(02-18-2016 10:03 AM)Max Power Wrote: (02-17-2016 09:09 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: No, Obama did not get "us back on track from the dumpster fire Bush left him."
He kinda did.
No, he really didn’t, and that’s not what that oft-misused graphic shows. First, we have been told repeatedly that employment is a lagging indicator. If so, then what that graphic shows is an economy that turned around before Obama moved into the white house. Even if you don’t allow for that lag, what that graphic shows is an economy that turned around on its own before any of Obama’s policies had time to take effect. Second, the most notable thing about that graph is the sluggishness of the recovery. With the amounts dumped into the economy between government “stimulus” and the Fed, growth should have been white-hot. Considering that historically, when you go into a crash hard you come out hard, growth should have been white-hot. It wasn’t.
And as far as Bush’s creating a dumpster fire that Obama fixed, it’s kind of interesting to compare the economic policies. What did Bush do that caused it? The largest 8-year deficit to that point in our history, the second highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world, and a top individual income tax rate that was among the highest in the developed world. What did Obama do to fix it? Cumulative 8-year deficits roughly twice Bush’s, moving up from second highest to highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, and continuing among the highest top individual income tax rates in the developed world.
Quote:Quote:And Wall Street was never "deregulated"--for example, regulators watched and accepted every move that Bernie Madoff made.
You're equating one instance of negligent oversight on the part of regulators with the systemic risks posed by repealing Glass Steagall so investment banks could grow to be too big to fail and speculate with deposits (1998) and deregulating derivatives so they could bet on the performance of financial instruments (2000). Madoff's Ponzi scheme didn't bring down the economy.
What part of the term, “for example,” do you not comprehend? No, I was not equating one occurrence to systemic risk or blaming the crash on Madoff. I was giving one example (kind of the meaning of “for example”) of the kind of behavior that went on all over the place. The banks and Wall Street were always highly regulated--before, during, and after the crash—and that bought us virtually nothing because the regulators failed to do their job. In fact, the real root cause of the crash—bad home mortgages--probably happened because of bad moves by regulators. Repeal of Glass-Steagall did not cause the problem. Investment banks did not speculate with deposits. Deregulating derivatives did not bring down the economy. Check your dates, both of those occurred under Bill Clinton and not GWB, by the way. So if you are going to blame the crash on those things, then no, GWB clearly did not cause the so-called “dumpster fire.”
But Bill Clinton was a good president. IMO he was a better republican than GWB. And those moves did not cause the crisis. As much as anything, we needed them to modernize our financial system to be competitive in global financial markets.
And the situation regarding investment banks would have been relatively easy to deal with without Glass-Steagall. The popular meme is that it let investment banks and commercial banks merge, therefore exposing commercial bank assets to investment bank risk. But anybody who knows anything about corporate law knows that even if the two activities were both being conducted, you would never set up both in a single corporation. The risks of one were insulated internally from the other by having them in separate subsidiary corporations. So you bail out the commercial bank subsidiaries and tell the investment banking subsidiaries, “Hey, you were big boys, you knew (or should have known) what risks you were taking, and you made a pile of profits for a while. So sayonara.” As my good friend Jim Rogers says, “We saved Wall Street’s Maseratis and let Main Street go to hell.” There was a plan put forth by a number of republican representatives that would have made Main Street whole and let Wall Street pound sand. It was offered as an alternative to TARP, and was basically the founding idea behind the TEA Party (which began as bipartisan opposition to TARP). Had John McCain embraced it, he might have become president. Instead, he said that he knew nothing about economics, and then went out and proved it.
Quote:Quote:NAFTA isn't what's wrong with anything--it's a symptom of US non-competitiveness in the global marketplace, not a cause.
It's a symptom alright. It's a symptom of our politicians being bought by corporations who want to ship jobs overseas and write tax codes in their favor. NAFTA was passed and shortly thereafter the Maytag plant in nearby Galesburg shut down and moved to Mexico. That wasn't a ******* coincidence. Factories like that would still be here if it weren't for NAFTA and permanent normal trade relations with China and corporate apologists like yourself.
Exactly WTF have I said that makes me a corporate apologist? I am totally opposed to shipping jobs overseas. The difference between you and me is that I understand why they do it and therefore what needs to be changed to stop it, whereas you simply regurgitate leftist talking points which advocate the very policies that make the situation worse.
I would appreciate a reasonable explanation how the left can complain that corporations move investment and economic activity and jobs overseas to realize lower costs, lower taxes, and less intrusive regulations, while at the same time advocating higher costs, higher taxes, and more intrusive regulations as the solution. How exactly do you expect that to work?
I am not personally familiar with the details of the Galesburg plant you reference, but I am generally familiar with hundreds of similar cases. Those moves take years to plan, and are vetted from every possible angle. If a decision was announced shortly after NAFTA was passed, then obviously the decision to leave Galesburg had been made long ago, and the impact of NAFTA was to make Mexico more attractive than maybe any of a hundred other places that were under consideration. But don’t kid yourself, and don’t try to BS me, into believing that plant would still be here if it weren’t for NAFTA or other free trade agreements.
There is one thing that we could do in a hurry that would positively impact our balance of trade and future plant locations. Impose a consumption tax. If we had a 15% consumption tax, that would allow us to charge 15% on all imports without it counting as a tariff (something that our “free trade” partners do to us), and perhaps more importantly for these purposes, rebating the embedded consumption tax (probably around 10-12%) on all exports without it counting as an impermissible trade subsidy (something else that our “free trade” partners do to us). That would shift a number of jobs back to the US over time, because it would shift the factors that are considered in such decisions.
Quote:Quote:And the second Iraq War was on Bush, but the third one now building is on Obama.
The whole region would be far better off if Bush did nothing. Obama may not be doing the best job cleaning up Bush's mess but that doesn't mean he owns everything. This can all be traced back to Bush's invasion, Rumsfeld disbanding the Iraqi army (many of whom eventually joined ISIS), Bush supporting a hardline Shia leader who alienated the Sunnis and Kurds, and his decision to sign a SOFA before leaving office. LOL at the ridiculous attempt to pin everything still going on on Obama. At least we're not getting flag draped coffins shipped back every day. For that I'm a little grateful.
I will not contest any statement that GWB screwed things up, but that does not mean that Obama has done anything right. Basically GWB screwed it up, and Obama is screwing it up worse. And we’re still getting plenty of flag draped coffins coming home. I believe we have actually had more in total under Obama than GWB. We simply don’t understand the region, and our attempts to intervene are misguided and do more harm than good as a result.
I find it interesting how much leftists like to defend Obama by comparing him to Bush. On the one had you say that Bush was the worst president ever (and I agree that he was a bad one), while on the other hand you say, “At least Obama is better than Bush.” If your highest praise is that he’s marginally better than the worst ever, then he’s pretty bad too. And I don’t necessarily buy the “marginally better” part of that.