Dan Lynch

Recovering journalist

The Demand Factor



More than anything else, consumer demand is what creates jobs. The problem is that people aren’t buying. Consumer confidence went up slightly in the first half of July, but it’s still only two-thirds of what it was in 1985 and remains at historically low levels. Vast numbers of people are paying down debt and/or hoarding every dime they can lay their hands on.

Why? Because they’re justly terrified of some personal disaster – the loss of a job, a health problem they can’t afford, a foreclosure, even a brand new recession. And very little of what they see in this campaign is designed to reassure them about anything.

New York is a solid Democratic state, so few New Yorkers are seeing on TV what denizens of the swing states are seeing. I spend a considerable amount of time in one swing state and routinely pass through others, so I’ve seen the torrent of attack ads from both campaigns. Mitt Romney is telling people that Barack Obama is a one-man economic disaster, and Obama is telling people that Romney’s election will drive the country more or less into a depression.

So far, this approach has brought neither guy much success. Each is pretty much mired at 47 per cent of the electorate with the remaining six per cent, people like me, waiting to see and hear more campaign – just a few specifics, please, to guide in us in making a voting decision. And, as all this goes on, the economy just sputters along.

A growth in the economy of 4.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2011 declined to 2 per cent in the first quarter of this year and to 1.5 per cent in the second. We need quarterly growth of 2.5 per cent just to stay even.

Consumption rose only 1.5 per cent in the second quarter, down from a 2.4 per cent increase in the first three months of the year. One reason for that is the distressing fact that wages and salaries are barely keeping pace with inflation. Another negative, however, is the political campaign itself. Consumption began to drop at pretty much the same time that the attack ads began.

In large measure, almost nobody who sees the attack ads believes that either candidate can do anything to make things appreciably better anytime soon. Pretty much all Obama did in his first term was to stop the bleeding. Yeah, we’re recovering now, but just barely. Meanwhile, Romney’s plan to revitalize the economy by lowering taxes for the rich and raising them on the middle class by scrapping deductions that middle-class people depend on is unlikely to spur greater confidence on the part of consumers. Nor, incidentally, is it likely to do much for business investment.

The rich are already paying lower taxes than they have in decades, but business investment during this “recovery” has been about $1.4 trillion below where it should be, according to economists. Lower taxes aren’t spurring investment because there’s no demand on the part of consumers for anything except better politicians, and they’re not for sale to ordinary people. They’re already bought and paid for by Wall Street, the oil industry and other pressure groups with money to burn.

In short, one of the key factors in the slowing of this “recovery” is politics – the sheer, vicious nastiness of paid political speech in this presidential election year. People can’t feel confident enough to spend unless they feel some confidence in their leaders.

And, at the moment, very few people seem to have much confidence in either one of these guys.

Be sure to visit my Web site at forpeoplewhothink.com.

Dan Lynch

55 Responses

  1. A. says:

    I won’t be voting for Romney, just against Obama’s ideology. I don’t like the idea that anyone can obtain a college degree that I worked hard my entire school career for, and that people who work at convenience stores make almost the same amount as someone fresh out of college in this area. Sure, everyone’s getting an education (albeit a very dumbed down one), but no one can DO anything with all of these new ideas their heads are filled with. I also don’t like how it looks like I won’t be able to afford the insurance I’ve sacrificed for years to afford due to chronic health problems, while people who have never paid anything will get care.

    Not only that, students, the poor and minorities have become the cheap, exploited whores of the current administration and I don’t like that, either.

  2. A. says:

    Sure, these things may have been the result of careless decisions made by multiple administrations, but to Obama, this is exactly where he wants us to be. Everyone gets the same education, the same pay, the same healthcare…except for the very rich…and some people have to work very, very hard for these while others get to do very little.

  3. iknowtruthismine says:

    A. – You are going to just love the “New Feudalism” the corporate Right plans on dishing up for you, if they are successful (wait till we are all competing for coolie slave wages in their idea of a “Free-Market”) . Obama is the only shot this nation has of preserving the middle-class, and you are blaming the wrong people for the nation’s woes, just like the corporate Right wants you to. The rich are playing the middle-class against the poor (the reason they keep them poor in the first place) for problems the rich caused by funneling so much of the nation’s wealth to the top. Instead of being their cheer-leader, you should try not being their clueless pawn.

