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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (103450)	10/25/2011 2:52:22 PM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 149317

The Republicans Bear Present UNITARY Responsibility You're not going to like this. I don't care. Let me make this clear in case the title wasn't: The Republican Party bears UNITARY responsibility for what is about to happen to the United States economy and political system. That's right: UNITARY responsibility. It's simple, really: The Constitution requires that all spending bills must originate in The House. Therefore, the overspending, today is the responsibility of THE HOUSE, which has a Republican majority. Yes, it used to have a Democrat majority. Then a Republican one before that. But let's remember how the die was cast here. Gramm-Leach-Bliley. All three sponsors were from which party? Alan Greenspan allowed "sweeps" which were a blatant attempt to evade reserve requirements. Since that was their only purpose *they were intentionally fraudulent edifices. Which political party's President nominated him to The Federal Reserve? Alan Greenspan* was responsible for off-balance-sheeting Medicare and Social Security. *Which party did that again? (Hint: Someone named "Ronald" was the President at that time and appointed that commission.)* Do not take this to indicate that Democrats are not also responsible for the lead-up to this. They are. The fact of the matter is that both major political parties have serially made promises that cannot be kept. This is active fraud upon the public and both parties are guilty of it. In a just society the leaders of both parties would be indicted, tried and imprisoned for attempting to run serial Ponzi Schemes on the public. We do not, obviously, live in a just society and the proof of same is that jackals like Reid and Boehner are free to ravage, er, wander amongst the people of this nation. But that's then, and this is now. NOW we need to cut the federal budget not with a knife or a scalpel, but a chainsaw. Bachmann has said "43%." There were gasps when she uttered those words. Sorry, that's not enough. (Take your heart medication before continuing folks.) Here's the math. Last year (Calendar 2010) we ran a 12% of GDP deficit, $1.7 trillion. This year we are tracking to run about $1.4, but we have three months left. If history repeats as to size it'll come in around $1.4 trillion, which is approximately 9% of GDP. This is within the rough range of 9-12% of the last three years. The last year of Bush's Presidency we ran somewhat over 9% of GDP. Obama has run 11 and 12%, respectively, and this will be ~9-10%, so there's no change in that regard. But withdrawing the deficit spending is not enough because the withdrawal of that money, when it runs through the economy, then produces a (gross) reduction in tax receipts. Figure 1/3rd of that deficit spending ultimately returns to the government in the form of taxes in some form or fashion by the time all of the "turns" those funds made in the economy (e.g. from company making the presidential limo to the folks making the alternator to the folks making the copper wire to the mine pulling the copper out of the ground), and subtract that off as well. So now we need to reduce spending not by $1,700 billion but that plus about another $500 billion for the tax impact, for a total of $2.2 trillion out of $3.7 trillion spent. About $500 billion of our spending at present is interest so this means we have: $3.7 - $2.2 - $0.5 = $1 trillion in total actual federal spending available to us out of an original $3.7 trillion. Were you sitting down when you ran that number? To put this in perspective DOD is $750 billion. You cannot pay for both that and any of the "big 5" entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, TANF/WIC/etc and Unemployment) You can cut DOD by 50% and cover one of the big entitlement programs in full. The other four and everything else in the Government gets zeroed. I know what you're going to say: *That's impossible - it will collapse everything.* Go talk to the Republican Party folks. They allowed this to continue past August with the debt ceiling vote and they've allowed this through passing "continuing resolutions" where they had the ability to stop them in the Senate (since there was no filibuster-proof majority) all the way since George Bush was President. When George Bush was President the gross reduction (in 2007) to address this was about 25%, not 43%. It was still horrific, but not as bad. Nobody from either party is telling the truth. It doesn't matter: Right now responsibility rests with the party that can put a stop to it here, now and today. That party is the Republican Party. This is an exponential series and in 2007 the contraction was about 25%. Now it's up to more than half and if we don't cut this crap out we're going to lose the ability to choose what happens at all. Can we do this "more slowly"? A bit, but not much. Just remember one thing: *So long as the government is running a deficit we're merely extending how long we have before it all blows up - we're not changing the outcome.* Yes, folks, it's that bad. I know people don't want to hear it or believe it, but just because you don't want to believe something does not make it untrue. It just means you're being an Ostrich and if that's a hunter you are sticking your head in the sand to "avoid" dealing with you're about to be turned into dinner.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (103450)	10/25/2011 4:41:04 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 149317

