been set over many years, the ax is in motion and things will get worse regardless of what we do. Doesn't matter who is in charge. Too many fast and loose policies have made this inevitable. Greed was rampant and now the consequences have arrived. It has been a long time coming. Obama has merely become The Conductor before the final train car plunges over the cliff.

[_JohnStuartMill]

This thread is full of fail.

[_JohnStuartMill]

A financial crisis is the worst time to change the foundations of American capitalism.

The illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. Instead of combining the best policies of past Democratic presidents -- John Kennedy on taxes, Bill Clinton on welfare reform and a balanced budget, for instance -- President Obama is returning to Jimmy Carter's higher taxes and Mr. Clinton's draconian defense drawdown.

Mr. Obama's $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

........

New and expanded refundable tax credits would raise the fraction of taxpayers paying no income taxes to almost 50% from 38%. This is potentially the most pernicious feature of the president's budget, because it would cement a permanent voting majority with no stake in controlling the cost of general government.

Oh I'd say Obama knows what he's doing. It's just not going to be what America needs or wants. Welcome to Venezuela everyone!

Venezuela, really? Obama has instituted price controls, and is calling for the nationalization of all industry?

Incidentally, how is Obama's reluctance to augment the DoD's budget (he's not cutting funds for it, so far as I'm aware) analogous to Venezuela's jingoistic militarism?

I don't think you've thought this through very much.

[_JohnStuartMill]

Oh, and before anyone else makes a idiot identification: Obama's policies /= socialism, or Marxism, or whatever the hell else Rush Limbaugh tells you to believe.

[_asbestosman]

This thread is full of fail.

Just remember, you're in it too now.

[_JohnStuartMill]

This thread is full of fail.

Just remember, you're in it too now.

Hah! Fair point.

[_JohnStuartMill]

Here's an excellent response to that WSJ editorial, by the way:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/ ... about.html

Assuming that the stock market is pretty good at accommodating new information into its pricing (without this position, the conservative economic position would fail outright), it actually looks like the stock market was pretty confident about Obama's stimulus plan.

[_harmony]

What pisses me off is the so-called housing crisis. What crisis? A lot of people who should never hae been given loans in the first place bought houses that were bigger and more expensive than they could afford, and now the working US taxpayer (that would be my husband and I and people like us) who paid their bills on time and lived within their means are now going to have to pay for those idiots' extravagence! Let the banks repossess those homes. Let the chips fall where they fall. Why should my children, my grandchildren, and I have to pay for someone else's stupidity?

Yeah. I'm pissed. In the community where my husband works, as you drive into town, there's 6 huge --HUGE-- homes that look like mansions. They are all owned by minorities who got special government subsidized low rates with balloons. Subsidized by my taxes, by the sweat of my brow.. and now rumor has it that they're about to be refinanced again with government subsidized money. Meanwhile, I live in nothing that even comes close. My taxes are paying for them to live in mansions!

If he'd really wanted to stimlulate this economy, instead of giving money to the banks and the car industry, he'd have given all those trillions (divided by the number of taxpayers, not citizens) to the taxpayers, so they could pay off their debts and have a little extra to spend. Instead, he gave it and is trying to give more to people who squandered the assets of their businesses and drove them to the brink of bankruptcy. What stupidity is that????

[_JohnStuartMill]

What pisses me off is the so-called housing crisis. What crisis? A lot of people who should never hae been given loans in the first place bought houses that were bigger and more expensive than they could afford, and now the working US taxpayer (that would be my husband and I and people like us) who paid their bills on time and lived within their means are now going to have to pay for those idiots' extravagence! Let the banks repossess those homes. Let the chips fall where they fall. Why should my children, my grandchildren, and I have to pay for someone else's stupidity?

Yeah. I'm pissed. In the community where my husband works, as you drive into town, there's 6 huge --HUGE-- homes that look like mansions. They are all owned by minorities who got special government subsidized low rates with balloons. Subsidized by my taxes, by the sweat of my brow.. and now rumor has it that they're about to be refinanced again with government subsidized money. Meanwhile, I live in nothing that even comes close. My taxes are paying for them to live in mansions!

If he'd really wanted to stimlulate this economy, instead of giving money to the banks and the car industry, he'd have given all those trillions (divided by the number of taxpayers, not citizens) to the taxpayers, so they could pay off their debts and have a little extra to spend. Instead, he gave it and is trying to give more to people who squandered the assets of their businesses and drove them to the brink of bankruptcy. What stupidity is that????

It's not a housing crisis so much as it is a credit crisis. I would very much like to leave these people out to dry, but if we did that, there'd be a pretty large probability that the rest of the economy would gum up even more in the interim.

[_antishock8]

This thread is full of fail.

Epic karma.