The Stimulus Seems to have failed

mhaze said:
Nonsense. You have a basic misunderstanding that I'll be happy to help out with.

Your propaganda chart tries to show that Obama isn't so bad because Bush started lots of costly new programs. But that, to a business manager, is tripe. The question is how much money is available to spend, and that is the only question. If previous CEO put programs in place that today, suck up all available money, then that is the reality to be delt with. In such a case, YOU DON'T CLAIM AN EQUAL RIGHT To SPEND AND CREATE NEW PROGRAMS.

You work within the available budget with the available cash. If you want a new program, you get an old one eliminated and use the savings.

That's not being done.

That's why Obama is a spend thrift. Maybe the entire Washinton DC establishment, but this discussion by your choice is the tired old meme "Bush vs Obama" which is just an attempt to blame it all on Bush.

Darn, those facts.
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And the highlighted is what kills me. Much of that is Bush reaching across the aisle so to speak.
 
Apologies BAC I had completely forgotten about this. I'll have to write up a more detailed response in the morning but right now I wanted to answer something that I see crop up quite a bit amongst right-wingers.

BeAChooser said:
Words are cheap. Clinton said what people wanted to hear. He was a politician. But in the end, Clinton approved the spending that democrat Congresses passed. And thus nothing happened. And that's why GDP remained flat. If he was serious about deficit reduction, he should have vetoed the Deficit Reduction Act of 1993. It was focused on the wrong thing. It increased taxes. And if there is one thing history shows over and over and over, the federal government will spend more than whatever taxes it collects. The notion that Act would reduce the deficit was flawed from the outset. It wasn't until Gingrich and 1995 when Republicans gained control of Congress and cut taxes and spending, that the deficit began to drop. And then Clinton had no choice and was rather preoccupied with keeping himself out of jail. If you think lower spending and less Federal government was EVER Clinton's agenda, you are sadly mistaken. And hence the notion that he favored reducing the deficit is ludicrous. History again proves that was never even in the cards. Not without reducing government spending and doing things that would grow the economy rather than impede it.
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A few things

-- We're talking about the federal deficit not the US GDP which, as they have always been, are two separate things.

-- The tax increases were considerably more modest when compared to those of Reagan or Bush. For that matter it was simply the right time to worry about paying down the US debt, we'd been out of recession for two years and contrary to how you're attempting to spin things the economy was not stagnant in 1993. We'd been seeing unemployment coming down from the '91 recession and decent GDP growth.

It wasn't until Gingrich and 1995 when Republicans gained control of Congress and cut taxes and spending, that the deficit began to drop.
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-- If I didn't know better I'd say this was a bald-faced lie, however I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say you've just never bothered to look up any of this information. The federal deficit had been decreasing since 1992. What's more is apparently there weren't any massive spending schemes from the Democrats as spending had also been going down since 1991. That plus a steady rise of revenues ensured we have a surplus by the end of the Clinton presidency.

Suffice to say none of this supports your narrative, which you never provided any evidence for in the first place. Gingrich did not swoop in and save a stagnant economy from a president only playing at concern for rising deficits, and if they slashed any spending at all it was spending from the previous two Republican administrations.

-- Finally we have this

And then Clinton had no choice and was rather preoccupied with keeping himself out of jail.
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If you have to invent an Occam's Razor violating scenario in the vain attempt to claim Clinton would've been too preoccupied with rape and murdering people who worked for him to notice the Republicans were slashing the spending and tax-hikes he worked so hard to implement then it's a sure-fire bet you're just plain wrong.
 
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Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
Apologies BAC I had completely forgotten about this. I'll have to write up a more detailed response in the morning but right now I wanted to answer something that I see crop up quite a bit amongst right-wingers.



A few things

-- We're talking about the federal deficit not the US GDP which, as they have always been, are two separate things.