  4. I am really glad right now I don’t have a TV. The random garbage friends freak out about in politics is probably strongly driven by those crazy ads.

    If it’s true that they’re both running on “My opponent will cause more terrifying awfulness – I’m the only one that can save you!,” that probably isn’t helping consumer confidence.

    One of the limits to jump-starting consumer consumption in the US is that we have a “services” based economy (imho.)

    People will start buying goods again before they buy services that they can do themselves – restaurants make up about the same proportion of our economy’s output as retail services ($990 billion vs $1300 billion), and financial services make up about a tenth of our total economy’s output ($2300 billion.) Manufacturing is less than 20% of our output. [Data here: http://www.bea.gov/iTable/index_industry.cfm ]

  5. A. says:

    I don’t believe in making the poor and the middle class all comprise the lower middle class, and that’s what we have. My family has worked for generations for what we have, and now all of those who have done nothing are stepping on our backs. I’m not going to wait out another “stimulus” where public sector employees go around changing all of the street signs and hire a dozen new secretaries to surf the ‘net all day long when there are better things to be done if that route is going to be taken. Foolishness.

    I’ve seen what two people who have never had a real job and had no business being president have done, and now let’s see what someone else can do. I’m going to have to ignore all of the false rhetoric of the campaign process, and just give the guy a chance. Hope is all we have.

  6. iknowtruthismine says:

    A. – Putting your hope in someone who is trying to get a seat at the Koch brothers “Big-Boy” table, by prostituting himself to serve their interests because he is not rich enough to buy that seat (his quarter billion is chump change in the “Big-Boy” world) is not a very smart idea. He has no interest in helping you, or even maintaining a level playing field, where everyone has a chance to reach for the brass ring. He exists to serve his own kind and if you do not fall within the sphere where you aid that cause, then you don’t count. Can’t afford health insurance, you die, lose your job because some corporation ships your job off shore to find people willing to work for squat, to bad, you lose. Give them an unrestricted environment where they can do all this, AND THEY WILL. Wake up, YOU ARE BEING CONNED!

  7. David Leisure says:

    People are kidding themselves if they think that the stage-actors whom we elect have any real power over the economy itself.

    Both Obama and Romney are bank-rolled to a large extent by Goldman-Sachs, which is a king-maker both here and abroad. There are also new realities in the Age of Globalization which Americans have failed to recognize: (1) Our President is no longer the most powerful man in the world of politics, and (2) we entered into the “Post-Employment” era a long time ago.

    The information age has completely remade the world and the way power is brokered. Sad but true, its almost to the point where systemic changes are needed throughout the West.

  8. A. says:

    Obama is just as much a prostitute to corporate interests, and he’s running a very dirty campaign. His own administration is telling outright lies about Romney’s tax record and the Dems are running ads making it like Romney had something to do with some woman’s death. Even Anderson COOPER confronted that lie. I could list a million reasons why Barack Obama is disgusting. Romney hasn’t become President yet, so everything that people say about how he will run the country is just a lie or speculation at this point.

  9. A. says:

    By the way, after all of this hype regarding women getting FREE health services, I went to get my birth control pills the other night only to find that I still have to pay a co-pay. The tech said that only a couple of insurances are eligible for Obama’s handout, but you wouldn’t know it from the hype. I don’t need his handout, but I want to point out that I pay three hundred some odd dollars per month for health insurance, I don’t make any money, and now I still have to pay co-pays? Another Obama lie.

    How about school loans? Obama is only saving the average loan holder $8 a month, but yet he acts like he’s saving us from the apocalypse.

    He’s taxing the rich to get their fair share? This amounts to 8 DAYS OF GOV’T SPENDING.

    Let’s stop the BS and stop deepening our debt over these phony programs.

