BigLutz and I had a debate that started to go off topic. Here's the splinter thread for it. Anyways, we're just discussing the effectiveness of the New Deal, the Stimulus Package, and the general shape of the economy. Feel free to hop in at anytime, anyone.
This, really didn't need to be placed in another thread, topics go off in a variety of different directions all the time in Debate.
Again, Bush did the same thing you're claiming Barack Obama does many more and to a greater degree of severity/stupidity. The Iraq War buildup, anyone?
No I believe saying the US would never recover gets as severe and stupid as you can get. That being said, why didn't you post one of those quotes instead of going back to a Campaign Ad. Also wasn't Obama supposed to be Change? Now you are saying he is acting just like Bush.
What, you don't think that there's a point at which things get so bad that people start rioting in the streets? It is completely possible for a nation to be destroyed because of a poor economy. That's exactly how al-Queda is trying to fight us right now, actually.
Rioting in the streets does not mean the country is destroyed. Seeing how we are the biggest or at least in the top few biggest economies in the world. That we have a multitude of safeguards in place to prevent such a event from occurring. And that we would have other countries come to our aid before that happened. Not to mention that things would have to get worse than the US Depression ( We are not even at 1980s levels yet ) for that to take place.
I would think the chances of a Alien Invasion coming down and destroying every US city are higher than a Depression happening with the magnitude to destroy this country.
Consumer Confidence in November 2008 was -52. It went down in December to -49. Obviously, there were other factors that go into people's feelings about the economy, but Obama's election was more than likely one of them.
Sauce.
And that has absolutely nothing to do with the rebound in the housing market seen in December, as well as a influx of stimulus cash, as well as higher sales at stores for Christmas, and gas prices [/sarcasm]
Please you act as if Obama's election was the only event to happen in those months, and that we were living in a vacuum. There is a saying for that Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Learn it.
Edit:
Consumer confidence rose slightly this month, coming off 28-year lows thanks to cheaper oil and deep discounts during the holiday-shopping season.
Now I notice you say Obama's election was most likely one of them, yet you continue to provide no proof for your absurd claim. I seriously doubt any major news agency would actually say that Obama's election played a major part in December numbers.
No, but it gets more money into the system, and with more money in the system, more can be spent.
Except A: The money would be so diverse it wouldn't make a dent
B: You are betting on there being billions of dollars flowing into the Restaurants outside of their weekly take, there wasn't
C: These large companies would have put the money into savings, seeing how they were facing cut backs in employees and restaurants. Cuts that were made that February and March.
I gave it as an example. Substitute "Go out to dinner" with "Buy cheap thing X." With more solid confidence in the economy, people feel a little safer splurging more which gets more money into the system. And that money gets spent, and so on and so forth until our economy recovers.
Except Confidence didn't remain that way after December, in fact in February the very first month Obama was in office, and when he went to work on the Stimulus. Consumer Confidence dropped to
The lowest level since the 1967 inception of the index
Again, substitute "Go out to dinner" with "But cheap thing X." The money goes into different businesses, but the important thing is that more money is being exchanged.
Except and this is where you get really stupid, the businesses are already facing red ink and are going to hold onto the money. The money does not go in a circular path, it stops at the business and they are going to put it into holding so that they don't have to fire thousands of employees. Remember the businesses are relying on banks to give them loans, the money coming in is barely keeping them afloat in some areas, and under in many others. Just because money is coming in, doesn't mean the banks will give out loans. Meaning the businesses will be keeping the money to stay afloat.
The idea is that people stop hording all of the money they make in their bank accounts and start spending it. If the feeling continues to the next paycheck, they may go and indulge in "Cheap thing X" once again.
Except you still are not relieving people's fears about being laid off, and those fears will not begin to back down until the lay offs actually slow to stop. The driving force in these fears are that you won't have a job in the coming months.
And if its not because Barack Obama, then how do you propose housing numbers increased in December?
Answer was right there in the NY Times story.
I probably should be less vague when I talk. By that, I mean people who had been saving, but were holding out for a better market.
Even in Decemeber the market was still in the crapper, thinking that they suddenly decided to splurge in a very down market is utter stupidity.
Yeah, better recovery after a harder fall.
Read their work, we were already poised for a recovery, the New Deal just retarded it for 7 years.
The thing with the New Deal and the Stimulus Package is that they attempt to take the nation into freefall. Its a given we'll recover, however, it isn't given how far we'd fall.
Problem is you have no guarantee it will work, or that it won't prolong the free fall or suffering. The thing with the New Deal is that it took what was going to be a short recovery, and lengthened the pain over several years. The problem with the Stimulus is that we are already going to have the recovery, but the money is so vast, that it is going to be spent in such small increments over such a large period of time that it won't make a difference.