-- The tax increases were considerably more modest when compared to those of Reagan or Bush. For that matter it was simply the right time to worry about paying down the US debt, we'd been out of recession for two years and contrary to how you're attempting to spin things the economy was not stagnant in 1993. We'd been seeing unemployment coming down from the '91 recession and decent GDP growth.



-- If I didn't know better I'd say this was a bald-faced lie, however I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say you've just never bothered to look up any of this information. The federal deficit had been decreasing since 1992. What's more is apparently there weren't any massive spending schemes from the Democrats as spending had also been going down since 1991. That plus a steady rise of revenues ensured we have a surplus by the end of the Clinton presidency......
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Duhh....the "peace dividend" was the result of Reagan policies ending the cold war.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/19/opinion/save-the-peace-dividend.html?src=pm
 
Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
We're talking about the federal deficit not the US GDP which, as they have always been, are two separate things.
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You can't separate GDP from a discussion of the debt and deficit, as the national debate about the debt crisis proves. And only those plans that include the effects of taxes on GDP growth are the ones that show any hope of reducing debt as a percent of GDP. And debt as a percent of GDP is the only parameter that really matters in all this discussion. The rest just confuse the issue.

Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
we'd been out of recession for two years
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I think only the blind and highly partisan believe that at this point, kf. We've gone beyond recession. Now we're talking about being in an honest-to-gosh depression.

Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
and contrary to how you're attempting to spin things the economy was not stagnant in 1993.
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I'm sorry, I admit I grew careless in what I wrote (maybe this thread has been going on too long ;)). Careless because what I should have been pointing you to is debt as a percent of GDP. That's the parameter that matters.

I'll grant that in the four years following Clinton's 1993 tax increase, real GDP grew about 3.3% on average per year. In the four years after the 1997 tax cuts, real GDP grew an average of 4.4% annually. See http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/SPECIAL-tax-cuts-1990s-economy-chart-1.jpg . And note which period had the better growth in real wages.

Read on ...

Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
Quote:
It wasn't until Gingrich and 1995 when Republicans gained control of Congress and cut taxes and spending, that the deficit began to drop.

-- If I didn't know better I'd say this was a bald-faced lie, however I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say you've just never bothered to look up any of this information. The federal deficit had been decreasing since 1992.
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Again I was careless. In this case I meant to say debt as a percent of GDP, since that's the only parameter that is really meaningful to talk about here. Here's a chart showing that, http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/feb/deficit/deficit.gif , and as you can see, debt as a percent of GDP didn't really start dropping until after 1995 (more like 1996). After republicans gained control of Congress.
 
BeAChooser said:
You can't separate GDP from a discussion of the debt and deficit, as the national debate about the debt crisis proves.
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Obviously a better economy means higher revenues but my point still stands that the discussion on Clinton had nothing to do with GDP but the deficit, and we seem to have come to an agreement that the economy wasn't stagnant prior to 1995 anyway so it's a moot point.

BeAChooser said:
And debt as a percent of GDP is the only parameter that really matters in all this discussion. The rest just confuse the issue.
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That doesn't even begin to be accurate, the national deficit inevitably becomes debt. The deficit has everything to do with the issue.

BeAChooser said:
I think only the blind and highly partisan believe that at this point, kf. We've gone beyond recession. Now we're talking about being in an honest-to-gosh depression.
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No that's not accurate either, the current downturn looks nothing like the depression despite the analogies individuals may use to make any number of political points, the facts simply don't back that up. The US was out of recession, though I do agree that certain indicators reveal that we may be heading back into recession.

However, all of that is a moot point as I was talking about the recession of 1991 and OBRA-93.

BeAChooser said:
I'm sorry, I admit I grew careless in what I wrote (maybe this thread has been going on too long ;)). Careless because what I should have been pointing you to is debt as a percent of GDP. That's the parameter that matters.
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As I stated above deficit inevitably becomes debt, serious headway can't be made into the national debt until we address the national deficit.