  10. Dan Lynch says:

    I’m not wild about either guy, and I haven’t yet decided who I’ll vote for, but Romney’s tax plan makes me nervous. One, it seems distinctly unfair. Two, and much more crucial, it’s likely to further erode consumer confidence and spending. Visit the Web site of the Tax Policy Center for details. This is a fair, capable, nonpartisan outfit. What they have to say about the Romney plan is disturbing.

  11. iknowtruthismine says:

    A. – Romney is working for the benefit of one and only one group. His every pronouncement (as shallow and duplicitous as they are) are directly tied to the service and betterment of the rich. If you are not one of the anointed few (the rich who became that way by manipulating society to that end) and support what he and they are doing to us, then you are being very foolish. If you are having a difficult time choosing between a corporate owned prostitute and a man and party (that needs some cleaning up too) that at its core has the betterment of the nation as a whole, then you are either in a walking coma, or seriously deluded by the simplistic and manipulative propaganda we have been programmed to believe by our highly ineffective and much altered (to create unrealistic and false societal myths) educational system. If we are to fix our political system, it is necessary to cut away the growing tumor of plutocratic greed, and the necrotic tissue threatening to poison the system (the ignorance that pervades society) )and then set about to clean up the lesser infection that has crept into the rest of the political process. Of course, if you insist on handing the keys to the bus back to the greedy power-drunk few at the top, don’t be surprised when they again drive it into the ditch and skip off again with as much as they can skim off the top.

  12. Albert J says:

    Are the “details” discussed on the “Tax Policy Center” website details of what they PRESUME is Romney’s Tax Plan, or what they ANTICIPATE points to Romney’s Tax plan, or actual details from a plan Mr. Romney has yet to unveil?

    Seems Mr. Reagan had the right idea, in that the necessary revenues come a lot faster from increasing the number of taxpayers rather than increasing the rate current taxpayers pay. Focusing on building the economy, and increasing the number of Americans holding jobs that require paying taxes, is a double edged sword, in that while also increasing the volume of people paying taxes, it serves to reduce the number of people requiring government subsidy, which obviously lowers how much we’re spending.

    The simple reality, that is never going to change, is that removing people from the cart, to help in pulling it, works a lot better than expecting fewer people doing the pulling, to pull harder. Our focus should absolutely be on helping people get out of the cart to help pull, than motivate people in the cart to stay there with promises of how to gain weight.

    We can fight each other about how how big we can re-slice the existing pie, or concentrate on making a bigger pie that everyone can get a bigger slice of. The latter makes more sense to me, and I don’t think the current Administration has any idea, or any interest in figuring out how to make a bigger pie.

    All the BS about, “if you insist on handing the keys to the bus back to the greedy power-drunk few at the top, don’t be surprised when they again drive it into the ditch” is nonsense designed to take everyone’s eye off where the bus is being driven.

  13. Bill says:

    Dan, when you consider the success of Mr. Obama’s economic policies, to include GDP growth, unemployment, poverty levels, income growth, the federal deficit and the national debt, do the results of those policies cause you to be nervous about enabling their continuation beyond 2012?

  14. Diogenes II says:

    I’m not particularly happy with Obama either. Warren Buffett advised him that the stimulus plan was like taking ½ a Viagra pill and that a lot more would be needed to get the economy really moving again, but Obama chose to spend way too much of his political capital on getting the ACA passed instead. He’s also spent way too much time getting our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Comparing Obama to Romney, however, is like comparing FDR to Herbert Hoover or George W. Bush, particularly the latter. As far as I can tell Romney wants to reproduce in kind all the bad policies of GW (lower taxes on the rich and international corporations, and invading Iraq) and none of the good/bipartisan policies (NCLB and prescription drug legislation). U.S. corporations already have record amounts of cash and cash/equivalents on their balance sheets, as do rich individuals, at a time when the median family net worth in the U.S. is at a decades low. If they were going to “create jobs” with all that extra money they would have done that already, but Romney wants to change the tax code so they’ll have even more. Romney is also much more likely to invade Syria and Iran. If it would really be useful to invade those countries let other countries do it for a change. We’re being played the fool by serving as the global police for countries that benefit from that but don’t pay for it. I’m a firm believer that this country is “of the People, by the People, and for the People” – ALL the people, not just the rich. Hopefully people will wake up realize that they have a perfect right to demand that their elected officials promulgate policies that are good for them and as well as the country as a whole, not just a select few.