We agree that the economy was still in freefall until only a couple of months ago, right? Same thing with the Great Depression.
We were showing signs of recovery in both this Recession and the Great Depression when both packages were introduced.
Even though it prolonged the Great Depression, it stopped things from getting worse.
Read the freaking article
"The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies."
Answer me this, would you rather have a short, but really horrible depression (and by really horrible, I mean people fighting over roadkill in the street horrible) or a long but moderate (and by moderate, I mean you can't spend as much money as you used to, but everyone in your family isn't starving, your house hasn't been repossesed, and you/your parents still have jobs) recession?
Short but really horrible depression. Depressions and Recessions tend to be the market naturally correcting itself, killing off the bad businesses and allowing for restructuring to happen. When you have a long drawn out moderate depression it is usually because of Government interference not letting the market play itself out.
We're talking about the New Deal's effectiveness in general, right? Of course we'd talk about the faults in economic indicators that can't show an improved environment or improved distribution of wealth. And the New Deal gave us programs like Social Security, which is still helping today.
Piss poor example, Social Security is about to go into the red, costing us billions per year. If you want to talk about the New Deal's effectiveness overall we can. How about we get into the Unconstitutional areas of it? How it allowed businesses to get together to decide wages? How about we talk about things like Social Security and how it is quickly going to be something we cannot afford.
Wait, I'm sorry, what? You're claiming the economy won't get better? Of course the economy will get better eventually, that's the nature of the business cycle. The question is how far up or down it will go and for how long.
Oh I have no doubt the economy will get better in the short run. In the long run it will begin to suffer again because of the debt brought on by this Recession. Remember we are talking about the long run of the economy not the short term.
Long-term economic health won't help much if everyone loses their jobs and homes.
Please, now you are starting up with the idiotic scare tactics
But, by then (hopefully), the economy will be back on track.
Just in time for the coming Inflation brought about by the Fed having to print money!
You want to talk about idiot Presidents? Then let's talk about Bush, who got us into this mess in the first place.
Bush didn't get us into the mess in the first place, this thing was building up for a very long time. In fact Bush tried to stop it multiple times but the Democrats wouldn't listen
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
These are the White House's own words, in 2001 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a "potential problem" that could lead to "strong repercussions in financial markets"
In 2003 they called them a "systemic risk,"
In 2005 we had Alan Greenspan saying that "We are placing the total financial system at substantial risk"
The Democrats refused to listen, they provided party line votes, and with that lack of support Republicans shelved any attempt to fix the problem. And guess what, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went under, and what was originally a small Recession, turned into the nightmare scenario Bush and others had been warning about for at least 7 years.
To say that Bush was the one that got us into this mess, shows a substantial lack of knowledge of the situation. Then again that seems to be about par for your posts.
Edit: Also trying to misdirect onto Bush makes Obama no less a idiot, or a disaster and danger to this country
But with the USA's new Viper, the USA got a hot new girlfriend (an expanding economy) and she's going to get a huge modeling contract soon which she'll use to pay off the USA's new Viper (the economy expanding enough to cushion the money we spent).
Excuse me but the Expanded Economy in your analogy was the new Job Opportunity. Can't switch them.
Oh, come on. You and I both know that's not how it works. Consumers need confidence in the economy to start spending. If they have that, then they start to buy more things, which puts money into the system, which causes a chain effect to get more money in the system until the economy gets going again. However, no one is going to start buying things if everyone feels like they need to save all of their money.
And they won't be spending anything until we see higher job numbers, and until we see a upturn in the Housing Market. People are not that utterly retarded. They are not going to go "Ooo Obama passed the Stimulus! Lets go spend!" while they are worried about losing their job or their mortgage. For some one who says that they know how "it" works, you sure are acting like you don't.
Funny, because I believe giving people jobs was one of the components of the Stimulus Package.
Jobs havn't been given out yet because the State has no idea where to spend the money. Not to mention thousands of those jobs will go to Illegal Immigrants who will ship the money back to Mexico. And hundreds of thousands of other jobs will be just quickie part time jobs.
Its not, actually. People don't think they'll be getting income from it. They think that they'll start to see more money from their job that they still have/just got. When people expect to have more money or do actually have more money, they start to spend.
Except there is no job security! That is what you seem to be unable to wrap your brain around. Right now there is almost no job security. Even if they see their money coming in they are seeing lay off after lay off happening out there and they are going to save it.
My God how hard is that for you to understand?