BeAChooser said:
I'll grant that in the four years following Clinton's 1993 tax increase, real GDP grew about 3.3% on average per year. In the four years after the 1997 tax cuts, real GDP grew an average of 4.4% annually. See http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/SPECIAL-tax-cuts-1990s-economy-chart-1.jpg . And note which period had the better growth in real wages.
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I don't deny that growth was better following 1995, I merely note that none of this information supports the narrative you've provided.

BeAChooser said:
Again I was careless. In this case I meant to say debt as a percent of GDP, since that's the only parameter that is really meaningful to talk about here. Here's a chart showing that, http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/feb/deficit/deficit.gif , and as you can see, debt as a percent of GDP didn't really start dropping until after 1995 (more like 1996). After republicans gained control of Congress.
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Yeah, after the deficit had already dropped significantly and we were heading into a budgetary surplus. With a lower national deficit we were able to make headway into the national debt.
 
Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
we seem to have come to an agreement that the economy wasn't stagnant prior to 1995 anyway so it's a moot point.
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But it wasn't growing fast enough to shrink debt as a percent of GDP and that's more than a moot point in this debate. Because we now have to bring down what is an unsustainable debt as a percentage of GDP.

Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
Originally Posted by BeAChooser
And debt as a percent of GDP is the only parameter that really matters in all this discussion. The rest just confuse the issue.

That doesn't even begin to be accurate, the national deficit inevitably becomes debt. The deficit has everything to do with the issue.
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No, it's true. Because they can play games with deficit. And that's what Clinton did. Democrats are always claiming that Clinton achieved a surplus when he did not. Treasury Department data (http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16 ) clearly shows the national debt going up each and every year of Clinton's term. Clinton just shuffled money (much like he shuffled the definition of "is") to hide the still growing national debt and make himself look good. That was so important to him that at one point he claimed he'd achieved a surplus of $230 billion when Treasury Department data shows there was still an $18 billion dollar deficit that year. Here: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus/ .

Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
No that's not accurate either, the current downturn looks nothing like the depression
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Most economists say a depression is a "sustained economic downturn". How prolonged? How deep? Many economists are now beginning to suggest this is a depression. Afterall, we are now 4 years into the downturn with GDP growth remaining far under historical averages and unemployment far above what used to be called full employment. In fact, the *real* unemployment rate now is only a half dozen percent below the level that unemployment reached in the Great Depression, and the unemployed are remaining unemployed just as long. A recent household survey found 22% unemployment so the delta may even be less than that. And I could go on and on with the bad news. The fact that the stock market has gone up for a while is meaningless (the stock market doubled in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression). The fact that GDP growth has been in positive territory is meaningless (it was in positive territory through most of the Great Depression). And just like in the Great Depression, there appears to be no expectation of speedy recovery. The Administation is now warning Americans that 8% unemployment (never mind those who have stopped working or get no unemployment check) will be the new norm. And the "new norm" for GDP growth looks equally dismal. And uncertainty is everywhere. Just like in the Great Depression. Looks like a depression to me. Unless you care to provide a precise definition of the term that most economists agree with. Hmmmmmm?

Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Again I was careless. In this case I meant to say debt as a percent of GDP, since that's the only parameter that is really meaningful to talk about here. Here's a chart showing that, http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/200...it/deficit.gif , and as you can see, debt as a percent of GDP didn't really start dropping until after 1995 (more like 1996). After republicans gained control of Congress.

Yeah, after the deficit had already dropped significantly and we were heading into a budgetary surplus. With a lower national deficit we were able to make headway into the national debt.
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A lower deficit does not reduce national debt unless it is a surplus and arguably there was no surplus during Clinton's administration. A low deficit will help reduce debt as a percent of GDP, provided GDP grows markedly at the same time. But GDP growth is linked to taxes. Lower taxes definitely seem to stimulate GDP growth. Higher taxes seem to curtail it. So shouldn't the conclusion what we should do be obvious?
 