    More directly to the issue of demand, Obama proposed a number of programs to increase aggregate demand, some of which were things republicans had been in favor of in the past, but the republicans stonewalled those proposals since they didn’t want to give Obama any more legislative victories. I can’t really see rewarding republicans for behavior like that by voting for Romney.

  15. No Quarter says:

    Obama’s tax plan is also not being well received by those who understand the tax code better than the IRS. Ernst and Young believe that Obama will devastate small business.


    This is also QUITE disturbing.

    Any plan for our Nations finances that does not include control of the growth of entitlements and ELIMINATING both the yearly deficit and the total debt is disturbing.

    Simpson-Bowles gave us a framework and a guideline that could be refined into actual policy. A preponderance of Democrats in power, especially the “community organizer” currently in the Oval Office is NOT the answer.

    Time for a change.

  16. A. says:


    To say something like that alone means that you are the one who is seriously deluded. Our educational system is owned and run by far left Dems. Much of what you learn in college (or HS) is the Democratic political platform taught not as an ideology, but as fact. If you took that worldview out, there really wouldn’t be much to college at all. At the time I was in college, I didn’t even realize that myself. Anyhow, no one perpetuates unrealistic and false societal myths as much as colleges do. But, that is what intellectualism is, and intellectualism is what college is about.

    I digress. I will look at Romney’s tax policies more. It’s a shame that the only info I’m getting from subscribing to Obama’s daily updates include photos of his family, fundraising stats, how he supports sports, and negative things about Romney. Oh, and this week there was that thing about how I’d get the free stuff for women, and that turned out to be a farce, so…I’ll have to go beyond the sound bites.

  17. Dan Lynch says:

    This isn’t about carts, Albert. It’s not about buses. It’s about economic growth. Without demand, there will be little or no growth. Romney’s plan to eliminate deductions that mean a great deal to the middle class and to effectively raises taxes on middle-class people whose income and assets have already declined will reduce the amount of after-tax cash that most people have available to buy goods and services. His plan would retard growth, not stimulate it.

  18. Dan Lynch says:

    I’m nervous abut both these guys. The only question is which one makes me more nervous. I don’t know yet. You, apparently, made up your mind before you knew who the candidates would be. That’s what party people do. Independents, like me, vote people and policies, not party.

  19. iknowtruthismine says:

    A. – Please, our educational system is hampered by a lot of factors, not least of which are caused by a textbook industry that paints a totally twisted view of our history. With the textbook industry ignoring vast numbers of incidents that happened in our not so glorious past (which you would hardly recognize if all you get is the “corrected” pablum emanating from heavily fundamentalist and Right-wing weighted textbook companies in Texas), we end up with a painted picture that ignores some of the worst crimes you could imagine, including systematic genocide of our native population. I know Native Americans who refuse to handle twenty dollar bills because one of the worst mass murderers to decimate their populations appears on the front, and I can’t blame them. The fact that our schools produce graduates who have no grasp of history, even the bad history pushed at them and ignored, because they never had the patience to absorb it, makes my case for saying the system produces people who are , “…seriously deluded by the simplistic and manipulative propaganda we have been programmed to believe by our highly ineffective and much altered (to create unrealistic and false societal myths) educational system…”. I stand on my statement and have a lifelong history of seeing the frustration in trying to get students to understand their past, so they don’t end up as clueless idiots marching into voting booths to vote for people who are using their ignorance to win. I know you won’t do this, but it would be the best thing you could do for yourself to get some basic understanding of history and how badly it is used to paint an easily swallowed false picture of reality. Read “Lies My Teacher Told Me, Everything Your American History Book Got Wrong”, by James W. Loewen. This book can be purchased used, and cheaply, at abebooks.com.

