sleeper;852543 wrote:Bush started office in 2000 with an unemployment rate of 4.1%. He ended Jan 2008 with an unemployment rate of 5%. Obama has caused unemployment rates to nearly DOUBLE since he's been in office.
First of all, if it is true that President Obama has made unemployment worse it is because he has been focusing on the deficit just like Conservatives want and did not create and adequate stimulus because he wanted to court Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe, Joe Lieberman, etc. Perhaps you say that you are unsatisfied with the deficit deal because it does not cut enough, well if that is your argument, as it is many conservatives, you are arguing for a higher unemployment rate because contractionary government policies in a depressed economy make things worse. Just look at Europe! Thus, you and several other conservatives are lambasting Obama and pinning it on him (and rightfully so IMO) but if you had your way, it would be even worse.
So that is our choices in this country now. Obama who is at best a moderate conservative, choosing "deficit, deficit" when even someone like Richard Posner of Free Market law and economics fame points out "the medium-term problem is the depression that the economy is still wallowing in..." and calls for fiscal stimulus and a raise in the debt ceiling, and Tea Party Conservatives (or people pretending to be like Romney and Pawlenty) who would harm the economy even worse if they did what they're saying in Iowa and New Hampshire.
It is a repeat of 1937 all over again when FDR on the advice of his Classical Economist Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau started focusing on debt and deficits thinking the depression was over and made it last longer. And BHO's gonna get kicked out of office by independents and moderates voting for Rick Perry, who would have made it even worse! BHO better hope that Iran attacks Israel or Aliens Invade or he's likely doomed. As Larry Summers put it on Charlie Rose:
"Never forget, never forget, and I think it’s very important for Democrats especially to remember this, that if Hitler had not come along, Franklin Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with an unemployment rate in excess of 15 percent and an economic recovery strategy that had basically failed."
And as to BHO's conservatism here's Former Reagan and Ron Paul adviser explaining how BHO is a moderate conservative:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/07/22/Barack-Obama-The-Democrats-Richard-Nixon.aspx#page1. This is the author of Reaganomics folks.
Conservatives have been wrong about everything. The market is still running to our debt despite our long term healthcare inflation problems with medicare and medicaid and our deficit. Even with the commodity inflation headline and core inflation has remained very low. Conservatives decry the deficit yet repudiate the easiest way to close the deficit which would be to repeal the bush tax cuts and we'd have >20% GDP in revenue according to the CBO, the Tax Policy Center and other experts (at least in the short to medium term....has happened a lot in a deviation from the 18.4% average) saying that it would harm the economy even though direct cuts in appropriations spending contract adequate demand even more than tax raises. (Shouldn't do either yet but it is Conservatives who want to go "deficit" instead of "Unemployment"). Even their patron saint repudiated this position when it came time to deal with deficits. Mitch McConnel says "I don't see how raising taxes on job creators" is good in a bad economy...well neither is cutting off checks being sent to job creators! Now, I don't think that's a great idea but I'm not calling for deficit reduction in the near term!
It has been nearly half a decade since Ron Paul stood on the House Floor declaring the end of the dollar and the inevitable spike in interest rates on our debt. Both could not have been more wrong. For heaven's sake people even left Gold for our treasuries yesterday. We heard all about how the crowding out of private investment but as the stimulus and QE II dissipates the job creators sit tight awash in cash as demand is ineffective and inadequate.
I've never seen anything like this. Conservatives complaining endlessly about Obama's handling of the economy when it's nothing but a poor man's version of what they want. The man is the largest tax cutter in history according to the Tax Policy Center and the Tax Foundation. I mean, when Art Laffer is on CNBC saying the Debt Ceiling Crisis is wholly self inflicted, Marty Feldstein is saying that spending cuts increase the odds of a double-dip and should be avoided and Bruce Bartlett is arguing to the world that Barack Obama is a Moderate Republican...and the majority of the Republican party disagrees with all of this and continues to have such utter disdain for BHO believing him to be a socialist prince because the facts cause too much cognitive dissonance, you have to wonder what happened to what was once the party of ideas. But I dunno, I guess everybody to the left of Robert Nozick is Bloody Commie These days. Hell he'd probably even be called a Marxist since he defended the minimal state against anarchy...