I'll continue to criticize both parties until they change their ways or are replaced by pragmatic people with good ideas. Your criticism has to be pragmatic also. almost all on this recognize that things have been screwed up to some extent. There have been criticism of Obama also on this thread. But it has not been a constant din and criticism for criticism's sake. For example if you go back you will notice that Road Walker and I disagreed on the way Obama involved this country on Libya. But we did not go on and on. We knew we disagreed. We stopped and then moved on. Disagreement is in our blood as Democrats. But we don't let that disagreement make us lose sight of our ultimate goal.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (103450)	10/26/2011 3:23:10 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

It’s Consumer Spending, Stupid By JAMES LIVINGSTON AS an economic historian who has been studying American capitalism for 35 years, I’m going to let you in on the best-kept secret of the last century: private investment — that is, using business profits to increase productivity and output — doesn’t actually drive economic growth. Consumer debt and government spending do. Private investment isn’t even necessary to promote growth. This is, to put it mildly, a controversial claim. Economists will tell you that private business investment causes growth because it pays for the new plant or equipment that creates jobs, improves labor productivity and increases workers’ incomes. As a result, you’ll hear politicians insisting that more incentives for private investors — lower taxes on corporate profits — will lead to faster and better-balanced growth. The general public seems to agree. According to a New York Times/CBS News poll in May, a majority of Americans believe that increased corporate taxes “would discourage American companies from creating jobs.” But history shows that this is wrong. Between 1900 and 2000, real gross domestic product per capita (the output of goods and services per person) grew more than 600 percent. Meanwhile, net business investment declined 70 percent as a share of G.D.P. What’s more, in 1900 almost all investment came from the private sector — from companies, not from government — whereas in 2000, most investment was either from government spending (out of tax revenues) or “residential investment,” which means consumer spending on housing, rather than business expenditure on plants, equipment and labor. In other words, over the course of the last century, net business investment atrophied while G.D.P. per capita increased spectacularly. And the source of that growth? Increased consumer spending, coupled with and amplified by government outlays. The architects of the Reagan revolution tried to reverse these trends as a cure for the stagflation of the 1970s, but couldn’t. In fact, private or business investment kept declining in the ’80s and after. Peter G. Peterson, a former commerce secretary, complained that real growth after 1982 — after President Ronald Reagan cut corporate tax rates — coincided with “by far the weakest net investment effort in our postwar history.” President George W. Bush’s tax cuts had similar effects between 2001 and 2007: real growth in the absence of new investment. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, retained corporate earnings that remain uninvested are now close to 8 percent of G.D.P., a staggering sum in view of the unemployment crisis we face. So corporate profits do not drive economic growth — they’re just restless sums of surplus capital, ready to flood speculative markets at home and abroad. In the 1920s, they inflated the stock market bubble, and then caused the Great Crash. Since the Reagan revolution, these superfluous profits have fed corporate mergers and takeovers, driven the dot-com craze, financed the “shadow banking” system of hedge funds and securitized investment vehicles, fueled monetary meltdowns in every hemisphere and inflated the housing bubble. Why, then, do so many Americans support cutting taxes on corporate profits while insisting that thrift is the cure for what ails the rest of us, as individuals and a nation? Why have the 99 percent looked to the 1 percent for leadership when it comes to our economic future? A big part of the problem is that we doubt the moral worth of consumer culture. Like the abstemious ant who scolds the feckless grasshopper as winter approaches, we think that saving is the right thing to do. Even as we shop with abandon, we feel that if only we could contain our unruly desires, we’d be committing ourselves to a better future. But we’re wrong. Consumer spending is not only the key to economic recovery in the short term; it’s also necessary for balanced growth in the long term. If our goal is to repair our damaged economy, we should bank on consumer culture — and that entails a redistribution of income away from profits toward wages, enabled by tax policy and enforced by government spending. (The increased trade deficit that might result should not deter us, since a large portion of manufactured imports come from American-owned multinational corporations that operate overseas.) We don’t need the traders and the C.E.O.’s and the analysts — the 1 percent — to collect and manage our savings. Instead, we consumers need to save less and spend more in the name of a better future. We don’t need to silence the ant, but we’d better start listening to the grasshopper. James Livingston, a professor of history at Rutgers, is the author of “Against Thrift: Why Consumer Culture Is Good for the Economy, the Environment and Your Soul.”