  20. Diogenes II says:

    @No Quarter,
    the study you referenced was done by Ernst&Young, one of those large accounting firms implicated in the various corporate scandals over the last 15 years or so, and was fundend by a group of pro-republican organizations. I personally put much more stock in Warren Buffet’s opinion on matters like this, since he ends up being proven right about economic matters more than practically anybody else referenced in the media, and he’s for allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to lapse. Bill Gates and many other billionaires are also in favor of letting the tax cuts lapse. I put a lot more stock in peoples’ opinions when they actually stand to lose money if their opinions are followed. Incidentally, much of the economic advances in the Reagan administration occured after he raised taxes, and the economy went gang-busters in the 90′s after Clinton raised taxes. Also, as a percentage of jobs at the start, fewer jobs were created per complete federal fiscal year under Bush policies than any other president since they started keeping detailed records. So much for tax cuts creating jobs. This country can’t really afford GW II as president.

  21. @ Diogenes:

    Name a major accounting firm that wasn’t part of the scandals, mismanagement, false predictions and cover ups of the last 15 years. Name one that wasn’t part of the banking fiascoes of the last 5 years.

    So far I think they both sound like they suck. I’m having a hard time forgiving Obama for the bank bailouts and the ill-planned stimulus. Romney seems pretty creepy, too.

    Unless Obama’s October Surprise is something truly novel and spectacular – a sign that he’s genuinely interested in changing how things are done – then I’m probably going to register a “protest vote” by voting third party.

    (Remember write-ins? I don’t – they were gone by the time I started voting. I wish I could write-in vote someone… a “someone” with a four-letter first name and a three-letter last name.)

    Interesting question: what lead to the economic boom of the 90′s? Common knowledge says it was the tech industry, but I’ve found very little evidence of that.

  22. barry says:

    I’m nervous about both guys, too. Romney is nearly as inexperienced as Obama was when we elected him in 2008. Obama has a track record of economic failure and futility.

    One thing is for certain: this country can’t afford four more years of eight percent plus unemployment, rising poverty, sinking incomes, record federal deficits, sixteen trillion dollar national debt, and nearly non existent GDP growth. We need a change from the policies which have produced these unacceptable economic conditions.

    Which candidate is more likely to change the failed policies of the recent past and present: the author of those policies, or someone other than that author?

  23. No Quarter says:

    I don’t know that you are referring to me but in case you are, you are correct. I did make my decision before I knew who the candidates would be. But I did the same thing four years ago. I knew I’d never vote for McCain and I supported Obama over Clinton even when it looked like Clinton was gonna win. But my disappointment over the last four years has turned to outright regret and remorse. I have seen very little in the way of hope and change. What I have seen is an ACA that was passed by giving outright bribes to Senators from Louisiana and Nebraska. The ACA’s individual mandate is an outrage (is there anything the Federal Government CAN’T make me buy?) and restructuring healthcare without including TORT reform was the waste of a fortune in political capital. Add to this absence of “shovel-ready” jobs, the pouring of half a billion down Solyndra’s rat-hole, the hiding of Fast& Furious documents (Executive Privilege, REALLY?) and borrowing over .40 cents of every dollar we spend.

    Hope and change?

    Have I seen enough to cause me to make a decision about who I am going to vote for in November? Yes. Yes I have. Does that make me any less of an independent than you are? I don’t think so. The people and the policies are the reason why I have made my decision.

  24. No Quarter says:

    Did I make some secret that the study was done by Ernst and Young? I name them I my second sentence. And your innuendo and guilt by association about how E&Y was “implicated in the various corporate scandals over the last 15 years or so” is so vague as to be meaningless. And of all the links I could have posted that covered the release of the study last month, I purposely chose The Washington Post because they subjected the study to the most critical vetting. The science and methodology used in the study were sound and widely accepted by the accounting industry. The conclusions they reached have been disputed ONLY by Democratic partisans and even they cannot refute the findings without changing and distorting the very definition of what is a “small business”.

    What this Nation really can’t afford is to allow the current administration another four years.

  25. Albert J says:

    I think most rational people understand that statistics, in the hands of a professional, can be manipulated to confirm whatever point someone is committed to making, and should be taken cautiously. However, some things make basic common sense and have proven track records that really can’t be denied, nor ignored.

