"The most economically incompetent administration since the Great Depression"

[Dementia_Madness]

http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2010/08/10/the_7_worst_presidents_of_the_last_hundred_years

A look at the worst Presidents of the last hundred years from a conservative perspective.

[NCVol]

However, Obama's massive expansion of spending and government for domestic purposes is not only unique in American history; it came at the worst possible moment. At a time when there were genuine concerns in America and across the world that our country no longer has the intention or even the capability of paying off our debt, Barack Obama massively increased spending under the auspices of fighting a short term recession. In this case, the cure is almost certainly worse than the disease. Could America default on her debts because of what Obama is doing? Absolutely. Could this spending be the reason future generations of Americans aren't as prosperous as their parents? Certainly. Is it possible that we're literally experiencing the turning point that will take America from super power to economic basket case? Yes. This country is now facing its greatest moment of risk since World War II and it’s an entirely self-inflicted wound.

Well, that's so full of stupid it's hard to know where to start.  

The bond markets are so worried about U.S. default on their debt that demand for these default-risk Treasury bonds has SKYROCKETED, and the price paid investors for holding these risky assets is the lowest in DECADES.  As we speak, a 30 year bond yields 3.98%.  Yeah, the bond markets are scared that there will be default, which is why they're falling over themselves trying to buy those things.  

"Short term recession."  That's actually insane or a lie of just monumental proportions.  When Obama took office, there were 750,000 people per MONTH losing their job, the entire world financial system was in freefall, we are in the midst of a great unwind of a debt bubble that can only be compared to the Great Depression in this country or Japan in the 1990s, housing is still collapsing, leaving millions underwater, and before Obama took office, the Fed began a series of simply unthinkable and unprecedented actions to try to prevent full out financial collapse and a horrific deflationary spiral that would put us on a path to what we saw in the 1930s.  Really only an utter fool or a liar could characterize the economy in January 2009 as a "short term recession." NOT ONE PERSON who has any sense of history or the economy believes this nonsense.  

And he doesn't only have to look here, where Obama has clearly destroyed the economy even before he took office, this idiot should survey the rest of the world, also in a depression and in the midst of unwinding a debt bubble, or has he not heard of Ireland and Greece?  

Finally, if he thinks that we are just now reaching a turning point, clearly he's not looked at the trade imbalance, the current account imbalance, wages for the middle class, jobs growth for the decade ending in 2008, debt levels at the individual and corporate level as of January 2009, the utter destruction of our productive capacity and the hollowing out of the middle class workforce that has been going on for decades.  Does this idiot think China just now became our biggest creditor?  Has he been on a trip to Asia to see the new cities emerging from farmland, the ports that are soon the biggest on the planet.  Where does this dumbshiate think those chinese jobs came from?  Where does he think U.S. wages growth will come from if we have no production and are reduced to service, aka no value added, jobs?  

I can't believe guys like this have a platform.  Seriously, that article will make everyone who reads it dumber.  

[Jeremy Roenick]

Yeah, kind of like the Democrat strategist on GMA this morning I heard actually saying that the economy was "good er... uh improving".  I almost fell off the couch laughing.  George Stephanopoulos had an awkward quiet moment after that comment, and the debating Repulican strategist's (Mary Matalin) eyes bulged out as she fought back a laugh.


Look, the disinformation about the health of our economy and monetary policy is abundant on both sides.  The power brokers know that if the masses woke up to the realization that the empire is broke and the currency is worthless that they're would be politicians and bankers alike swinging from the lamp posts.

There is something terribly wrong in the structure of our economy.  There are several more bubbles that have yet to burst.  And you are correct about the bond market.  The only one word to describe it is "paranoid".

The longer these PR fools preface their economy and jobs stories with phrases like "unexpected downturn", "less than expected", "less than projected" etc. hopefully the sooner the sheeple  will realize they're being fleeced again.

[NCVol]

I agree with all that, which is why I spend so much time talking about Larry "Eight Million Man" Summers.  He effectively blockaded any advice that he didn't like from reaching Obama, and that's Obama's fault too, since he appointed others for a reason, then let them be shut out.  Clinton was just as bad as Bush, maybe more so since he was a democrat supposedly interested in the working class.  The GOP is up front about their loyalties.  All you need to ask is WWTDD - What would Tom Donahue of the National Chamber of Commerce do - and you know where the GOP leadership is on ANY issue. 