Now here is a foul mouth, ivory tower socialist who is truly, truly Stuck On Stupid, i.e., not able to learn from even her own experiences, much less history:

University of California, Berkeley Professor Christina Romer, formerly chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, appeared on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday night.

… snip …

“The long run budget situation is abysmal,” Romer said. “And it has been abysmal going back at least a decade. So it was never an immediate emergency. And it is something that we absolutely needed to deal with, but we didn’t need to deal with it today, we didn’t need to deal with it a week ago.”

… snip …

Romer said, “The basic idea that if you increase government spending or you cut people’s taxes that stimulates the economy and lowers the unemployment rate, is a very widely accepted idea. It’s in every economics textbook, that’s what we teach our undergraduates, and I certainly try to teach them the truth.

… snip …

Romer said that although the stimulus should have been bigger, it isn’t too late to pass another, larger stimulus now. “What I want is more now,” she said.
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Stupid doesn't even begin to describe leftists like this.
 
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44285105

26 Aug 2011

The U.S. economy grew much slower than previously thought in the second quarter as business inventories and exports were less robust, a government report showed on Friday, although consumer spending was revised up.

Gross domestic product growth rose at annual rate of 1.0 percent the Commerce Department said, a downward revision of its prior estimate of 1.3 percent.
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So … uh … how's that stimulus working? :rolleyes:

Guess they'll be no recovery this summer … either. :mad:

But … hey … Martha's Vineyard certainly is nice this time of year.

Well ... it was until Irene came along to give Obama yet another *excuse* for the dismal performance of his economy. :D
 
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=583026&p=1

According to the revised gross domestic product data released Friday, the nation's economy grew a paltry 1% in the second quarter, after eking out a barely noticeable 0.4% gain in the first.

… snip …

This isn't just slightly bad. It's monumentally bad.

An IBD review of all the post-World War II recessions shows that, on average, it took just over two fiscal quarters for the economy to recover from a downturn and start expanding again.

In contrast, we're eight quarters into the Obama recovery, and the expansion is somewhere off in the distance, with real GDP still $65.5 billion below the pre-recession peak. And if you take into account all the population growth that's occurred over the past two years, we're even further behind.
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Is this the sort of Change you were all hoping for? :p
 
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/41009

None dare call it a recession

August 26, 2011

Under President Obama, there are three phases of economic news: First, the estimate by the experts ahead of the official announcement, second the official announcement (unexpectedly below what experts predicted), and finally, the revision a month later that shows the news was worse. Further revisions come later that show things are even worse.

And so it goes with the economic growth in April, May and June — the second quarter.

From Reuters last month: “The U.S. economy came perilously close to flat-lining in the first quarter and grew at a meager 1.3 percent annual rate in the April-June period as consumer spending barely rose… First-quarter output was sharply revised down to a 0.4 percent pace from a 1.9 percent increase. Economists had expected the economy to expand at a 1.8 percent rate in the second quarter. Fourth-quarter growth was revised to a 2.3 percent rate from 3.1 percent.”
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So can we expect the current 1% GDP growth figure to be revise downward next month, too?
 
Looks like history, once again, is a good teacher...and Obama is working from ignorance (Or perhaps as a Wall street puppet):
A quote from FDR in 1932;

Our basic trouble was not an insufficiency of capital. It was an insufficient distribution of buying power coupled with an over-sufficient speculation in production. While wages rose in many of our industries, they did not as a whole rise proportionately to the reward to capital, and at the same time the purchasing power of other great groups of our population was permitted to shrink. We accumulated such a superabundance of capital that our great bankers were vying with each other, some of them employing questionable methods, in their efforts to lend this capital at home and abroad. I believe that we are at the threshold of a fundamental change in our popular economic thought, that in the future we are going to think less about the producer and more about the consumer. Do what we may have to do to inject life into our ailing economic order, we cannot make it endure for long unless we can bring about a wiser, more equitable distribution of the national income.
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Good-bye era of stimulus, hello era of cuts.

How're you liking it now?
 
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