    I submit the reality is that Presidents really don’t create economic boom, or bust, what they do is either take advantage of booms presented by opportunities and facilitate their success, ignore opportunities and let them pass, or get in the way of opportunities and muck everything up.

    Forgive my reliance on “carts”, but it’s really easy for me to see the reality they present. the more you load into a cart, the more horsepower you need to pull it. When you can redirect more of the horsepower that’s actually riding in and weighing down the cart, to help with the pulling, there is clearly a double benefit.

    Encouraging investment, by stimulating investor interest, to expand business opportunities requiring creation of more jobs, which get people out of the cart, happily into pulling, will generate far more revenue than squeezing additional taxes out of a small minority of the population, BESIDES eliminating, or reducing, the expense of those people who left the cart to help with the pulling.

    The current thrust of the Obama Administration has been focused on inducing more and more people to climb into the cart, and for whatever reason, that is not helpful especially when we have to borrow money to pay for the ride. The number of people on disability has skyrocketed during this Administration, has the wrokplace gotten so dangerous in the past few years, or has there been changes in administering these issues. I understand that perhaps requirements that were overly stringent need to be relaxed somewhat, but a TRIPLING of people on disability is at the very least, questionable.

    The fact that G. W. Bush may have made mistakes is not an automatic allowance for Obama to make all the mistakes he wants. We need to make corrections to fix as many previous mistakes as we can regardless of who might have made them, not someone to keep blaming everything that goes wrong on someone else and do nothing to plug whatever pipe may be leaking.

    During the Obamacare sales pitch, much was made over the “fraud and abuse” apparently EVERYONE was aware of. Why hasn’t anything been done to deal with it during the last 3 years? The sales pitch is over, so forget about it? When you are the plumber, suggesting, “yeah, year someone needs to do something about that leak” just doesn’t cut it.

  26. Diogenes II says:

    I didn’t intend to single out Ernst & Young. My point was that the people behind the referenced study had an obvious bias towards the republican point of view on the subject of the study. Almost all of what most people consider “bank bailouts” were done during the Bush administration, and the last I knew the government actually made money on the deal.

    Obama’s stimulus plan might have been ill-planned, but at that point in time he had to get something through congress as fast as possible. The economy was continuing to come unraveled and doing nothing would have been the worst option possible. GDP was continuing to plummet and we were continuing to lose jobs at the rate of over 500,000 per month – and that rate was increasing month-by-month, and we were in danger of losing the heart of our industrial capacity – the auto industry. The stimulus obviously “worked” – the GDP started to grow again by July 2009, and the rate of job loses per month declined dramatically – it just wasn’t big enough. Instead of spending his political capital on getting through a second stimulus package when it became obvious that the first one was too small Obama spent his political capital on getting through the OCA. OCA may end up being Obama’s equivalent of GW’s invasion of Iraq – a BIG BIG mistake that may end up relegating him to the “elete” group of “failed presidents” along with GW. I too may vote for a third party candidate or just not voting at all, but I’m certainly not voting for Romney the Wing-nut Bully.

    As far as what caused the economic boom in the 1990’s – who kinow for sure? I’d say that we probably know less about how free-market economies really work than we do about climate change, except in hindsight. My guess is that it was a result of a “perfect storm” of economic events that created a sort of a “positive feedback” that fueled the boom. I give George HW Bush a lot of credit and even more to Bill Clinton. Unfortunately when the republicans who had taken over congress in the mid-90’s realized that Clinton had snookered them in negotiations on important legislation, the last vestiges of bi-partisanship flew out the window.

  27. Dan Lynch says:

    You seem to be purposely ignoring my point. Please explain to me how lowering taxes on the wealthy will stimulate investment when trillions of dollars are now on the sidelines invested in no job-creating activities. Explain to me how raising taxes on the middle class will spur demand. Rhetoric is no substitute for information or logic.