I guess economically, I don't see a solution or an end to our crisis, and it is a crisis, until we walk back the "free trade" nonsense, which is in fact heavily tilted trade that has gutted this economy and encouraged the emergence of an exploding manufacturing platform in China and elsewhere.  I just don't see how wages or jobs improve when those activities that add value, namely making things from relatively worthless raw materials into valuable goods, almost all take place elsewhere. The income and wealth charts matter, those that show the gains going ALMOST ENTIRELY to a tiny slice of America, while the middle class stagnates - and this started in the 1970s - because the figures tell us who benefits from current policy and who is getting killed, and who is getting killed are workers and the broader U.S. economy.

I read yesterday that now half of Fortune 500 revenues come from overseas now, so our economy is less and less important to their fortunes than at any time in history.  For them, it's fine to trade an exploding market of 1.4 billion people in China for a flat market here.  Profits are profits, and the big boys increasingly are going to rely less and less on the U.S consumer and more on emerging markets with much more room to grow.  That's fine for stock prices, but at some point we should ask about what's good for the U.S. and actually implement policies that help THIS economy grow.  And a race to the bottom on wages and environmental standards isn't good for the U.S.  And that's the only way to "compete" with China on goods producing jobs. 

[GRAY]

NC, like many on the left, simply can't believe that some have a right to speak...the outrage!

[Jeremy Roenick]

I found the video segment on Hulu here:

Hulu - ABC Good Morning America: What's at Stake on Primary Day?

If you have 4 minutes, you gotta go check that out.  It was Donna Brazile.  I almost felt sorry for her, telling a whopper like that with a straight face.  Notice also she calls it the "Bush Recession" and talks about it in past tense like its over.   Lane

[NCVol]

NC, like many on the left, simply can't believe that some have a right to speak...the outrage!

You're a truly strange individual.  Free speech doesn't mean the right to say nonsense without getting challenged, just a freedom from gubment to prohibit him from speaking that utter garbage. 

He spoke, I exercised my right, granted by Plumber (not Uncle Sam) to post on his private website and call that person a frikcing idiot.  I just can't believe someone so stupid gets, I assume, paid actual money to put out such drivel.  I have no problem with his RIGHT to do it, just the idiocy of paying for it or placing it on a website which I assume isn't interested in placing sheer nonsense on its pages for visitors to read. 

It's interesting that you never actually challenge what I say about the economics issues, just resort to some kind of name calling. 

[One Man Gang]

based on what FL? are the numbers correct or incorrect?

Obviously, DoD is not an "approved" source.

[Just Win]

More debt to enslave our heritage.

"pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest"= Obamonomoics is a scham and they know it.



 

Federal Reserve officials decided to reinvest principal payments on mortgage holdings into long-term Treasury securities, making their first attempt to bolster growth since March 2009 to keep the slowing U.S. economy from relapsing into recession.

“The pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement in Washington. “To help support the economic recovery in a context of price stability, the Committee will keep constant the Federal Reserve’s holdings of securities at their current level.” The Fed retained a commitment to keep its benchmark interest rate close to zero for an “extended period.”

With growth weakening in the second quarter and company job gains in July falling short of estimates, today’s step signals that risks of a downturn have increased enough for the Fed to delay its exit from unprecedented stimulus. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told Congress last month that the Fed was “prepared to take further policy actions as needed.”

The Fed said it will “continue to roll over the Federal Reserve’s holdings of Treasury securities as they mature.” The reinvestment policy applies to agency debt and agency mortgage- backed securities held by the central bank.

The central bank left the overnight interbank lending rate target unchanged in a range of zero to 0.25 percent, where it’s been since December 2008. High unemployment, low inflation and stable price expectations “are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period,” the Fed said, repeating language from every policy meeting since March 2009.

“The pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months,” the FOMC said. The Fed will “continue to monitor the economic outlook and financial developments and will employ its policy tools as necessary to promote economic recovery and price stability.”

U.S. central bankers repeated that inflation is “likely to be subdued for some time.” Prices in June rose 1.4 percent from a year earlier, the third straight month of slowing gains under the Fed’s preferred index, which excludes food and energy costs.

Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig dissented from the decision for the fifth straight meeting.

Fed policy makers, at their last meeting in June, judged that the central bank “would need to consider whether further policy stimulus might become appropriate if the outlook were to worsen appreciably,” according to minutes of the session. Records of today’s meeting will be released Aug. 31.

Bernanke said in an Aug. 2 speech that “we have a considerable way to go to achieve a full recovery in our economy.” Still, he avoided signaling that the central bank would reverse months of reductions in record stimulus and liquidity programs, including the end to $1.7 trillion in purchases of housing debt and Treasuries.

St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said July 29 that while he expects a continued recovery, policy makers should be ready to buy Treasuries if the economy slows further.

The Fed’s last move in favor of easier policy came in March 2009, when policy makers agreed to buy $300 billion of Treasuries and more than double planned mortgage-debt purchases to $1.45 trillion while starting a pledge to keep the benchmark rate close to zero for an “extended period.”

This year the central bank stopped buying assets, raised the rate on direct loans to banks and shut emergency-lending programs for corporations, bond dealers and money-market mutual funds. It’s also developed tools for raising rates with a near- record $2.3 trillion balance sheet.

Today’s decision defied easy prediction after a report Aug. 6 showed U.S. private employers added 71,000 jobs in July, below the 90,000 median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.5 percent. Including government workers, the U.S. lost 131,000 jobs in July, compared with the median estimate of 65,000.

The weak job market has inhibited growth in consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. Such expenditures rose at a 1.6 percent pace last quarter, down from a 1.9 percent rate in the previous three months that was smaller than previously estimated.

“They’re supposed to keep inflation under control, but they’re also supposed to promote full employment,” Christopher Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview before the announcement. “The Fed is starting to worry about hitting that full-employment goal any time in the next three or four years.”

Aeropostale Inc., a retailer to teenagers whose sales rose in July at one-seventh the pace analysts predicted, said changing consumer preferences and a “challenging” retail environment hampered spending. Sales at J.C. Penney Co., a department-store chain, fell 0.6 percent last month.

Still, Bernanke and other officials in recent weeks had maintained their outlook for a pickup in the economy over the next year. Corporate spending on equipment and software jumped at a 22 percent annual rate last quarter.

While weakness in housing and commercial real estate will restrain the recovery, and the job market’s “slow recovery” weighs on consumers, “rising demand from households and businesses should help sustain growth,” Bernanke said in a speech last week in Charleston, South Carolina.

United Parcel Service Inc., the world’s largest package- delivery company, raised its annual profit forecast last month and posted second-quarter earnings that climbed more than analysts estimated on increased demand overseas.

The S&P 500 Index has rebounded 12 percent as of yesterday from its low this year on July 1.

Investors don’t expect the Fed to raise the federal funds rate until late 2011, based on futures contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade.

The housing market has faltered since a federal tax incentive for first-time homebuyers expired in April. Sales of previously owned homes fell 5.1 percent in June from May, housing starts slid to the lowest level in eight months and the 330,000 annual pace of new-home sales was the second-lowest in data going back to 1963 after May’s 267,000 rate.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, an academic group with a committee that marks the start and end of recessions, has yet to announce a date for the end of the downturn that started in December 2007, even after four straight quarters of growth. Some panel members including Stanford University’s Robert Hall and Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard University have said it’s clear the contraction has probably ended.

The Obama unemployment numbers from his Department of Labor

 

[Jeremy Roenick]

Whoopee!  More steroids for the economy.  More wealth creation from thin air at the expense of the tax payer.  You know its bad when the Fed has to buy treasuries.  They can't entice anyone to buy these worthless notes.

[One Man Gang]

Obamanomics explained:

[Just Win]

While weakness in housing and commercial real estate will restrain the recovery, and the job market’s “slow recovery” weighs on consumers, “rising demand from households and businesses should help sustain growth,” Bernanke said in a speech last week in Charleston, South Carolina.

Does anyone actually buy this sort of rot about "sustain growth"?