  28. Diogenes II says:

    @No Quarter,
    Washington post didn’t really vet the article at all, all they did was get comments from people and institutions that were obviously biased on one side of the issue or another. The debate about the effect of raising or lowering taxes on the economy has been going on for years and there is if anything a glut of scholarly and other fairly nonbiased works on this topic,and this biased and poorly done study by Ernst & Young doesn’t add anything. I did a quick search for other references to this study and couldn’t find any that had any semblance of impartiality. Apparently the academic community doesn’t feel this study warrants comment. Like I said before I trust people who have a good track record on economic topics, particularly when what they are saying is not in their own personal economic self interests, and there are a lot of billionaires who oppose Romney’s tax plans.
    I still haven’t heard any Romney supporters explain why anybody should vote for Romney given that he seems to be planning to continue GW policies. Just saying that he isn’t Obama isn’t good enough for me. If Romney is elected there is a real danger that the US will revert to the GW downward spiral. I don’t like treading water, but that’s a lot better than drowning. I also don’t want to see any more young American soldiers suffering so that the President can have a legacy.

  29. @ Diogenes:

    Looking through the GOA report on TARP:


    We’re still owed well over $100,000 million

    (Or, if you prefer, 0.1 trillion. Or, better yet, four times the annual budget of the Department of Justice: http://www.justice.gov/jmd/2012summary/pdf/fy12-bud-summary-request-performance.pdf)

    However, reading more carefully, the bank portion is paid. It’s stuff like the auto industry that’s causing the big deficit in TARP, not the banks.

    TARP went into effect in January 2009. That means that while it’s the brainchild of the Bush II administration, it’s been administered by the Obama administration.

    Thus, I do blame Obama. I also blame Bush. For the record, although the War on Drugs was the brainchild of Nixon, I blame every president after him as well for the poochscrew that’s turned out to be.

    This is why I find it hard to ever be enthused with the incumbents. If something goes wrong in the last administration, I don’t accept “Well, my administration is not to blame” if it keeps happening. Patriot Act falls under this as well.

    You see the stimulus as working. I think it “worked” very briefly, but it didn’t cure any problems. An antihistamine will make you feel a little bit better when you have a cold, but it doesn’t solve anything. And close to a trillion dollars is a LOT to spend on an antihistamine.

    Personally, I think the fact that we’ve ignored human rights violations by our economic partners is coming back to bite us in the a$$. Chinese labor is really cheap – slaves are cheap labor – and our workers, as well as European workers, etc. cannot compete (or must also become slaves.)

    We need to address that issue, imho, not use another trillion-dollar snake oil remedy.

  30. A. says:

    Psychological factors? Some may invest/spend just because a Republican businessman is in the White House. I believe that some people spent/invested just because Obama was in office, and because he was supposed to be “The Guy” who changed everything (in fact, I believe in that more than I believe in his policies…understate inflation, and you’ve got GDP growth=policy success!). Maybe the wealthy will become more risk-acceptant with the additional income saved with the tax decrease. With 500k in the bank, a guy might not want to take his family to Bora Bora, but maybe with a certain amount extra, he’s comfortable with the idea. Yeah…We’ve got a tough road ahead, no doubt about it.

    Euro style socialism is not the answer, though. Even if it was, we’d mess it up because we can’t handle our money here in America. It’s crumbling overseas, and it would be worse here. In NY, they take so much money, but we still ride on rough roads and crumbling bridges and had no money for last year’s flood mishaps. Put that on a national scale. Further, people in public sector jobs or people who receive welfare benefits do not have more dignity, they have less. And they’re more frustrated…unless their soul has died. Humans thrive on work, achievement, and competition. If heaven exists, that’s where we get to play around and not care about any of that stuff. I’m not going to sit on a high horse and say that the “disadvantaged” need me and my tax dollars to survive and self-actualize. How arrogant the current Dem elites are. I can’t support them.

    @19…The real reason I am here is to explore different viewpoints. I am aware of all that you wrote in #19. I know of that book and am a believer. It seems that both sides have altered history and perceptions of our current reality to how they see fit…in different ways. I was thinking more of global economics, American social issues, other things…

    I’m not a party person. I am an upstate NYer who went to college and come from a dyed-in-the-wool Democratic, union family. I have primarily supported Democratic presidential candidates in the past. I see that the party is changing and expressing concepts and ideas that I’m not sure I agree with based on what I’ve seen and experienced so far in life.